«One can understand why your Emperor's reputation has traveled even as far as England,» Blade said finally. «Indeed his will is one of iron.»

«It is,» said the duke. «Yet even iron has only so much strength. The army of Saram is strong, and when it can meet the Steppemen man against man and horse against horse, they must flee or perish. But this seldom happens. They choose their time and place and seldom fight unless they can bring against us numbers so great that we must flee or die. The soldiers of His Magnificence will not flee, for he is harsh with cowards. So they die. Each year our soldiers grow fewer, each year the Steppemen grow more numerous. We know they dream of a year when they will ride across our border in all their strength and sweep our army aside like the tides of the sea. We fear that year is not far off, for all that His Magnificence and his soldiers can do.»

So the Empire of Saram seemed to be facing the attacks of a horde of nomadic barbarians. Blade was not quite ready to call the Empire itself «civilized»-not with their Emperor's rather bloodthirsty taste in punishments. Yet certainly they were facing a notoriously unpleasant sort of enemy. A horde of horsemen could be as elusive, painful, and sometimes deadly as a swarm of wasps.

«I can understand why they are not welcome in Saram,» said Blade. The duke laughed shortly, and even his son managed a thin smile. «I am glad you decided that I was not one of them. Matters might have become difficult, for as you have seen, I would not have been easy to kill.»

The duke laughed again. «No, indeed. There would have been a battle worthy of quite a number of poems, if by some chance anyone had lived to write them. In fact, we had some hopes that you might not be a Steppeman when you first appeared. Not one in a thousand of them is as large as you are. Nine out of ten have their legs bowed like the crescent of the moon from a life spent on horseback, while yours are as straight as pine trees and as tough as seasoned wood.