Boulders and slabs larger than Blade went sliding and rolling away down the hill, with more rumbles and crashes that echoed around the empty valley like an artillery barrage. Blade winced, less now at the pain of his scrapes and gouges than at the noise of the rockfall. Anybody within five miles could hear it, unless they were stone deaf. Anybody who took the rockfall as the sign of an approaching enemy would be alert and waiting. But Blade was no more inclined to turn back than he had ever been. One of these days, he suspected, this habit of pushing on would turn out to be his last mistake. In the meantime it helped him get into things a lot faster and find out a lot more. As secret agent or explorer, finding out what was going on had always been the heart of his job.

He continued his climb and reached the ridge in a few minutes. Near the top he dropped on hands and knees and crawled the rest of the way: Peering down between two boulders, he scanned the slope and valley below.

Two hundred feet below him, a dozen men sat around a small fire. Two gaunt and swaybacked horses were tethered to stakes driven into the ground just beyond the fire. Beyond the horses a naked, filthy, human figure crouched, also tied by the ankle to a stake. It was so gaunt and dirt-blackened that Blade could not tell whether it was a man or a woman.

He turned his attention back to the dozen men around the fire. They were not much cleaner than their prisoner, and their hair was just as long. All wore beards and all wore fur tunics and baggy leather boots and breeches. All wore long knives, and several had short swords in battered sheaths hanging from bleached leather belts. They were alternately spooning something out of a large communal brass pot and gnawing meat off the bones of several small animals.

Apart from the knives and swords, none of the men were wearing any weapons. But each seemed to have a good set piled ready to hand behind him. Blade couldn't tell exactly what was in each pile. But it looked as if these people were well able to take care of themselves, and if not exactly looking for trouble, well able to handle it if it came to them.