The hours passed; evening settled on the mountains, and darkness and the end of Blade's daily march were not far off. Blade was making his way along a narrow ledge above a fast-flowing stream when he caught sight of a dim orange glow far ahead. It flickered and wavered, and he couldn't tell what or how far away it might be-but it was there. He kept moving, but now he held the knife in his right hand and was thankful that the goatskin bindings made his footsteps almost noiseless.

The darkness grew thicker, and in contrast the orange glow ahead grew slowly larger and brighter. Blade felt a moment's relief as he stepped off the narrow ledge onto a broader shelf of rock. There he would have room to fight and no chance of a fifty-foot plunge into the boiling stream if he put a foot wrong.

The rock shelf broadened and sprouted boulders, then grass, bushes, and even small trees stunted and twisted by altitude and years of wind. Blade used every bit of cover as he crept forward, his eyes never leaving the steadily growing spot of orange.

A few more steps, and Blade was on the edge of a wide belt of cleared land, sloping down to the stream. On the far side of the stream another slope rose to the foot of a cliff. Halfway between the stream and the cliff a fire blazed inside a circle of large stones. Its flames shot up ten feet into the air, and sparks rose higher still. Around the stones about twenty men lay or sat on furs or skins, oiling or sharpening weapons, drinking from skin bags, or sound asleep. Blade's eyes were drawn to the spectacle of what lay beyond them.

The stream ran through a cutting at the bottom of the cleared slopes, between vertical walls of dressed stone twenty feet high. A wooden footbridge crossed it directly below the fire and the men. The stream ran on for another fifty yards, then suddenly it was no longer there. On either side of it the ground also ended, as if it had been cut off by a knife or dissolved into the night air.