Zosk uttered an inarticulate cry, and began to stumble backwards. His hands fumbled on the cords and the great bundle of wood loosened and clattered to the stone flooring of the road. Turning to run his foot slipped on one of the sticks and he fell. He fell almost on top of the ax which lay on the road. Impulsively, as though it were a life- giving plank in the maelstrom of his fear, he seized the ax.

With the ax in his hands, suddenly he seemed to remember his caste, and he crouched in the road, there in the dusk, a few feet from me, like a gorilla clutching the broad-headed ax, breathing deeply, sucking in the air, mastering his fear.

His eyes glared at me through the grizzled, matted locks of his hair. I could not understand his fear, but I was proud to see him master it, for fear is the great common enemy of all living things, and his victory I felt somehow was also mine. I remembered once when I had feared thus in the mountains of New Hampshire, and how shamefully I had yielded to my fear and had run, a slave to the only degrading passion of man.

Zosk straightened as much as his giant bow of a backbone would allow him. He was no longer afraid.

He spoke slowly. His voice was thick, but it was fully under his control. "Say you are not Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," he said.

"But I am," I said.

"I ask your favour," said Zosk, his voice thick with emotion. He was pleading. "Say you are not Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba."

"I am Tarl Cabot of Ko-ro-ba," I repeated firmly.

Zosk lifted his ax.