Their days settled into a peaceful routine. Every morning they washed in a nearby stream. Riyannah now stripped in Blade's presence as casually as if they'd been lovers for years. She never came close to him while they were bathing, though. Blade was quite willing to leave things that way.

After bathing, they ate a breakfast of leftovers from last night's dinner. Then while Riyannah tidied things up, Blade would go check his snares and the lines he'd left in a stream a mile to the west. He relied on them for most of the food. They had two hundred rounds of rifle ammunition and five grenades, but Blade wanted them saved for future emergencies. He doubted they'd have any serious trouble in the forest. They seemed to be outside the hunting grounds of the bat-cats and he hadn't seen anything else large enough to be dangerous. Leaving the woods might be another matter when it came to fighting.

Without those thoughts of the future, Blade might have been tempted to pitch the rifles, ammunition, and grenades into the nearest stream. It was getting harder to stay on his guard and keep all the weapons out of Riyannah's hands. At the same time she never made a single move toward any of them. Did this mean she could really be trusted, or was she playing an even deeper game than he suspected? Blade would have given a great deal to know-and even more not to have to ask the question at all.

Damn it, Riyannah was too pleasant a companion to be caught up in this «war of the worlds,» Menel or no Menel. To be sure, some of the most pleasant companions could also be deadly opponents. Blade learned that very young, and because of that lived to grow older. He didn't have to like it.

Blade always spent most of the morning collecting the night's catch and resetting the snares and lines.