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nimble zorcas with superb skill. As the zorcabows opened out, so the lancers bored on through in a solid bone-crushing charge. The lance heads with their red and white pennons all came down. The steel heads glimmered cruelly in that wavering light.
    When the half-squadron hit, they plunged in like a fist into a tub of butter. In a twinkling the individual combats broke out as the melee swirled along between the shuttered houses. Caught utterly by surprise, thrown into confusion, the totrix men gave no thought to fighting — only to flight.
    A trumpet pealed the recall. As one, the lancers disengaged. The archers shot until their targets flitted into the shadows and were lost.
    Karidge yelled in his strong voice: “No pursuit, Jiktar Tromo! Form up, emperor’s guard!”
    With drilled precision the two half-squadrons swung back and formed at the door of the Sign of the Headless Zorcaman.
    “Well — by all the names!” declared Mevek.
    His men huddled, gaping at the red and yellow uniforms, the feathers, the furred pelisses. Yes, zorcamen, archers and lancers, make a fine show, by Krun!
    Nath Karidge was staring at me in great uncertainty.
    Mevek, however, voiced the mutual thoughts first.
    “So you brought a bodyguard, emperor, after all.”
    “It was necessary,” said Karidge, very firmly, brooking no argument, no recrimination. “The emperor did not order the bodyguard. I did so on my own responsibility.” He looked down, and then up, defiantly. “I disobeyed your orders, majister, and now I accept that I will be sent as a simple trooper, to pay for my crime.”
    “You assume I would send you to a cavalry regiment?”
    He suddenly looked aghast.
    “But — majister—”
    Karidge was a zorcaman first, last and all the time.
    “I am minded to send you to the Phalanx, to be a brumbyte.” I said brumbyte deliberately, and not soldier, for I wished Karidge to understand the situation.
    “Majister...” He spoke in a weak, strangled voice.
    “I shall speak to you, Chuktar Karidge, about this later. For now, I thank you for your two half-squadrons. They judged it nicely. Jiktar Tromo? Send him to me later on.”
    “Quidang, majister!”
    Then it was a matter of clearing up and finalizing what was understood between the guerrillas and myself. I heard Karidge saying to Korero, “In the Phalanx — I admire them, of course — but to trail a pike as a brumbyte! One of your muscled fellows with a vosk-skull helmet and a damned great pike and the view of the fellow in front’s backside! By Vox! I couldn’t bear it!”
    “Cheer up, Nath,” Korero advised him. “The emperor has a funny way with him at times.”
    “Aye!”
    Keeping a straight face, I walked over to Turko and Mevek who were arguing about payment for the damage to the inn.
    “These folk have been badly treated,” Mevek was saying, his flat face now filled with passion. “I shall pay for the damage. And then—” and he laughed “—I shall find a damned convoy of Jhansi’s and take from it what he owes.”
    “I feel I have a better claim,” said Turko.
    “You are then a rich man, you who save my life and refuse to tell me the name of the man to whom I owe it?”
    “No, I suppose, if all goes well, I could be rich one day. But wealth does not interest me for itself. It is what may be done with riches — like paying for this damage.”
    I said, “Let Mevek pay and take the gold from Jhansi. I like the sound of that.”
    There, you see!” burst out Mevek. His impassivity had quite deserted him. “The emperor speaks sense.”
    “I shall return to Vondium now, Mevek. You call yourself a Chuktar?”
    The note of interrogation prompted him to a long, circumstantial story about once having served in a mercenary army raised somewhere in Pandahem, and he was a Chuktar by that right as well as being the leader of his guerrilla band.
    “Then Chuktar it is, Mevek. An ord Chuktar, I would say.” Ord — Kregish for eight — meant he had only two