Someone tried to hit me over the head with his thraxter and I swerved and kicked him, and shook the fellow in my grip. “Call them off! By Sasco! Are you witless!”
“You — strive for Spikatur?”
“Of course! Now — go, or you’ll drink steel.”
A man pitched into me and coughed bright blood, red in the torchlights. I dodged away and threw the fellow I’d been gripping off. I kicked him up the rump as he staggered.
“Run!” he shrieked. Then he let rip a wild ululating scream that would have frozen the blood in a bullfighter. His companions — who had been taking a severe hammering — checked their onslaughts. “Run, brothers! Flee!”
Lobur’s face expressed the utmost fury.
“By Krun! They’ll not escape my vengeance!”
He stood hard by Nedfar as he shouted, and I judged Lobur spoke thus not only out
