Transit to Scorpio

Chapter seven-2

For, clearly, he was a warrior.

I had made a mistake in custom and usage; for he made a face and pointed to the dead rider and his mount. “Indeed, it is for me to call you Jikai; what have I done that you know of?”

“As to that,” I said, “I doubt not that you are a mighty warrior. But I seek a girl these — things — took.”

He had an open, frank face, burned brown by the suns of Antares, with light-colored hair bleached by those suns. He carried a steel helmet at his saddle bow, and his mount was of the same strange high-stepping breed as the dead one at my feet. He wore Leathers, russet-brown, tasseled and fringed after the fashion in New England, and he sat his saddle with the alert carriage yet relaxed air I knew bespoke a master rider. I could not say horseman, although no doubt from s