Her eyes and mouth joined in smiling, and he felt relief.

“Ram,” she said, “I believe you’re the only one of your people on this ship who has meaningful psi potential. Perhaps I can teach you to use it, if you’d like.”

“What did you think of her?” Celia asked.

“Pretty remarkable. Damned remarkable. Thanks, Cele, for pushing me. She’s not only a walking reference library; she’s going to train my psi potential.”

“I thought you found your occasional flashes of telepathy painful-wished you didn’t have them.”

“You know the background, the reason for that. But it’s like having sight and keeping your eyes closed; I need to face up to it now, to what I am and can be.”

His expression changed. “Would it bother you, Cele, if I became a functional telepath?”

“I can’t be sure. You’re-not always nice, Ram, and I don’t know how it would be, not being able to keep secrets from you. But I think you ought to do it. We’ll work things out later if we need to.”

He looked at her soberly for a moment. “Good,” he said quietly. He kissed her gently on the corner of her mouth where it nestled against the smooth curve of her cheek. “I guess I better go to the bridge now.”

The Alpha skimmed swiftly up the narrow valley sixty meters above the ground, began braking at the first sight of huts, slewed in a tight 360 degree turn above them while angling upward to a hundred meters, then moved upvalley again, but slowly now. Had Nikko seen it, she’d have known that none of her people were piloting. It had been flown with a hard arrogant snap.

She didn’t see it though, only heard the alert as she knelt beneath the pines, helping Hild rake tubers from a fire before a lean-to. A sentry had spotted the pinnace and blown a signal on his great ox horn, a signal repeated in a series up the valley.

Her face tightened. There had been little doubt it would happen. Now it had. And she was afraid neither Matt nor Mike had given in easily.

Alpha continued up the line of clan encampments. Hard eyes scanned the landscape, finding no one. No one ran into the huts or from them. No one fled into the forest. No smoke rose from the roofs. She swooped parabolically to 2,500 meters, and a hairy brown hand adjusted the visual pickup. Then they drifted back down the valley.

There could be no question; the Northmen had abandoned their camps. They probably hadn’t gone far though. There were hints of smoke, as of campfires, above the canopy of the timbered ridges, though nothing justifying the expenditure of ammunition.

With a jerk of acceleration the pinnace shot toward the valley mouth. They still would go home blooded. They would disperse the herd of Northman cattle they’d seen on the prairie beside the forest’s edge, and shoot up the herdsmen, before returning to the city.

An endless undulating sea of grass, the prairie dried beneath a towering sun. A caravan crept across its vastness, raising a train of dust to mark its passage. Carts and wagons, grinding drought-baked ruts and clods to flour, lurched and jolted clumsily, their teamsters swaying more or less awake. Armed guards rode beside the wagons, spitting gray grit, cursing the lack of breeze, cursing the merchants whose pay had brought them here, cursing their fellows who rode as scouts or flankers away from the choking dust.

Milio Gozzi shifted his bulk fruitlessly in the silver-inlaid saddle and thought of his younger brother who sat at home envying his wealth. Envying at home on a cushioned chair, fanned by a servant, tended by a lovely girl-mistress eager for position, a girl with young breasts like lemons and small dimpled hips.

He shifted again and grunted. Wealth grew only partly from shrewdness. It also required will, the exercise of correct judgment, and attention to details.

Seldom, but occasionally, he wished he was the younger brother. Eat as one might, riding in the hot sun for long days was to feel the fat melt from one’s bones, trickling down over sensitive skin to gather and turn to butter in the loosening creases around the torso, marinating and stinking. The worst was behind and the worst was ahead. The mountains had been more dangerous, sheltering bands of brigands, but the days of open steppe ahead promised to be hotter and dustier.

It was hard to make an honest credit today. Since the orcs had lost their emperor, the peace had not been kept as well. Brigands had grown bolder, forming larger, more ambitious forces. His escort was three times as large as in years past, and cost ten times as much, because the danger was greater and because he would keep them all the way to the City. In other years the orcs had not allowed an armed escort to come more than a day’s ride past the mountains. Nor had it been necessary. Now bandits had attacked even farther out than this, it was said-two full days beyond the foothills. And it was rumored that barbarians had come into the country from a land of ice, infesting the mountains farther north and riding out to attack orc patrols!

One could hear anything, of course, but even lies often had roots in truth. The most disturbing evidence was that they had been advised to bring their escort to the City.

No one had encountered Northmen this far south yet. Gozzi laid a fat fist on the hilt of his short sword. He had no wish to be the first.

He squinted back along the string of wagons at the grimy toughs who rode in the dust, some with lances, some with bows, all with a shield slung alongside and a sheathed sword. A band of surly cut-throats who rode guard instead of raiding only because the pay was surer and because the orcs hunted brigands. They’d fought well though, that time below the pass.

Some rode shirtless. It would be better if they kept their mail on, but he did not press the issue. He’d lost several in the fight and couldn’t afford desertions.

The caravan master pulled his black Arabian alongside Gozzi. It was Gozzi’s caravan and Gozzi had hired him. The other merchants were lesser men who’d paid to join their wagons with Gozzi’s.

“Padrone,” he said, pointing toward the sun, “it is midday, and there’s a creek just ahead. It would be a good place to stop.”

Gozzi nodded and the man jogged his horse down the long train of wagons, calling instructions. When the first wagon reached the stream, the caravan stopped. Teamsters unhitched their horses and walked them in harness to drink below the trail. No fires were lit; they cooked at dawn and again at evening, but lunch was quick and cold.

The mercenaries ate together in a loose cluster of small groups, all but the outriders, joking and gibing in Anglic as best they could, for their own languages varied from Greek to Slovak, from Catalan to Croat. They believed themselves better than teamsters because they were more deadly and better paid. They considered themselves better than the merchants for half the same reasons, but kept it to themselves because they could not trust one another.

As they ate and talked, they paid little attention to what went on nearby. Vigilance was the duty of outriders; their own job was to discourage raiders by their presence, and to fight if need be.

Milio Gozzi, on the other hand, was alert by disposition and practice. As he chewed, his eyes in their creases followed a man trotting his horse toward them from the east. Nudging the caravan master, he motioned with his head.

“I haven’t seen that one before. Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” the man answered after a few seconds. “He’s not one of ours.”

The personal guards of the merchants rose to their feet.

A giant, thought Gozzi, and a resourceful one to have gotten past the outriders. The man dismounted four-score meters away, as if to reassure them, and led his horse, a stallion built to carry weight. Like a Turk, he wore only a breechclout in this season, though the merchant’s shrewd eyes knew he customarily wore more. His legs were tanned less deeply than his torso, and neither was as dark as his face, while his stubbly scalp was flaking from recent sunburn.