"Right." The older man was slipping the stout bowstring into its notched recess on the upper end of his long bow. "They cross the Barrier from the fertile plains of Nyd to raid the Hairy People. They take them for slaves."
"I must warn them." Altha's lips thinned and her brown-flecked eyes flamed.
"The outlaws may capture," warned Tanner. "They have taken over the canyons of Gur and Norpar, remember."
"I will take the glider." Altha was on her feet, her body crouched over to take advantage of the sheltering shrubs. She threaded her way swiftly back along a rocky corridor in the face of the Barrier toward the ruins of ancient Aryk.
Tanner shrugged his shoulders. "What can I do? Altha has the blood of the Hairy People in her veins. She will warn them even though the outlaws have turned her people against her."
Rolf watched the column of barbarically clad warriors file out upon the barren desert and swing to the right along the base of the Barrier. Spear tips and bared swords glinted dully.
"They will pass within a few feet!" he hissed.
"Right." Tanner's fingers bit into Rolf's arm. "Pray that the wind does not shift, their nostrils are sensitive as those of the weasels they resemble."
Rolf's eyes slitted. There was something vaguely unhuman about those gracefully marching figures. He wondered what Tanner had meant by calling them weasels, wondered until they came closer.
Then he knew. Above half naked feminine bodies, sinuous and supple as the undulating coils of a serpent, rose the snaky ditigrade head of a weasel-brute! Their necks were long and wide, merging into the gray-furred muscles of their narrow bodies until they seemed utterly shoulderless, and beneath their furry pelts the ripples of smooth-flowing muscles played rhythmically. There was a stench, a musky penetrating scent that made the flesh of his body crawl.