"I want you, Nitka Porn." Hardan's voice was slow, his pent-up rage well under control.
The huge sarif's freckled face was mottled with fear and hatred. His yellowish-green eyes were baleful as he swung down from the saddle. Hardan's ears heard a rush of feet and then a ghastly series of shrieks and thuddings, and from the corner of his eye saw the other two horses were now riderless. The sarifs were trampling at something underfoot and the Aarthmen were turning away pale sickened faces from what was there.
Ylda's hand was on his arm. "Take him prisoner," she begged. "Tarnish justice will punish him. And he is so big, so brutal—you will be killed!"
Hardan pushed gently at her arm. Nitka Porn was a spear's length away now and his swords were drawn. Then, before Hardan could stop her, Ylda had stepped between them.
"Surrender your weapons, Nitka Porn," she commanded imperiously, "and you will live to see Aba."
Nitka's flat-nosed simian face snarled. "Surrender and be torn apart as were they?" His head nodded toward the mumbling knot of crazed sarifs beside the terrified maars. He laughed hoarsely, and with one great arm swept the girl close.
One of his swords now pressed against the breast of Ylda, ready to plunge deep into her vitals. He backed again toward his maar.
"At the first sign of attack," he told Hardan, "the woman dies."
He prepared to climb into the saddle, to ride away into the eastern uplands that led toward the Desert of Niid and the Bitter Sea that had been their goal. And then it was that Hardan remembered the strange power of the Aarthmen.
No sooner had the thought been born in his brain than the little men chuckled and their dejected faces brightened. Nitka Porn's body froze immobile and slowly he spread his arms so the girl stepped free.