He knew that the slaves would have helped him if they could.
One part of his mind was beginning to function now—the part that had to do with a long experience in saving his own neck. He was only a few paces away from the buildings at his back. He whirled and leaped suddenly, the bright steel swinging.
It bit twice into flesh and then he had gained the doorway of a ship’s chandler, so that they could only come at him from the front. A small advantage but every second a man could stay alive was a second gained.
He made a flickering barrier of steel before him and then bellowed, in their own High Martian. “Wait! I am no Khond!”
The crowd broke into jeering laughter.
“He says he is not of Khondor!”
“Your own friends hail you, Khond! Hark to the Swimmers and the Skyfolk!”
Carse cried, “No! I am not of Khondor! I am not—” He stopped short. He had almost said he was not of Mars.
A green-eyed girl, hardly more than a child, darted almost into the circle of death he wove before him. Her teeth showed white as a rat’s.
“Coward!” she screamed. “Fool! Where but in Khondor do they breed men like you, with pale hair and sickly skin? Where else could you be from, oh clumsy thing with the barbarous speech?”