"Go ahead, great gar! Blast us! Take your chances on what you can learn from old Namboina!"
Slowly, then, Sark sank back into his chair. His eyes were like live coals, incredibly baleful.
"Go!" he choked thickly. "Go, for now, you chitza! Take your woman and your hwalon and your light-lance! My day will come, and when it does, you'll pray for a death that will not answer! You and the woman—you'll share your agony together, and in the end I'll still claim Xaymar's secret—"
Haral said: "Perhaps. Or perhaps it will be you who rots in hell instead."
Bleakly, he wheeled the hwalon; and to the crowd he shouted, "There's death in my lance for the man that follows!" Then, weapon ready, the girl close against him, heedless of the steaming hate and curses of the mob that parted before him, he rode away.
CHAPTER III
They rode fast and in silence—first skirting the outskirts of the town; then plunging full-tilt into the tangled maze that was the native quarter.
The Ulno Haral had hired on the chance he'd need someone to hide the hwalon was already waiting at the appointed place.
But the blue man rode on past the primitive with no sign of recognition, pausing instead around the next corner, by the entrance to a blackly burrow-like dead-end alley.