"What do you mean, you're sorry? Sorry for what? That not everyone's fool enough to want to die on your crazy rockpile planet?"
Her eyes flashed. "Are you so afraid of death, then, blue man?"
"You ask it?" His fury ate into his words like acid. "You dare to ask it, after the blood I've shed just to save your lovely neck?"
The blue eyes lost their fire. "Haral, I'm sorry. Truly sorry—"
But the rage that was in him now would not let him take up the peace he knew she was trying to offer.
"What do I care for dying? I've gambled my life a thousand times, a thousand ways. But curse me for a chitza if I want to die for nothing! What would it gain me or anyone else if I stayed here and drowned in my own blood in Sark's arena? If I perish, at least let it be somewhere along the road to empire, not here in the backwash of this pest-hole you call Ulna!"
The words quenched his fire, and as it died a strange confusion churned within him, a discomfiture that seemed to come only when he spoke with this slim girl, Kyla. Furiously, he riveted his gaze straight to the pathless wilderness ahead, trying to lose himself in scrutiny of the rocky course the hwalon followed.
But Kyla asked, "Is that, then, your only dream, Haral? A dream of empire? Is that the height of your ambition?"
"What—?" He turned in the saddle to stare at her, as much for her tone as for her words. He thought he almost caught a note of sadness.
Or perhaps it was disillusion.