Tyr shook his head and said, "No," but he never took his eyes away from the man with the bald head.

Mason lifted his hand suddenly.

And Tyr moved.

He went fast, so fast that his arms were mere blurs lifting Mason off his feet and flinging him. He swung up over a table and drove both heels into a man's chest. He hit another splat on the jaw just as the man's finger tightened on the trigger and a bolt of fire went toward the high ceiling. Now their guns were aiming and shooting yellow bolts at him. He caught three of them on his chest.

Those yellow fires burned momentarily, before his pores could suck their ravening power into his system. But they filled him with a wild, savage elation. His throat keened as he charged the men by the entrance, who knelt and fired as their eyes widened, seeing him come, growing bigger and bigger before them.

He did not stop. He ran over the men, and left them broken on the floor.

Tyr chuckled grimly, his feet treading a rug. His big right fist held a solargun that he had wrenched from a falling soldier. A weapon for the Trylla! His shoulder splintered a door with two hundred pounds of energy behind it. The lock went through the wood and Tyr was onto the cobblestones.

The street was dark and empty. He ran with the wind, dodging around corners and leaping along straight streets. Far behind him there came shouts and the dull thumping of pounding feet.

The cyclopean walls of Yawarta rose before him. Here and there hung the great nets of the fishermen, hung out to dry on stout wooden pegs. Up then he went, his arms lifting his massive body with ease. From bastion to ledge he went up the wall like a scurrying spider.

Now he stood on the broad top, beneath the stars. He raised an arm and waved it at the city, and went over the other side.