Was that news good or otherwise? Under other circumstances Fors could have longed for no greater pleasure than to travel in the company of the Star Captain. But now he went in a manner as Jarl’s prisoner. He sat glumly looking over the battlefield—only a small scrimmage—one which the Old Ones, with their fleets in the air and their armed columns on land, would not even have mentioned. Yet here a full-sized war had been fought and out of it had come an idea—perhaps one which would prove the starting point for men. It would be a long weary trail for them to travel—the road back to such a world as the Old Ones had known. And maybe not even the sons’ sons’ sons of those who had fought here would live to see more than the glimmerings of its beginning growth. Or maybe the world which would come would be a better world.
The Plainsmen and the Dark Ones were still suspicious, still wary of one another. Soon the tribes would separate for a space. But, perhaps in six months’ time, a party of Plainsmen would venture again to the south, to visit the bend in the river and see with wondering eyes the cabins which stood there. And one rider would trade a well-tanned hide for a clay dish or a string of colored beads to take home to astonish his women. Afterward would come others, many others, and there would in time be marriages between tent and cabin. And in fifty years—one nation.
“There will be one nation.” Fors hunched on the riding pad of the steady old horse Marphy had forced upon him. Two days had sped but the tramped earth would show scars for a long time.
Jarl shot a measuring glance over the field they crossed. “And how many years pass before such a miracle?” he inquired with his old irony. “Fifty—fifty years—perhaps—”
“If nothing intervenes to stop them—yes—you may be right.”
“You are thinking of the Beast Thing mutant?” Jarl shrugged. “I think that he is a warning—there may be other factors to set barriers in the way.”
“I am mutant.” For the second time Fors made that bitter statement and he spoke it again before the one person he wished had never known of his difference.
Jarl did not rise to the bait. “I have been thinking that we may all be mutants. Who is to say now that we are of the same breed as the Old Ones? And I am of the belief that it is time we all face that fact squarely. But this other—this Beast Thing—” And he proceeded to drown Fors in a barrage of questions which drew out of him all that he had observed while a prisoner of the enemy.
Two days later the mountains stood sharply outlined against the sky. Fors knew that by nightfall, if they kept the pace they had held through the journey, they would be past the outposts of the Eyrie. He fumbled awkwardly with his one hand at his belt and pulled his sword from the sheath. As Jarl caught up to him he held it out, hilt first.
“Now I am your prisoner.” He did not have to steady his voice, it was naturally so. It was as if he no longer