The knife point rose and made two quick motions. Torcred did not flinch; on his forehead was a tau cross in oozing drops of blood. The chief bent, took a pinch of sand, and rubbed it into the wound to make sure that it would scar—if the victim lived that long.
Vazcled turned away. "Cast them out!" he ordered over his shoulder, to the guarding warriors.
"The girl too?" Helsed asked hastily; his eyes lingered.
"Of course!" rasped the chief. "It is the tradition—and what else should we do?"
Helsed licked his battered lips nervously. "Of course," he agreed. "What else?"
V
Torcred sat, head sunk limply in his hands, on the white salt beach facing the lifeless sea. The throb of motors and swirl of dust behind the departing terrapins had died down in the south; instead of hunting today as planned from this camp, they had left the spot that had become accursed. And Torcred sat numb with despair, passively waiting for the end.
Near him Ladna, the bird-girl rose to her feet. She looked in the other direction, out over the lifeless waste of sand, and then at the man's slumped, motionless figure.
Her voice was hard and scorn-edged. "So—a terrapin shorn of his armor is less than a bird clipped of her wings?"