It was the guardian Laq, and he was dying if ever I saw a man die, with a broken back and a leg that bent sideways in a way no leg was ever meant to bend. I knelt beside him and he opened his eyes and recognized me, and he spat feebly, for there was still hate in the man. I could do nothing for him, could not even straighten his limbs or ease his head, for motion would have slain him.
"Lie easy, Laq," I said. "You must rest a while, and then I will help you home."
"When I have rested, I will slay you, Ahmusk the hunter," said he with a curse. His hand moved feebly, and I saw he wished to pull the bow closer, the bow that he had stolen and practiced with until he thought he was skilled enough to murder me. I put it into his fingers, noticing without much surprise that it was one which I had made and believed I had lost somewhere. I gave him one of the arrows from his quiver, too, and that was a mistake, for he stared sharply at me with his filming dark eyes. "You think I am crippled," he said huskily, "but I will show you when I have rested, Ahmusk. Lora will never come to your platform and your mating furs."
I said nothing, for one cannot grow angry with a dying man, and there was no kind word that my tongue could lay hold on; and so presently he began to talk in a quiet, sane voice.
"Of course I cannot let you live. You braved the land of the shaggy people, and made friends with them; and you have a knowledge which must never be given to our tribes. Men must have something to fear. It keeps them decent."
I do not know, even yet, whether he believed what he said; and I have often pondered on it. Perhaps he had made himself believe it, for the peace of his soul.
"The legend of The Nameless goes on," he said, the bright froth dripping from his lips. "Ahmusk dies.... My father was a guardian. He preached to me that some dreadful calamity would occur if we allowed the two races to come together. All the guardians were taught that. It was dinned into them from their birth. Only the intelligent ones saw what that calamity would be. Our craft would lose its privilege, its honor, its reason for being."
It was the same thought I had held. The guardians fattened on adulation, and if that was taken from them, there would be nothing left, for they were so accustomed to it that they could not conceive becoming as other men.
"It does no harm to tell you these things, Ahmusk, for you will shortly die. Yes ... you understand, I saw very early that the basic ideas of my craft were wrong, all wrong. There was no harm in letting you know of the shaggy people, for they are as innocent and affectionate as you; the harm lay in the breaking-up of our guild, and the...." He was silent for so long that I thought he had lapsed into insensibility, but after a while he repeated what he had said about mankind needing something to fear. He used the same words, as though it were an excuse he had learnt by rote long ago.