Then behind her she heard the fresh shouts of her pursuers as they topped the final rise and began to fan out, cutting her off while they surrounded her in a half-circle.
They lusted upon her with evil stares, until the stub-end of the arrow in her chest was seen by several of them and indicated to the others with much arm-pointing. Then their looks were transformed to insolent, harsh contempt. What was her life to them anyways? The sight of her suffering engendered nothing but contempt in their looks. Loftily, they all kept back from her by a distance of several rods, with newcomers doing the same as they arrived, and forming a great semi-circle around her with both ends close to the river banks, effectively cutting off her escape.
Then their leader finally came cantering up into their midst on his speckled gray steed and lurched through their enclosing line to get a good look at her.
He paraded back and forth on his nervously prancing steed, displaying an aura of wickedness. One look into his heavily lidded, toadlike eyes, so lifeless and sickeningly dead, utterly convinced Si'Wren that this man's soul must surely have already died a long time ago while his body was yet alive.
Then she realized when he pulled at his reins, that he had six fingers on each hand. Surely this must be Kadrug, because if it were Conabar he would have had only five like his dead relation, the late Master Rababull.
It occurred to Si'Wren without even questioning it that Kadrug must be possessed, and she realized that in looking at the six-fingered one, she was looking also upon a combination of the personality of the possessor, a demon, and of the outward man, a vain soul, and she sensed that this great 'free' warrior was but a proud and unknowing slave, indwelt by hideous evil.
Now more than ever, Si'Wren found in this, even in the face of evil, a proof of the righteous, Invisible God. For she could easily see an unmistakable spiritual side to life, wherein evil and good, and all men's souls, truly dwelt. All life within the visible world, like a finger-drawing in the sand, could show only a muted portrayal of that spiritual side. Like sand, or dust, it must eventually be blown away at death, and give place to the true inner self, the spiritual identity, and there would be found in the hearts of mens' souls, either the good and true bedrock, or just so much foul and polluted slippery sand.
Looking into the man's lizard eyes, Si'Wren perceived all of this in a flash, and shuddered. Surely, as Nelatha had said, it must be that all men must die and see the Invisible God someday when they finally came face-to-face with Him.
These were wicked men, lost souls living in sin. Men who forced their evil lusts upon all around themselves. But they would not have their way with her!
Feeling light-headed and drastically weak, she swayed slightly in the saddle as she turned her head and looked out fearfully over the steep drop-off. There was only swift water directly below her, at the outside shoulder of a natural crook in the river's meander.