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those metal-shod thundering hooves.
    “Keep as close as you can, but not upon us! Be ready!” ordered the dharener, and his flat hand came down hard upon Quiris’ croup, and the black sprang away from the other threx as though they stood grazing upon sweet jer grass.
    I had not imagined Quiris capable of such speed. The night roared around us as he strained to catch Saer. But it was not so easy to draw abreast of the cahndor. Slowly we gained upon him. I could see Chayin’s arm rise and fall upon his mount’s bunched quarters. Almost imperceptibly we closed the distance, Quiris’ superior stamina telling as the ground blurred by. A northern threx would have died of burst lungs long before Saer’s rider slid him to a halt atop a rock-strewn rise in the cold moonglow.
    “Another nera, and I would have caught you!” called Hael as he brought Quiris alongside.
    “I know it,” Chayin allowed, his eyes searching the flatlands ahead. Nothing bigger than a pandivver could cross that open ground unseen in the bright clear night. “Back down the slope, that they will not see our outline!”
    Hael did this, and set our sweat-slicked threx walking in a long ellipse that he might not injure its legs standing still while so badly overheated. Chayin paced us.
    “Only some few enths remain until sun’s rising, and the appreida is but thirty neras from here at the most. Where is your enemy, Chayin?”
    “Even now they sneak stealthily through the webweavers’ appreis with their loot. This is the place where we will meet them, upon the plain, when the sky is greened before sun’s rising. It is as I have seen it. We are only early enough to rest the threx. We wait here.”
    I heard Hael sigh softly. His body seemed to slump slightly in the saddle. We walked the threx and waited.
    When the jiasks were all among us, Chayin set them to likewise walking their beasts in circles. He would not suffer them to dismount and charged them to maintain their readiness. Then he himself dismounted and crawled to the top of the stony rise and lay there, his head nestled upon his arms, watching.
    After a time, we went to join him, leading Saer and Quiris as close as we dared to the ridgetop and tethering them to the scraggly harinder bushes that grew there in relative profusion. No harinder bush or even puny boulder was upon the plain below us. Nothing moved. I lay between Chayin and Hael, looking over the rise. I knew stinging embarrassment for the cahndor. He would be much shamed before us all if no foe appeared upon the plain. An enth passed, and still nothing stirred upon the silent expanse before us. No yit squeaked nor friysou cried. The sky was lightening, a presaging green haloed the peaks. The jiasks whispered and grunted behind us. There was much restlessness among them. Another enth passed. I wondered why Hael did not speak, put a stop to this ugly farce.
    “There!” Chayin whispered. I sighted along his outstretched arm and could barely see a dust cloud rising. At first I thought it just a trick of anxious eyes, a quiver in the predawn light. Hael pulled himself forward an arm’s length, as if that short gain would bring the distance into clearer focus. A thousand breaths did I take, and still the dust cloud grew upon the horizon. Hael wriggled back the short distance he had gone from us. His face as he looked past me to meet Chayin’s eyes was painful to look upon in his joyous relief. He reached his left hand across me and grapsed Chayin’s shoulder, his fingers making valleys in the Shaper’s cloak the cahndor wore.
    “Let us go down and do battle, brother!” the dharener said, and suiting action to words, hastened down the slope in a crouch.
    Chayin put his hand upon my arm. “Go with him. May your gol-knife quench its thirst this rising.” And he pushed me gently before him toward the others.
    As I mounted Quiris, and Hael swung up behind me, I entertained thoughts of death. Perhaps I could slay the dharener, make away