More and more spearmen appeared over the ridge and began to throw their deadly missiles. She could see that Marcellus was comparatively safe, but her fears grew for the other, for there was nowhere for him to hide, no cover, and if he attempted to make for cover they would pick him off with consummate ease. Marcellus, safe enough for the time being, could only sit and watch as a hail of spears sailed through the air. He had thought that if he could get to the quarry, together they might have figured a way of getting away from the spearmen. For the moment, the situation was not theirs. Miki watched anxiously as spear after spear bounced off the rocks within inches of their target while Marcellus, standing beneath an overhang, was well protected. Sooner or later one of the nine spearmen would find his true aim, and that was her greatest fear. Out of the corner of her eye she saw a figure creeping silently and slowly up the rock face towards the ridge, unseen by the spearmen. Over his back hung a long bow, and a pouch containing some twenty arrows. Then he was out of sight. Again the spearmen launched a salvo of throws, and with a cry of horror she saw one finally strike its target, piercing the man's upper thigh. He cried out, falling backwards, and presenting them with an even better opportunity. Then a spearman himself cried out and toppled over the ridge into the void below, an arrow through his chest. A second fell backwards as a shaft pierced his left eye and passed into his brain. A third turned to cast his spear in the direction of the unseen enemy, but he too died without a sound as a third arrow tore into his heart. The remaining six spearmen threw their last spears at the original quarry, then turned and ran, and both Miki and Marcellus were relieved to see that none of the spears had found their target.

Now Marcellus was able to break cover and make the dash across the rock face to where the wounded man lay. He went quickly, still keeping low, aware that at any moment the spearmen might return with reinforcements and mount a new attack. At last he crossed the final few feet to where the man lay.

'Keewa!' he cried, and the Warikeewa chief opened his eyes. The spear was buried deep in his thigh. Marcellus laid him on the ground and examined the wound.

'I will pull it out, Keewa, hang on!' he muttered, and tore a strip of cloth from Keewa's tunic in readiness to apply as a bandage when the bleeding stopped.

Keewa's hand clutched at his own, and he smiled grimly.

'Do it,' he said. 'The spear is poisoned.'

Cursing softly, Marcellus grasped the haft of the spear with both hands and pulled quickly. It came out easily enough, with a jet of blood to follow, which he quickly stopped and bandaged. Then, as the bronzeskin chief sank into unconsciousness, he assisted Miki, who had by now followed him, into the recess.

'We have to get him down from the mountain,' he said.

'Will they attack again?'

'It is most likely.'

'Who was firing the arrows?'

'I could not see. Miki, help me get your father across my shoulders.'

'He is too heavy for you to carry!'

'It is the only way.'

'You are injured yourself!'

'It is the only way.'

He stooped to pick up Keewa, and managed to get him across his shoulders with Miki's help. She kept watch to see if the spearmen were anywhere to be seen. Hand by hand, with Miki helping as best she could, they descended the lower slopes of the mountain. As Marcellus gently deposited Keewa onto the ground beside the ice cold mountain stream that discharged into the river, they both noticed that the bleeding had started again, though not seriously. Marcellus made a compress from linen soaked in the water from the stream, and bound Keewa's leg tightly. What worried him was the appearance of a number of small white weals around the edge of the wound.

'He said the shaft was poisoned. What could he have meant?'

'I do not know, Miki. He would have felt enormous pain as the spear entered his thigh. I do not know how he could tell that it was poisoned.'

'Are we safe here?'

'For the time being, I think. You keep watch while I try to do something about the poison.'

'What will you do?'

Marcellus took out his hunting knife.

'I am going to open the wound and remove the poison, if I can,' he said.

Miki shuddered.

'I will hold his hands,' she said. 'In case he wakes while you are doing it.'

'You will not be able to hold his hands,' Marcellus said gravely. 'He is already rousing. You are not strong enough to hold him still while I cut his leg open.'

'What will we do, then?'

'There is only one thing to do.' He picked up a flat rock from the ground beside him.

'You are going to hit him.'

'I do not see anything else to be done,' Marcellus said. He raised the rock and brought it down hard on Keewa's skull. The brown-skinned man's head jerked suddenly with the impact, and his eyes, which had been flickering open, shut again.

'Now you will keep watch while I do this thing,' Marcellus said.

'I will help.'

'Please? I do not want you to see this.'

'Why? I am not squeamish! I may be able to help.'

'Very well.'

Marcellus removed the bandage. There were more of the little white weals, resembling heat bumps, appearing around the wound all the time. Already the wound was beginning to look angry, and full of pus. Marcellus ran the edge of his knife down his thumb, and satisfied himself that it was sharp enough for the task. Then he put the blade to Keewa's thigh, just above the wound, and drew it back towards him carefully, making a cut some six inches long. He turned the knife by ninety degrees and made a similar cut, though not so long, in the opposite direction. At once an evil-smelling greenish-yellow pus ran from the wound, spilling over Keewa's flesh and onto the earth.

'What now?' Miki asked, feeling decidedly sick.

'I have to excavate the flesh around the wound, to below the depth to which the spear penetrated,' Marcellus said. 'Before it starts to knit together and the infection is sealed into the wound. Then it may be too late.'

'Do you know what it is?'

Marcellus nodded grimly.

'I have seen it before.'

'What is it?'

'It is an infection caused by introducing an alien parasite into the bloodstream. The parasite, once lodged within the body, begins to feed off the muscle tissue of its host, and gradually, little by little, the body becomes emaciated and begins to waste away.'

'Does it have a name?'

'Rota Virensis.'

Miki nodded.

'I have heard of it. It is a disease that comes from the city.'

'It is prevalent in some cities, that is true.'

'It comes from your city.'

'Horta? There is Rota Virensis in Horta, but it did not originate there.'

'You are wrong, Angry Wolf. Members of the Warikeewa and the Hunyapi were attacked some months ago, by men from your city. They became infected and had to be isolated, then killed so that the disease did not spread through the camps.'

'You must be mistaken,' Marcellus said. 'The outbreak in Horta was caused by infection from Pekeesh bronzeskins.'

They regarded each other coolly, neither wishing to give way on the point of origin of the disease.

'Maybe we are both wrong,' Marcellus said. 'Maybe the men who attacked Warikeewa bronzeskins were not from Horta, but pretended so to be so that Warikeewa would accuse them of bringing disease.'

'And maybe the men of Horta who were infected were infected by men who were not from Pekeesh but pretended so to be?'

'It is possible.' He took his knife and began to probe, deeply into the wound, cutting carefully and selectively through muscle tissue. Finally, satisfied with the progress he had made, he took up a dry twig and set fire to it, then thrust it down into the wound. Keewa stirred, and moaned, and drew breath sharply, but he did not open his eyes. The smell of burning flesh brought an overwhelming taste of bile into Miki's mouth, but she did not vomit. Instead the turned away, wondering how Marcellus could bring himself to do this awful thing to her father, but aware all the same that he would not live without Marcellus' treatment.

'Fetch water,' Marcellus said, and she brought water which he poured over the charred flesh, washing out the last remains of the infection. At last he was satisfied that the wound was clean, and set about bandaging it up again.

'Thank you, Angry Wolf. You have probably saved his life.'

'He would have done the same for me.'

'Of course.'

'Now we should think about getting him back to Warikeewa camp.'

'It is two days away from here.'

'Even so, he should be put to rest in a cool hut, away from the sun, and have nothing to eat or drink for a day. There is nowhere here we can protect him from the sunlight.'

'The ponies!'

'Can you call them?'

'They may have followed us.'

'We should make a travois.'

'I will see if I can call the ponies.'

She ran off up river and a few minutes later he heard her calling and whistling while he gathered the necessary materials together with which to build a travois. But she returned empty-handed.

'I will have to pull him myself,' Marcellus said. 'We will travel at night, when it is cool, and rest up in the forest during the day. Do not give him any food or water for one day from now, no matter how much he asks you for it. He will not keep it down, and all of the work of getting rid of the infection will be undone.'

In the event Marcellus did not have to haul the travois back to Warikeewa camp with Keewa on it, for within the hour they were located by braves following them from the camp, anxious at Keewa's failure to return within the specified time. With the travois safely secured between two ponies, and Marcellus' instructions repeated over and over so that there was no mistake, Keewa' at last opened his eyes and grasped his friend's arm. There was surprising strength in his grip.

'Kotsoteka,' he whispered.

'What of him?' Marcellus asked.

'He is captive in Ancyros.'

Marcellus nodded. He had thought something of the nature might have occurred.

'I will bring him out of Ancyros and return him to you, Keewa,' he said reassuringly, though he had many doubts.

'Miki will go with you.'

'You think that wise?'

'I had it in a dream, while you were gouging out my leg,' Keewa said. 'Miki will go with you, and the three of you will return safely. I saw a fourth, but I do not know him, nor his involvement in this matter.'

Miki and Marcellus exchanged glances but said nothing. It was possible that Keewa's dream had included a vision of Radulf. They watched the chief's travois disappear into the afternoon sun, then again began to climb the rock face, expecting at any minute to be attacked by the spearmen. But this time their route to the top was uneventful. As they stood atop the low range of snow-covered mountains that formed the border with Ancyros, the clouds began to gather, and soon it was raining, a chill, cold rain from which the drops formed particles of soft snow, something Miki had never seen before in her life.

They descended the slope to the floor of the valley on the opposite side of the mountains, and still there was no sign of any opposition. In the distance they could see only a vast green plateau stretching off in every direction for as far as they could see. Even had the horizon not been shrouded in the mist of the rains, Marcellus doubted that they would have seen much more. Ancyros, as he remembered from his previous ill-fated visit, was flat and uninteresting, its only remarkable feature being the mountains at its western border.

Ancyros lies on the north-eastern territory of Heraklion. It is one of the largest provinces, yet is shrouded in mystery. Stories abound on Heraklion of men who are not men, and women so dazzlingly beautiful that they may not be seen by men. It is bounded on its northern and eastern sides by the seas, and by Pekeesh to the west, Hor-Lak to the south. Little is known of its cities, or its inhabitants, save that within the province is situated what is known as the Holy City, Prakussara. This city, is, like all of the other great cities on Heraklion, walled, its eastern wall on sheer rock face descending a thousand feet into the sea. Entry to the city may be gained through a single entrance across a causeway serving, in effect, as a moated surround.

'It will be necessary for us to find some way of gaining entry to the city of Prakussara,' Marcellus said, 'and that is best done under cover of darkness. The city is heavily guarded by fanatical followers of their Gods, and we will be lucky to find Kotsoteka still alive.'

'We do not know the manner of his capture,' Miki said. 'Would they not keep him for ransom?'

'The men of Prakussara are not like other men of Heraklion, Miki. They are castrated at an early age. That way they pose no threat to the women who are the handmaidens of the Gods of Ancyros.'

'They do this to all the men?'

'Yes.'

'Men who are captured?'

'Especially men who are captured. A small number of men are retained as breeding stock, and in this way a continuous population manages to survive, but the vast majority of men can no longer be termed thus. They, having been deprived of their manhood, become aggressive, ferocious in their determination to protect their precious city and its inhabitants, the virgins.'

'It is a strange society.'

'It is.'

'How long will it take us to reach the city of Prakussara?'

'I do not know, because the last time I was here, I approached the city from the east, coming from the eastern seaway.'

'In a boat?'

'It is a long story. I believe, if the rain were to cease, and the sun come out, we might see the spires of the city even from here.'

'Spires?'

'There are a number of buildings within the city, with enormous spires towering into the sky, built from granite and covered in gold.'

'I should like to see such a city.'

'It will take us some time to reach it. I wish we had deichen.'

'Or ponies.'

'Or ponies.'

'Instead we must walk.'

'Agreed.'

They started off down the slope, through the driving rain and the grey, gloomy mist. By nightfall they had made little progress, and there was still no sign of the city of Prakussara. Marcellus began to wonder if the province of Ancyros might be much larger than he had previously thought. All through the next day, and the next, they carried on through interminable rain, sheltering from the worst excesses of the weather beneath rocks and trees, and hoping that the following day might see the re-emergence of the sun from behind the dark and threatening clouds. By the middle of the third day the clouds began to thin and break up, and small areas of blue sky began to appear here and there. By the end of the day the sky had turned at last and they believed that they could look forward to a better day. For the first time since they had crossed the mountains, they saw stars, more than either of them had ever seen before.

Marcellus was intrigued by the fact that they had seen nothing of the fierce spearmen who had attempted to prevent them from scaling the mountains. He was equally interested in the fact that they were now being tailed by a solitary figure, probably a mile behind them, but following them, nevertheless. He said nothing of this to Miki, although he believed he knew the identity of the person.

At sun-up they refreshed themselves in a brook and climbed a ridge, from the top of which they could now see all the way to the coast. And in the far distance, the sun gleaming on the spires Marcellus had described, they saw the fabulous city of Prakussara. Marcellus estimated that they would reach the city by sundown, and they set off again.

Occasionally, when the terrain was suitable, they saw animals, for the most part deichen, wild and shaggy, grazing peaceably at a safe distance from them, but also larger animals, lizard-like, with enormously long necks and tails, and short, stumpy legs. They too kept a respectable distance from the humans, and the journey to Prakussara was mostly uneventful. At last they reached a small wooded area before the causeway, and Marcellus decreed that they should make their camp within the wood, and make their approach on the city during cover of darkness. Before them loomed the forbidding granite walls of the mysterious city.

There rose before them a series of natural defences, granite outcrops growing to a relatively uniform height, their peaks for the most part jagged, descending from the plateau on which the city had been raised, with a double peak serving as a kind of entrance. Nearer to them was woodland, green fields with a staggering number and variety of trees, through which it should theoretically be possible to approach the city without being detected.

Entry from the eastern seaboard had not been easy, but Marcellus had achieved the seemingly impossible by means of a hot-air balloon, under which had been suspended a basket carrying him and Thandor, his lieutenant on that mission. Once inside the city, they had taken their captives and lowered them into the waiting boat. During their attempt to return to Barbessel a ferocious storm had disabled the boat and they had taken to the skies, in enormous brightly-coloured balloons with cages slung underneath to hold the prisoners, but Marcellus and Thandor had somehow crashed their craft into the great lake north-west of Sharmak on the western sub-continent of Heraklion. The event was lost in the mist of time and Marcellus's memory. No such strategy was available to them now, approaching as they were from the west.

As they made camp, he glanced back the way they had come, to the ridge from which they had first seen the city, and to his satisfaction, saw the solitary figure who was following them, outlined clearly atop it.