The men set out again after sunrise.  Frost had whitened the tops of the rocks they'd cleared to sit on the night before, but the snow was still soggy, with no ice crust to make walking dangerous.  Anen pointed to a narrow ledge, several hundred meters above the gorge floor, that switch ed to and fro across the mountainside.  "That's where we're going.  Oryc trail."

"I don't have an oryc's tiny hooves," said Zik, pointing to his boots.

They all looked at Stanis, who had much bigger feet.  He seemed to be pale.

"Stanis?" Anen's voice sharpened with worry despite himself.

Stanis grinned weakly.  "I'll manage, Anen."

They climbed to the oryc trail through a jumble of rocks and small boulders.  A strong wind still swept down the gorge, reaching them even so high above the gorge.

"Keep moving," Anen ordered as the men began to slow.  "We won't be out of this wind until we're past the end of the ridge we were on last night."

Stanis began to move forward in the direction Anen said, limping.  Anen watched him only a momentt before stepping up his pace and catching up to his buddy.  "I'll lead, Stanis.  I've been over this trail before."  Anen hoped the face-saving explanation was convincing.  He wasn't tall enough to make much of a windbreak for Stanis, but anything had to be a help.

The trail wove to and fro, slowly climbing above the sheer face of the former waterfall.  The air was colder at this altitude, the snow hard and dry.  The trail crossed the foot of a cliff on which the meltwater of the day before had frozen into a thin, gleaming sheet.  The men had to walk with one mitten on the cliff wall for balance.  Then, with one more step, they rounded the end of the cliff and were out of the biting wind.  Stanis sighed tiredly and leaned against a big boulder.  Anen surveyed the way ahead.  On this side of the mountain, the sun had remelted the top layer of ice, making the trail much slipperier.  Here, above Ghorr, Thawtime showed more than on the plains. The barren slope above and below the men showed patched of brown rock, a stretch of ice-glazed gravel here and there, a dried clump of grass, the skeleton of a bush.  Trees had lived on the slope once, before some ancient fire, but now their yellow wood stood open to the weather, their trunks reached upward, giant poles striped and streaked with wind-polished charcoal.  Below the trees, at the foot of the mountain, lay the still-white expanse of the Desert of Ghorr.  To the north, on one of the mountains ringing Ghorr, Anen saw fire flare towards the pale blue sky.  Zik saw it, too.

"Lookers!" Zik could not hide the tremble in his voice.

"Either we've been spotted or Moaekod has people out here.  Nobody sends convicts to the Desert this early."

The excitement in the others' voices roused Stanis from his numb silence.  "Lookers?  What are Lookers?"

The troopers looked to Anen to explain.  "It's hard to say, Stanis."  Anen thought for a moment, trying to remember what, if anything, he had told Stanis about the Puredorv and Mirl'da V.  "The Lookers were here before the first of the Puredorv, missionaries of The Way, settled this planet.  "They---look. That's all we know about them.  The Runners, who are convicts sentenced here by the Families, see the signal fires and hunt down what was seen.  Runners rob humans they catch of everything that's usable here, but they don't kill unless they're starving.  And they leave their victims with enough food and water to get out of the Desert.  Part of every catch the Runners take to one of the places-of-leaving, as payment for the signal fires.  But the Lookers are never seen, according to the men who survive their sentence and come back to the Holdings."

"I don't want to find out what they look like," Ota said, shivering.

"Me, either.  Let's go!" Zik looked about vainly for the trail.

Anen looked at Zik, grim-faced.  That trooper should've been left in the shelter.  "No trail here, Zik," he told the man sharply.  "The guarpost stands in that pass."  Anen pointed across a long, shallow bay, where Ghorr invaded the foothills, to a notch beyond to the southwest.  "The Congress sets patrols on this side of the Desert from Thawtime till Frosttime to keep the convicts here," he added for Stanis's benefit.  "We need your sense of direction here, too, Stanis, because we won't be able to see the pass from the Desert floor.  Do whatever you can to keep your bearings and let's begin."

Stanis looked steadily at the place Anen had pointed to.  When he nodded, the men set off down the mountain, zigzagging across the gravel slope, slipping, sliding, sometimes falling down.  They ate midway halfway down.  By sunset they were nearly a fourth of the way across the bay of desert.  They set up camp in the shadow of the sentinel rocks, upright black stones several times a man's height, that followed the line of foothills.  Anen kept a close eye on Stanis, worrying, yet not willing to shame his friend in front of the troopers when there was nothing that Anen could do to ease the misery the cold was for him.

Snow was falling again the next morning and the men set off into a snowy haze.  Stanis, because of his directional sense, led still, complaining continually of the renewed cold, and that was so unlike him that Anen took him aside at midday while the two troopers were readying the meal.

"What's wrong?  You're as hard to live with as a hungry Vrell."

"Nothing's wrong, Anen.  Nothing that anyone can do anything about.  I'll be all right when we get to the guardpost.  I just can't be comfortable in Puredorv clothes in the cold.  Too warm-blooded, I guess."  Stanis stripped off a mitten, opened his topcoat fastener, and slipped the hand against his chest.

"Stanis, show me that hand." Anen knew his voice betrayed his anxiety, but he could no longer help it.  Stanis was in real trouble with the cold.

Stanis shook his head deprecatingly.  "It'll be all right, Anen.  It's just cold."

Anen thrust out his own hand.  "Let me look at it, Stanis."

Stanis reluctantly pulled out his hand.   It was red and very cold.  That wasn't good and they had a whole day left to travel.  There had to be something Anen could do to keep those hands warmer, because the thermo worked only until the thermo cooled.  "How does it feel?" he demanded.

"Numb."

"Really numb, I'd guess."  When Stanis nodded sheepisly, Anen's voice sharpened.  "And the other?  Is it the same?"

Stanis nodded again.

"Here," Anen held Stanis's hand between his until it warmed, then he warmed the other the same way.  He dared not rub the skin, fearing it already had been damaged.  "Go sit by the thermo and warm them up."

Anen looked anxiously across the bay to where it bent back into the Desert.  Somewhere along that bend was the trail to the guardpost.  If Stanis could get to the post without more damage to his hands, the com connection with Congress would bring medical attention as soon as possible.  Anen swallowed hard and looked at his friend, hunched over the little warmth of the thermo.

"His hands," Anen whispered to himself.  "Sentinels!  I have to get him to the guardpost in time to save his hands!" Anen brushed away a big snowflake irritating his nose.  Getting Stanis there without more damage wouldn't be easy.  If the Lookers' fires this morning were the first, Runners would be on their way.  If those fires weren't the first.....Anen would not let himself think of that.  Either way, they would not have time to stop and light the thermos for the sake of Stanis's hands.  He went back to the thermo and stood looking down at the heads of the men who crouched around the two-pot.  They were probably as tired as he was, and stiff as well from plowing through snow and keeping balanced on ice.

At least there's no wind here, Anen thought, and crouched beside the thermo until he, too, was somewhat warm.

The men ate nightmeal and moved into the tents.  Anen sat long on his nightbag, thinking.  Speed back to Baruq was very important.  But Anen had heard that exhausted people suffer more from cold than rested ones.  He glanced at Stanis, stretched out in his bag.  His hands, which probably hurt, lay near his face.  Anen dialed the tent thermo up two decades and lay down atop his bag.  They were only one day away from the post.  There was an unused thermo in Ota's pack.  They could afford to spend the extra fuel to save Stanis's hands.

Strange, faraway howls floated on the still night air.  Anen shivered despite himself.  The Runners were out, and they were hunting.

Stanis's hands looked normal the next morning, but Anen wasn't sure that meant they would continue to be all right and the spare mittens among the men were all too small for Stanis.  Anen pushed everyone to hurry, hurry, hurry through the sunny morning, yet stopped several times, against his better judgment, to fire up the spare thermo until it was just on the cool side of too hot to hold, then hand it to Stanis.  Too soon clouds covered the sun and a fine, light snow, the sign of colder weather, began falling.  By the time the men reached the sentinel rocks at the other end of the bay, the snow had become a fog.  Runners' howls came through it eerily, making the hair rise on the men's necks.

"They're closer," Zik whined.  "We'll be captured!"

"They haven't got a guide who could find the way blind to the guard hut," Anen snapped.  "We have."

The falling snow became a wall of white that hid anything more than one arm's length away.  Stanis stumbled from tiredness and, Anen suspected, numbed feet.  Anen ordered each man to hold to the belt of the man ahead so no one got lost.  The Runners howled closer.

They were climbing a hill.  Stanis stumbled and fell.  Anen helped him up and whispered, "Not much farther.  It's not much farther, Stanis.  Keep going till we're inside."

"What?  Inside?  Where?" Stanis's bewildered voice frightened Anen.

"The Runners are on our trail, help us get away, Stanis," he urged, ashamed of using a threat to force the exhausted, freezing man to move on.

Stanis responded.  He straightened and walked a little faster, but his breath rasped in and out.  That was the only sound in the eerie, snow-thick silence, Stanis's harsh, painful breathing.

"Where are we, Anen?" Again, Stanis sounded like a lost child.

No, don't let him be lost.  Sentinels, keep him on his track!  Anen prayed silently.  Aloud, he said, "We're going to a warm house, Stanis.  You know where it is, remember?"

The walking and stumbling and the pull of arms on belt before and belt behind seemed to go on forever.  It was a nightmare without sight or sound, only muscles telling the men that they were moving.  Snow collected in Anen's eyebrows.  It melted where his outstretched wrists were exposed, turning his cuffs into icy knives.  Stanis walked into something.  Anen let go of Stanis's belt to feel what that something was.

"It's a wall!  It's the guardpost!" Anen reached for Stanis's belt.  It was gone.  "Stanis! Stanis!"

Only the slush of snow falling against the wall answered him.  He turned to the men who had crowded close to him.  "Zik, Ota, follow the wall by hand till you find the door.  Press against the tube under the bottom edge, then get some lights on our here.  Ota, come out immediately with a torch and help me find him."

Anen heard the two men's mittens sliding along the stone wall, something made a light rumble, then Anen heard a click.  Light fell from a window onto the snow behind him.  "A rope, Ota," he shouted, feeling his way towards the door, walking sideways because the wall was on his right.  He waited by the door with the faint snow of snow falling for his only company.  The urgency of finding Stanis tore at him.  "Stanis!" he shouted into the muffling snow.  What was taking Ota so long?  "Ota!" Anen dared not take his hand from the building until he had a rope to follow back again. "Stanis!"

Time dragged on in hideous silence.  Then four brilliant lights came on, illuminating the area around the hut for a hundred meters, drastically shorter than the lights' normal range.  Ota jumped from the raised doorway into the snow, slid the door shut, and tied a rope around Anen without waiting for orders.  "I had trouble finding the rope, lord.  And I found the lights instead of a torch," he said, matter-of-factly, then added, "He was too done to go far."

Knowing one end of the rope was tied fast inside the hut, Anen and Ota moved to the other and trudged slowly, about two meters apart on the rope, in a circle from the hut wall outward.  Anen saw a faint depression in the snow that might mark Stanis's path.  He pointed, Anen nodded.

"Stanis!"

There was no answer.  The two men moved forward again, both feeling with their feet as well as looking for Stanis.  The snow fell silently, smothering shapes and sounds.  

"Stanis!" 

There was no answer.  The two men moved forward again, both feeling with their feet as well a looking for Stanis.  The snow fell silently, smothering shapes and sounds. 

"Stanis!" Despair swept Anen.  The person who meant more to him than anyone else did was gone.  Anen plowed forward, feeling the resistance of the snow against his shins as a heavy weight.  Then, off to the left, he saw an oddly-shaped mound of snow. Surely nothing that lived out her grew that way.  Anen plowed forward and dug swiftly with his good hand.

"His pack!"

Ota slid along the rope and was with Anen in seconds, digging frantically at the mound.  First the broad shoulders, then the shaggy blond head, then his face.  Anen touched Stanis's throat.  "He's alive."

As if they'd worked as a team all their lives, Anen and Ota hauled Stanis's body out of the snow and dragged it back to the post.  Within moments after they'd hoisted him through the door, they'd stripped Stanis and wrapped him in warmed blankets.  His hands and feet they set in basins of tepid water.

Ota sank back on his haunches when the work was done and stared at the off-worlder's face.  "Will he live, Lord Anen?"

"That's for God to know, and us to find out." Anen sank to the floor beside his friend, blank with exhaustion, knowing he should try to reach Congress and too tired to move.

When Anen awoke, it was a gray snowy morning and Stanis was watching him.  The blue eyes were puzzled.  "How did I get here?"

Anen rolled onto his side, aching from the night on the hard floor.  "You led us here, then wandered off and fell or lay down in the snow.  You could've died, Stanis!"

Stanis struggled to sit up and couldn't.  He sagged back onto his blankets and his voice had the sharp edge of panic.  "I---Anen, I can't feel my hands!"

Anen lifted one of them from the blanket.   It wasn't stark white, as it'd been the previous night, but it was still glossy, unnaturally pale, and heavy as lead.  Its mate was the same way.  Anen looked at those hands and thought of the ancient heroes painted across his bedroom wall.  Without hands---he looked at his friend and saw the same thought in Stanis's eyes.  "Stanis...." But there was nothing comforting to say.

Anen sprang up and over to the com-console.  It came on at a touch.  "Congress, this is Guardpost 216, the Kererr of Kurharay speaking.  Medical emergency.  Repeating, Post 216 is reporting a medical emergency.  Do you read me?"

Nobody answered.  Anen tried again and again, every hour.  Nobody ever answered.  Anen hurled the patrol logbook across the room.  "I know it's hooked up.  It's always hooked up!"

Stanis turned his face away.  "There's nothing they can do anyway, Anen.  If I can't feel them, it's too late."

"If only I'd set the tents up last night...."

"You are not to blame, Anen!  I walked off on my own.  Maybe I should've gone farther."

Anen heard the bitterness and there was nothing adequate he could say in reply.  A long, uncomfortable silence followed, broken only by Zik's gentle snoring.  Anen paced across the hut and back, stopping beside the front window.  "If I can't com help, Stanis, I'll walk to Buruq for it.  It's only a day and a half or so."

"Don't be foolish!" Stanis snarled.  "If you do that, this whole trek will have been for nothing.  I'll have lost my hands for nothing!  Congress has to staff this post.  If the com doesn't work, stay until the patrol arrives.  Svarog, Anen, your House is at stake!" Stanis rolled with difficulty to his side and one hand dropped to the floor with a sound like a rock.

Stanis's anger shook Anen back into remembrance of priorities.  Stanis was very important to Anen, but several thousand lives would be lost if Gaito Moaekod were to carry out his threat to destroy Kurharay to the last stone and distant cousin.  Sentinels!  No wonder the lords of the Puredorv feel nothing but anger, pride, and a kind of mild affection.  They can't afford to know more about their feelings with Puredorv rules the way they are!  They'd go mad or tear themselves apart otherwise.  As I'm tearing apart.  Anen looked down at Stanis's rigid back and turned his face to the window to hide his tears from the awakening troopers.

Snow was falling more heavily than the night before, if that were possible.  Anen couldn't see beyond the windowsill.  Sentinels, where are you?  My friend, my brother, may die!  He spun away from the window and paced the square hut floor.  For hours the storm whirled and howled outside and Anen prowled from one side of the room to the other inside, trying to reach Congress on each swing past the com unit, struggling to make his feelings accept Stanis's decision, worrying that Moaekod had somehow cut off even Congressional transmissions.  House Kurharay was in deadly danger, Stanis would likely die, and the patrol hut's only link with Congress wouldn't work! 

Anen slept fitfully that night and got up before dawn.  Stanis was moaning with pain.  Anen knew how bad the pain must be for a man of Kharzov to admit it:  pain was to be laughed off, dismissed as if of no importance.  He dug painkillers from one of the medpacks and ordered Zik to dose Stanis on the prescribed schedule.  The night's sleep, scan though it was, had helped Anen regain his strict self-control.  Stanis had made his own decision about his life.  That was his right.  Now Anen had to decide how best to protect his House if he couldn't reach Congress headquarters.  After hours of struggle and internal arguments, Anen could find no better answer than to return with Ota to Kurharay Holding and try to reach Bubov's men.  Anen's personal danger would be no less than before, but Zik and Stanis if he lived, would still be alive and out of Moaekod's reach to be witness to what happened to Kurharay.   That was cold comfort, but it was all the comfort there was.  Congress must know of the illegal siege.  Maybe some remnant of his House would be saved.

The snow stopped falling in late afternoon, but the wind rose as the snow lessened.  Sometimes the men could see the Desert from the front window and sometimes they could only see plumes of snow.  Anen and Ota prepared for the trek back to Buruq by packing all the food and other supplies they were likely to need.  The patrol hut's supplies would feel Stanis and Zik.  Zik stood by the window, watching.  Suddenly he called, "Hey, what's that?!"

Anen and Ota rushed to the window.  Two gaunt figures stood at the edge of the trees almost 100 meters away.

"Runners?" Zik asked.

Ota and Anen nodded.

"Why are they here?" Zik's voice had begun trembling with apprehension.

"Because we know how to open the guard hut, which is warm, dry, and full of food." Anen looked again at the figures and wondered how many more lurked in the cover of the trees.  "The convicts who survive their first trip across the Desert live in caves deep beneath the mountains on the other side.  They heat and cook with wood and eat whatever they can find.  There's no such thing as a fat Runner."

The Runners watched the guardpost for a very long time, then vanished.  Anen finished packing.  Ota kept watch at the window.  He turned and watched Anen press down the last pack closure.  "Is this building armed, lord?"  The question held none of the fear Zik would've put into it.

Anen looked up. "It should have perimeter stunguns, medium-range, with automatic track and fire.  Probably a long-range zapper, fired from the roof.  Why?"

Ota turned back to the window.  "There are ten or more Runners out there now, Lord Anen."

Anen went to the window.  The Runners stood along the edges of the trees, thin as shadows in the gathering dusk and much closer than they had been before.  That they came so close to an occupied Ghorr patrol had slowed their desperation.  Anen bit his lip.  Runners made leaving the hut far more dangerous.  Yet Kurharay needed help.  Stanis needed help.  Anen's hands clenched and unclenched.  The Runners would eventually attack; they only needed to work up their courage, though Anen, with no knowledge of Runners' ways, had no idea what kind of weapons they might use.

A harsh gasp broke into Anen's thoughts.  He spun.  Stanis was sitting, using one of his dead hands as a prop.  He was breathing hard against the pain.  "Take these two and go, Anen.  I'll cover you with the zapper."

"I won't trade my life for yours."

"How else are you and Ota going to get past the Runners, smart boy?"

Stanis's words stung.  Anen couldn't pass the Runners with just Ota's help, nor with Ota and Zik together.  "I won't trade my life for yours," he insisted stubbornly.  "The only way I could make myself leave was by convincing myself you'd still be here when patrol arrives, to tell what happened to Kurharay."

"You're my brother, Anen.  I love you.  I want you to live."  The two troopers looked away, embarrassed.  Stanis went on.  "You can live.  I know it.  You've got the skill and the wit to make it to the Bubov camp."  Stanis took a deep breath and continued.  "Everything I'm good at requires hands, Anen, and my hands are gone.  But even if my hands worked, I'd still offer you this chance.  Don't you know that?"

"No," Anen replied, "I didn't know that.  Even members of my own clan wouldn't offer me that."

"Anen, your whole House dies if you die.  But you'll make it to Bubov.  You can make big changes in your world, important changes."  Stanis paused to clear his throat.  "Take your life as my gift and tell your children about the friend who saved you by pressing beamer buttons with his nose."  Stanis's voice held the amusement and joy a Zizranski would feel at such a way of dying, a way worthy of saga.

Anen looked into Stanis's eyes for a moment, then nodded.  "Zik stays with you."

Stanis shook his head.

"Hey stays, Stanis.  You can't feed yourself.  You can't even get to the zapper without help.  Trust me, there'll be someone here for you within three days.  You can hold off the Runners for that long." Anen hoped with all his heart that was true.

"I don't want to stay, Lord Anen," Zik whined.

"Zik, you're a soldier.  This is your post.  Help will come.  Now take Stanis up to the zapper."

Zik's mouth sulked, but he bent his head, accepting the order.

For Anen, the following night dragged by.  He was up at first light, slipping into his pack with Ota's help, waiting by the back door while Zik helped Stanis up and into the tiny lift that went up to the zapper's hole.  "I'll yell when I'm ready," Stanis said as he went.

Moments after the lift stopped, Stanis roared down. "Ready!" He sounded almost normal.

Anen and Ota slipped out the door, through the softening drifts, and into the pinkpines covering the sides of the pass.  Runner howls frayed the air, answered by hissing zapper bolts.  The two men didn't speak or look back or stop moving until they were over the crest of the pass and walking down the gentle valley that widened slowly on its way to meet the plain.  Anen heard a flier and held up his hand.  Ota stopped beside him.

"You hear that?"

Ota nodded.

"Let's duck out of sight until we see whose flier it is."  The men stepped under the branches of some pines and waited until the flier came into sight.

The flier was a little Ghorr-patrol transport in Congressional gray. Anen hesitated.  Baranovsky would be the chairman at the Thawtime meeting, and Baranovsky was a Moaekod ally.  But Congress was Kurharay's only hope.  He had to take the chance he could convince Congress to protect his House.  Anen stepped out of hiding, more boldly than he felt, and jumped and waved to attract the transport.  It passed over, then banked and returned just above the top of the trees.

"Looking for a proper landing place," Ota muttered.

The transport landed down the valley and a squad of patrolmen jumped out onto the snow.  Half were wearing Zentov hot blue and half Wessely light gold.  The squadleader wore Congressional gray.  They fanned out and moved toward Anen and Ota, zappers drawn.  Anen tensed.  There was nothing else he could do.  He'd committed them to Congressional hands.

The squadleader stopped a pace from Anen, his zapper pointing at Anen's head.  "Anen Kurharay, you're under Congressional arrest."196Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAQMa3db5I6