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have done for her if he did stop?
At last he clamped his own lips shut and kicked the load beast into a run.
This too, at first, only seemed to make matters worse. The woman's grip on
the load-beast's saddle was brutally broken when the animal began to run. But
she still tottered down the road after Arnfinn. For a long time she kept up
the hopeless pursuit, begging him to come back to her. It seemed to him that
he had to ride for an hour, sweating in the chill air, trying to shut his
ears, before the sound of her cries had faded entirely away.
When night came he slept in the open. And for a day or two after that
incident he avoided villages altogether, making a long detour whenever a
settlement of any kind came into sight ahead.
He could not avoid encountering other travelers now and then. Inevitably they
displayed either one of two basic reactions, and Arnfinn wasn't sure which one
was worse:
the fear or the strange, puzzled love. Puzzled, he supposed, because the
loved one was behaving so strangely, offering no recognition.
But Arnfinn no longer found anything enjoyable in either reaction. And so he
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ceased to wear the Sword. Taking off the belt and scabbard, he wrapped them
in his only spare shirt, making an undistinguished-looking bundle, and then
contrived to tie the bundle onto the load beast s rump along with the rest of
his meager baggage.
On the following day he was traversing a particularly lonely stretch of road
when two men suddenly appeared out of the scrubby forest no more than an
arrow's flight ahead of him.
More to reassure himself that his treasure was safe than to seek its
protection, Arnfinn reached behind him and felt inside the bundle for the hard
hilt of the Sword And the moment he touched it, his perception of the two men
changed.
In Lunghai, robbers were very rare indeed. But stories about them were common
enough, and many of the village men were reluctant to undertake even necessary
journeys on these roads, except in groups. Arnfinn, listening to the stories,
had mentally allied himself with the braver village men, and had tended to
dismiss such fears as a sign of timidity. Now, however, matters suddenly wore
a somewhat different aspect.
There was no obvious reason to assume that these two men were robbers. But
Arnfinn, from the moment he touched Sightblinder, was certain that they were.
When they looked toward him, and then started in his direction, he stopped his
mount, then turned it off the road at an angle, urging it to its greatest
speed. It was a young animal, and healthy enough, but the healthiest load
beast was not a riding-beast, and certainly not a racer.
Behind him now the men's voices were hailing him, in friendly tones, but
Arnfinn ignored the call. He steered his animal among trees, and forced it
through a thicket, trying to get himself well out of their sight.
Halfway into the thicket his mount rebelled against this strange procedure,
and came to a stubborn halt. He saw, through a thin screen of dead leaves,
the two men on their swift riding-beasts go cantering by on the road he had
just left. They were a savage-looking pair now in their anger, muttering
curses as they rode, and Arnfinn noted with a feeling of faintness that they
both had drawn long knives from somewhere.
Robbers, no doubt about it. Murderers. He twisted in his saddle as soon as
they had passed, and with shaking hands he started to undo the bundle that
held the Sword.
His fumbling fingers let the burden go, and with a noisy crash it fell from
the animal's rump into the dry twigs of the thicket. At once one of the
robbers' voices sounded, startlingly near; they must have already turned, they
were already coming back to kill him.
Jumping, almost falling, from his saddle after the Sword, Arnfinn, praying to
all the gods whose names he had ever heard, scrambled after Sightblinder on
the ground. At last he reached it. Unable to get the bundle open quickly, he
thrust his right hand inside and grasped the Sword's hilt, and felt the full
power of it flow into his hand.
That flow was not of warmth, nor cold, it was of something he could not have
described, but it passed through the skin as cold or heat would pass.
He was still in that same position, crouched awkwardly on all fours almost
underneath his puzzled animal, when the two men on riding-beasts came crashing
into the thicket after him.
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