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Updated: June 7, 2025
Muttering to himself, he pulled the lead rope and brought Ross's horse to follow in the direction from which Ennar had brought the captive less than a half hour earlier. Ross tried to think. The unexpected death of their chief might well mean his own, should the tribe's desire for vengeance now be aroused.
Like the other tribesmen he was armed with belt dagger and ax, and since he wore two necklaces and both cuff bracelets and upper armlets as did Foscar, Ross thought he must be a relative of the older man. "Child!" Foscar clapped his hand on Ross's shoulder and then withdrew the hold. "Child!" He indicated Ennar, who reddened.
Ennar's hand came away from the ax hilt as if that polished wood were white-hot, and he transferred his discomfiture to Ross as the other understood. Ennar had to win now for his own pride's sake, and Ross felt he had to win for his life. They circled warily, Ross watching his opponent's eyes rather than those half-closed hands held at waist level.
The constant crooning wail of the women in the tents produced a minor murmur of sound, enough to drive a man to the edge of madness. Ross had been left under guard where he could watch it all, a refinement of torture which he would earlier have believed too subtle for Ennar.
The young man tossed one of his braids back across his shoulder and turned his head to face Ross squarely. "Your chief come our camp. Talk with Foscar two four sleeps ago." "How talk with Foscar? With hunter talk?" For the first time Ennar did not appear altogether certain. He scowled and then snapped, "He talk Foscar, us. We hear right words not woods creeper talk. He speak to us good."
He will be angry if I do not come. Let Foscar fear his anger " Ennar laughed. "You run from your chief. He will be happy with Foscar when you lie again under his hand. You will not like that I think it so!" "I think so, too," Ross agreed silently. He spent the rest of that night lying between the watchful Ennar and another guard, though they had the humanity not to bind him again.
The young tribesman grinned as he knelt down beside the helpless prisoner. Ross knew a thrill of fear worse than any pain. Ennar might be about to do just what he hinted! Instead, the knife swung up and Ross felt the sawing at the cords about his wrists, enduring the pain in the raw gouges they had cut in his flesh with gratitude that it was not mutilation which had brought Ennar to him.
He had not been knocked silly and then transported for miles slung across a horse after days of exposure and hard usage. It remained to be learned was Ross Murdock as tough as he always thought himself to be? Tough or not, he was in this until he won or dropped. Comments from the crowd aroused Ennar to the first definite action.
Only the present mattered, and it was a dark one. He might have fought Ennar to a standstill, but in the eyes of the horsemen he had also been beaten, and he had not impressed them as he had hoped.
"Sharp tongue," he commented. "Tulka lost knife ax? So! Ennar," he called over his shoulder, and one of the men stepped out a pace beyond his fellows. He was shorter and much younger than his chief, with a boy's rangy slimness and an open, good-looking face, his eyes bright on Foscar with a kind of eager excitement.
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