to prostrate themselves before him as before a god. His body shaking now with fatigue, relief, and perhaps with poison, Nestor made his way down to the ground level of the temple, and then out of the building to the south.
In another moment, Draffut, who in Nestor's view from the roof had been only a distant, toylike figure, was coming around a corner of the temple from the southwest. The giant moved in vast strides, his twolegged walk covering ground faster than any human run. A flying dragon of moderate size, perhaps the very one that Nestor had earlier spoken to, was flitting along near Draffut's head, almost as if it were planning to attack him. But Draffut ignored the flying thing, and it did him no harm.
The small mob of refugees had followed Nestor down to ground level. Draffut was obviously known to them, and a very welcome sight; Nestor supposed it was hope of the giant's protection that had brought them fleeing to the island in the first place. Now they offered Draffut worship, and clamored to him at length. The giant answered them in their own language. With his huge hands he raised them from their knees, and touched their wounds and healed them.
Then one of his enormous hands reached out for Nestor, who once more felt its restoring power. As his touch healed, Draffut said to him: 'You have fought well here. And with the use of more than ordinary powers, if what these people tell me is correct.'
'It probably is. Thank you again, Healer-who-is-not-a-god.' The shaking was gone from Nestor's body, and the places where his small wounds had been were whole. He felt healthy, to a degree that made the long fight just past seem as unreal as a dream. He was surprised at a passing feeling that, along with the fear and pain, something valuable, had been wiped away.
'Yes,' Nestor went on, 'there were very many of them. Very many, including your pet that rose up in advance of the others and tried to kill me. The sword gave me no more than ordinary service against that one.'
Abstractedly Draffut lifted one of his huge wrists, and the flying dragon perched on it like a falcon. 'My airborne scouts,' the giant rumbled, 'tell me that the Great Swamp is being invaded from the west by a large human army. Its soldiers wear the black and silver of Yambu, and it may be that the queen herself is leading them.'
'Ah.' Nestor felt shaken by the news; he bent to take up again the sword he had cast down when Draffut reached out to him. Nestor like everyone else had heard of that queen and of her power. 'I suppose that her objective is not the conquest of the swamp.'
'And I suppose that it is probably the domain of Kind Sir Andrew. The sorcerers of her army chant their spells as they march, and all across the swamp the larvae that they have cultivated from afar rise up and form in ranks to follow them.'
'So,' said Nestor. 'We know now who is responsible for the larvae. And why is this army being led against Sir Andrew in particular? And why just now?'
Draffut made a motion of his arm, so that the dragon flew up from his wrist; it had rested, and now with vigorous wingstrokes went off on its own business. Draffut said: 'Two of the god-swords, at least, are there now. A tempting booty to be taken, would you not agree?'
Nestor looked at the refugees, who were following the talk with reverence if little understanding. He said to Draffut: 'One sword at least is there, and that one mine. I suppose if the Queen of Yambu knew where it was, and its importance, she might risk much to take it. As would Duke Fraktin, or a hundred others, I am sure. So what are we to do? I'd risk much myself to get it back.'
Draffut said: 'You should go to Sir Andrew, and warn him. And do what you can, with that you have there in your hand, to help him. Now that we know who is raising the Gray Horde, and where it is being led, I no longer feel that I must remain in the swamp. In fact, there is somewhere else I want to go now, and we can go part of the way together.'
Again Draffut held brief conversation with the surviving swamp-folk. Then he explained to Nestor: 'I have told them that they can return to their village now, on another island not far from here. They will be safer there than here, if powers should come seeking here for followers of mine.'
'What powers might those be?'
'I mean to go,' said Draffut, 'and start an argument with the gods. Or with some of them at least. Are you ready to depart?'
Nestor had no baggage to bring with him except the sword. Which was, he now observed, an awkward thing to have to carry in one's hand for any length of time. This difficulty loomed larger when he realized that he was going to have to ride a long way on Draffut's shoulders, and that he might at times want both hands free to hang on with. Draffut, suggesting a solution, sent Nestor to rummage in a certain room of the temple that he had not found in his own explorations, a long-abandoned guardhouse or arsenal. Much of the weaponry stored therein had rusted and rotted away, but Nestor turned up a copper scabbard that fit Townsaver tolerably well. To make the necessary belt, he used the sword itself to cut a length of tough vine from the temple wall.
The surviving swamp-people and their canoes had already disappeared back into their native habitat when Draffut, with Nestor clinging to his back, left solid land behind and strode into the morass, heading to the northeast. Draffut's long wading strides soon overtook the paddlers; the people in the canoes made way for him, waving as they pulled aside.
For half an hour or so, Draffut made steady and uneventful progress. If any of the multitude of lifeforms large and small that inhabited the marsh ever considered molesting the Beast-Lord in his passage, Nestor at least was not aware of it. Draffut never went more than waist-deep in the water and mud, and Nestor was easily able to keep himself dry. Now and then he had to dodge a tree-branch, but that was his most serious immediate problem. He clung with both hands to his mount's glowing fur, and was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It seemed to Nestor that sometimes even the thorntrees bent aside before the giant reached them.
This pleasant interval ended abruptly just as Draffut was mounting a ridge of dry, comparatively high ground. At that point a large warbeast, armored and collared in the colors of Yambu, sprang in ambush at the Beast-Lord from a brake of reeds. The giant's reaction was practically instantaneous; before Nestor could draw his sword, Draffut had caught the attacker in midair, as if he were playing with a kitten. But then the giant threw the warbeast violently, so that the flying, screaming body broke tree branches and vanished behind a screen of trees some thirty meters distant before it splashed into the swamp.
Almost as if in response, there came a distant, whistling call, that sounded like some hunter's cry. Nestor had heard similar signals used to control warbeasts. Draffut paused for a moment, turning to gaze over the treetops to his left; then he moved swiftly off to his right, walking at a greater speed than ever. Now Nestor had to clap his half-drawn.sword back into its scabbard and once more hold tight with both hands.
'The advance guard of Yambu,' said Draffut over his shoulder, in what he used for a low voice. 'We will outspeed them if we can.'
Looking back, Nestor saw more warbeasts already in pursuit. He counted three, and there might well be more. Hundreds of meters farther back, beyond the great catlike creatures, he could see the first advancing elements of a human army, some of them mounted and some in boats. He announced this to Draffut's ear, but the giant did not bother to answer. Draffut was almost, but not quite, running now. Maybe, thought Nestor, his size and build made a real run an impossibility for him. Nestor had considerable conference in Draffut's powers; but at the same time the man could almost feel those huge warbeast talons fastening on him from behind…
The chase went on. From time to time Nestor reported, in a voice he strove to keep calm, that their pursuers were catching up. Then abruptly Draffut stopped, and calmly turned to stand his ground.
'It is no use,' he said. 'They are too fast. And they are maddened with the lust to fight, and will not listen to me.' With one hand he lifted Nestor from his shoulders, and placed the man in a high crotch of a dead tree. 'Defend yourself,' the Beast-Lord laconically advised him, and turned to do the same.
A moment later, half a dozen warbeasts, hot on the trail, came bounding out of the brush nearby. Draffut cuffed the first one to come in reach, grabbed and threw another by its tail, and had to pick a third one from his fur when it was actually brave enough to leap on him. He hurled it into the remaining three. With that all of the warbeasts that were still able to move scattered in flight, emitting uncharacteristic yelps. Nestor, his sword drawn and ready though showing no special powers, had nothing to do. Which, under the circumstances, was quite all right with him.
Draffut had just retrieved Nestor from his high perch when a new figure appeared. It was the form of a woman with long black hair, her body clothed in light armor of ebony and silver, on another ridge or island of dry
