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He bowed slightly and remarked in perfectly understandable, though somewhat shrill Darkovan dialect:

“Good morning. I trust you are comfortable and that you have not been harmed?”

Both boys leaped to their feet as if electrified. He spoke an understandable tongue! The guardssurrounding the trailman personage put their hands to their flint knives, but seeing that neither boy made amove toward the man, stood back.

Kennard shouted, “Comfortable be damned! What the mischief do you mean by keeping us hereanyhow!”

The trailmen murmured, twittering, in shock and dismay, and the Personage spun on his heel in obviousoffense; Kennard instantly changed his tactics. He bowed deeply.

“Forgive me. I”—he looked wildly at Larry—“I spoke in haste. We—”

Larry said, speaking the same dialect, “We have been well fed and kept out of the rain, if that is whatyou mean, sir.” The word he used would also have been translated “Your honor.”

“But would your very high honor condescend to explain to us why we are being taken from our road

and put in this exceptionally damp and confining place at all?”

The trailman’s face was stern. He said, “Your people burn down the woods with thered-thing-that-eats-the-woods. Animals die. Trees perish. You were being watched and when you builtthe red-thing-that-eats-the-woods, we seized you.”

“Then will you let us go again?” Kennard asked.

The trailman slowly made a negative gesture. “We have one protection, and only one, against thered-thing-that-eats-the-woods. Whenever your people come into the country of the People of the Sky,they never leave it again. So that your people will fear coming into our world, and there will be no fear ofthe red-thing-that-eats-the-woods destroying more of our cities.”

Kennard, with a furious gesture, rolled back his sleeves. There were still crimson burn scars on them. “Listen, you—” he began; and with an effort, amended, “Hear me, your— your High Muchness. Just afew days ago, I and my family and my friends spent many, many days putting out a fire. It is not
my
 
kindof people who burn down woods. We are— we are running away from the evil kind of people who setfires to burn down woods.”

“Then why were you building a—you call it
fire
 
?”

“To cook our food.”

The trailman’s face was severe. “And your kind of—of
man
 
”—the word was one of inexpressiblecontempt on his lips—“eats of our brothers-that-have-life!”

“Ways differ and customs differ,” said Kennard doggedly, “but we will not burn down your woods. We

will even promise not to build a fire while we are in your woods, if you will let us go.”

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“You are of the fire-making kind. We will not let you go. I have spoken.”

He turned on his heel and walked out. Behind him, his guards stalked out, and the bolt fell into place.

“And that,” said Kennard, “is very much
 
that
 
.”

He sat down, chin in hands, and stared grimly into space.

Larry was also feeling despair. Obviously the trailmen would not harm them. Equally obviously,however, they seemed likely to be sitting here in this prison—well fed, well housed, but caged like alienhorrid animals—until hell froze over, as far as the Personage was concerned.

He found himself thinking in terms of the trailmen’s way of life. If you depended on the woods for verylife, fire was your worst fear—and evidently, to them, fire was a wild thing that could never be controlled. He remembered their triumphant dance of joy when they had managed to put out Kennard’s littlecookfire.

He said thoughtfully, “You still have your flint and tinder, don’t you?”

Kennard caught him up instantly. “Right! We can burn our way out with torches, and no one will dare tocome near us.”

Suddenly his face fell. “No. There is a danger that their city might catch fire. We would be wiping out awhole village of perfectly harmless creatures.”

And Larry followed his thought. Better to sit here in prison indefinitely—after all, they were being wellfed and kindly treated—than risk exterminating a whole village of these absolutely harmless little people. People who would not even kill a rabbit for food. Sooner or later they would find a way out. Until then,they would not risk harming the trailmen, who had not harmed them.

They were interrupted by the entry of their guard, limping heavily, carrying a tray of their food—the nuts,the honey, and what looked like birds’ eggs. Larry made a face—raw eggs? Well, he supposed theywere a treat to the trailmen, and they were at least giving their prisoner-guests of their best. But a boiledegg would be a pleasant enough meal.

Kennard was asking the trailman, by signs, how he had hurt his leg. The trailman sprang into a crouch,his head laid into a feral gesture; he actually looked like the great carnivore he was imitating. He made abrutal clawing gesture; he fell to the mossy floor of the hut, doubled up, imitating great pain; thendisplayed the cruelly festering wound. Larry turned sick at the sight of it; the thigh was swollen to nearlytwice its size, and greenish pus was oozing from the wound. The trailman made a stoical shrug, pointed tohis flint knife, gestured, struggled like a man being held down, hopped like a man with one leg, folded hishands, closed his eyes, held his breath like a man dead. He picked up the tray and hobbled out.

Kennard, his face twisting, shook his head. “I suppose you got all that? He means they’ll have to cut hisleg off soon or he will die.”

“And it’s so damned unnecessary!” Larry said violently. “All it needs is lancing and antibiotics, and a

little sterile care—” Suddenly, he started.

“Kennard! That pot they brought the honey in, do you still have it?”

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“Yes.”

“I’m no good at making a fire with flint and tinder. But can you make one? A very small one in the pot?

Enough, say, to sterilize a knife? To heat water very hot?”

“What do you—”

“I have an idea,” Larry said between his teeth, “and it just might work.” He pulled his medical kit from his pocket. “I have some antiseptic powder, and antibiotics. Not much. But probably enough, considering that the fellow must have the constitution of—of one of these trees, to live through a clawing like that and still be walking around at all.”

“Larry, if we kindle a fire they will probably kill us.”

“So we keep it in the pot, covered. The old fellow looks intelligent—the one who spoke Darkovan. If

we show him that it can’t possibly get out of a clay pot—”

Kennard caught his thought. “Zandru’s hells, it just might work, Larry! But, Gods above, are you thenapprenticed to be a curer-of-wounds among your people, like my cousin Dyan Ardais?”

“No. This knowledge is as common with the boys of my people as—” he sought wildly for a simile, and Kennard, following his thought as usual, supplied one: “As the knowledge of sword-play among mine?”

Larry nodded. He took over then, giving instructions: “If the chap yells, we’ll be swamped, and neverhave a chance to finish. So you and I will jump him and keep him from getting one squeak out. Then yousit on him while I fix up his leg. We’ll get just one chance to keep him from yelling— so don’t muff it!”

By evening their preparations were made. The light was poor, and Larry fretted; though the light fromthe fire-pot helped a little. They waited, breathless. Had their jailer been changed, had he died of histerrible wound? No, after a time they heard his characteristic halting step. The door opened.

He saw the pot and the fire. He opened his mouth to scream.

But the scream never got out. Kennard’s arm was across his throat, and a crude, improvised gag of astrip torn from Larry’s shirt-tail was stuffed into his mouth. Larry felt slightly sick. He knew what must bedone, but had never done anything even remotely like it before. He held the knife in the fire until it glowedred-hot, then let it cool somewhat, and, setting his teeth, made a long gash in the swollen, festering leg.

There was an immediate gush of greenish, stinking matter from the wound. Larry sponged it away. Itseemed there was no end to the stuff that oozed from the wound, and it was a sickening business, butfinally the stuff was tinged with blood and he could see clean flesh below.

He sponged it repeatedly with the hot water heated in the second pot; when it was as clean as he couldmake it, he sprinkled the antibiotic powder into the wound, covered it with the cleanest piece of cloth hehad—a fragment of bandage remaining in the medical kit—and took the gag from the man’s mouth.

The man had long since ceased to struggle. He lay blinking in stuporous surprise, looking down at hisleg, which now had only a clean gash. Suddenly he rose, bowed half a dozen times profoundly to theboys, and backed out of the room.

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Larry slumped on the floor, exhausted. He wondered suddenly if what he had done had reallyendangered their lives. The trailmen’s customs were so different from theirs, there was really no way oftelling; they might consider this just as evil as killing a rabbit.

After a while, at Kennard’s urging, he sat up and ate some supper. He needed it—even if he had thefeeling that he might be eating his last meal. They fed the small fire with fragments of vine from the deadleaves, and toasted their mushrooms over it. For a while they felt almost festive. Much later, they heardsteps, and looked at one another, with no need for words.

This is it. Life or death?

Kennard said nothing, but reached silently for Larry’s hand; he clasped it and the clasp slid up Larry’selbow until their arms were enlaced as well as their hands. Unfamiliar as the gesture was, Larry knew itwas a sign not alone of friendship but of affection and tenderness. He felt faintly embarrassed, but hesaid, in a low voice, “If it’s bad news—I’m sorry as hell I got you into this—but it’s been damn niceknowing you.”

An instant before the door opened, Larry saw it, a clear flash of awareness; the sight of the trailmanchief, and his face was grave, but he was alone, and unweaponed. It was not, at any rate, instant death.

The trailman said, “I have seen what you did for Rhhomi. I cannot believe that you are evil men. Yet youare of the kind who make fire.” With a sort of grave dignity, he seated himself. “None is so young hecannot teach, or so old he cannot learn. Am I to learn from you, strange men?”

Kennard said swiftly, “We have told you already that we have no will to harm even the least of yourpeople or creatures, Honorable One.”

“Yes.” But it was at Larry that the trailman chief looked. He said, irrelevantly, it seemed, “Among my folk, my title is Old One, and what is age if not wisdom? Have you wisdom for me, son of a strange land?”

Larry reached behind him for the honey pot, containing still a few glowing embers of fire. The Old Oneshrank, but controlled himself with an effort. Larry tried to speak his simplest Darkovan; after all, thelanguage was strange to both himself and this alien creature.

“It is harmless here,” he said, searching for words. “See, the walls of your clay pot keep it harmless so that it cannot burn. If you feed it with— with dead twigs and little bits of dead, dry wood, it will serve you and not hurt you.”

The Old One reached out, evidently conquering an ingrained shrinking, and touched the pot. He said,

“Then it can be servant and not master? And a knife made clean in this fire will heal?”

“Yes,” said Larry, bypassing the whole of germ theory, “or a wound washed with water made very hot,

will heal better than a dirty wound.”

The Old One rose, bearing the firepot in his hands. He said, gravely, “For this gift, then, of healing, mypeople thank you. And as a sign of this, be under our protection within our woods. Wear this”— and heextended two garlands of yellow flowers— “and none of our people will harm you. But build nored-flames-to-eat-our-woods within the limits of these branches.”

Larry, sensing that the Old One spoke to him, said gravely, “You have my pledge.”

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The Old One threw open the door of the hut.

“Be free to go.”

Awkwardly they settled the crowns of yellow flowers over their heads. The trailmen surged backwardas the Old One came forth, bearing in his hands the pot of fire. He said ceremoniously, handing it to awoman, “I place this thing in your hands. You and your daughters and the daughters of your daughtersare to feed it and bear responsibility that it does not escape.”

The scene had a grave solemnity that made Larry, for some reason— perhaps only relief— want togiggle. But he kept his gravity while they were escorted to the edge of the trailmen’s village, shown a longladder down which they could climb, and finally, with infinite relief, set foot again on the green and solidground.