He hastened away before they could voice the torrent of objections on their lips. He had taken Zoor’s hiltless knife.
Khal Kan made his way through the dark tents to the big pavilion of the dryland chief. He silently skirted its rear wall, stopping here and there to slash the wall and peer inside.
Thus he discovered the compartment of the pavilion in which the girl slept. It had a guttering copper night-lamp whose flickering radiance fell on silken hangings and on a low mass of cushions on which she lay.
Golden Wings’ dark head was pillowed on her arm, her long black lashes slumbering on her cheek. Coolly, Khal Kan made an entrance. He delayed to cut strips from the silken hangings, and then approached her.
His big hand whipped the silken gag around Golden Wings’ mouth and tied it before she was half-awake. Her eyes raging as she recognized him, and her slim silken figure struggled in his grasp with wildcat fury.
Khal Kan was rough and fast. He got the silken bonds around her hands and feet, and then drew a breath of relief.
“Now we ride for Jotan, my sweet,” he whispered mockingly to her as he picked up her helpless figure.
Golden Wings’ black eyes blazed into his own, and he laughed.
He kissed her eyelids. “This will have to serve as proof of my affections until we can take this damned gag off, my dear,” he mocked.
* * * *
Her firm body writhed furiously in his grasp as he went out into the starry night. Silently, bearing the girl easily, he made his way through the sleeping camp.
Stamping shadows loomed up at the camp edge, awaiting him. Brusul and Zoor had horses, and the little spy handed Khal Kan a stolen sword.
“You have the girl!” Zoor sniggered. “Even I could not make a theft so daring—to steal the drylanders’ princess out of their own camp!”
“We haven’t got her out yet, and it’s far to Jotan,” snarled Brusul. “Let’s get out of here.”
Khal Kan vaulted into the saddle and drew Golden Wings’ struggling silken figure across the saddle-bow. They walked their horses softly eastward till they were out of earshot of the camp, and then they spurred into a gallop.
The cold dawn wind whistled past Khal Kan’s face. Far ahead, the black bulk of the Dragals loomed against the paling sky.
He took the gag from Golden Wings’ mouth. In the growing light, the cold anger of the girl’s face flared at him.
“Dog of Jotan!” she panted. “You’ll be staked out in the desert to die the sun-death, for this crime.”
“I didn’t free your mouth for words, my dear,” replied Khal Kan. “But for this—”
Her lips writhed under his kiss. His laughter pealed bade on the wind as he straightened again in the saddle.
Golden Wings sobbed with rage. “You’ll not be killed at once,” she promised breathlessly. “It will take time to think up a death appropriate for you. Even the sun-death would be too easy.”
“That’s the way I like to hear a girl talk,” applauded Khal Kan. “Hell take these wenches who are all softness and whimpers. We’ll get along, my pet.”
They were still far from the first ridges of the Dragals when the crimson sun came up to light their way. Brusul turned his battered face back to stare across the ocher sands, and then swore and pointed to a remote, low wisp of dust back on the western horizon.
“There they come! They’re following our tracks, curse them!”
“We can lose them when we reach the mountains,” Khal Kan called easily. “Faster!”
“You’ll never reach the Dragals,” taunted Golden Wings, eyes sparkling now. “My father’s horses are swift, Jotan dogs!”
They spurred on. The first low red ridges of the Dragals seemed tantalizingly far away. The sun was rising higher, and its blistering heat had already dispelled the coolness of dawn.
The crimson orb hung almost directly overhead, and they were still hours from the ridges, when Zoor’s pony tripped and went down. It rolled with a broken neck as the little man darted nimbly from the saddle.
Khal Kan reined up and came riding back. The dust-cloud of their pursuers was ominously big and close.
“Ride on!” Zoor cried, his wizened face unperturbed. “You can make the ridges without me.”
“We can’t make them,” Khal Kan denied coolly. “And it’s not our way to separate in face of danger.”
He dismounted. Golden Wings was looking westward with exultation in her black eyes. “Did I not tell you I’d see you caught!” she cried.
Khal Kan cut free her hands and feet. He reached up and set his lips against hers, bruisingly. Then he stepped back, releasing her.
“You can ride back and meet your father’s warriors with the glad news that we’re here for the taking, my sweet,” he told her.
“You’re letting her go?” yelled Brusul. “We could hold her hostage.”
“No,” declared Khal Kan. “I’ll not see her harmed in the fight.”
He laughed up at her, as she sat in the saddle looking down at him with wide, strangely bewildered eyes.
“Too bad I couldn’t get you to Jotan with me, my little desert-cat. “But you’ll have the pleasure of seeing us killed. Tell your father’s warriors to come with their swords out!”
* * * *
For a long moment, Golden Wings looked down at him. Then she set spur to the pony and galloped away to the oncoming dust-cloud.
Khal Kan and his two comrades drew their swords and waited. And soon they saw the force of a hundred drylanders riding up to them. Bladomir was in the lead, his beard bristling. And Golden Wings rode beside him.
“The little hell-cat wants to help kill us,” growled Brusul. “You should have slit her throat.”
Khal Kan shrugged. “I’d liefer slit my own. Too bad we have to end in a skirmish like this, old friends. I dragged you into it.”
“Oh, it’s all right, except that we won’t be with the armies of Jotan when they go out to meet Egir and the Bunts,” muttered Brusul.
The drylanders were not charging. No sword was unsheathed as they came forward, though old Bladomir was frowning blackly. The desert chieftain halted his horse ten paces away, and spoke to Khal Kan in a roaring voice.
“I ought to kill you all, Jotanians, for taking my daughter away with you. But we’re a free people. Since she says she goes with you of her own free will, I’ll not interfere.”
“Of her own free will?” gasped Brusul. “What in the sun’s name—”
* * * *
Golden Wings had dismounted and came toward Khal Kan. Her dark eyes met him levelly. She did not speak, nor did he, as she took his hand.
Bladomir laid a sword-blade across their clasped hands, and tossed a handful of the yellow desert sand upon it. Khal Kan felt his heart in his throat. It was the marriage rite of the drylanders.
Zoor and Brusul were staring unbelievingly, the drylanders sadly. But Golden Wings’ red lips were sweet fire under his mouth.
“You said that for each lash-stroke last night, I’d pay a hundred kisses,” she whispered. “That will take long—my lord.”
He looked earnestly into the brooding sweetness of her face. “No deceptions between us, my little sand-cat!” he said. “When I freed you and let you go to your father, I was gambling that you’d come back—like this.”
For