As the fire blade turned point down Farne caught and held those other chill eyes.
“Blood calls to blood,” he said slowly.
The other’s mouth contorted. He spat and the spittle flecked the trampled leaves by Farne’s boots.
“Beast calls not to true man!” He flung up his head in harsh pride. “Kill if you will but think not that aught between us can ever be altered—runner in the night!”
Farne swung the sword, not towards the other but as if he weighed something in his hand and that weight dragged heavy upon him. He shook his head.
“Run no more,” he said slowly. “The choice has been forced upon me at last. I may well have lost more than I gain—”
“I do not understand you,” broke in the other impatiently. “Kill me—you win nothing, beast—”
Farne, to Thra’s surprise, nodded. “Nothing,” he agreed. “Did you think I challenged your rulership with this?” Again he waved the sword.
That light which had blazed along it was gone. But the strangeness did not return to his face. Now he stepped back and away from the other.
“This much is true. You live, kinsman, by my leave.”
The other scowled and took a step forward as if he wished to drag Farne down by strength alone.
“Also,” once more the forest man shifted his grip on the sword, “I have at last come into my inheritance. No, kinsman, do not fear that you shall be dispossessed of your lands, your ill-ruled people—not yet. But the ‘beast’ you have been pleased to hunt is gone. Try your tricks again at your will, they shall net you naught. Take up your liegemen and get you gone. This forest has an ill name among your kind that was not lightly earned, nor shall it be forgot.”
Deliberately he sheathed the sword and held its belt in one hand. The other he put to the wide buckle of the furred belt.
As Farne’s fingers touched that buckle it burst open. The metal over which the strange colors had played flaked away. Fur loosened from scaling hide and shifted through the air, the hide itself slipped and fell from about his body, to lie in bits upon the ground. Then he fastened the sword belt in its place.
The lord watched through narrowed eyes.
“You have given me quarter—I asked it not, I shall not accept it!” His voice was harsh challenge.
“Accept or not as you wish,” Farne shrugged. “You stand on land which I know and which knows me. I have made my choices—yours shall be yours only, and you shall answer for them.”
He turned his head to look to Thra. What he had just said, she thought, was meant in its latter part as much for her as for the lord.
She swallowed. Life was always choices and somehow she knew she faced a mighty one now. As she settled the sword she had taken into the empty scabbard at her belt she saw on the ground a wisp of dirty fur.
Two belts and a man, there was a meaning she could guess at. But in this forest one need not be surprised at anything. She made her choice.
As Farne moved forward she fell in at his right hand, Grimclaw padding into the shadow of the great trees at his left.