Chapter II

Sand slipped away in back of him, as wind passes the arrow in its flight. Air was cool on his chest and on the powerful thighs that rippled with muscles as he ran. The sun beat at him, leaving him in its warmth. He grew strong and powerful as the cells of his skin sucked in energy.

Run, Tyr. Run faster and yet faster, that the thoughts teeming in your brain may be left behind. You are a god, and a girl named Fay is not for you. You have only the _ardth_-men, Tyr. They are your enemies, and they must be vanquished!

But how? But how? His brain howled in desperation. They are so many. They know sciences, and they have weapons. You have two bare hands and a strong body, a strange body, a body that frightens you at times, it is so different.

Something dug into the sand ahead of him and exploded. Tyr swerved like a frightened faun and came to a stop. Something else blew up a little closer to him. Hard granules of sand stung his flesh.

He saw them, then, in the sky. Three sleek aircraft with stubby wings and a long fuselage out of which shot tiny glints of red.

The _ardth_!

Tyr drew his hands down his ribs, lips twisted. By the god that he was supposed to be! He'd show them a race, even if they could fly and he could only run.

The sun was hot and searing. Good! It was his ally, that immense orb. While it shone, they could not catch him.

Tyr ran.

His pace was a blurred thing. His flight was that of the _kala_-bird whistling before the hawk. He swerved and he darted, and he made fools of the men in the shiny things above and behind him. It was an incredible thing that he did, but Tyr was an incredible being. The rules were not made for him, for who made the rules knew nothing of Tyr. He outran those aircraft.

All day long, while the sun beat upon him, Tyr flew. Vaguely he realized that he was a living, functioning thing of energy--not pure energy, but energy translated into human power.

Yet he was human, and the fliers were machines. He lost them among the rocks, but the aircraft spread in widening circles and one of them found him again. And so Tyr ran on. Once or twice he stumbled, toward the end of the day. The thunder of the jet planes was loud in his ears. They swooped low, casting long shadows before them.

There were no more explosions. Those had stopped once he began his mad race. He thought, 'At least, Fay and the others are safe. I've led the _ardth_ a long way from them.' The muscles in his legs were hardening, knotting. They grew heavy and inert.

Tyr staggered.

The planes had landed, and the men were coming for him. The stars-and-bars on their jackets loomed bigger and bigger as he stood and waited. His chest rippled with sweat, and his long arms hung limp on either side of his giant frame.

He could fight and die here, with the moon starting its rise in front of him, and the wilderness of his run behind him. His body was pouring the energy through his system again, and his muscles grew less heavy.

"By Kagan!" swore the first _ardth_-man, staring at him with round eyes over the muzzle of a lifted gun. "Who are you, man? _What_ are you?"

"He's their god," rasped another, appraising Tyr with knowing eyes.

"No wonder," grunted the third, holstering his weapon. "A god such as he would find me among his worshippers! They'll never believe us on Rigel-7!"

"Do you yield?" asked the first.

They did not seem so frightening, close up. They were like Tyr. They were men, smaller than he, but men. He could kill them all, here and now, but--

He owned a desire to see more of these _ardth_. Perhaps he could reason with their commander, make some sort of compromise. He would do anything to save the Trylla. Fay and the others were safe. Let them go to the Barrow. He would know where to find them when he escaped from the _ardth_. And he would escape. There was no prison made that could hold Tyr.

He said slowly, "I yield. I will go with you."

Dully, despite all his hopes and plans, he knew himself a complete and total failure as a god.

* * * * *

Her hair was black as the tip of a raven's wing, parted in the middle, and drawn back over tiny ears. She had black eyes and a wide, crimson mouth that kept smiling at him, gently. She stood in the midst of the cloaked _ardth_-men who stared at him as they listened to the voices of the airmen who had captured him.

Tyr grew uncomfortable under her steady gaze. He shifted his feet, feeling silly, looming so big above the smaller pilots. He felt that they all were laughing at him. What a god he was! No wonder they laughed at him secretly. A god who was the protector of his race, allowing capture by three pilots he could have killed with three blows of his big hands.

The eyes and the mockery of the men he did not mind, but the steady eyes of the woman--

Forget her, and look about you, Tyr. This is a room of the Old Ones, with its silver and black-glass windows arching a hundred feet up along the wall, and the hooded eagle design carven into the stone and wood. A highbacked chair stood empty on a rostrum as the man who usually filled it stood with the others, watching him. This was wealth, from the priceless red damask drapes at the windows to the hand-laid tiles beneath his feet.

It was no use. Her dark eyes were too steady.

"A lie," said one of the Old Ones calmly. "No man could do what he did."

"He is no man, sire. He is the one the Trylla worship. He is--Tyr!"

They started at that. The pilot had told his story cleverly. He grinned with self-appreciation as the murmurs and the cries rewarded him. Tyr knew the closer scrutiny of the eyes beneath drawn brows. They ate him up, those eyes. Especially the eyes of the woman.

A lean man with a bald head and iron-grey mustache stepped forward and walked around Tyr, his glittering eyes probing. Shaking his head dubiously, he said, "Katha, you're our biochemical expert. Can it be?"

The woman with the black hair came toward him, swaying gracefully.

"I must make tests, Space Commander," she said, and Tyr liked the hoarse vibrancy of her voice. It sent tingles down his spine. But maybe that was the black eyes of her that smiled up at him as she asked, "Is it true, what he says?"

"Yes, it's true. I outran their planes. I could have killed them, but I did not choose to."

"Then why didn't you?" she smiled.

"Because I--show me to your commander. I want to treat with him. That is why I suffered capture. I will offer peace for peace. All I ask--"

The lean man with the bald head came around in front of Tyr and stared at him with cold eyes.

"I am Space Commander Ronald Mason," he said flatly. "I am in charge of Expeditionary Space Force to the Fornax Cluster. You will offer peace? But there is no war."

Tyr held the snarl in his throat as he replied, "But there will be war, unless the _ardth_ are willing to deal with me for the liberty of the Trylla."

Mason smiled, but Tyr saw the flecks of passion deep in his ice-blue eyes. "The Trylla are a free race."

Tyr said patiently, "The Trylla worship me. They think I am a god. I know, and you know, that I am nothing of the sort. Yet I would help them, if I could. You cannot keep me here, if I seek to escape. I can plunge this planet into the bloodiest war you ever saw. But I do not want to do that. I seek only peace. Peace, and some sort of pride for the Trylla, that they may once again hold up their heads--"

Mason interposed, "A laudable desire. But the Trylla are quite content. Otho tells me they will make no trouble. As for your idle boast of escaping--"

Space Commander Mason gestured and turned away with, "Test him, Katha. See why his responses vary so far from the norm."

Red anger beat up in Tyr in mounting pulsings. He bit into his lip and eased up to the tips of his toes. His muscles writhed. He--

A cool hand touched his forearm. The black eyes were there again, and the red mouth was smiling at him.

"The tests? Please?"

Tyr licked his lips, confused. He looked at the _ardth_, and down at the girl, whose eyes were sapping the mad rage in his heart. He said, "Yes, the tests."

"Follow me."

* * * * *

The room was big and white, and fantastically clean. Chrome and plasticine gleamed and shone under the bluish-white ceiling that diffused soft brightness into every corner. A fluoroscope machine stood against the north wall. On tables were set scalpels and needles and rolls of cotton. Electronic ray-machines, microscopes and cyclotroncancereas peered beyond them. This was the biochemical science of the Old Ones inside four walls.

Katha closed the door behind her and loosed her black cloak. She was garbed in black blouse with a star-and-bar in silver threaded into the material. Tight trousers, white, gave her a streamlined look.

"Be comfortable, please. This will not hurt, what I am about to do."

Tyr watched her roll a big machine out, saw her thrust a needle with a handle into a jar of white liquid. She saw him watching her, and laughed softly.

"You are like a caged animal. You do not like walls, do you?"

"No. I prefer the desert."

"You have spent all your life on the desert?"

"All. Ever since I was small."

She turned from a wad of cotton that she was unrolling to regard him thoughtfully from under long black lashes.

"A boy. What of your parents?"

"I don't remember them, if there were any to remember. The first thing I recall is sand under my feet, and running. The sun was always my friend. I love the sun. It feeds me. I need nothing to exist, other than the sun."

Her left hand was warm where it caught his wrist. The damp cotton was swept across his flesh swiftly.

"I remember a lot of things about my youth. Unconnected things, like the first day I found the blue lake and the silver forest. The day I killed a _panth_ with my bare hands. The first night I saw the stars, and recognized them for what they were."

Katha held his hand in hers and said, "I am going to draw blood. It will hurt--a little." As the ruby liquid oozed from his wrist, the woman went on speaking. "And you cannot recall anything beyond that? Only that you were a boy, and that you grew up?"

"Only that. It was many years before I saw another ... human. The Trylla are not desert-dwellers. They like their cities. But I saw a caravan, and came close to examine it, and when the guards saw me, I ran so swiftly they started rumors."

Her mouth smiled in amusement as she walked across the room.

"No wonder. A man who can outrun three aircraft is quite a runner."

"From that began the tales about me. A hunter would shoot and miss. That started my invincibility legend. After many years, during which I found the Tower, they sent a delegation to me, to ask me to be their god, to take the ruby throne."

"How did you learn to speak, if you never knew other men and women?"

Tyr paused. Some of his education he had gotten from the books in the Tower. His other knowledge, and it was vast, he secured from eavesdropping in the narrow alleys of Yawarta.

But he said, "Oh, I just picked it up."

"The tower you mention. What is that?"

"An old building I broke into. It stands by itself on the Desert of the Whipping Wind."

"Can you read?"

"No," he lied.

She was sliding a splinter of glass under a frosted screen, and depressing a button, and bending. Tyr watched, wondering what she sought.

"That is too bad," she murmured. "For if you--you--you--ohh!"

Her face whitened as she stared at him.

"What is it?"

"Your blood ... if it is blood. It is so--so different!"

* * * * *

Katha put out a white hand and deflected a switch on the wall. A section of panelling slid back, disclosing a screen on which stood the three-dimensional images of the black-cloaked men in the throne room.

"Space Commander, I must see you. Already the preliminary test has disclosed revolutionary reactions."

Her voice was excited. It made the bald, lean man jump a little. Tyr saw him stride toward him, loom larger and larger, walk out of the screen and--disappear. A moment later, the laboratory door opened and Mason entered.

"What is it, Katha?" he said coolly.

"His blood. It is not blood that we know, that carries food and oxygen, and the toxics. It is alien. The cell structure is apparently designed to transmit--this is going to sound silly, and I haven't the opportunity of checking my first impressions, to make sure--but the cells appear constructed to transmit pure energy in the form of sheer heat."

"But the tissues, girl! In a normal man the food becomes energy in the tissues. How--?"

"I don't know. Look for yourself."

She stood away from the microscope, gesturing toward it. Space Commander Mason bent to the screen. His right hand raised the electronic power a hundred units. He stood like that for many minutes, frowning, scarcely breathing. When he straightened, he looked at Tyr for a long time, breathing harshly.

He said, "It seems to be a blood that carries nothing but radiating heat pulses. That means he intakes his energy pure. The efficiency rate is perfect. Katha, he isn't a man. Not a man such as we know men."

Katha took Tyr by the arm and led him behind a fluoroscope machine, saying, "Stand here, please." Mason was eyeing him steadily as he walked in front of the screen.

Tyr grinned to himself. They were in for a shock, if this machine did what he thought it did.

The room darkened. A pale green glow came and pulsed. The plate before him seemed to hum softly. The dark blobs of shadow that were the Commander and Katha moved suddenly and grew still. Deadly still.

"The machine is wrong!" croaked Commander Mason.

"It was tested yesterday. Commander. Besides, he has a heart, and a blood stream."

"_No stomach! No lungs! No intestines!_" he breathed.

"And in place of them, strange organs that we know nothing of. Commander, let me take him to the home planet for study! What an experience. A mutant that--"

Light grew from the ceiling, slowly. Mason stood beside the switch, staring at Tyr. His eyes were wild, having seen a miracle. He shuddered and drew his cloak tighter about him.

"A mutant! And _what_ a mutant!"

Katha said reflectively, "He has organs in place of digestive tracts that are designed for some purpose. But what purpose?"

Tyr slid away from the fluoroscope machine. He flexed his muscles. Long enough now had he rested and played their games with them. Now he was going into action.

"Commander, about my offer--"

"Quiet, man. Quiet! I need to think. A long time ago I knew a man who said--but no! What I am thinking is incredible. It could not be. And yet--and yet--"

Tyr picked up a bar of steel and balanced it lightly in his palms. Slowly his fingers closed around it. Muscles lifted on arms and back. The bar bent into a circle.

"My muscles may be different, too," he said. "About my offer. Is it peace or war? All I want--"

Space Commander Mason moved his right hand swiftly downwards. It came up from beneath his cloak with a gun. He smiled grimly, "You're big and you're powerful as a bullock, and you're _different_. I don't want to test your skin with a shower of light photons, but--"

Katha came up to Tyr. There was a hungry look in her eyes and about her mouth. She whispered, "Be sensible, god of the Trylla! You are a long time dead. Come with me. Later you can meet the Space Commander, when his surprise has worn off."

Across the black sheen of her coiled hair he looked at the bald man and read a pride as great as his own in the blue eyes. Dimly he knew that Commander Mason was possessed of a will of steel and power as great as his own, among his people. Tyr nodded.

"I will come with you."

Katha lifted her black cloak and threw it around her slender shoulders. She cast a red-lipped smile at him and tucked her arm through his.

"Come along to my apartment," she laughed. "I want you to tell me more about yourself."

* * * * *

The alleys were dark and deserted. Underfoot the rounded edges of the _calanian_ cobblestones bit into their thin sandals. The cyclopean stone structures towered black and forbidding against the pale greyness of the night sky. Like spiderwebs of giant structure, great space-vox antennae were flung from tower to tower.

They walked slowly through the warm night, and others walked faster. It was Tyr who heard the clanking of a guard's accoutrements, the _thup_ of a holstered ray-gun smiting a trousered thigh, the harsh rattle-clang of manacles and chains.

His wrist dragged her against him, and back with him into the shadows of a recessed door. Many men were coming down the street. There were a lot of chains, too.

A sliver of moonlight touched the leading man who walked stooped with iron and the pain of open whipcuts.

"Zarman!" breathed Tyr.

His brain raced. Zarman was the governor appointed by Tyr. The _ardth_ had taken him and flogged him. It was a sign of their power over Tyr. The people needed a sign from their god. If he were to free Zarman and send him back to the people--

Tyr was across the cobblestones and his right fist was coming up in a short arc. A startled guard did not have time to open his mouth before the back of his head touched his spine and his neck cracked under that blow. Tyr lowered him with his left hand in the small of his back, as he snatched up the heatgun from the holster.

"Tyr!" sobbed Zarman, straightening.

The others knew him too, and in place of the blind pain and despair, came the laugh of hope to snap their backs straight and their chins forward.

"Beware," they whispered. "There are more of them."

Tyr moved into the shadows, saying, "Keep marching. Turn at the corner--and wait."

The guards came on unsuspecting, but this time there were three of them, talking and jesting. Tyr came out of the shadows with naked hands and he hit so fast that one guard writhed on the stone street before the others had their guns out. Another dropped with splintered ribs. The third opened his mouth to scream. Two big hands took his throat and vised on it.

Tyr dropped the guard and nodded to the prisoners, "Keep moving. Zarman waits for me around the corner."

There were only two more guards. Tyr charged low. His fists pumped.

Tyr shook himself, standing alone in the alley, with the moon above beaming down at him, bathing him in silver. The street was deserted except for a white face above a dark cloak, and Tyr. The girl had a gun in her hand.

"Shoot," Tyr said, tensing himself.

"Goose," whispered the girl, and bent her head to watch her hand holster her weapon.

"Why do you not shoot?"

"Oh, I don't know. I always was a sucker for an underdog."

But there was another explanation in her dark eyes looking up at him that made Tyr blink. He caught her elbow and walked with her around the corner.

Zarman and the others were ranged along the wall in darkness. Zarman came forward and looked at the girl, and whispered, "She is an _ardth_."

"Forget her. Tell me of yourself."

"The Old Ones caught us easily. Otho blabbed with his traitorous mouth. They came and took us, though we fought."

"If I set you free, what can you do for your freedom?"

"We can fight, god Tyr. We can burrow like the mole, and battle like a cornered rat. Try us!"

Katha went around the corner for the key to the manacles. She searched the implementa of the guards and brought it back proudly.

The men lowered the chains and manacles into a hole they dug beneath the cobblestones. They reset the stones and kicked the dirt into crevices between them. One of them took the gun Tyr handed him.

Zarman made a motion to the men, and they faded out of sight.

"We go underground. Into the old tunnels dug during the war with the _ardth_. Only the Trylla know those labyrinths."

"Good. I shall get word to you."

Katha sighed when Zarman was out of sight.

Tyr asked dryly as they walked, "Why did you not shoot me? You had your gun out."

"That was for the guards--in case your fists were not enough."

"But you are an _ardth_!"

The girl sighed and said, "It is such a nice moon. And we are almost at my rooms."

She laughed softly, and Tyr wondered why.