"What's the going rate, Sergeant Khalor?" Albron asked his officer.

"Oh, two gold pieces ought to cover it, my Chief," the kilted Khalor replied.

"Two?" Althalus protested. "He's only a boy!"

"He's got leadership potential, Althalus."

"I'm not buying potential, Khalor. I'm buying what he is right now. One silver penny ought to cover that. He may become a general later, but that's off in the future."

"You took him without Chief Albron's permission," Khalor pointed out. "There's a penalty involved in that."

"He was a captive and Andine was on the verge of cutting him up into little pieces."

"That's true," Khalor conceded, "and you did sort of save his life, I guess. I might be able to go as low as one gold piece."

"A half gold piece. Nothing higher."

"Fifteen silver pennies," Khalor countered.

"Twelve."

"Just to keep this on a friendly footing, why don't we say thirteen?"

"Remind me never to trade horses with you, Sergeant Khalor," Althalus said sourly. "All right-thirteen, then."

"I think Sergeant Khalor might be just about due for a promotion," Chief Albron mused.

"I don't know that we need to go into any extended details here, Chief Albron," Althalus said somewhat later. "When you get right down to it, we're not so much fighting for our religion as we're fighting against somebody else's. There's a man named Ghend who wants to convert the whole world to the worship of his God. We're going to prevent that. Ghend's formed little secret groups of his converts in most of the lowland countries, and those cults are stirring up rebellions. The official armies down there are mostly ceremonial. They're very good at polishing their armor, but not much good in a fight. That's why I'm here. Arums are real soldiers, and I want to hire them to train and advise the lowlanders to fight their own wars-at least this one."

"You're asking me to put myself out of business, Althalus," Albron objected.

"Not really. After we've smashed Ghend's armies, things should go back to normal. The princes of the low countries will still break out in rashes of ambition, and they'll come here to Arum to hire professionals to do their fighting. It's a matter of economics, Albron. It's very expensive to train and maintain any army. Even when there's no war, you have to keep feeding them. It's cheaper in the long run to hire Arums."

"How big is your treasury, Althalus?" Albron asked.

"Big enough-I hope. How long do you think it's going to take to gather the Clan Chiefs together for a general conclave? I'd like to talk to them all at one time."

"Next spring's probably as early as they can all make it," Albron replied. "Once the passes are snowed in, nobody travels in Arum."

Althalus feigned a thoughtful expression. 'Will that be soon enough, Em?' He sent his silent question back over his shoulder.

'That's more or less what I'd planned, Althalus,' she replied. 'I know Arums well enough to realize that it takes them a while to get started. Ghend isn't quite ready yet either, so I'd say that the war won't start until about the middle of next summer.'

'I'll check my schedule and see if I can work it in,' he told her.

The rivers rushed cold and clear through the canyons, and eagles soared on high, and wolves stalked the forests.

The mountains and forests were silent, silent. And then from afar came the wailing of utter despair. And with that wailing, the people came out of the west. Crude they were, clad in half rotten hides of beasts, and red were their tools and weapons-axes and mattocks of ruddy copper.

And Ghend walked among the people, whispering, whispering, and his eyes burned the ruddy flame of copper.

And the people were afraid.

But Ghend urged them on, and to the rivers they went, and behold, gold was in the rivers, and Ghend commanded them, saying "Seek the gold, O ye people, and offer it up to Daeva, who is your God, for gold is fair in the eyes of Daeva, and he will bless ye in that ye offer it unto him."

And the people fell to hard toil, searching the rivers for yellow gold, and all the while, the wailing echoed from the mountainsides, and the people were afraid, afraid as they toiled.

"Noisy night, wasn't it?" Althalus said to the shaken Chief Albron the following morning.

"Were you having nightmares, too?" Albron asked.

"Oh, yes-and so was everybody else, most likely. That's not all that unusual, you know. An overripe piece of meat in the stew can do strange things to everybody at the supper table. This particular nightmare didn't grow out of rotten meat, though. It was a present from Ghend. You saw a group of frightened people dressed in fur and carrying copper tools, right?"

"How could you possibly know that?"

"I had the same dream, Albron. Most likely everybody in the castle had that dream. Ghend's done this before. He's trying to change reality. That's what this upcoming war's all about. Ghend wants to change some things that we don't want changed, so we're going to stop him."

"How in the world can you stop somebody with that kind of power?" Albron's face had gone ashen, and his hands were trembling.

"I sort of thought I might kill him just a little bit," Althalus replied. "People usually cooperate with you after you've killed them."

"Would you like to borrow my sword?" Albron offered. "Did you hear that dreadful howling sound during your dream?" he asked, shuddering.

"Oh, yes," Althalus replied fervently. "Any time you hear that, you'll know that Ghend's playing tricks with your mind and that what you're seeing is something that he thought up."

"How did you find that out?"

"You don't really want me to answer that, Albron. You're a confirmed skeptic, and if I told you where I got this information, you'd think that I was trying to convert you. I'm not a missionary. I don't tamper with the beliefs of other men. That isn't why Dweia hired me. She hired me because I'm the finest thief who ever lived."

"You're getting paid to do this?"

"Of course. It's very unprofessional to work for nothing. Oh, speaking of that, I'll be gone for the next few days. I think I'd better pay a little visit to my gold mine-unless you and the other Chiefs of Arum would care to accept my promissory note. I'd be happy to sign, of course, but-" He broke off, grinning broadly.

"If it's all the same to you, my friend, why don't we keep all accounts current?" Albron replied.

"I rather thought you might look at it that way. My name might be responsible for that. Isn't it one of the commandments of the Arum religion not to trust anybody named Althalus?"

"It's right up at the top of the list, my friend."

"Perquaine?" Eliar objected the next morning after he, Althalus, and Bheid had returned to the House. "There isn't any gold in Perquaine, Althalus."

"That depends on where you took," Althalus replied. "It's not a natural gold deposit, Eliar. It's a treasure room in the ruins of an old house."

"How did you find it?" Bheid asked him.

"Emmy took me there when we were on our way to Osthos. How much detail do you need to find the right door, Eliar?"

"Not too much, really," Eliar answered. "Emmy and I practiced a bit before we all went to my Chief's castle. You have to know exactly where you want to go, but I don't."

"That doesn't make any sense, Eliar," Bheid objected.

"I know. I told Emmy the same thing, but she showed me that I was wrong. The Knife's involved in it somehow. If Althalus has a sort of picture of the place in his mind, the Knife picks up that picture and tells me which door I'm looking for. I guess the Knife can do the same sort of thing Leitha does. It reaches out and picks the information it needs out of people's minds. Then it tells me where to go. Emmy wasn't really too clear when she was telling me how it worked. You know how she is sometimes. She said that it wasn't important for me to know how it worked, just that it would."

"That's our Emmy, all right," Bheid said. "And there's a lot more to that Knife than she's told us, I think."

"Someday we might want to talk with her about that," Althalus said. "For right now, though, let's grab our shovels and go dig up some gold."

Eliar led them to a corridor in the south wing of the House, and about halfway along that corridor, he stopped in front of a door that looked exactly like all the others. "This is it," he said, opening the door.

Just beyond the door was a road, and Althalus saw the familiar hill off to the right. "This is the place, all right," he told his friends. "We want to go around to the south side." He stepped through the doorway out onto the road and made a large mark in the dirt at the side of the road with his shovel.

"What's that for?" Eliar asked him.

"To let us know exactly where the doorway is."

"I know where it is, Althalus."

"Let's not take any chances. It'll be a long walk back to the House if we lose that door."

They went around to the south side of the hill, and Althalus led the way up to the spot he'd concealed the previous spring. He stuck his shovel into the ground. "This is it, gentlemen. Start digging. We need to go about four feet down. Don't throw the dirt too far away. We'll probably need to fill the hole back in before we leave."

"Why?" Bheid asked curiously.

"To hide the gold we'll leave behind."

"Aren't we going to take all of it?"

"I hope not. It shouldn't take that much to hire the Arums."

"How much is there?"

"I'm not entirely sure. All I took last time was a hundred or so pounds. We know how to get here now, so if we need more, we can always come back. Let's start digging, gentlemen."

It took them about a quarter of an hour to get down to the flagstone floor, and then Althalus probed around with his dagger until he found the loose-fitting flagstone. He pried it up, reached down into the hidden cellar, and lifted out one of the oval-shaped blocks. Then he blew the dust off the block to reveal the rich yellow metal.

"Dear God!" Bheid breathed reverently, staring at the block of gold in Althalus' hands.

"Pretty, isn't it?" Althalus said. "Here, hold it while I make a lantern. I really don't know how big this cellar is. It's fairly dark down there." He handed the bar to Bheid and made a lantern with the word "lap." He lit it and held it down into the cellar. "Give me your hand, Eliar. I don't want to break my leg jumping down."

The cellar was about eight feet deep, and the stacks of gold bars stretched back into the shadows in all directions. "My goodness," Althalus murmured softly.

"Is there quite a bit of it down there?" Eliar called from up above.

"I don't think we're very likely to run out," Althalus replied. "Climb out of the hole, Eliar. I'll hand the bars up to Bheid and then he can give them to you. Stack them in a pile a ways back from the edge of the hole. Bheid, keep count. I think two hundred and fifty should cover current expenses."

"Are there that many down there?" Bheid asked in an awed voice.

"It won't even scratch the surface, Brother Bheid. We're moving way out past rich this morning, gentlemen. Let's step right along here. I want the gold back in the House and this hole covered up again before the sun goes down, so let's get cracking."

CHAPTER NINETEEN.

"Why not just leave it in bars?" Eliar asked as the three of them sat in the tower staring at the carefully stacked wealth they'd brought to the House.

"Most people have never seen a bar of gold," Bheid explained. "They recognize coins, because they probably handle them every day."

"You could be right about that, I suppose," Eliar conceded, "but why Perquaine coins?"

Bheid shrugged. "Perquaine coins are a standard all over the known world. I've been told that their weights are very precise, and the Perquaines don't adulterate the precious metals that go into their coins, the way others do."

Eliar eyed the stack of bars. "This is going to take quite a while, isn't it?" he asked.

"Not really," Althalus told him. "Emmy showed me some shortcuts the last time we did this."

"When was that?"

"Just before I bought you from Andine." Althalus scratched at his ear. "Maybe I'd better make some stout kegs first, though. Twenty thousand coins might just be a few too many to carry in my purse."

"Are you busy right now, Albron?" Althalus asked the young Clan Chief the next morning after breakfast.

"Not really. Why?"

"There's something I'd like to show you."

"All right. Where is it?"

"Not too far," Althalus replied evasively.

"It's snowing outside, you know."

"That shouldn't be any problem. Shall we go?"

Eliar and Bheid were waiting for them in the corridor outside Rheud's armory and Eliar straightened and saluted his Chief.