Warlock

had lived their lives in high elevations, as both he and Gregor had, nestled in the mountainous village of Perdune.
        
        Aside, Commander Richter said, “I was not aware that the great barbarian there was such a religious man.”
        
        “The last time I saw him in such a mood was six years ago-when he lit a candle for a dead friend's soul.” The Shaker was barely able to suppress a smile, and the lingering traces of it curled the corners of his thin mouth.
        
        “Then why does he-” Richter began.
        
        At that moment, a group of five enlisted men returned from the giant. One of them was entertaining the others, and as they passed, he could be heard to say: “… how a great, simple lummox like that could have done it! It was the sheerest luck-unless his air sprites are more substantial than the air from the giant's mouth!” Those around him broke into pleasant laughter.
        
        “I see,” Richter said. He looked at Mace with more admiration than before. “He plays his role even more completely than I had thought. Or perhaps he plays it so well that I had forgotten his true nature.”
        
        “He is a complex lad,” the Shaker said. Then he turned from his boys and faced the old officer next to him. “Tell me, how will we discover what caused those accidents? If accidents they were. Two men dead and almost a third-that seems like the carefully planned sort of accident, does it not?”
        
        The commander nodded to the far side of the chasm where the other pulley had by now been dismantled and was being packed away in its component parts. “When those five men reach us, we'll question them. Perhaps they know something, and perhaps-if our two assassins are in that group-the villains will have brought about their own end this time, by narrowing down our field of suspicions.”
        
        “There's Gregor as well,” the Shaker reminded the commander.
        
        “That there is. When he comes to, perhaps he will be able to shed some light upon this latest mystery.”
        
        
        It was simple enough to trace the source of the treachery once everyone had been questioned. To find the man or men who had perpetrated that treachery, however, was nigh onto impossible. The agents of Oragonia worked quietly, cleverly, and without clue; the treason lay in a bottle of brandy without label or mark of ownership…
        
        Hastings, Immanuli and Gregor had all taken healthy swigs of the potent brew before embarking on the hazardous journey across the gulf. A careful taste check and a comparison of odors between this brandy and a bottle of the commander's own, proved that what they had drunk was adulterated, perhaps with some sleeping potion of more than a small degree of efficiency.
        
        No one could remember where the bottle had come from. Apparently, someone had given it to Hastings with the suggestion that he drink of it before crossing the gorge, to steel his nerves, for Hastings had been notoriously terrified by the pulley arrangement, though other rigors of mountain-climbing did not bother him at all. Immanuli, after watching Hastings to go his death on the rocks, might have thought he too required a draw on the liquor before following in deadly footsteps. Likewise, Gregor, after he had witnessed not one but two tragic and violent deaths, wanted something to warm his gut and stop the shuddering spasms that shook his thin body. But Hastings had mentioned no names. And no one would admit, of course, to having possessed the bottle at one time. Finally, no one could even recall having seen the bottle in anyone else's belongings.
        
        Two more men were dead, and nothing gained for it.
        
        “And we cannot even eliminate the five men on the western cliff,” Richter said to the Shaker. “It could as easily have been one of them as someone over here.”
        
        “I think it looks like snow,” Sandow said, indicating the leaden clouds that scraped by close overhead. Sometimes, he knew, the mind welcomed a change from one catastrophe to another, merely to be able to stop thinking about the first for even a moment.
        
        Richter surveyed the sky. “Aye, and we best be moving. At least we can get in two more hours of march before camp.” He snorted in disgust. “I wish we could progress without being afraid to turn our backs on each other. That, more