The other is the mercenary whose story Inclito told; his name is Eco, and I saw him nod to Inclito when I came into the dining room.

"They'll ride for Blanko to take my letters to Novella Citta and Olmo, " Inclito explained to his mother and daughter. "It'll be dangerous. They know, and every god knows I do. But they're going to do their best to get through, aren't you, boys."

Both young men nodded.

"The Duko's troopers are on their way to fight us already?" my host's mother asked me. "That was what you saw when you sacrificed?"

"As I told you, madam."

"We've got to believe it, " her son said. "But if the gods had told Incanto the Duko wouldn't move for another month, we'd have to believe his troops had started anyway. We can't afford the other. You got to stay off the main roads. You got to stay off the little side roads as much as you can. You want grass under his hoofs whenever you can get it."

Thinking of Green, I added, "And leaves above your heads."

"That's right. Stay out of sight. Move fast, but not so fast you wear out your horse." Inclito paused. "I don't think you're going to get a chance to change horses, but do it if you can. Lead him uphill wherever it's steep. Give him a little rest."

Speaking for the first time, Mora said, "They should be riding this minute."

Her father shook his head. "They rode out here. For today, that's enough. Let them get a good meal now and a good night's sleep. There's good big stalls and clean straw for the horses, water and oats and corn. Tomorrow they go as soon as the sun's up."

Turning to Rimando he explained, "Decina's going to wake me up. Decina's my cook. She goes to sleep right after dinner and gets up early. I'll wake you up, and you, too, Eco. I'll see you off."

They nodded, and I gave Inclito what I intended to be a significant glance.

"Both, we don't want you killed. We don't want you dead, understand? If they try and stop you and you can get away, fine. But if you can't-" He raised both hands.

Mora asked, "Do they have needlers?"

Rimando shook his head.

Her father said, "We can't spare even one for this. No needlers, no slug guns, no swords. They're too heavy anyway. We want them to get away, not fight."

Decina herself came in as he spoke and transferred the huge roast on the spit to a great pewter platter fit for it; she set it down ceremoniously before Inclito, who stood and took up a fork with which he might almost have pitched hay and a carving knife with a blade as long as my forearm. "Holy meat. Don't anybody swear or talk against the gods while you eat it, it's not polite."

Eco, seated between Inclito and his mother, asked me whether the victim had been a steer.

I shook my head. "A young bull, fawn with a black face. Do they sacrifice steers in your town?"

"I think so."

"Perhaps they may, customs differ. In my own-and much more in Old Viron  -  no animal that had been maimed in any way could be offered, just as no private person sacrificing at home was to offer a loaf from which a slice had been taken or wine after he had drunk from the bottle."

Salica said, "You're not a patre, Incanto? I know, I asked you before."

I smiled at her. "No, I'm afraid not. Nor am I an augur, which is what we call them. Our canons permit sacrifice by a sibyl when no augur can be found, however, and sacrifice by a layman-or a laywoman, for that matter-when no augur or sibyl is present. Such sacrifices are nearly always private, carried out before a small shrine in the giver's own house."

"I see."

"I felt that this one, which was to take place in your son's presence and on his property, with the sacred fire upon an altar of turfs I built myself, could reasonably be considered a private one."

"Only the family attended, " Salica explained to Rimando and Eco. "My son, my granddaughter, and I. "

Mora added, "And Torda."

"That's right, Torda to help Incanto with the knife and the blood."

Inclito had been carving a thick slice while we spoke. "You're the main guest, Incanto, and you sacrificed him for us. Hold out your plate."

I did not. "Half that or less. Less, as a favor."

"Rimando? Here you are." Inclito cut a smaller piece and gave it to me.

Eco told Mora, "In Gaon, where I was before I came here, they still sacrifice heifers to Echidna, but they won't eat the meat themselves."

"The gods got the head, all four feet, and some other stuff, " Inclito remarked as he laid a thick slab of beef on Eco's plate. "They said that was all they wanted, and we could have the rest."

"The people of Gaon do not abstain from beef and veal because they think them unclean, " I explained, "but because they think them too sacred."

Rimando paused in the act of cutting his meat. "But the gods told you that the horde of Soldo has already set out to invade us? That's the important point. What gods were they, anyway?"

"The Outsider and the sea goddess of the Vanished People, " I told him. "I don't even know her name, and perhaps no one does now."

Mora smiled mischievously. "You could ask your neighbors."

I smiled back. "The Vanished People themselves, you mean? I'll try to remember."

"Fava didn't believe in them, " Mora told Eco. "Fava's a friend of mine who was staying with us until this morning."

Rimando said, "I've got her old room. She seems to have left behind a good many of her belongings."

"She'll be back for them eventually, I suppose."

I added, "Or she'll send for them, Mora. I would think that more likely."

Mora nodded.

"Why did you choose those two?" Rimando asked me. "Isn't there a god for war?"

"A goddess, " I told him absently, "and several minor gods, as well."

Salica said; "Don't make him talk, please. He doesn't eat enough as is."

Eco asked Inclito, "Didn't the gods have anything to say about us?"

There was a pained silence, broken at length by Rimando. "I believe I understand. One of us won't reach his destination. Or is it that neither of us will?"

"Fish heads?" Oreb had flapped through an open window to reclaim his post on my shoulder. I passed him up a scrap of meat, and Mora asked, "If I try to feed him, will he take it?"

"Probably. He likes you."

She cut a considerably larger piece from the slice on her plate and tossed it across the table to Oreb, who caught it in his beak and flew to the hearth to tear it into shreds of manageable size.

"I'd like to know, " Rimando challenged us all with his eyes, "precisely what these gods, two gods I've never so much as heard of, had to say about us. I don't believe in them. Less even than your friend believed in the Vanished People, if that's possible." (This last was addressed to Mora.) "But I want to know. It's my right, and Eco's too."

Salica inquired rather timidly, "Why don't you believe in the gods?" Rimando snorted, and she gave me a pleading glance.

"You see, " I told her, "as soon as you silence me, you find that you require my speech."

Eco tried to restore harmony. "I think I'd prefer not to know. It was a private sacrifice, they say. Let it stay private."

"I'm of your mind, " I told him. "The interesting question isn't what I read in the entrails of this young bull. An augur with sufficient imagination can read whatever you like in the entrails of whatever beasts you choose, and predictions made at sacrifice fail at least as often as they succeed-more often, in my experience."

Rimando asked, "Is one of us to die? Which one?"

"No, " Mora told him. "There wasn't anything like that."

"Nor is the interesting question why Rimando doesn't believe in gods, " I continued. "It is why anyone should. Why didn't Fava believe in the Vanished People, Mora? The answer may prove enlightening." -

"Because they have vanished. She knew that they were here once. I mean she'd seen the things people show that they say were theirs, things that have been dug up, you know. And last year one of Father's hands found a little statue when he cleaned out our well."

"I'd like to see it."

Inclito glanced up from his plate. "I'll show you right after dinner."

"Only she said they were gone, and that was why they're called the Vanished People. If they were still here, we'd know all about them and see them every day."

I nodded. "Anything that's seldom seen is assumed to belong to the remote past, even when it was last seen yesterday."

Rimando began, "I want to know-"

"Of course you do. This is my fault; I may have misread the gods' message, and in fact I probably did. I thought it said that only one of you would set out in the morning."

Inclito broke the silence that followed by picking up the small bell beside his mother's plate and ringing it. A smiling Torda appeared at once, and he told her, "I'd like a little horseradish. Would you ask Decina for some, please? I know it's not your job."

"I'll grate some for you myself, sir. I know right where it is."

Rimando cleared his throat. "It didn't say which one of us wouldn't go?"

"I don't know, " I told him. "Quite possibly that was written there as well, but if so I was too obtuse to read it."

Mora said, "Wouldn't the gods know you couldn't, and not bother writing it?"

I shrugged.

"You want to ask why I don't believe in the gods, all of you, " Rimando declared, "but you're afraid to ask me, or too polite."

"Not at all, " I told him. "By this time you should have seen enough of our host to know that though he is extremely brave, he is never polite."

Inclito dropped his knife and fork, and roared with laughter.

"He has many excellent qualities. He's both intelligent and shrewd, for example, a rare combination. Mora, you love your father, I know. What is it you like so much about him?"

From his place on the hearth, Oreb croaked loudly, "Good man!"

"He is." Mora nodded. "But that's not why I love him. It's hard to explain."

"Do you want to try?"

"I think so. It's that he loves whatever he's doing. He made me a house for my doll when I was small, and he loved doing that, just like he loved building onto this house and then building more, or putting up a new barn. I played with his dollhouse, and you know how children are. After a while it didn't look as nice, so he fixed it for me and repainted it, and he loved doing that, even when he'd been working hard all day."

Torda returned from the kitchen with a saucer of horseradish and a spoon. Inclito took it from her and dumped half of it onto his plate, then held out the rest to us.

Only Eco accepted. "Your daughter mentioned a little statue, you were going to show it to Incanto. I'd like to see it myself. Would that be all right?"

"Absolutely, " Inclito told him. "There are some other things, too."

"In Gaon they've got a cup that belonged to their rajan, the one that disappeared."

Inclito nodded.

"The Vanished People are supposed to have given it to him, and it certainly looks like some work of theirs I've seen. They say it cures the sick, and they keep it in the temple of their goddess."

Mora came in as I was writing cures. "Not in my nightgown this time, " she said, and tapped her riding boots with her quirt.

"Nor with Fava, " I remarked. "I like this much better." more." She paused. "I've been out in the stable just now with "But with the same questions she and I had last night, and Rimando. He wanted to see about his horse, see that it was comfortable and had enough water. Only when he got me out there he had a thousand questions, just like me."

She seemed to expect me to smile, so I did.

"I couldn't answer most of them, but when I got back to my room and started to undress for bed"

"You became curious yourself, " I suggested.

"I was already. That's why Fava and I came last night. But I need somebody to talk to. That used to be Fava, but she's gone now."

"What about your father and your grandmother?"

"It wouldn't be like talking to Fava. Or to you."

She sat in silence for a few seconds while I finished the sentence I had begun when she knocked, and wiped my pen.

"That man Eco talked about, the man down south who was looking for his father. Do you have a son?"

I nodded.

"Because you thought he might be looking for you. That's the way it seemed to Rimando, and it seemed like that to me, too."

I asked whether she thought Rimando attractive.

"That has nothing to do with it."

Oreb croaked a warning: "Look out!"

"Of course it does. You went to the stable with him."

"I wanted to see their horses, that's all. Did you see them when they came?"

I shook my head.

"They've got wonderful horses, both of them. A chestnut for Eco and a bay for Rimando. Father got two of the richest men in Blanko to contribute a horse apiece. I'd like to know how he does that."

"So would I."

"Uh huh. You don't know anything, do you, Incanto?"

"At least, I know how little I know."

"Did you really think that could have been your son looking for his father down south?"

"No." It required a good deal of resolve to tell the truth. "I didn't think it could possibly be. But I hoped it was."

"I think the father that he said he was looking for would have been younger than you are. He didn't sound a lot like you, either."

I nodded.

"You don't know who it was?"

"I have no idea  -  none. You'll want to know whether Eco's description would fit my son. No, it would not. My son's name is Sinew."

"That's what you said."