Hyara fled the wagon as if demons were after her.

At first, because of the deepening twilight, she could barely make out what was happening outside the wagon. Perhaps half a dozen men had dragged Unver to the ground, with Gurdig leaning over them like a bear trying to pick fish from a river. Dozens more had crowded into the camp and surrounded the combatants, shouting and cursing in excitement. Crows, startled from their nearby nesting tree by the noise, wheeled above the mêlée in their hundreds like a squawking thundercloud.

By sheer weight of numbers the Stallion clansmen had overwhelmed the stranger, kicking and pummeling him, shouting as they did so, some of them laughing as though it were only a rough game. Hyara suddenly wished she could set all of them on fire—the brutish clansmen, her husband, the wagon and the entire camp—then fly away like a bird.

“Off him!” Gurdig bellowed. “Off him, you shit-eaters! He is mine!”

Her husband was a very large man with a terrible temper, as Hyara and the clansmen knew well; the men swiftly untangled themselves from Unver and rolled away. The last pair dragged the stranger to his feet and pushed him staggering toward Gurdig, who felled him with a single blow of his thick fist.

“How do you dare to push your way into the March-thane’s wagon?” Gurdig said, standing over him. “What clan do you come from?”

Unver looked up at him, his eyes still bright in a mask of blood and dirt. “I have no clan. I came for what is mine.”

One of Gurdig’s followers handed him a long, curved sword. “Then die nameless,” the thane said, and spat on the ground. Gurdig turned to the men who had now formed a rough circle around the two of them. “Someone give him a blade so that I will have at least a hoof-paring’s less shame when I kill him.”

Hyara felt someone shoulder past her, almost tumbling her off the wagon’s shallow front step. It was Vorzheva, who threw something toward Unver. It struck, pommel first, and fell flat on the ground—a long, thin, straight sword. A stone-dweller sword.

“Take it!” Vorzheva cried. “Your father called it ‘Naidel’.”

“He named his sword a needle?” Gurdig threw back his head and laughed, the twin braids of his beard bouncing on his chest. “Good! Very good! To call a man’s weapon, especially such a puny one, after a woman’s tool.”

Unver looked down at the sword, blood dripping from his chin, but he did not pick it up. “I want nothing of his.”

Thane Gurdig laughed again. “Then I shall give you something of mine!” he said, and leaped forward, swinging his great sword in a horizontal arc meant to decapitate the other man with one stroke. Unver rolled out of the way and let Gurdig’s momentum carry him past, but it was a near thing.

The March-thane turned. His smile was wolfish. “I see there is some fight left in you. That is good, by the Grass Thunderer! I will have some evening entertainment after all!” He moved toward him, this time in a more controlled way, swiping this way and that, making Unver creep backward toward the fire pit.

“Watch out for the fire!” Vorzheva cried.

“Wife!” shouted Gurdig. “Tell your sister to keep her mouth shut or I will shut it well and truly when I finish with this horse-stealer.”

For the first time, Unver’s face showed something other than disgust and resignation. “I am no thief. I came only for what is mine.”

“But everything here is mine, little man,” said Gurdig, slashing again. Unver leaped backward over the pit before he could be driven into the flames, but landed badly; when he turned, he could barely stand straight. Several of the other clansmen moved to shove him back toward Gurdig, but the thane waved them off and began to stalk Unver, the fire now between them.

The trees were thick with crows. Their squawking cries almost overtopped the shouts of Gurdig’s men, and even in the midst of all that was happening before her, Hyara felt a moment of superstitious dread. Nesting season for the black birds was over. Where had they all come from? It was like the famous story of Edizel Shan, when the crows came from all over the world to salute the hero’s birth. But sometimes they came to herald a disaster, too.

For long moments Unver kept the fire between them, but Hyara knew the stalemate could not last long: the younger man was staggering, while her husband had not only the advantage of size but was not covered with bruises and bleeding welts from a beating as his opponent was. Gurdig already seemed almost bored with the chase; after a feint first to one side and then the other, the March-thane leaped over the fire pit and landed on the other side with a thump of impact and a scatter of sparks. Now nothing lay between him and the stranger but trampled grass. Swiping his blade again and again like a scythe, Gurdig drove the other man toward the ring of spectators, but they only fell back a little way before stopping. When Unver reached them, rough hands shoved him back toward Gurdig.

“I did not come seeking a fight,” he said, breathing hard, blood bubbling in the corner of his mouth. “But you and your people gave me the back of your hand.”

“I don’t care if you came in a wagon with golden wheels.” Gurdig was now nearly within the span of his long blade. “You forced your way into the March-thane’s wagon. You struck my cousin. That is enough to earn you death and a vulture’s belly for your grave, No-Clan.”

“Then strike,” said Unver, and lowered his arms. Many of those watching gasped in surprise or perhaps disappointment. “I will be happy to leave this world behind.”

Suddenly there was a vast clatter and a chorus of shrill, creaking cries. Crows came swirling out of the nearby trees like a black cyclone, swirling up and out. But instead of flying away, the birds turned and stooped abruptly on the camp, wings and beaks everywhere, crowing in their flat, urgent voices. The onlookers shouted in surprise, throwing up their hands to protect themselves as the cloud of black birds dropped on them. Some of the clansfolk broke and ran away; others fell to their knees, but the thickest part of the flock descended on Gurdig and Unver. The March-thane, suddenly blinded by wings and bright eyes, whipped his heavy blade from side to side like a horsewhip, knocking black shapes from the air. Most of those struck fell to the ground around him, but a few were batted into the fire.

“The stranger called the birds,” someone cried. “He is a witch!”

“No!” roared Gurdig. “He is my meat!” Hyara’s husband had been forced back almost to the fire pit by the flurry of squawking shapes. The sword Vorzheva had thrown her son lay at Unver’s feet where it had fallen, still untouched. Gurdig’s violent swings began to drive away the nearest of the crows. Others had taken to the sky and were barely visible against the deep evening blue, wheeling just overhead, still croaking in what sounded like outrage or warning.

Facing him, only a few paces away, Unver did not attempt to defend himself again, but looked up at the sky and the circling birds. The firelight turned his features into a stony carving, a mask of resignation or even perhaps peace. His arms still hung at his sides as Gurdig came toward him with his curved sword swept back for the killing blow. Then a blazing ball of feathers burst out of the fire pit and flew awkwardly into the air, shedding sparks like a comet, before it swooped down and flew directly into Gurdig’s face. He bellowed in surprise and pain as the burning crow battered him with its fiery wings and became entangled in his beard. His efforts to knock the thing away only made it cling more fiercely, until the dying bird was screeching as loudly as the thane, whose beard now curled and smoked where the crow clung to it.

A moment later Unver lurched forward, picked the slender sword from the ground, then lunged toward Gurdig and buried the point three handspan’s deep in the March-thane’s burly chest.