The Quest of Kadji Read Online Free Page A

almost unheard of, for the wolf was as tame as a great dog. And yet it was purebred plains-wolf, untainted in blood with town-dog strain, for often had Kadji seen the terrible wolf-packs of the Great Plains, and had fought them betimes, when harsh winter made them fierce mankillers.
    She was an enigma, and as he went to sleep that night in a cramped loft atop the inn, the mystery of the girl and the beauty of her filled his thoughts and floated in his dreams.
    WHEN HE rose with dawn from his narrow pallet, it was to shiver in the cold raw breeze. The harsh bleak light of morning flooded the little loft and through the one small window, shielded with a carven uthrab screen of pierced wood, he could see the grey light on stucco domes and low-roofed houses, and a clouded wintry sky beyond to the World’s Edge.
    He broke his morning fast in the tavern of the inn, before a roaring scarlet fire, while a cheerful inn-girl with red cheeks and thick braids and a very dirty apron clattered pots and pans noisily. When he went to the stables to say good morning to Haral, his boots crunched on frozen mud crusted with a very light fall of snow. The cold season was upon the world, and henceforth the going would be hard and difficult.
    The black pony was happy to see him, stamped restively and nudged him with its velvet nose while he gentled the steed with soft loving words and wove his fingers through its long unshorn mane. Today he must finish the last of his purchases and depart. He thought of the amber-eyed Perushka girl with her flaming hair: soon she would only be a fading memory to him, a bright-haired wraith. For once he left the streets of Nabdoor-town behind in his travels, he would never see her again.
    He growled at himself, as a boy will: why all this accursed mooning over a pretty girl glimpsed in passing amid the streets of this nameless and unimportant little, town? He was glooming over her like a love-struck poet, but he was no poet but a warrior; a man, and on a mighty mission of honor and vengeance! He had no time to dream about pretty girls; he should be meditating on blood and fire and steel. . . .
    Yet somehow he could not drive her from his mind. And as he strode about the snowy streets, buying provisions for his pony, his thoughts returned again and again to the slim, proud, lovely girl with eyes of smoky amber and hair like a scarlet banner tossed on fiery winds, and on the great wolf that went ever at her side.
    Almost he thought to see her again today, but no, she was nowhere to be seen, and Kadji did not care to ask too many questions of the boothkeepers in the bazaar. For here and there about the square strode burly knights of the Rashemba in their glittering longshirts of chain mail, horned helmets of sparkling steel on their Straw-colored hair, their heavy red faces impassive, and cold grey eyes roving everywhere, alert and suspicious. To ask, questions might mean to draw attention to himself; therefore Kadji asked no one about the flame-haired girl.
    He kept his month shut and his face blankly incurious. He bought his goods with a minimum of talking, and he kept as far away from the towering horned knights as he could, without seeming to do so. And under his fringed kuruz the God-Axe, the Axe of Thom-Ra, lay bound against his beating heart. The sacred “Fortune” of the Chayyim Kozanga Nomads rode with him . . . and the razory edge of the holy steel thirsted to drink deep of the vile blood of the dog-knights of Rashemba,
    vii. The Road North
    ERE THE sun star Kylix had ascended to the zenith of noon, Kadji had finished purchasing his provisions. He settled his debt to the innkeeper, paid for stabling his pony, mounted and rode forth from Nabdoor. The sleepy Rashemba knights merely waved him through the gates without a word of query; still and all, the Red Hawk did not breathe freely until he had left the shadow of the walls of Nabdoor-town far behind.
    Ahead of him, grim and bleak under the grey wintry sky,