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Not that Krog was necessarily against killing Dreamers and looting vaults, especially for food, clothing, gold and jewels, and the marconite crystals. With hundreds of trained fighters behind him, he could in fact do both on a vaster scale than had ever been done in Pura. But he did not want to and hoped he would not have to. Rather, he would threaten to break into thousands of vaults, looting them and killing their occupants. The Dreamers he captured would be frightened into going to where their fellows lay asleep and bringing them into Waking. Then they could be captured without chasing them all over the city or going to the trouble of actually breaking into the vaults.

«What will you do with all these slaves?» Blade asked at this point.

«I will not make them slaves,» Krog replied, «unless they force me to do so. I would rather have them be loyal subjects like my fighters. The fighters will protect the Dreamers and teach them to defend themselves. The Dreamers will use the wealth and the machines in their vaults to help the people to a better life. They will teach the fighters how to use the machines themselves. And they will learn how to make more machines. Fighters will marry Dreamer women; Dreamer men will marry Waker women. I will even think of freeing all the Dreamer slaves we already have. In a generation we will be like one people. Each will have learned from the other, and there will be many machines. Then we can start rebuilding Pura.» And when Krog said «rebuilding Pura,» there was a distant, dreaming expression in his eyes. That expression told Blade more than any ten thousand words that Krog was sincere in what he said. If the future of Pura had depended entirely on Krog's desire to see it rise again, Blade would have had no doubts at all about that future.

But Krog was only one man, and there were only a handful among the Wakers who understood and approved his plans. He stood like a rock in the middle of the sea. All around him that sea roared and hissed, a sea of simpleminded, blood-thirsty men and women with nothing behind them but generations of bloodshed, privation, and hatred for the Dreamers. They had almost found a leader in Drebin. They might easily find another one in Krog's own daughter. After weeks of sharing her bed, Blade knew that the young woman was a pure, bloody barbarian, even if an intelligent one. In the hour of their greatest victory could Krog control these people and keep them from slaughtering and looting far and wide? That would smash not only Krog's plans for rebuilding Pura but any possibility that the Dreamers could ever do so. Blade didn't think Krog could manage it. Moved as he was by the man's dreams, he came away from the chamber as determined as ever to derail the Wakers' plans.

He walked for a while in the cooler air of the courtyard to clear his head. The interior of any Waker-held building always reeked of soot, smoke, spoiled food, and masses of unwashed humanity. Even Krog's efforts and example had done little for the Blue Eyes. And what good were those efforts anyway, thought Blade sourly, when even his own daughter rejects them? That made him think of Halda, of how she was always waiting for him at this time of night, and how he must go in to her soon if she were not to become suspicious and resentful. He sighed and turned back into the building.

Halda was waiting for him in their private chamber as he came in. She lay sprawled in the pose she usually adopted. It was meant to tell him that her needs were urgent. There was no romance in her and seldom any sense of fun or play, only the rutting urge. But no woman as beautiful as she was-savagely beautiful-could hurl herself at him as she did without arousing a response.

He stripped off his tunic and kilt and lay down beside her on the sleeping cushions. She was still wearing her kilt and two of her knives, one on the right wrist and one on the left ankle. These she never took off, not even at the height of their lovemaking. Blade had often felt the fiat coldness of the knives pressed against his skin as Halda's arms and legs locked around him as tightly as the jaws of a trap.

Her eyes flickered toward him as he lay down, but she made no movement. This would be one of the nights when it was up to him to do all the work. He rose on one elbow and bent his head down over her face, brushing his lips gently against hers. Then he pressed harder until he felt her mouth open under his and the hot little puffs of breath that told him she was responding. As he continued to kiss her, his free hand reached across her body and took her right nipple between thumb and forefinger, massaging it gently in a slow circular pattern that drew it up out of the firm breast into a firmer bud and drew out of Halda a soft hissing moan. Her breasts were exquisite, and exquisitely sensitive.

He prolonged the breast play until he could feel her body begin to writhe slowly back and forth of its own accord. He moved his mouth down into the fine-muscled hollow of her slim throat and nibbled and licked the firm flesh there. Now her own hands seemed to drift lightly over onto his body. They toyed with the hair on his chest, then crept downward to his genitals, teasing them upward and outward into a stiff, swollen rod. She was playing the same game she often did: trying to make him come prematurely. So far she had never succeeded, although she had pushed him terribly close more than once. She had skilled fingers and yet more skilled lips.

He replied by moving his own hands downward across her body to her navel, playing with that for a moment, and then leaping his fingers clear over her groin down to her knees. Slowly he brought his hands back up along the inside of her thighs, plucking, caressing, and stroking to the mat of stiffly curled dark blonde hair over her mound, already damp from her arousal. It became damper still as Blade's fingers played around it, his palm cupped and pressed down with a slow pulse that quickened bit by bit as he felt her responding. The twistings of her body became wilder, her motions coming almost continuously.

At times she insisted on riding him. But tonight she was too far gone to rise away from his hands and swing herself into position. Her muscles bunched, and her thighs almost exploded apart as he levered himself over her and plunged down and in. She was as wet inside as outside; he slid in without the slightest resistance, plunging far deeper than he had intended for the first stroke. Then he raised himself so high that he almost withdrew. Halda's hips jerked as she tried to heave herself upward to keep Blade deep inside her. Blade dropped down again, plunging once more deep inside and settled into a steady stroke. He was moving fast, but he knew that his iron endurance would enable him to keep up for a long time, more than long enough to meet Halda's needs.

It was a hot and sticky night. The sweat soon ran down from Blade's body to mingle with Halda's. She was beyond awareness of what went on around her, almost beyond control of her body. It was heaving and jerking almost continuously as Blade drove himself in and out of her. Her arms and legs came up to curl tightly around his back and buttocks as she sought to pull him deeper and deeper into herself, sought to pull herself higher and higher on the thrusting phallus.

Her breath came in a continuous hiss, a low moaning from deep in her throat occasionally breaking through. Her head thrashed back and forth tossing the blonde curls about. Blade could feel more quickening in her movements. She climaxed with a great wrenching of her entire body, a convulsion that seemed to be as agonizing as it was joyful. Then his own spasm came, triggered by hers. He surged into her in a wild fierce spewing that seemed to drain every cell of his body down through his genitals into her.