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persons. I felt the pounding of hooves before I saw them. They were coming from the north, from Mueller. And when they came into sight, I recognized the banner of the Army of the East. The commander would be Mancik, my godfather.

But Mancik wasn't with them, though the commander's banner was there; thus I knew that he had died. If I'd had a knife, I would have given him grief, but I had no weapon, and after a few moments I had other things on my mind.

I didn't know the commander, nor did I know the soldiers who leapt from their horses and bound me. I consented to the binding partly because I was confused and partly because I was outnumbered. There's a limit to how many body parts even a reformed radical regenerative can renew. And they looked willing to take me apart.

"I'm told to bring you to the capital alive," said the commander.

"Then I won't hinder you," I answered. "That's where I was going."

This apparently made them angry. Two soldiers struck me at once, and I was dazed for a moment. "I'm Lanik Mueller," I said, spitting put the words, "and I won't be treated like this!"

The commander looked at me coldly. "We know who you are, and after the way you've treated this land, any way we treated you would be far kinder than you deserve." He looked for a moment, grimly, across the wasted fields. "Of all the traitors who have ever lived, Lanik Mueller, there must be a special place in hell reserved for you."

"I've been to hell," I said. "It's a better place than this."

"What if you burn like you burnt these fields?" called a soldier. There was a murmur of bitter assent.

"I didn't do this," I said, perplexed that they could think I did.

"Didn't do it!" shouted a man. "I saw you dangling a torch yourself, ahead of all your inker troops!"

How could I even protest against a charge so absurd?

"Enough talking," said the commander. "He's going to claim he was insane or some such nonsense. No one will believe him, he'll get the death that such a man deserves, but there'll be no glory in it for us, having found him. The damage is already done beyond repair, and killing him won't undo any part of it."

It was a strange thing for any commander to say, and yet it had a strange calming effect on the men. They had none of the hearty lust for battle that I had seen in the army all my life. But the commander's words had stirred in them some silent, desperate courage. All did their work quickly, wordlessly. They threw me over a saddle, strapped my legs to the stirrups, and left me to find my balance as best I could with bound arms on a galloping horse. They rode madly across the fields, as if they hoped (and I'm sure they did) that my horse would fall, would shatter me, would crush me into the ashes that had once been grain. Or perhaps they thought of me no more, and merely rode, machines of flesh astride these heaving horses, empty of thought, empty of anything but the knowledge of desolation.

As I rode, what else had I to do but think? Somehow I was blamed for all this devastation, and not just by strangers, but by the men of Mueller-- the ones who once had loved me, if not for myself, then as my father's son. This was not something Dinte's lies could accomplish, nor could Ruva have persuaded anyone to think of me that way, nor any other jealous enemy. The man said he had seen me. Seen me, and though I know it was impossible, I could not doubt his honesty. It wasn't just my name that was hated here, it was my face.

Thinking of hatred, thinking of my own face, I saw an image of myself before my eyes, and it was not a memory of my face as I saw it in mirrors. Then I knew the answer, knew why it was that every accusation they made against me could be true and not-true all at once. I also knew that no matter how convincingly I told my tale, they would never believe me,

The slap of hard leather boots rang out in the stone halls of my father's palace. I was dragged in brutally and thrown down on the floor. I had seen the scene before, but from the other point of