Even before dawn it began to rain, a steady, straight downpour which would last for hours.  Fors' wound was stiff and he had trouble crawling back into the corner of the hut where the broken roof still afforded some protection.  Lura rolled against him and the warmth of her furry body was a comfort.  But Fors was unable to drop back into the restless, dream-broken sleep which had held him most of the night.

It was the thought of the day's travel still before him which plagued him.  To walk far would reopen the gash and he thought that he had a degree or so of fever.  Yet he had to have food and better shelter.  And that drumming - Being disabled he wanted to get out of the near vicinity of the drummer - fast.

As soon as it was light enough for him to distinguish a black line on white paper he got out his scrap of map, trying to guess his present position - if it were on that fragment at all.  There were tiny red figures printed between certain points - the measured miles of the Old Ones who kept to the roads.  By his reckoning he might yet be at least three days' journey from the city - if, of course, he was now where he believed himself to be.  Three days' journey for a strong and tireless traveler, not for a crippled limper.  If he had a horse now -

But the memory of Jail with the horse herders put that thought out of his mind.  If he went to the Plains camp and tried to trade, the Star Captain would hear of it.  And for a novice to steal a mount out of one of the well-guarded herds was almost impossible even if he were able-bodied.  But he could not banish his wish - even by repeating this argument of stern commonsense.

Lura went out hunting.  She would bring back her kill.  Fors pulled himself up, clenching his teeth against the pain that such movement gave his whole left side.  He had to have some sort of crutch or cane if he wanted to keep going.  There was part of a sapling among the wood within reach.  It appeared almost straight and he hacked it down with his knife and trimmed off the branches.  With this aid he could get around, and the more he moved the more the stiffness seemed to loosen.  When Lura returned, a plump bronze-feathered turkey dragging out of her jaws, he was in a better frame of mind and ready to eat breakfast.

But the pace at which they started out was not a speedy one.  Fors hissed between set teeth when now and again his weight shifted too heavily on the left leg.  He turned instinctively into what once had been the lane tying the farmstead to the road, and brushed between the encroaching bushes, leaning heavily on his cane.

Rain made sticky mud of every patch of open ground and he was afraid of slipping and falling.  Lura kept up a steady low whine of complaint against the weather and the slowness of their travel.  But she did not go off on her own as she might have done had he been himself.  And Fors talked to her constantly.

The lane came to the road and he turned into that since it went in the direction he wished.  Soil had drifted across the concrete and made mud patches which gave root to spiked plants; but, even with that, it was better footing for an almost one-legged man than the wet ground.  Lura scouted ahead, weaving in and out of the bushes and tall grass along the side of the old thoroughfare, testing the wind for alien scents, now and then shaking head or paws vigorously to rid them of clinging raindrops.