Chapter Ten
Down the Slave Trails South
Southward Kalesh and his two beasts of burden plodded through the regions of dry sand. The way was hard, and hot, and ever he was fearful of losing his way—not for himself, whose death of its own accord would mean little, he now believed, but for his women. For they were lost and alone among evil strangers, perhaps forlorn and hopeless, and certainly unprotected by the husband who had abandoned them to cavort upon the sea. Would they know that he somehow would follow? he asked himself. Or had the poor slender females already given themselves up as lost, imagining that even mighty Kalesh could never find where they went?
He had seen the look in their adoring eyes, and he knew that they thought their husband, imbued with the magic of the giants of o
