Alliances

Chapter 22

The elves walked all night, across the wadi and up the opposite bank. There they waited while the various groups trickled in. Dawn was just brightening the eastern sky by the time the last of the stragglers arrived and the nation was once more a single great column. They had made it across the obstacle. No nomads had attacked. They began to congratulate themselves.

Their relief was premature. When the first blood-red sliver of the rising sun cleared the eastern mountains, the nomads fell upon them.

The Mikku, familiar with the wadi, had ridden hard and crossed it at a low point farther down. They caught the elves with their backs to the dry riverbed. Of Taranath and the rear-guard cavalry, there was no sign, only more and more Khurs. Like ants converging on a dying serpent, riders emerged from a screen of low trees and charged. Only forty yards separated them from the elves, so they hadn’t room to gain much momentum. They were counting on swords, rather than the impact of their galloping horses, to drive the laddad nation to its death over the steep side of the wadi.

Gilthas, at the head of his people, had just cleared a stand of juniper and seen the pass into Inath-Wakenti ahead when the sounds of battle reached him. Joy evaporated in an instant. Despite all his people’s sacrifices, the nomads had caught up with them.

He dodged among his frightened people, shouting for any with weapons to get to the front. An elderly female was knocked to the rocky ground in front of him. Gilthas picked her up and passed her to an elf running in the opposite direction.

Hamaramis had no more than two hundred warriors on hand, and all were on foot because of the shortage of horses. Without hesitation, the old general led his warriors out of the disorganized mob, hoping to draw the nomads’ attention, but the humans rode around his well-armed company to attack the civilians. With cooking pots, sticks, and pitifully few spears, the elves fought desperately to fend off the nomad horsemen. The weak and old were gathered in the center of defensive squares and circles. While the women labored to build barricades from baggage, stones, windfall tree limbs, and anything else to hand, the males drove Tondoon and Mikku riders back with rakes and shovels. Keen-eyed elves of both sexes emptied more than a few saddles with well-aimed stones.

Gilthas moved from square to square, comforting the frightened and urging the fighters to greater efforts.

“Taranath and the warriors will return soon,” he assured them. “Take heart! I have seen the entrance to the hidden valley. It is just ahead. We’re almost there!”

The elves knew the nomads would not follow them into Inath-Wakenti. The nomads considered the valley the last home of the gods before they departed the mortal plane. As such, it was taboo. If the elves could reach the valley, they would be safe. If.

Hamaramis marched his soldiers back to the Speaker. The warriors moved with shields locked, presenting a fearsome hedgehog of spears. Several tribes feigned thrusts, but none dared close. The humans had learned just how hard elven blades could be.

“Great Speaker!” Hamaramis had taken a hard rap and the nasal of his helmet had cut his nose. Blood trickled down like a crimson mustache. “The enemy is not yet here in full strength! I estimate five or six hundred.”

That meant many thousands of nomads were still to arrive.

“We must get the people moving!” Gilthas declared. “Immediately! Inath-Wakenti is just beyond those trees!”

He raised his voice, exhorting the people to follow him. “Our journey is almost over! The valley, our safety, is beyond that grove of trees! Follow me there!”

The elves could see only the fierce tribesmen milling beyond the reach of makeshift defenses. None moved. Gilthas redoubled his efforts, pulling at arms, clapping backs or shoulders. A few dozen elves struggled to their feet, but the majority stayed where they were, too tired and too fearful to comprehend the desperate truth the Speaker was telling them.

Gilthas coughed. Dust clogged his sickly lungs, and the illness the healer’s potions had eased came roaring back. Hamaramis saw him double over and ran to him. Blood stained Gilthas’s chin. The old general cried out, but Gilthas waved him away. When he could speak, Gilthas asked, “Where is Wapah?”

Puzzled, Hamaramis said, “With the head of the column, I think. Why, sire?”

“I must find him.”

Gathering his strength, Gilthas walked to the outside ring of elves, still anxiously watching the nomads. The riders would circle, attack small bands of elves who dared move, and circle again. Unfortunate elves marooned when the lines broke apart were ridden down and mercilessly put to the sword. The horrible spectacle so captured the elves’ attention, they didn’t react at first when Gilthas approached. He began tugging them apart to make his way through the crowd. Ingrained respect for the Speaker finally penetrated their terror and they complied. Only after he was through did the elves realize he was leaving the protection of the circle.

Hamaramis yelled for him to stop. Others took up the plea. A few dared take his arm or grasp the back of his tattered geb.

He looked coldly at the hands gripping him and one by one they fell away. Head high, he strode onward, in the direction of Inath-Wakenti.

Several Mikku saw him break the circle. Shouting, spurring their mounts, they rode at the lone laddad.

Hamaramis broke into a run, bawling at his warriors to protect their sovereign.

“The Speaker! The Speaker!” The cry went up from dozens of throats. Warriors and civilians alike ran after Gilthas. Rather than try to hamper his progress, they formed a double wall between him and the advancing nomads, with warriors on the outer face and civilians on the inner. As he moved, the walls moved with him. Elf warriors and Mikku riders collided, and a skirmish began. Tondoon warmasters mustered their men to join the attack on the pocket of elves walking from one square to another.

Gilthas reached the next defensive circle. Its near side opened to allow him to pass. Sheltered within, a tiny blond Silvanesti child regarded him with frank curiosity. “Where are you going, Speaker Pathfinder?” she asked.

He smiled. “I’m going home, little one. Will you come with me?”

The girl left the cover of a pile of baggage and came to him. Without hesitation, she took his hand.

He kept walking. Soon hundreds of elves had joined him, walking alongside and behind their Speaker. Nomads sallied in, hacking at the fringes of the moving crowd, but were driven off when the elves swarmed around them, attacking from all sides. Not even the best swordsman could defend against thirty or forty foes armed with farm tools and a great deal of determination. The elves were fighting not only for their own lives, but for the life of their Speaker. Fear for his safety outweighed fear for their own.

Gilthas gave his tiny companion over to her father and walked faster. Every strike of his heels against the stony ground shook his whole body. Every rapid breath burned in his chest like fire. But he smiled and waved jauntily at his astonished people. His route encompassed circle after circle, until the entire front half of the nation was in motion. Word was passed back to the rear. Not yet under attack, the remainder of the elves picked up their bundles and came on.

At the last circle, Gilthas found Wapah standing with sword bared in the midst of hostile and worried elves. The circle opened and Gilthas entered. He hailed the nomad. Wapah doffed his sun hat.

“Greetings to you, khan of the laddad. You bring your nation on your heels.”

“They only want a leader to show them the way, and I need a scout to show me. Will you enter the Valley of the Blue Sands?”

Wapah’s chin lifted. “If the Speaker so orders.”

He returned his weapon to its brass scabbard. Side by side, Speaker and nomad headed for the juniper grove. Mikku and Tondoon riders followed, not engaging but staying always within sight. Gilthas wondered what they were doing.

“Some stratagem of the Weyadan’s,” Wapah told him. “Beware, Khan-Speaker. My cousin is a shrewd woman.”

Beyond the gnarled junipers, the distant, blue-gray slopes of the Khalkist Mountains rose. These were the first real mountains the elves had seen since coming to Khur. The elves walked faster.

Wapah had ridden into the pass years earlier, although of course he’d not entered the valley proper. He explained the pass was like a funnel, narrow at the near end and wide at the valley end.

Gilthas pushed low-hanging juniper branches out of his way and stepped through to open air. Wapah emerged a few steps away. When human and elf beheld what awaited them, both stopped dead.

“Merciful E’li,” Gilthas whispered.

The bulk of the nomad army was arrayed in a vast semicircle a hundred yards away. Thirty thousand warriors faced the thunderstruck Speaker. All seven tribes of Khur were represented, although the coastal Fin-Maskar tribe had sent only a token presence and even fewer of Sahim-Khan’s Khur tribe had joined Adala’s venture. The men sat motionless and silent, morning sun glinting off the swords resting on their shoulders. Their horses, trapped in the colors of their rider’s clan or tribe, were bright as a rainbow. Positioned in the center of the line was one member of the vast army mounted on a small gray donkey.

“The Weyadan.”

Wapah’s identification was unnecessary. Gilthas recognized the black-robed figure of Adala Fahim, Hamaramis and his small band of soldiers came crashing through the trees. The general uttered an oath when he saw they’d fallen into a trap. He urged the Speaker to come away. Gilthas ignored him, The nomads’ horses snorted, pawed the ground, and switched their tails, but the men did not move. “What are they waiting for?” he asked Wapah.

“What?” Hamaramis demanded.

“The single moment in time when a thing is destined to happen. The Weyadan is mistress of the ifran.”

“I’ll ask for a parley,” Gilthas said, but Wapah shook his head, “There will be no more talking.”

A cry rose from the Khurish host. It began low then grew and grew until it seemed the nomads might beat the elves back by the very power of their joined voices. The roar cut off abruptly, and in the sudden silence, over the ringing in his ears, Gilthas heard Wapah murmur, “Ifran.”

Swords were lifted high. The line of horsemen lurched forward.

Hamaramis formed his warriors into a double line to protect the Speaker’s position. Desperate, the general pleaded with his sovereign to withdraw. Gilthas tore his fascinated gaze from the onrushing horde and retreated a few yards into the shelter of the juniper trees but would go no farther.

“Not another step in retreat,” he said. “Here we win, or we die.”

With weary familiarity, the elves aligned themselves to receive a charge of horsemen. The closely growing trees made a natural barrier that would break the force of any headlong attack. The gaps in the trees quickly sprouted spears, staves, and farm tools as the elves got into position.

While nomads charged from the front, the several hundred who had been shadowing the elves’ left flank also attacked the column south of the juniper grove. The straggling line of elves thinned and broke as they once more hurried to form defensive squares.

The shouting Khurs smashed through the column, cutting it in two. The larger portion, thousands of confused and terrified civilians, backed away from the nomad assault, seeking more defensible ground.

Where Gilthas stood, in the juniper grove, all that could, be heard was the thunder of hooves, the deep-voiced shouts of the nomads, and the answering cries from the elves. A few arrows flicked out of the grove but not many. The Khurs pressed on and slammed full-tilt into the junipers, losing many to the hedge of sharp points and many more to collisions with twisted, sturdy trees. There were so many nomads that, for a long, blood-drenched moment, it seemed the impact would carry them through the grove, obliterating the elves within. Yet Gilthas held true to his defiant vow. He did not retreat a step. A horse and rider were upended in front of him and crashed at his feet. Wapah ducked, but the Speaker of the Sun and Stars held firm.

When it became clear their initial attack was not going to destroy the elves, the nomads withdrew. Along the edge of the juniper grove lay the bodies of Khurs and elves. Intermingled among them were dead and dying horses.

At seventy yards the nomads turned around and came roaring back. More penetrated the grove, galloping among the startled elves, sabering all within reach. Hamaramis’s warriors moved from point to point, applying their skill and weight to each crisis until the encroaching Khurs were dead or evicted.

“Next time they back off, we counter-charge!” Hamaramis said.

But the nomads didn’t withdraw. They kept fighting. Knocked from their horses, or with their horses killed beneath them, they rose and continued the fight on foot. Their vigor and unusual tenacity began to tell on the trail-weary elves. The Khurs penetrated farther and farther into the trees.

Behind the grove, the main body of elves was in dire straits, but fresh plumes of dust rising in the southwest heralded the arrival of Taranath. The elf warriors had had to ride completely around the lengthy wadi to rejoin their comrades. Horses blown, the cavalry nonetheless fell on the several hundred nomads harassing the column. They were routed in short order. Taranath immediately rode to the aid of those in the juniper grove, but by then the wings of the nomad force had lapped around the grove. Taranath tried to fight his way forward, but the Khurs stubbornly refused to yield.

Fighting closed around Gilthas. Sweat poured down his face. He was cold but perspiring at the same time. It was only a matter of time before the nomads overwhelmed his exhausted people. His bodyguard was engaged. Hamaramis had taken a place in line. Even the Speaker’s councilors were fighting. When Wapah drew his weapon, Gilthas asked, “Will you fight your own people?”

“There are no roads in the desert,” the Leaping Spider sage replied. “Any way that gets you where you’re going is the right way.” He shouldered in behind Hamaramis, trading cuts with a mounted Tondoon warrior.

Gilthas dodged a slash aimed at his head. He felt the nomad’s blade snag the loose fabric of his geb. The sword ripped free, and the Khur was knocked flat by Hamaramis and Wapah.

More and more nomads streamed out of position to join the battle for the juniper grove. More and more fell, slain or wounded too badly to continue fighting. Adala watched impassively. “No respite,” she told the warmasters gathered around her. “Keep on them until they break.”

“And if they don’t?” asked Yalmuk.

She rubbed the broken lapis cabochon, the one that had saved her from the laddad arrow, as if to extract every bit of power from it. She’d tied her sash on the outside of her black widow’s geb so the broken cabochon would be visible and could act as a sign of her maita.

“They will break. I know it.”

Fighting raged all day. The sun was low in the west when Hamaramis received a stunning blow to the side of his helmet. His sword spun away, and the old general sagged to his knees. Two nomads spurred their horses at him. Gilthas was unarmed, but couldn’t stand by and see his old comrade killed. He snatched up two hefty stones. He hurled one, hitting the nearer nomad’s horse. It bucked, throwing its rider. Before he could throw the second, something slammed into his back, knocking him flat.

The nomads have killed me, he thought, struggling desperately to draw breath. “Kerian,” he managed to say, although no one could hear him.

As the Speaker went down, dark shapes appeared overhead, emerging from the low clouds shrouding the setting sun. No one engaged in the battle spared a glance at the sky, but the rear ranks of nomads, trotting forward to join the fray, found their horses suddenly seized by a strange madness. The animals balked, planting all four feet at once and refusing to go ahead. No amount of spur, riding stick, or cursing would induce them to move. The madness spread to the horses in the next wave. They reared and snorted, bared their yellow teeth, and bit each other and nearby riders. Hundreds of men who’d learned to ride before they could walk were cast to the ground and trampled.

The source of the madness was revealed when a high, ear-shredding screech split the air. Griffons were a rarity in Khur, but the nomads recognized the winged creatures swooping down upon them. Mounted on the flying beasts were laddad warriors brandishing lances and bows.

Kerian and Alhana led twenty-two griffons down from the heights. Two of their number had been lost crossing the mountains when the griffons flew into cloudbanks and never emerged, and five were swallowed up by a storm over the New Sea. Wind-burned and saddle-sore, the remaining riders had completed their grueling, amazing flight.

They skimmed low across the line of nomads, relying on the horses’ innate fear to disrupt the charge. It worked. The desert ponies panicked. With the wave disrupted, Kerian told Alhana to unsling her bow.

“I’ll steer for the trees!” Kerian added. The juniper grove was where the main battle was raging.

Hytanthas, Samar and Porthios, and the rest of the sky-riders fell in behind Chisa. Alhana leaned far to the side, drew back her bowstring, and loosed. A Khur wearing the brown-and-blue striped geb of a Mikku threw up his hands and fell from his horse.

Following Alhana’s example, the griffon riders rained arrows on the nomads. They could hardly miss. The mass of humans below was so dense, their horses so uncontrollable, the elves barely had to aim.

Soon enough, the remaining nomads quit the juniper grove and galloped back up the slight rise to Adala and the warmasters.

The panicked horses didn’t stop there, but stampeded past, all but knocking Little Thorn over. Adala shouted at the men, but they couldn’t control their animals. The last of twenty thousand thundered by, leaving her enveloped in clouds of choking dust, colored red by the fast-dying sun.

The air stirred violently, and the dust was driven away by the downdraft of beating wings. Seeming to materialize from the blood-red air, the agents of the nomads’ catastrophic reverse alighted in front of Adala. She glanced back and saw her warmasters and chiefs returning to her. They’d given up trying to urge their beasts hack and were hurrying forward on foot. Curiously, Little Thorn seemed unaffected by the griffons. He dropped his head and cropped a tuft of saltbush. A single figure swung down from one of the lead griffons and approached her on foot.

The griffon rider appeared unarmed. Below a metal skullcap, the figure’s face was covered by a dust cloth. When the dust cloth was pulled down, Adala recoiled in shock.

“By what magic do you appear to me alive?” she exclaimed.

“A god’s magic, it seems,” the Lioness replied.

Adala glanced over her shoulder again. The main body of her host had recovered control of their horses and were drawn up several hundred yards away.

“You came back in time to perish!” she said.

“I’ve come back to take my people into Inath-Wakenti.” Kerian gestured to the griffon riders behind her. Two more dismounted and came to stand by her. She introduced them.

“This is Alhana Starbreeze, once queen of Silvanesti. And this is Orexas, leader of the elf army of the West.”

Adala’s expression settled into hard lines. “It doesn’t matter who you bring against us, laddad. We will not yield. If it costs every life we have, we will not yield!”

“You see?” the Lioness said to Porthios. “What can you do with such a fanatic? Reason doesn’t work. Nor fear. The sword is all she understands.”

“Must we wade through blood to find peace?” asked Alhana.

“Yes!” Adala said. Her chiefs and warmasters had struggled through the churned-up sand to stand on either side of Little Thorn, their swords drawn. Adala added, “The battle will resume. Flying beasts or no flying beasts, you will not pass!”

“I think we will.”

Porthios stepped forward and addressed Adala. “I was once like you, proud, defiant, certain of the rightness of my cause. I faced enemies far more powerful than you without hope of victory because I knew I was destined to win in the end.”

“Every foolish warrior in the world thinks that,” Adala said, dismissive. “I am not a warrior. I am a woman, mother of my people, and Those on High have granted me the gift of maita. How can the destiny of a single laddad compare to the fate promised me by the gods?”

She had asked a similar question of all her opponents. The humans had joined her or been struck down by her divine maita. The laddad had been delivered by it into her hands.

Porthios was silent for a moment, making a decision, then he said, “Maita means ‘fate ordained by the gods,’ I believe. Perhaps you do have your gods’ favor.” His hands dropped to his waist, and he untied his ragged sash. “Or maybe you’ve just been lucky.” He loosened the gray cloth winding around his neck.

Kerian realized what he meant to do. It was brilliant and terrible, matchlessly brave and utterly selfish. For the first time during their endless, arduous trek, she admired him.

His hoarse voice went on, unstoppable, impossible to ignore. “Let me tell you about fate, you insolent barbarian. I once ruled the greatest, most civilized nation in the world. I was married to a queen who was as good, honest, and brave as she was beautiful—and she was very, very beautiful.” A tiny sob escaped Alhana’s lips, but Porthios went on, remorseless. “We had a child, a son to rule our combined nations. He was handsome, intelligent, and courageous as only a prince of elves could be.”

He dragged the scarf away from his neck. The flesh was mottled red and scarred like the skin of a lizard. The Khurish chiefs muttered. Adala blinked a few times, but held firm.

“All this greatness I lost. My son threw away his life on a false love and an evil cause. My wife never forgave herself, or me, for his death.” He pushed back his hood.

“Oh, my love, don’t,” Alhana whispered brokenly.

His gloved hands halted for an instant, and he glanced at her. “I must, beloved. It’s maita.”

He spoke to Adala again. “No mortal being should have survived what I survived. You speak of your divine fate. You know nothing! I am divine fate. It is all that keeps me alive, and I will not be denied.”

In one motion Porthios drew off the cloth mask. Nomad and elf shrank back in horror. Kerian had seen this once before. Although she looked away, she saw it still. The image was burned into her memory. Only Alhana did not recoil or avert her eyes. She looked full upon the ruin of her husband’s face, and she did not waver from his side.

The dragon’s fire had burned Porthios’s flesh down to the last layer of skin. Flame-red, it covered a head devoid of ears, nose, and lips, the eyelids retracted to nearly nothing. Almost as if to mock what was gone, a fringe of long hair remained on the lower half of his skull, but the hair was dull, dead gray. His face was a skull, covered by crimson muscle and slashed by harsh, white scar tissue.

He turned his head stiffly toward the shocked warmasters and several dropped to their knees. “We will enter this valley, and you will do nothing more to stop us. Go!”

The apparition before them was horrid enough; to hear it speak was the final straw. The chiefs and warmasters fled. Even Adala’s fortitude wasn’t proof against the sight. She did not flee, but she lifted her dust veil over her eyes.

“Abomination,” she gasped. “You should not be!”

The lipless mouth moved in an awful parody of a smile. “I agree. But here I am. Do you really want to match your fate to mine?”

He stepped forward and slapped the donkey’s flank. Faced with the wall of elves and griffons ahead, the donkey snorted and jogged back toward the men and horses he knew. Adala clutched reins and wiry mane to avoid being pitched off. She did not try to halt his going.

Porthios could not move. He had bared his shame to the world, and he could not turn to see the horror in the eyes of those behind him, especially one pair of violet eyes. A hand, clutching his mask, appeared at his side. He turned to find Alhana standing close by. Her eyes brimmed with tears, but there was no revulsion on her face, nor even pity, only love. He replaced the mask, raised his hood, and began to wind the long cloth around his neck again.

“Get the people moving,” he said. “If the humans think too long, they may try to fight again.”

Kerian climbed onto Chisa. She expected Alhana to follow, but the former queen stayed by her husband. Porthios told Samar to go without him.

“You’re staying here?” Kerian asked.

“What are a few thousand humans when you’ve bathed in the breath of a dragon?”

The Lioness saluted. It was not a gesture she performed often. She had a Wilder elf’s inbred distrust of authority, but at this time and place, a salute seemed proper.

Porthios returned the gesture, then Alhana linked her arm in his.

Gilthas awoke. Only one eye would open. He lifted a hand and felt a thick bandage crisscrossing his forehead.

He was lying in a litter, being carried. Night had come and around him were the voices and footfalls of his people.

He must have spoken his confused thoughts aloud, because the elf holding the rear poles of the litter said, “No, sire. You’re definitely not dead.”

“Hytanthas! When did you—?”

“I carried out your orders, Great Speaker,” said the young captain. He nodded to the elf carrying the front of the litter. Gilthas strained to see with his good eye.

“You look like the dog’s dinner,” Kerianseray told him. Her voice broke, betraying her true feelings despite the crude human expression. “Why were you in the middle of a raging battle without arms or armor?”

He could not credit the evidence of his eyes. Her presence was a miracle such as the gods might have bestowed on a long-ago hero. He remembered having fallen during the battle, but in his muddled mind something else seemed of greater import.

“Your hair!”

She shrugged. “It’s a long tale.”

They told him all of it, from Kerian’s plunge into Nalis Aren and the participation in the rebellion, to Hytanthas’s arrival in Qualinesti and the capture of Golden griffons. Gilthas found it impossible to fathom. Yet the griffons wheeling overhead, keeping watch over the mass of refugees beneath them, were undeniably real.

“Where are we?” he asked.

“Inath-Wakenti. Where else?”

He pushed himself painfully up on one elbow. It was true. They were enclosed in the tree-shrouded embrace of the mountains. Gilthas inhaled deeply, filling his ravaged lungs with balmy air. They had done it. They were here.

He lay down again. “I am glad you came back.”

She thought how best to answer him. “I’m glad too,” she finally said. “We’ll be at the creek soon. It marks the boundary of the valley proper, and the strange things that go on inside it.”

He asked no more questions. The Speaker of the Sun and Stars had slipped, aching but contented, into slumber.

Robien sniffed the wind. “They come,” he said. “May the gods help us all,” Favaronas murmured.

At the mouth of Alya-Alash, Adala sat on Little Thorn. She’d sent her faithful followers away and was alone at the doorstep of the sacred land, pondering the meaning of fate.

A horse and rider appeared, shimmering in the morning mirage. The laddad had all passed through the night before. Who was coming back?

The rider finally resolved into her cousin, Wapah. A ferocious frown twisted Adala’s face.

“Traitor! You betrayed your people.”

He pulled his horse to a halt by Little Thorn. “I betrayed you, cousin. You are not Khur.”

With that he rode away, into the sacred valley. Adala listened until his horse’s hoofbeats were lost in the sighing wind. She stared at the ground, trying to understand what Those on High wanted of her. The foreign killers were in the valley. What was she to do next?

A few feet from Little Thorn’s left front hoof lay an unusually shaped stone. It was of common composition, but rectangular, with sharp corners, as if worked by a mason’s band. Adala slid off her donkey, an idea taking shape in her mind.

The stone was three feet long and two wide, and she could barely shift it, but she finally got it aligned across the entrance to the pass. It was perfect. More would be needed, of course, many more. Yet it was a start.

The united tribes of Khur had a new task before them.