The three mountain peaks loomed ahead, blotting out all sight of the way beyond. Kerian stared in amazement at their snowy tops. She couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen snow.
As the column entered the mouth of the pass, the last fingernail slice of sun vanished below the western range to their left. With the light gone, the temperature plummeted, leaving shivering riders to don long-unused cloaks. It really wasn’t so cold, but compared to the blast furnace of the High Plateau, the air felt frigid indeed.
The pass was a silent place. The wind, which had swirled around the elves since the Khalkist mountains first came in view, died away. Although there were more plants about- scrub pines and gnarled junipers, thorny greasebushes and spiky aloe-the area seemed oddly lifeless. The only sound to be heard was the clink of their horses’ hooves on the pebbly soil. No birds chattered from the trees, no insects buzzed.
Color was returning. To elven eyes, the desert was dull, all tans, browns, and grays surmounted always by a blue sky that, cloudless, seemed oddly flat. At the mouth of the Inath-Wakenti, subtle shadings were restored to the landscape’s palette. The mountainsides were softly washed in purple and blue. Dark green pines stood over dwarf junipers in lighter greens. Moss and lichen mottled the rocks in silvery gray, or a green as bright as the limes popular in Khuri-Khan.
Kerian did not like it. When the valley had been nothing more than a spot on a map, she’d had many reasons for not wanting to come here, much less to live here. Now that it was real, now that she was here, her objections only increased. The very feel of the place was wrong. Tainted somehow.
She wasn’t the only one to notice this. Favaronas had drawn his cape close around his shoulders. “Feels like a graveyard,” he muttered, his eyes darting left and right.
Unconsciously, the elves slowed their pace. They’d come through the fiery crucible of the High Plateau, losing many of their number to nomads, the sand beast, and heat stroke, and they had reached their goal at last, yet no one felt any joy. No one smiled. Like Favaronas, all were looking around uncertainly, not drinking in the sight of their fabled destination, but regarding it with suspicion. Talk ceased. Every face reflected the same thought: What sort of place have we come to?
“General! Tracks!”
Kerian shook off the tomblike mood and urged her mount into a trot. The vanguard riders had found an area of prints. Horses had crossed the elves’ intended path, from left and right. Kerian dismounted and joined one of the scouts, kneeling to study the prints.
“Small hooves. Unshod,” she observed.
“Nomad ponies,” agreed the Wilder scout. “Many.”
“How long ago?”
He put his sun-darkened face scant inches from the prints, then lifted a handful of trampled dirt, crushed it, and let it fall from his fingers. “Half a day or less, but more than an hour,” he reckoned.
So much for having beaten the nomads to the pass, she thought unhappily. Kerian rose. Favaronas arrived leading his horse. He asked what they had found.
“Nomads,” she said. “Probably the same ones we’ve fought twice before.”
“Why? We aren’t in their desert anymore,” the archivist said, exasperated.
“To keep us out of the valley.” Dusk had come
The howl of a wolf pierced the air. Immediately it was answered by others both ahead and behind the elves. Kerian’s gloomy mood shattered.
“Stand to horse!” she cried, drawing her sword.
Favaronas did as she ordered, but didn’t see the need for such alarm. Surely even a large pack of wolves wouldn’t attack a column of armed elves.
The Lioness glowered at him. “Those aren’t wolves, librarian! The enemy is upon us!”
Her officers came cantering up, the balance of the company following.
“Deploy your riders, now!” she ordered.
Favaronas’s uncertainty evaporated abruptly as a hail of arrows fell out of the darkened sky. The wolf cry was a nomad signal.
With a hundred riders, the Lioness moved down the slight slope to the east, seeking the hidden archers. The ground was broken by deep gullies cut during winter rains. Nomads skulked in these crevices, raising their heads long enough to loose an arrow, then ducking under cover again. The mounted elves were forced to bend low to saber the enemy, but in a few minutes they put the archers to rout. Whooping with victory, they would’ve chased the fleeing humans, but the Lioness called them back.
Returned to the main body of warriors, she sat motionless in the saddle, her head up, straining to hear the slightest sound. She divided her attention between north and south. From one direction or the other, the main attack would come. She was beginning to understand nomad thinking. Feint into ambush was practically their only tactic. Wolf calls and a burst of arrows were intended to strike fear, to fix the enemy’s attention in one direction, while the main assault came from elsewhere. The pass here was too wide for a strike from the west; it would come from the north, directly ahead, or the south.
“Keep alert,” she called. “Watch the shadows.”
From the north came the rumble of approaching horses. The Lioness spread out her small band in skirmishing order, each rider seven or eight feet from his neighbor. By the sound of the enemy’s approach, she estimated she faced a force slightly greater in size than her own.
Others in the line had made the same mental calculation. An anxious voice asked, “Should we sit still and receive their charge?”
“Unless you want to die tonight,” the Lioness replied. She was certain this was yet another feint. The main attack still had not shown itself.
A dark mass of riders appeared out of the north. The nomads were strung out in a long, thin line, stretching beyond the limits of the elves’ small formation. Fortunately, the rough ground prevented the Khurs from charging at full speed. They had to pick their way around broken ground and small trees, then climb through steep gullies in small groups. Under the Lioness’s steady hand, the elves waited. When the first nomads reached level ground, she ordered half her command to charge. A brisk melee began, with the elves battling the Khurs as they arrived, piecemeal. This effectively destroyed the nomads’ numerical advantage.
The battle continued, Khurs and elves wheeling and turning on the ground as the stars overhead performed their own slow, stately march between the high peaks. A rider made his way to the Lioness. He reported large numbers of nomads coming up from the south.
She felt a kind of relief. At least the waiting was over. “How many?” she asked.
“Difficult to say, General. Three hundred, maybe more.”
She sent him back to his comrades. Three hundred nomads against fewer than one hundred of her soldiers, awaiting their charge. Even with the advantage of darkness, those were daunting odds.
The elves around her watched her in silence. The veterans, with her since the days of rebellion in Qualinesti, sat as motionless as she. Younger warriors shifted nervously. Since she was the Lioness-admired just short of worship, yet first among equals-one spoke up, asking what her orders were.
She turned a thoughtful look on him. “Who carries our fire?” she asked.
Certain elves in the warband were detailed to carry live coals in clay pots. From these each night’s campfires were lit. The young elf couldn’t fathom why the Lioness would ask about this now, but he replied after only a brief, confused pause: “Sergeant Vitianthus has our fire, General.”
She knew Vitianthus. A Silvanesti volunteer, he was a former horse trainer and an elegant rider.
“Tell the sergeant I want fire-lots of it.” Twisting in the saddle, she pointed to a copse of cedars forty yards distant, on their right flank. “Have him set fire to those trees.”
The young elf saluted and galloped away.
“Everyone is to remain where they are,” Kerian commanded. At her order, swords were drawn and rested on shoulders.
Sergeant Vitianthus and a contingent broke off from the band and galloped to the cedar copse. For a long interval nothing could be seen, then sharp elven eyesight noted smoke rising, nearly invisible in the night air. The sweet cedar smoke drifted back over the motionless warriors. An orange flame leaped up. Then another.
