Alliances

northwest to southeast, they were called Pincer, Ripper, Great Fang, Chisel, Lesser Fang, and Broken Tooth. Great Fang was the tallest; Pincer, the smallest. Broken Tooth covered the largest area and sported a wide, flat top.

Distributed around the bases of these spires were thousands of elves, survivors of the exodus from Khurinost, their tent city under the walls of Khuri-Khan. In six months the ponderous column had progressed barely sixty miles. Apart from the massive logistical problems of moving so many people, their possessions, and their livestock across the inhospitable terrain, the elves had been dogged every step of the way by growing numbers of Khurish nomads.

The desert tribesmen had always resented the presence of outsiders in their sacred land, but they had largely ignored the elves until Adala, female chieftain of the Weya-Lu tribe, awakened to the special danger the elves posed. It was not their trespass (considered a grave sin among nomads), nor their trampling of Khurish traditions that provoked Adala to action. As long as the laddad remained in their squalid tent city, Adala could ignore them. The spur that finally caused her to raise her people against them was their Speaker’s decision to lead his people away from the Khurish capital to settle in a valley on the northern border of Khur. The elves called it Inath-Wakenti, the Vale of Silence. City-dwelling Khurs knew it as the Valley of the Blue Sands and considered it little more than a fable.

Nomads knew better. To them, the valley was Alya-Alash (Breath of the Gods), the home of Those on High when They dwelt on the mortal plane. Strange forces lay quiescent in its cool, misty recesses. Disturbed by interlopers, the powers might leave their mountain haven and wreak havoc on the desert peoples. The world itself might come to an end if the sacred silence of Alya-Alash were broken.

Those on High had filled Adala with Their holy purpose. Her maita, her divine fate, was to unite the people of the desert against the intruders. Maita and the grace of Those on High would allow the nomads to overcome the subtle ways and superior warcraft of the laddad. Unfortunately, maita was no one’s servant, to be commanded at will. Adala had gathered six of the seven tribes of Khur to her cause, and they had won several victories, but the final destruction of the elves eluded them. Protected by the khan’s army, the laddad had escaped from Khurinost and begun their journey northward. With both Sahim-Khan’s formidable troops and elf cavalry arrayed against them, the nomads could do little more than harass their enemy. As the miles increased, the khan’s soldiers turned back home, and nomad attacks on the laddad grew stronger, more determined.

In the shadow of the Lion’s Teeth, nomad horsemen struck the left side of the elves’ formation while it moved slowly, steadily north-northwest. The hard-riding men of the Weya-Lu and Mikku tribes sliced a bloody swath through the terrified elves, driving warriors and civilians back upon the center of the column. Panic-stricken civilians hampered the warriors’ efforts to re-form and counterattack. A rout seemed inevitable. The elves would be scattered across the sun-baked wasteland and slaughtered.

Traveling in the midst of his footsore nation was Gilthas Pathfinder, Speaker of the Sun and Stars. When the fighting reached him, he halted his horse amid the backwash of his terrified people. An iron ring of warriors formed around the Speaker, trying to hold off the nomad horde.

“Great Speaker, you must withdraw!” said General Hamaramis, commander of the Speaker’s private guard. Blood streamed down his forehead.

Warriors and ordinary elves alike added their pleas to withdraw, but Gilthas would not remove himself to a place of safety. Even as nomad arrows flicked past him, he remained where he was.

“You’ve done your best, General. Now we must help you push back this attack,” he said then turned in the saddle to address his people. “Elves of the two nations! We have been driven from our homelands, persecuted, robbed, and slaughtered. This may be our last trial. Let us go no further. Let us meet our fate as true descendents of Silvanos and Kith-Kanan, and never bow to the murderers’ blades!”

The elves let out a roar, and Adala’s fickle maita ebbed. Elves of every stripe- nobles, commoners, artisans, farmers, male and female-surged forward around the Speaker’s horse. Armed with anything that came to hand, they fell upon the nomads. Astonished Khurs were dragged from their saddles or had their mounts pushed over. The enormous mass of elves pressed in on two sides, squeezing the Khurs between them. Many elves fell to nomad swords, but the momentum of the whole nation could not be stopped. Like a slow flood rising over a sandbar, they wore away the ranks of nomads and threatened to engulf them completely.

Some Khurs in the rearmost ranks gave way. More followed, and more still. Robbed of impetus, the nomads’ deadly thrust collapsed. When at last their line broke, their spearhead-several hundred warriors of the Weya-Lu tribe-was surrounded by elves. Hamaramis called for the humans to surrender.

Their reply was blunt and rude. Regretful but unyielding, the general signaled his re-formed cavalry and left the nomads to their inescapable fate.

Gilthas had saved his people, but the cost was high. Hundreds were killed, hundreds more wounded, and irreplaceable supplies were lost in the mad rush to fend off the nomads. Carts were overturned, and oil, water, and other precious liquids soaked the pitiless sand. Foodstuffs carefully preserved and hoarded were trampled.

While the elves marveled at their survival, despite the high cost they had paid, the dispirited nomads returned to their hidden camps. For an entire month, they’d marshaled their forces, gathering together far-flung tribes and clans from every corner of Khur. That was to have been the decisive battle, the final defeat of the laddad pestilence, and it had failed. Their supreme effort had been repulsed.

Some of the clan chiefs and warmasters spoke openly of quitting. The valley to which the laddad were headed wasn’t really part of Khur after all. No nomads lived there. No nomads even visited there. Why not let the laddad go to the valley and be cursed by the forces within it? Why sacrifice more Khurish lives to hasten the death that surely awaited the laddad?

The chiefs and warmasters gathered around their leader. Their sturdy desert-bred horses were shorter than the war-horses ridden by elves, but still towered over Adala’s donkey.

Known as the Weyadan, Mother of the Weya-Lu, but more frequently called simply “Maita” by her followers, Adala sat on Little Thorn’s back beneath a square of black damask supported by four tall poles. As always, her hands were busy. She was darning holes in the robe of one of her kinsmen. Months ago most of the Weya-Lu women and children had been slain in a night raid on an unprotected camp. The atrocity was blamed on the laddad, who had a warband in the vicinity. Since then Adala had taken on various domestic tasks for the surviving wifeless men. Chief of the Weya-Lu and anointed leader of the temporarily united desert tribes she might be, but she also sewed, mended, and cleaned as necessary to support her loyal warriors.

“What say you, Maita?” asked Danolai, warmaster of the Mikku. “Why waste our lives against a departing foe?”

“The blood of our people is still hot upon the sand,” Adala replied evenly. “Who would not avenge his kinsmen, wrongly slain?”

The men looked away. Adala’s youngest daughters, Chisi and Amalia, had been among those slain in the treacherous night raid. Adala had always been certain the laddad were behind the terrible crime. Her followers had been less sure until the tracks of shod horses were discovered nearby. Nomad ponies wore no shoes.

“They are too great for us, Maita.”

It was obvious most of the men present agreed with Danolai. Adala looked at him, her eyes hard.

“Then go home,” she said. “If you think the laddad are greater than you, then you are nothing. Take the other nothings and go, but leave your swords in the sand. You have no right to bear arms.”

The men blanched. A nomad’s sword, narrow bladed and bare of guard, was as vital a part of his identity as prowess on a horse or skill as a storyteller. He could experience no greater shame than to have his sword taken away and driven pointfirst into the sand. The gesture implied every degree of cowardice.

Adala’s cousin Wapah, sitting a horse at her side, spoke. “Our great throw did not succeed. But while we live, we can fight again.” His pale gray eyes were unusual among nomads, but common in Wapah’s Leaping Spider Clan.

“Every fight weakens the laddad. This is not their land. This is not their climate. One day their foreign ways will fail them, and they will be ours.”