Alliances

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 unsung 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,