fingers. The effect was to erase all but the tiniest traces of their passage through the grass.
Announced by a whirlwind of dust, the nomad avengers halted at the scene of the earlier fracas. The dead were examined and the wounded treated. Listening in total silence, Mathi concluded that their presence was compromised. When the humans recovered elf arrows from their comrades’ bodies, they would know a party of armed Silvanesti were around.
As if reading her mind, Artyrith smugly whispered, “We weren’t here.” He and Balif had supplied themselves with centaur arrows at Free Winds, he explained. In the bloody confusion, the nomads might convince themselves they were attacked by a war party of centaurs instead of two elves and a crazy little man.
They stole away, grateful not to be noticed. The Longwalker contently rode with the general, but after a short distance, Rufe dropped off Mathi’s pony and slipped away in the weeds. Mathi started to call him, but fearing the humans might hear, held her tongue.
Not until they were half a day north of the road did Balif speak again. He reclaimed the lead from Artyrith then stopped the procession when he reached a small stream.
The horses watered themselves. Balif said, “Where is the other little fellow?”
“Run off,” Mathi reported.
“Explain how you know him, child.”
She described how she’d found Rufe prowling the fortress and sort of hired him. She admitted that Rufe was the author of the governor’s troubles, but since she had never met a being like him before, she had asked Rufe to come with her, ostensibly as a guide, but also as a living example of the kind of people currently flooding the eastern province of Silvanesti.
Balif listened without expression then asked his passenger: “Who are you people?”
“We have as many different names as the people we meet. We’ve been called golighters, halflers, tweeners, and wanderfolk. Among ourselves we are just People, although the human horse riders call us ‘kender,’ which in their tongue means ‘those who all look alike,’” the Longwalker said. “Which we don’t.”
“Where do you come from?” asked Artyrith.
“From the sunset.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the sunrise, by way of any place we haven’t been before.”
Artyrith clucked his tongue at the poetically evasive answers, but Balif accepted them as offered. The elves and Mathi passed around a water bottle while the horses’ finished. Without warning, the Longwalker slipped off the general’s horse.
“Wait,” said Balif. “Stay with us. I would know more about you.”
“I thank you for your help,” the little man replied, “but my feet itch too much to ride. Gotta walk. Farewell.”
Before they could do anything, he was in the high grass and gone. Mathi called loudly, “But what is your name? Your given name?”
“Serius Bagfull, your lifelong friend,” his voice came back, drifting over the grass from no real direction.
From two mysterious companions there remained none. Balif said, “Mathi, from now on you must get my approval before adding anyone to our party. Our mission is secret, after all.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I do thank you for making contact with these newcomers. What did they call themselves? Wanderfolk? I see now how they could have driven Governor Dolanath to distraction.”
He looked over the sea of wind-tossed weeds. It was evident from his expression that not even he, a full- blooded elf, could detect any sign of the departed Longwalker.
Balif continued to call them wanderfolk for some time. Treskan adopted the name kender and used it in conversation and his notes. In time the elves forgot Balif’s term and used kender too.
CHAPTER 10
The sea of grass thinned out as they approached the Thon-Tanjan, becoming isolated tufts of tall grass in a sea of stony loam. Tracks appeared in the bare soil, lots of them. Not an hour passed that the elves didn’t spy other wanderers entering the great bend of the river. Many were humans, mounted and on foot. Balif said that the people he saw walking concerned him more than the riders. Nomads traveled constantly, moving their families and herds wherever water and forage was best. No one in a nomad clan walked unless they were in dire straits. Humans on foot meant emigrants, settlers. They were looking for a place to stay. Speaker Silvanos would not tolerate them on land he claimed as his own. There would be war.
In addition to humans, they also saw centaur bands in the Tanjan bend. The Silvanesti had never had too much trouble from the horse-men. They were even more footloose than human nomads, and if they caused trouble, a few flights of griffon riders usually sufficed to drive them out. Balif confessed he had never seen centaurs in such numbers. While the humans seemed to be moving west to east, the centaurs were coming down from the north. After a full day of watching horse-men streaming south, Balif resolved to speak to them.
“Is that wise?” asked Artyrith. Even from a distance, it was easy to see the centaurs were armed.
“Nothing about this journey is wise,” Balif replied. He smiled wryly. “That’s why it will succeed. No one expects us to behave so foolishly.”
He took a moment to don his most impressive outfit, white silk robes with a cloak made of cloth of gold. At the general’s insistence, Mathi, Treskan, and Artyrith smartened up, though there was little the scribe or the orphan girl could do about their poor wardrobe. Tidied as best they could, they abandoned stealth and rode forth as if they were lords of all they surveyed.
It didn’t take long to make contact with the centaurs. They found a band of close to a hundred males trotting along the bank of a dry wash ravine. They were a swarthy breed, dark coated and dark skinned. Balif noticed that they wore a lot of seashell ornaments. That meant they were a coastal clan. Why were they so far inland?
The outriders spotted Balif’s party. It was hard not to, what with the general’s golden cape billowing in the wind. Centaurs broke off in small groups, fanning out on either side of the elves. Everyone but Balif watched their movements with concern. It looked very much as if they were being surrounded, and there was no Rufe in a blanket to distract a large party of dangerous opponents.
The main band of centaurs, forty strong, descended the ravine bank, crossed the dry bed, and climbed out, coming straight for Balif. At a strategic point atop a rocky outcropping, Balif halted. Artyrith and Treskan drew up one either side. Mathi halted behind him. She had to admire Balif’s presence. Sitting there on his horse, dressed like a great lord of Silvanost, he looked fit to command any situation.
Whooping and whistling, the centaurs made a ring around the trio. Mathi rubbed her sweaty palms together and tried not to stare at the array of weapons around her, stone axes, mauls, bent and dented swords taken from metal-making foes. The centaurs often carried two weapons at once, one for each hand. Their favorite tool was the one they had invented, a long-handled club of dark, dense wood with a ball-shaped head. Swung in wide circles by madly galloping centaurs, the knob could easily crack an elf skull wide open.
The centaurs jostled each other, making loud whistling sounds through their teeth. Visible over their heads were an array of totems, or standards, brandished by the chief’s champions. With some shoving and loud rebukes, the champions bulled their way through their comrades. The totems were poles fourteen feet high with crossbars lashed along their length. Important spiritual and magical artifacts were fastened to the crossbars: skulls of slain enemies, crystals, shells, bits of metal chain gleaned from a despoiled caravan, and odder things such as dried hornets’ nests or painted gobs of molded clay.
When the champions reached the front, they made a lane for their leader. A centaur chief was always the eldest male in the clan, and he was ancient. His hair and coat were dappled with white. His left rear leg dangled off the ground. The muscle had been cut in some long-ago fight, and upon healing it had shrunk so much that the chief’s hoof no longer touched the ground. In many barbarous societies, a damaged warrior might have been turned out and abandoned but not among the centaurs. They esteemed the wisdom-and cunning-of the aged.
