The seashell centaurs were beardless, either by heredity or custom. When the chief emerged from the pack, he limped up to the splendidly dressed Balif.
“May the sun shine only on your back,” he said gruffly. His voice was low and raspy. Mathi saw why. He had a huge scar across his throat, an old one.
“My greetings to you, mighty Chief,” Balif replied. “You honor me with your words.”
“Sky-folk are alone?”
“We three are part of a larger company, sent here by my great lord, the Speaker of the Stars. In his name I greet you. I am Balif, son of Arnasmir Thraxenath, of the Greenrunners clan.”
The champions around the chief muttered and shifted. The general’s name was well known and carried weight even out there.
“You are welcome, son of Arnasmir, but I must ask, why are you here?”
“I came to see you, Chief.”
The old centaur blinked his liquid brown eyes. He put a thumb to his own chest.
“Yes. You are Greath, are you not?” Balif pronounced the centaur’s name to rhyme with
The centaur spread his hands. “Greath I am. Have you seen our faces before, sky-folk?”
“Never, mighty Chief, but even in the Speaker’s land we know the name of Greath.”
The ancient horse-man made a horrible face. He was smiling. Mathi saw his front teeth had been knocked out long past.
Having made the old chief smile, Balif went on. “Mighty One, my great lord, the Speaker of the Stars, hears grave things about this land, his land.” All three elves watched closely for signs of resistance to the claim. Greath was in such good humor, he let it pass.
“It has come to the ears of the Speaker that many folk from outside his realm have entered his land, to pass through and to live. Those who pass through go with the Speaker’s blessing. Those who settle on his land without his leave are not welcome and will face his displeasure.”
The warriors shook their knobkerries and dented swords. They were proud creatures, not easily intimidated. Greath let them grumble a bit then silenced them with a bob of his shaggy gray head.
“It is not the way of the Hok-nu to grow in place like trees,” he said, naming the centaur tribe. “We have left our place of wandering, the land of Vesh, to seek grazing for our families.”
In spite of their ferocious appearance, centaurs were vegetarians. They lived off roots and shoots of trees and grasses, enlivened by fruit in season. They regarded cultivated crops as travesties of nature and would often burn gardens full of produce rather than eat such unnatural bounty.
“The land is your land, as the Great Speaker knows,” Balif said. “Those who pass through the Great Speaker’s land are not the Great Speaker’s enemies, but there are those who come to take that which belongs to the Speaker of the Stars.”
Balif nodded solemnly. “Not only
Mention of the kender caused the assembled centaurs to grimace and prance. More than a few looked back over their broad backs, as if to find Rufe or the Longwalker skulking there.
Mathi had not seen such reaction in centaurs before. They were very bold in their emotions-love, fear, hate, joy-but that was new. At the mention of kender, the Hok-nu were
“We have met them. They are troublesome,” Greath declared.
“Do you know where the little people come from?” Balif asked.
Greath pressed a palm to his forehead, the centaur equivalent of a shrug. “It is said they came out of a crack in the ground, like vermin from a wound. Nothing is a barrier to them, not water, not the brown land, not the high mountains of Khal.”
With much flowery language, Greath explained further that the kender had been seen lurking around for the past four seasons, but the summer brought a torrent of them. At first the centaurs had no problem with them, but lately the newly arrived little people had taken to pilfering the centaurs’ meager possessions. That they would not tolerate.
“Him, little man.” The old chief hiked his dusky thumb at a totem held behind him. Balif, Mathi, and Artyrith followed his finger and saw a small, white skull attached to the lowest crossbar. The forehead had been crushed by a knobkerrie.
Sensing he would learn no more from the centaurs, Balif presented Greath a gift, a brightly polished bronze knife with a gold hilt and a round beryl stone in the pommel. The old roughneck was greatly pleased.
“You are Greath’s friend!” he vowed. “The people of Balif are the friends of the Hok-nu!”
“It warms my heart to hear you say so, mighty Chief. I will tell my lord, the Speaker of the Stars, the passage of the Hok-nu into his land should not worry him. You will return to the coast by autumn?” Flipping the shiny blade back and forth, the centaur chief agreed. “Then I shall tell my great lord, the Speaker, to be easy in his mind about his friends the Hok-nu.”
The assembled centaurs gave Balif their version of a rousing cheer. They reared back on their hind legs, pawing the air with their front hoofs and ululating deep in their throats. It was an uncanny sound.
Greath galloped away surrounded by his standard-bearers. In orderly files the warriors followed until Balif and his companions were alone on their windy outcropping. Mathi suddenly realized she had been holding her breath. She let it out in a long sigh.
“Amazing,” said Artyrith. Mathi couldn’t remember so long a time the garrulous cook had remained silent. “They actually smell as badly as they look.”
“They are honorable folk,” Balif replied. “Far more so than most humans.” His handsome face appeared weighed down with sadness. “It grieves me to assist in their destruction.”
He admitted Speaker Silvanos would never allow centaurs, Hok-nu or not, to graze in his territory. Once Balif’s report reached him, he would summon the fearsome griffon riders of Silvanost to harry the horse-men out of the country.
Mathi said, “That is not just!”
“It is the Speaker’s will,” said Artyrith.
Balif watched the dust trails rising from the departing centaur horde. “The Speaker’s will can be shaped by what the Speaker knows.” He gripped his reins so hard the leather creaked. “Or does not know.”
They rode on to the ford. Because of the delay with the centaurs, they were unlikely to reach Savage Ford before dark, but Balif pressed on. With each mile, he rode a little faster, forcing the others to keep up. Treskan and Mathi, handicapped by the pack train, dropped back. The cook stayed with them, and together they watched Balif diminish in the distance as the gap between them widened.
Artyrith called to his master in vain. Annoyed, he reined up and watched Balif canter away. “What ails him?” he said, blotting sweat from his face with the back of one gloved hand.
“He pities for the centaurs,” Mathi suggested.
“They’re little better than beasts,” Artyrith replied. “Not fit company for our people!”
Inwardly Mathi wondered what Balif was up to. He felt bad about the centaurs’ future, no doubt, but he was not so emotional that he would let his anger or grief cause him to abandon the rest of his party. The three of them shared a quick drink-tepid water for Mathi, solid swallows of surplus Free Winds nectar for Treskan and Artyrith- and started after their wayward leader.
At least his path was easy to follow. Balif rode straight as an arrow through every clump of wire grass and scrub in his path. Then they found more troubling traces smeared on the foliage. Artyrith found blood on the leaves, still fresh enough to flow.
Artyrith rubbed the drops between his fingers. “This does not smell like elf blood,” he declared, puzzled.
“Is it from his horse?” asked the scribe.
It was not horse blood, either. Mathi yearned to sniff the traces herself. Her nose was keener than an elf’s, but she wasn’t prepared to answer the questions her prowess would raise.
Wrapping the reins around his fist, Artyrith urged his horse to a gallop. Mathi and Treskan had to follow as best they could, leading the stubborn pack ponies.
