Lofotan unwired the links and removed Balif’s chains. Rubbing his wrists, the general stood. Mathi stooped to pick up the costly bronze links.
“Mathani.”
She straightened, coiling the chain in her hands.
“Mathani, your gown.”
She realized that her garment was still torn open. Mathi waited for the questions and the denunciations that would follow. She looked at Balif blankly, leaving to him the final challenge.
Lofotan returned. “We must hurry!”
Balif gazed intently at her. Without a word, he took the cloak he’d been sitting on and draped it around Mathi’s exposed back. He walked on and swung into the saddle. Lofotan kicked Rufe awake. Yawning, the kender scratched his ribs, got up, and walked off alone in the predawn darkness.
Why didn’t Balif, general of the Speaker’s army, denounce her as an impostor? Did he take Mathi for a half- breed, as the nomads had? The existence of half-humans was officially denied in Silvanost on the grounds that such pairings could not be fruitful. Secretly, half-humans were subject to summary arrest, exile, or imprisonment without trial. Balif was known to be a tolerant elf. Perhaps his own condition made him more sensitive to the question of who was an elf and who wasn’t.
Puzzling over it, Mathi got on her pony. She had just settled in the saddle when Treskan came furtively to her side.
“My talisman. I must have it back,” he said in a low voice.
“Forget it.”
“One of the nomads-Vollman? — must still have it. I have to have it back, or I am lost!”
Mathi looked around. Rufe-where was he? He was the perfect one to steal back a trinket, but where could one find a kender when the kender was on the loose, not wanting to be found?
CHAPTER 13
Balif’s party rode south, away from the nomad war band. For reputedly empty territory, they ran into plenty of people on the move-centaurs and kender, mostly. The few small groups of humans they spotted were mixed men, women, and children. The elves were unable to approach them, as the family bands fled at the sight of riders.
Balif dictated notes to the Speaker from the saddle. He was calm, insightful, and accurate in his judgment of the situation. There was no law in the eastern province. Human war bands crossed the territory with impunity, and they were trying to drive out anyone not part of their own tribe. The wanderfolk were numerous but not a serious threat to Silvanesti hegemony. They were simply migrants, living off the land, bothering no one but belligerent nomads and hysterical officials such as Governor Dolanath.
Mathi noticed that the general did not use the official Silvanesti name for the east, Silvanoth, and that he played down the potential problems the kender presented. She asked Balif about that point.
“The wanderfolk are not warriors or nation-builders. They are no threat to the Speaker’s rule or the elven nation. In fact, they may prove to be a useful buffer against the humans and centaurs,” he said.
“Those little oddlings useful?” Lofotan commented sarcastically.
“Would you buy a house infested with cockroaches?” asked Balif. Lofotan avowed he wouldn’t unless the pests were exterminated. “Not an easy thing to do. Smoke, poison, and traps will get many, but the house may never be free of them. Do you understand?”
Lofotan easily saw a connection between cockroaches and kender, but Mathi felt she understood better. If the east were thickly populated with kender, it would put off the nomads from settling there in large numbers if at all. They were perfectly willing to fight the elves for the land, but the kender wouldn’t fight; they would just dwell there, doing all their infuriating kender things.
“Wanderfolk are bigger than insects,” Lofotan mused. “Maybe the humans can eradicate them.”
Balif said, “We must not let that happen.”
Before his majordomo could question the wisdom of that, Balif trotted ahead, signaling an end to the conversation. Treskan hurried after him, eagerly scratching down every word the general had said.
As they drew near the forested region just inland from Golden-Eye Bay, they found signs of conflict: patches of burned grass, broken spears, and shattered arrows. The heads had been carefully salvaged, but there was no mistaking the ruined shafts of either. When the first tall trees came into sight, a delegation of kender emerged from the woods and approached them.
“Greetings, illustrious General,” said the lead kender, holding a green sapling with a scrap of white cloth tied to the tip.
“General? What general?” Lofotan said warily.
“This is the storied commander of the elder folk, is he not?” The kender with the sapling pointed at Balif.
“You have us confused with others.”
“The Longwalker told us of your coming.”
Balif said, “The Longwalker deserves his name. Is he here?”
The kender wagged his head back and forth. “I don’t see him.”
Behind the flag bearer were five more kender, all bearing wounds of various sorts. The leader said, “Where is your army?”
“What army?” said Lofotan.
“The army that will defend the greenwood against the horsemen.”
A large number of kender, traveling more or less independently, had taken to the woods to escape the bands of marauding humans. Some kender had been captured, brutally treated, then turned loose as a warning to the others to leave the territory.
“Who gives orders for you to leave?” asked Balif.
“The chief of the horse riders, Bulnac by name.”
“Is this Bulnac a veritable giant, seven feet tall?” Mathi put in.
One of the silent kender stepped forward, waving a tightly bandaged arm. “Yes, yes, that’s him! Closer to eight feet, I’d say!”
According to the kender, Bulnac had recently led an uprising against the chief of his people, the Monsha. Balif knew the Monsha, or Mon-shu as they were called by the elves. They were a populous, powerful tribe whose range was in the far northern Great Plains. Losing his fight to gain control of the tribe, Bulnac had ridden away with his supporters to carve out a new realm for himself in the east.
Lofotan and Mathi glanced at their leader. He sat immobile, gazing over the heads of the battered kender delegation.
“Bad tidings,” he finally said. “A failed coup makes the loser desperate. This Bulnac will be difficult to deal with.”
“Your excellent self can do it,” said the flag-bearer cheerfully.
Balif looked at each of the little folk in turn. “I will do it,” he said solemnly. “But you must help.”
Lofotan started to protest, but his lord’s manner dissuaded him. Inwardly Mathi rejoiced. For reasons she did not understand, she wanted Balif to help the wanderfolk. The sympathy she felt for the race-a word she did not completely comprehend-was something new. But she was pleased to know Balif would be fighting the savage humans and defending the kender.
He had no army. He had a single old retainer, a disguised human scribe, an unknown quantity of kender to command, and Mathi. She had no idea if the wanderfolk could be welded into an effective fighting force, but with those few words-“I will do it”-Balif had pledged himself to try.
Balif and his companions dismounted. They led their horses into the cool shade of the woods. Born to the green, Balif glowed with happiness to be under trees again. Close on his heels, Lofotan brooded. Treskan gripped
