lose anyone’s trail.
“All right, here is the truth: I didn’t lose him. I turned back. I did not want to see what my commander has become.”
On the sixth night after raising his banner, Balif returned before dawn dragging a heavy body. At first they took it for game, but the carcass wasn’t a deer or wild pig. Balif dragged it to the foot of the hill and left it.
The Longwalker, the centaurs, and Mathi gathered around. The curious kender turned the corpse over.
It was a human, a nomad by his clothes and hair. Evidently Balif had encountered him on his nightly prowl.
“A scout,” Balif said from the recesses of his tent. “I caught him in the forest not ten miles from where we stand.”
“I understand killing him, Lord General, but why fetch back his remains?’ asked the leader of the centaurs, Zakki by name.
“I didn’t want to leave him out there.” There was something very odd in his voice, a plaintive quality out of step with his new restive manner.
“Slain, he points to enemies,” Lofotan said, interpreting for the others. “Vanished, anything might have taken him.”
Zakki said, “We will bury him, Lord General.” Two centaurs dragged the nomad away by the feet.
Lofotan went after them to see that the grave was well concealed. That left Mathi, Treskan, and the Longwalker outside Balif’s tent.
“Chief, will you excuse us? I have some information to share with my scribe.” With a shrug, the Longwalker departed. “You remain, too, girl.”
“Yes, my lord?” Mathi said when they were alone.
“Bulnac will be here soon. Two days, maybe three.”
Mathi was astounded. “But how, my lord?”
“The scout was not alone.” He grimaced. “I could not get them all.” Bulnac was pouring south and east, driving everything before him. Greath’s centaurs were no longer a threat. That left only Balif and the kender.
“How many warriors does he have?” the scribe asked.
“Five thousand horse, plus many more on foot. Remember the road we found? He’s rallied every footloose and disaffected nomad in the eastern province to his banner.” All told, Balif estimated Bulnac’s force at nearly twenty thousand.
“We can’t possibly hold off such a horde!”
“There’s more.”
What more mattered? Treskan fingered his talisman nervously. Mathi noticed he always did that when confronted by the greatest danger.
“I will not be myself much longer,” Balif said. His voice, normally clear and confident, was choked. “Already I am … changed, and what is changed is not turning back to anything close to my normal self. In a week I won’t be able to command anything.”
Mathi was surprised. Her own reversion was very slow, almost imperceptible. Hair was returning to her legs and body, but as yet she thought as clearly as ever. It must be part of the Creator’s malediction, robbing Balif of his wits early. Taius and the other beast folk retained their powers of understanding, even as their bodies reverted to beastly form.
“I am not like them!” Balif shouted for both to hear. “I am being transformed into an animal, not from an animal into an elf. My mind is-is failing. The nomads escaped last night because I thought like a beast, not like a soldier.”
The truth dawned on Mathi. Balif’s strange attachment to the dead nomad wasn’t due to security or sentimentality. It was the bond between predator and prey.
“Don’t leave me, either of you. Not until the end. Do you swear?”
They swore, but Treskan asked, “Why me, lord? Don’t you want Lofotan at your side when-when the time comes?”
“Lofotan is Silvanesti. He is my comrade in arms, but he cannot comprehend what will happen soon. I think you can. And-”
He stirred in the darkness, putting out a hand to close the tent flap. It muffled his last words slightly.
“And you must tell history what became of Balif.”
The hand yanked down the tent flap was not a hand, but a paw, covered in fur.
CHAPTER 17
The birds gave the first warning.
A mass of men and horses on the move required food. On the open plain fodder was all around them, but foraging in the woods was far more laborious. When the outriders of Bulnac’s force entered the Haddaras watershed, their progress was marked by enormous flocks of birds fleeing ahead of them. Especially raucous were the crows, which the woods housed in great numbers. Clouds of black birds fled screaming as the nomads probed and plundered the greenwood.
After the birds came the wild creatures of the forest. At dawn and dusk Balif’s tiny camp was overrun by deer, wild pigs, and rabbits escaping Bulnac’s hungry horde. The advance of the nomads was easy to calculate. When the panicked animals came more than twice daily it meant the humans were drawing nearer.
Balif remained in his tent during the day. No one blamed him for hiding from the light. Mathi deflected queries by Zakki, the leader of the centaurs, and by the Longwalker, saying the general was ill. Lofotan did not try to see his leader. He knew the curse was advancing, and he did not want to see how the general was changing. Several times a day he stood outside the closed end of the tent, relating the latest news of nomad advance. Balif replied with single words when necessary, or dismissed his old comrade by not answering at all.
On their own, the centaurs took to ranging into the woods on the open end of Balif’s redoubt. They tried not to be seen, but inevitably Bulnac’s men spied them and gave chase. Zakki’s fellows used a simple blind to hide the location of Balif’s camp-they always fled nomad pursuit eastward, across the river, which they recrossed below the confluence before returning to report to Balif.
Mathi felt their doom was fast closing in. They had no defenses, no stockade, and only the weapons each of them carried. Aside from the Longwalker and a few of his friends, not a single kender had been seen in a week. Even Rufe was long gone. Mathi still owed him a horse, but Rufe was apparently no longer interested in trying to collect. If Mathi had been him, he would have written off the debt too. Treskan alone seemed busy. He inscribed volumes on any surface he could carry-leaves, tree bark, scraps of cloth, all written with charcoal sticks and spit. Mathi thought he would keep scribbling up to the moment a howling nomad lopped his head off.
At night Balif crawled out of his tent and slipped into the trees. He wished to go unseen, but Mathi and Lofotan kept watch from a discreet distance. All they saw was a dark, stooped figure creeping on all fours. It was enough to make the old warrior shut his eyes and shudder.
After his leader had departed on his nightly prowl, Lofotan returned to a project of his own. Mathi found him sitting cross-legged near the cliff edge overlooking the river. He had collected a large mound of green vines and was painstakingly braiding them into a single thick strand.
“What are you making?” Mathi asked.
“A lifeline.”
The scribe didn’t get his meaning at first. Lofotan explained that when the time came, he wanted a rope he could throw over the cliff. That way they could climb down to the river and not be hopelessly trapped on the bluff.
It was a good idea. Mathi asked how much he had made.
“Twenty feet.” About half of what was needed. Mathi fingered the coil of finished rope Lofotan had made. It was tight and supple, amazing handwork. Elven dexterity at work.
