'Pardon, my lord, but I suggest that perhaps the survivors speak truth for once — as unlike the Bakluni as that is.'
Frowning, the dwarf demanded to know why Bolt thought the way he did.
'Because, great dwarf, the merchant made sense even as he beat himself and tore at his beard over the loss of his goods. To travel ahead, or back, slowly, laden with such stuff, and with only a handful of men, would be to invite every predatory nomad to fall upon oneself. The Yoli, even though they slaughtered great numbers of the attacking Arroden and drove them away, dared not recover their property and try to travel with it. They came back northward with their most precious possessions — their lives.'
'Well done, sorcerer!' said Obmi, his spirits abruptly and unusually high. 'Your news is splendid and your assessment sound, I think. That is an excellent omen for us. The Arroden will be licking their wounds for a time. Oh, yes, they'll gather their warriors again, and that band will be larger and more bloodthirsty than any seen for a long time by the Sons of Yoli. We will be long past, however, safe in Karnoosh… or beyond. Tribes less fierce than the Arroden — and that is most — will hesitate to come against any caravan of any size for a while, anyway. The story of the Arroden defeat will spread quickly through this wasteland, and will dishearten other raiders. Our trek will be a quiet passage through a peaceful land, I'll wager.'
Obmi's pronouncement proved to be true — but it was fortunate, in a way, that his optimism was not shared by most of the other travelers. The big caravan made a little more than twenty miles each day — a good pace for so large a train of men and animals. Drivers, merchants, and guards alike were spurred on by the thought of vengeful veiled warriors, the terrible, camel-borne Arroden, coming down upon them by the thousands.
Their route was along the more westerly of the two wide trails that ran from Ghastoor to the city on the shore of Lake Karnoosh — slightly longer in distance than the easterly track, but a path that was generally parallel to a dry riverbed that ran southward from the Yolspur Tors to Lake Karnoosh. Every two or three days they came to a wadi where water could be found, either lying in pools remaining along the watercourse or waiting just a foot or two beneath the surface of the ground. Two times during the journey through the dry steppeland the caravan came upon a permanent source of water — once a true oasis, another time a well.
At the well site, the oasis, and some of the other places there were fortified villages. Although the tribesmen dwelling in such spots were neither strong nor numerous, the caravan master always paid over a tribute in coins or gifts for water and whatever other supplies the train needed that the villagers could spare. The local folk started out demanding exorbitant prices for dates, eggs, chickens, and all the other produce they had. But a few rounds of hard bargaining brought prices down into the realm of the believable.
This dickering was obviously the chief amusement of these tribesmen, for there was little else for them to do to enjoy themselves. The leaders of caravans through these parts quickly learned how they were expected to conduct themselves, or else they paid a high price for their obstinance. Purposely poisoned water and tainted food were only two of the more obvious means the locals had of revenging themselves upon any who sought to take water, provisions, or lives without proper payment. Anything the village could do without could be had, but money or goods in return must exchange hands. Such was the way of these places, and no wise person expected it to be otherwise.
The route to Karnoosh was fairly direct, for the steppe was relatively level and few obstacles stood in the way. The six-hundred-mile journey was accomplished in just more than thirty days. Every veteran caravaneer was astounded at such speed, especially for so large a train. Occasional encounters with savage carnivores were handled with ease, for Bolt and other spell-binders in the group were well prepared for such contingencies. The small bands of steppe nomads who came near the caravan were impressed by its size and capability. They approached without threatening, talked, traded, and rode peacefully away thereafter. One experienced guardsman informed Obmi that these petty warriors roaming the steppe were a sure sign that the Arro-den had suffered a severe defeat, for normally these nomads they were encountering dared not come so far north for fear of the terrible veiled warriors.
About halfway along their route, the nature of the land changed. The steppes were seldom favored by precipitation, but in areas well away from the intervening mountains, the clouds did drop rain upon the land regularly. As the caravan proceeded southward, a little more than halfway to its destination, dry plains gave way to a well-watered grassland. Camels were no longer essential in this place; although they certainly could survive, they were no Longer the most appropriate means of conveyance. Horses were favored by this terrain, and thus the camel-riding Arroden did not venture into the prairie to raid. The threat of the veiled warriors, small as it may have been, was safely past.
Large tribes and clans of horsemen roamed the grasslands around Lake Karnoosh, but many were paid tribute by the city of the same name to refrain from molesting trade. These warriors, then, tended to prey upon those groups that did attack caravans. The continual warfare that resulted kept the nomadic warriors in check while distributing some of the caravan loot — that which actually reached the city
— to even those who protected the merchants' trains. Of course, the least slight or pretended offense could send some formerly nonhostile tribe into a frenzy of raiding. When this occurred, other clans would happily take bribes and tributes to reverse their roles. Then these nomads would ride out to seek the now-hostile group, being paid to do so and relishing the prospect of taking loot from those who had recently gained it by pillaging some caravan or other. Obmi greatly admired this system, remarking pleasantly to Bolt on its practical and logical workings, and the sorcerer had to agree.
Turrets and domes dominated the brick city of Karnoosh. The walled portion of the place — the actual city — was relatively small; no more than seven or eight thousand souls were enclosed by the high barriers. All around the city, except on the side that abutted the shore of the big lake, were ancillary villages and towns that quadrupled or quintupled the total population of the area. Most of these smaller places were liberally dotted with caravansaries and wine shops where traders and laborers could find housing and amusement during their brief stay.
Continual streams of merchants came to the city, for Karnoosh was a hub where purveyors from north, south, east, and west could exchange commodities. An open bazaar was always busy. Slaves, spices, animals, ivory, and a multitude of other goods were sold and traded there. The brick casbah housed sufficient troops to encourage everyone to do business peacefully, but just in case auxiliary fortresses also stood on either flank of the city. The Shah of Karnoosh was very rich and very powerful. There were no strong states around his little realm, so for a century there had been no warfare troubling the place. Such peace and prosperity brought even more merchants to Karnoosh, and it was a thriving cosmopolis by all measures of the whole of Oerik.
Obmi's attitude about the place was in conflict with all the obvious facts. 'This is no real city,' he observed petulantly. It was obvious that the dwarf belittled Karnoosh for one simple reason. Men, not demi-humans — and in particular, not dwarves — dominated it. In the whole of the city, there were not more than a half-dozen of his own kind. In fact, there were so few of any nonhuman sort here that even Bolt was amazed. An easterner like Obmi, he had long been accustomed to encountering at least a fair number of nonhumans in any city or large town. Even in the western cities of Hlupallu and Ghastoor, they had seen enough dwarves and elves so that neither Obmi nor Bolt felt terribly out of place. But out here on the steppes, such was not the case.
Here there were males and females with deep brown, dusky, swarthy, tan, yellow, or reddish hues to their skin. There were short men and women, tall ones, stocky folk and lean. Some had small noses, others beaks. They looked different from one another, but with few exceptions they were all humans. These folk lived and worked together in harmony of a sort, at least bound to each other by their common racial heritage, but they did not consider elves, dwarves, or the like as their equals.
So, instead of desiring to linger in this exotic city as he had wanted to do in both Hlupallu and Ghastoor, Obmi demanded to leave Karnoosh as quickly as possible. This edict placed a terrific strain on Bolt, for the sorcerer had to gather more equipment and supplies, see that all was properly packed and loaded, and all the while make certain that no spy discovered what was taking place. It required four days for Bolt to handle all the details, but then the dwarfs group was away from Karnoosh, going along the southeast track that followed the lake's edge for more than seventy miles before splintering into three smaller trails heading in different directions of the compass. They led their carts and wagons, horses and mules along the smallest of the three paths, the center one that led south toward the town of Tashbul and then east and south into the Grandsuel Peaks.
'Tashbul will provide all the rest of what we need,' Obmi told Bolt smugly, even though he himself did not know the whole truth of the matter, for he was aware that the sorcerer had no knowledge of this part of the west, and Obmi had picked up some intelligence on the subject back in Kamoosh. Although even most sages and savants of the Flanaess could boast no great store of knowledge on the subject at hand, the sorcerer's ignorance was a tool
