Elves? Nomads?
“Form a circle!” Amero shouted.
The villagers with spears presented a hedgehog of flintheads to the unseen foe. One by one the horns died away. Eventually, the sound of massed hoofbeats reached the villagers.
“Horses!” someone cried.
“Nomads! The nomads have come back!”
Villagers on the extreme ends of the formation began to back away.
Amero shouted, “Stand where you are! Stand fast!”
The frightened folk rejoined the circle, crowding closer together.
The noise grew louder. Dust rose from the mouth of Cedarsplit Gap. The villagers’ nervousness spread to the cattle and horses penned on each side of them. The animals milled about, neighing and lowing.
A column of dark-clad riders burst from the pass. They thundered out a hundred paces, halted, and surveyed the scene. Amero squinted through the whirling dust. They looked like small, dark-skinned men on ponies, not rangy nomads or fair-skinned elves.
The riders launched into motion again and came straight at the defenders. At sixty paces the dust parted enough for Amero to see who they were.
“Raise your weapons!” he cried. “Spears up! It’s Miteera!”
Confused but relieved, the villagers shouldered their arms. The centaur herd slowed when they saw the spears rise. Amero stepped out of the formation and held up his hands.
“Greeting, noble Miteera!” he shouted. “Welcome to Yala-tene!”
The gray-haired chief of the horse-men trotted forward.
“Hail, Arkuden! My eyes weep to see you!”
Arms wide, man and centaur embraced. Time had not dulled Miteera’s fierce smell, but Amero was so relieved that he felt like he was holding an armful of flowers.
The remainder of the centaur tribe ambled down the ravine into the open valley once they saw there was no danger.
“What brings you to our valley, noble chief?” Amero asked. “It’s been ten years since I saw you last.”
“Ah, Arkuden, such evil speaking I must do! My people are driven out!”
“Driven out? By who?”
“The Old Ones.”
The centaurs were rough, primitive folk, but they were valiant fighters. To dislodge the entire herd would have required -
“A great host,” Amero muttered. “Balif?”
Miteera nodded, frowning. “Aye, Arkuden. We could not stand before fire and metal.”
Amero studied the warriors at Miteera’s back. Many bore recent wounds, and all looked tired and trailworn.
“Fear not, Miteera,” he said. “You are welcome here. Will you stay and take greens with us?”
“One night only, Arkuden.”
“Why the hurry?”
“Is word of kokusuna.” This was the centaurs’ word for “spirits.” It also meant, in a vague way, “omens.”
Amero led the centaurs to the water troughs used by the village’s horse herd. The visitors weren’t insulted. Centaurs considered horses kin and in general held them in higher regard than humans. As the centaurs refreshed themselves, one of them spoke to his chief. Miteera clapped a gnarled hand to his brown forehead.
“Ah, Arkuden! Your people seen on mountain!”
“Eh?”
Miteera explained how his band had encountered three humans in the high mountains. Through the old chiefs oblique descriptions, Amero understood the three to be Tiphan and his two acolytes.
“Were they well?” he asked.
“Hale, not wise.” The centaur shook his head at the incomprehensible foolishness of humans. “They go sunbirth. B’leef there.”
Amero was puzzled. Tiphan was headed east, toward the elves? “Did he say exactly where he was going or why?”
“Nah. They hunt. Not say what.”
Amero’s face betrayed his concern, and Miteera clapped him on the shoulder, saying, “Fear not! Elu I give — strong, good fighter. He guard good.”
Amero called for fodder to be brought to the hungry centaurs. The centaurs ate the sweet grass ravenously, plunging their faces into piles of fodder and coming up with great wads of hay sticking out their mouths and clenched in both hands. They chewed noisily, slurping water to wash everything down.
While they fed, Amero plied Miteera with questions about the elves. According to the centaur, Balif’s army had appeared in late summer, following the course of the Thon-Tanjan. They pushed into the centaurs’ homeland slowly, stopping every few leagues to erect stockades, which they filled with warriors. The two races first clashed about the time the leaves changed color. Elf cavalry wiped out one centaur warband, driving the rest of the herd into the eastern bend of the Tanjan, trapping them against the swift-flowing river. The destruction of the centaur tribe seemed certain. And then -
“B’leef turn away,” Miteera said. “Fight old enemy. Karada.”
Amero stepped back, thunderstruck. It could not be! The old centaur was mistaken — not Karada!
Karada, born Nianki, was Amero’s only blood kin. He had not seen her in twelve years. She was known throughout the plains as Karada, meaning “Scarred One,” from the scars of a vicious animal attack she bore on her face and neck. Fifteen years ago she and her band of nomads had been the scourge of the Silvanesti, raiding their outposts and threatening their new settlements. Twelve years ago, after being defeated by Balif, Karada’s shattered warrior band had come to Yala-tene, where rebels in her ranks tried to overthrow her and loot the village. Together, Amero, Duranix, Karada, and her loyalists had defeated the rebels, led by Hatu the One-eyed and Karada’s blood foe, Nacris.
With the village secure, Karada and her people had departed. Though Amero had hoped she would return, neither she nor her people had ever come back to the Valley of the Falls.
Stories had reached him of his sister’s ongoing fight against the Silvanesti. Karada had become the nemesis of the elf general Balif. For years she thwarted the elves’ plans of conquest in the north and east. Four years ago, wanderers passing through Yala-tene brought a tale of Karada’s death. Pursued by elite Silvanesti warriors, she and her band were said to have been trapped on a flat-topped escarpment in the far north, overlooking the inland sea. Five times the finest warriors of Silvanost tried to storm the plateau, and five times they were hurled back by Karada’s ferocious fighters. Finally an elf priest came forth and called down fire from the sky. The wooded plateau blazed from end to end, and when the flames went out days later, the elves found the burned bodies of Karada and all her band. That was the tale the wanderers told, and Amero had believed it — until now.
“She’s alive?” Amero asked eagerly, “Karada lives?”
Miteera shrugged. “I not see. Old Ones cry, ‘Karada! Karada!’ and ride away. Not kill us.” The old centaur’s eyes gleamed. “Karada is kokusun. No kill, ever.”
Amero didn’t know what to think. It wasn’t only the centaurs who thought his sister was a spirit. Many people, villagers and nomads alike, believed her to be the living spirit of the plains. Amero knew that if anyone could escape the might of Silvanos, it was Karada.
Amero saw the centaurs bedded down for the night then returned to the cave. He told Duranix what he’d learned from Miteera, both the story of Karada and that the centaurs had seen Tiphan and his two acolytes in the eastern mountains.
“Shall I go after Tiphan?” Duranix asked, slanting a look at his human friend.
“He chose this path. Let him follow it.”
“It would be convenient if the elves rid you of your problem.”
Amero was genuinely shocked. “I don’t desire his death!”
Duranix’s brazen lids clashed as he blinked. “I don’t see why not. He wouldn’t weep if you fell off the mountain.”
