"And you, Ghekhen?" Jegrai looked at his warlords hands, clenched around his wooden cup.
"To survive and prosper is a better revenge," the old man said reluctantly. "To take this valley—if we can—would be no bad thing. It is defensible—and is like the old tales of the home the Suno stole from us. But I cannot counsel making a stand; I would not care to have our banner in Khene Sen's tent, no matter how many lives it had cost him."
"Can we take this valley?" Aravay spoke softly. "I do not know that we can. You know that my care is the scouts. The young scouts have brought tales to me, of wizards on the western pass. They say that it is only because they are vowed not to meddle in the lives of lesser men that we have not been struck down before this. They say that the storm of last night that sent Yuchai's horse shying into the pit-trap is a warning not to go further. They say that the wizards of the mountain can call upon the lightning—"
"Any man can call upon the lightning," Northwind said skeptically. "The question is, will it answer him?"
"They say that the lightning has answered the wizards, and out of a cloudless sky and bright day," Aravay replied. "They captured those who had seen it with their own eyes."
"Men will say anything," interrupted Vaichen.
"But these were not men, they were children. And they had seen this less than a year ago."
Jegrai clenched his jaw, angry at the thought that his orders regarding youngsters had been disobeyed. "Children? We took children? How? What became of these children?" Jegrai asked sternly. "We are burdened enough with Vredai children, but—I gave orders that there was to be no slaughter of women and young things. Vredai has honor. We fight only those who will fight us—and we make no warfare on the helpless."
"The scouts surprised and scattered a party of fleeing land-folk in the pass itself," his mother answered serenely. "And two children were left behind. As you ordered, the scouts took counsel of me. Upon my advice, Obodei, who has some of their tongue, took them blindfolded through the valley pass and released them." Aravay smiled a little. "But only after telling them to tell their parents that we numbered in the tens of thousands and ate babies, and that they were fortunate that Obodei was not hungry at that moment."
The Shaman grinned, Shenshu snickered, and Vaichen shouted his laughter. Even Jegrai had to chuckle.
"Old schemer, well did your husband name you Fox-woman!" Vaichen snorted. "I think perhaps I should take the horsetail banner and have it placed before your tent!"
Aravay inclined her head to him, her eyes twinkling.
"These wizards," Jegrai prompted. "Did the children have anything else to say of them?"
"That they are very strange; more scholar and healer than wizard. They sound something like to Holy Vedani. That they keep mostly to themselves, but have been known to take a very clever child into their ranks should the child wish to become a wizard. That they have lived upon the mountaintop for time out of mind, and trade wondrous devices for food and the like, but have otherwise little to do with the folk of the valley."
Jegrai whistled between his teeth, softly. "So," he said, after turning all this over in his mind, "we have one choice: to make a stand. And another: to continue to flee. I think perhaps we have a third. We might seek allies and settle here, so that if the Talchai follow, they find us in the position of strength."
"Allies from among the wizards?" the Shaman asked, one eyebrow rising high. From his expression, Jegrai judged that he was surprised, but cautiously approved. "What of the land-folk, then?"
"I do not know; I do not think it matters for now. Eventually we must win them if we are to remain, but first we must win the wizards. It would be best to come at the wizards with at least the appearance of strength, hm? It would make an alliance to their advantage, I think."
"Aye," Vaichen said, slowly. "What say you to this: let us harry these land-folk, but gently. If they flee, pursue only so as to let them know we do pursue, but allow them to escape. Raid only to take what we need, no wanton wastage, no despoiling, no burning. Most of all, take this end of the valley and hold it, so that we have a secure camp to work from."
"Good." Jegrai nodded, and felt a rising hope. This might well work. "The warriors are weary enough to accept this, I think. Listen out there—I think the Vredai are equally tired of running and warfare. I think they would welcome the chance to rest. All of you—pass the word that we do not harry the wizards; we will tell the people that they are dangerous, and probably quick to anger—"
"And like to Holy Vedani," his mother interrupted. "That will hold them when naught else will. The Wind Lords would surely curse a man who caused harm to such a wizard. Fear of the Wind Lords will stay their hands where fear of magic would not."
"Very good." He put his cup down on the carpet and leaned forward. "This is what we do not want the wizards to learn; that we are fleeing the Talchai, that we are not here to conquer, but in retreat. If they rally their folk and cause them to come upon us from behind, we surely will be caught between fire and torrent. If the Talchai do not come upon us this summer, they surely will the next."
All four of his advisors nodded at that, faces sober. "Is there anything else?" Shenshu asked.
"I need to learn more of these wizards," he replied, chewing his lip. "Much, much more."
* * *
Though Jegrai had his own tent, he had neither wife nor sister to tend it for him. Though Aravay had her own tent, which had been his father's, she found time to tend to his. The arrangement worked well, for she could bring him the scouting reports—if they were less than urgent—with his dinner.
So she had tonight. The light from the lantern hanging from the centerpole cast a gentle glow that made her seem as ageless as a Wind Lord. She handed him the covered bowl of thin stew she had brought from her fire, and knelt beside him while he ate.
"The wizards are of a surety aiding land-folk over the pass," Aravay said softly. "So all the scouts say."
Jegrai flexed his aching shoulders and leaned back against the tentpole. He had ridden out with a raiding party, but what they had brought back with them was firewood; a singularly awkward prey to carry. "These land-folk either will or will not return; it is of no consequence. If we do settle here, our own folk will make up for those who flee. How do the folk care for this new camp?"
"They do not like the mountain at our back, but the pasturage and good water make up for it," his mother replied. "My son, you are worried. Have you learned something which troubles you?"
"Aye," he brooded for a moment, then concluded that Aravay might as well know the worst. "We can go no further. It is as I feared. Beyond the western pass lies a land that is well ruled, and strong. It is called Yazkirn, and governed by princes. They have ignored our presence because they care not overmuch for these lands; they are hard to reach and tax, and besides, contain the wizards. But—should we force our way over the pass, it would be up with us. They would come to the defense of their land, and crush us. If they even think we have become a threat, they will come to us, and I think we would have no chance."
The fire in the fire-pot flared, and Aravay's eyes showed her alarm, though nothing else did. "How came you to learn this?" she asked, cautiously.
"That merchant we let pass. I questioned him myself; promised him no despoiling in return for truth." Jegrai sighed. "I have some skill at reading men, I think. He told truth. We are in the cooking pot. . . ."
"Unless we can gain the favor of the wizards."
"Aye." He bit his lip, and told her what he would tell no other living soul. "They frighten me, Mother—and they fascinate me. They can call the lightning, for every prisoner we have taken has tales of it, tales so unlikely I think they can only be true. They have used it—imagine this, Mother—to gain metals, and to level great rock outcroppings, and to change the lay of the land about their fortress! And if they can call lightning to do that for them, it should be the work of a single thought to use it to start a fire in the grasslands where we cannot escape i
t."
Only once in Jegrai's memory had the Vredai been caught in a grass fire. They had lost a third of the herds, and many lives, and there were men and women among those left who still bore the ugly keloid scars from it. It had been in the first year of the drought, and the memory still gave him nightmares when storms passed overhead.
"The stories I hear say they are very wise," his mother replied thoughtfully, her hands busy with plaiting a new riding quirt. "And that they do nothing without good reason. And that they are no friends to the kings over the mountains."
Jegrai sat straight up. "That is something I had not heard!" he exclaimed.
His mother looked up and smiled at him. "The kings over the mountains drove them here, or so it is said," she told him serenely. "And wizard or no, I have never yet seen the man who does not thirst for revenge."
"So-ho. A reason to ally to us. Their magic—and our -warriors . . ." Jegrai fell silent, considering the possibilities.
"You have ever been a Khene who respects good advice when you can get it, my son," his mother said demurely, breaking the long silence.
He roused from his thoughts and gave her a half smile. "If there are strange gods to have the blessing of, and wizards to come upon my side—it would be folly to foul my chances, no?"
"And you have never been foolish, not even as a child." Her eyes darkened with affection; then a sadness passed across her face. "The Shaman wished me to tell you that there is no change with Yuchai."
Jegrai cursed under his breath, and his food lost its savor. He started to push his bowl away, then recalled how little they had, and finished it grimly.
"My son—I speak as a mother." Aravay put her hand over his, and her eyes were soft with concern. "I cannot see how Yuchai's hurt is your doing, nor does his mother blame you for it."
"You cannot—but I can," he replied harshly. "The boy follows after me with his heart in his hand. He strives to copy all I do. He wishes so much to have my approval that he would do anything to get it. There was no need for him to have joined the scouts. He was barely within the age. I could have told him he must wait a year. But I was a scout at fourteen summers, so therefore he must do likewise—I should have forbade it. He is not the rider nor the fighter that I was at twelve, much less having the skill I had at fourteen. But I could not find it in my heart to tell him no. And this is the result of my ill-judgment. Bones broken, and flesh torn by the stakes in that pit, and a blow to the head from which he may never awake—and it is only by the grace of the Wind Lords that those people have honor enough not to poison the stakes. It is only by their grace that he is not dead already."
"Jegrai—" Aravay said, after a moment of brooding silence. "I wonder—the Holy One was a healer—and if the wizards are of his kind, could it be that they could help young Yuchai?"
He started, for the thought had not occurred to him. "It may be—it just may be. All the more reason to ally with them. And may the Wind Lords grant it be not too late!"
CHAPTER THREE
Kasha shaded her eyes from the brilliant afternoon sun with one hand while she clung to the polished wood of the Fortress flagpole with the other, and strained up on her toes as high as she dared.
"I wish you wouldn't do that," Teo complained from the window below her, his uneasiness plain in his voice. "It makes me dizzy."
She grinned down at him, perfectly comfortable on her tower-top perch. He squinted up at her; from here his blocky face and wide shoulders made him look a little like a granite statue that had never been completely finished. Hladyr bless, she thought impatiently, I've got both feet planted on the pole-socket. What's to be nervous about?
"Why should it make you dizzy?" she asked mockingly. "It's not you that's up here!"
He shivered visibly and looked away. "I can't help thinking about how Benno fell from up there."
"Benno was a thirteen-year-old fool who didn't live to see fourteen because he was a fool," she retorted, reveling in the brisk east wind that was playing with the short strands of her hair. "He climbed up right after a storm when the slates were slippery, and he didn't have a rope on him. I do, because I'm not a fool."
"We know you aren't a fool, Kasha," Zorsha replied. "You keep forgetting Teo saw him fall."
So did I, and so did you, she thought, but didn't say. People die; it happens. You learn from it, but you try not to let it live in you forever.
"Now that you're up there," Teo said, carefully not looking at her, "can you see them?" He tugged at his neat little beard with his right hand; an unconscious gesture that showed how nervous he was.
She squinted at the eastern end of the Vale. "Maybe . . . I can see a big dust-cloud, anyway. That'll be their horse-herd." She groped for the far-glasses looped around her neck, and put them to her eyes. It wasn't easy adjusting them with only one hand, but unlike Benno, she wasn't out to prove what a great daredevil she was. The blurs of green, white, and brown finally leapt into clarity.
"Well, I sort of see them," she called down. "Too far away to make out people, but there's a bunch of white things that are probably tents. And if there's as many people as there are tents, we've been undercounting."
She swung the lenses slightly right, to see if she could make out anything under the dust-cloud. "Hladyr bless—" she said in awe, the words trailing off.
"What?" Teo asked anxiously. "Something—something wrong?"
"No, nothing like that. It's just—I've never seen so many horses before in my entire life." Even with the far-glasses they were just tiny dots—but so many of them!
"There must be hundreds—thousands. No wonder they move them every day; they'd eat the grass down to the ground if they stayed put for long." She let the glasses fall, and felt for her footing on the slates of the peaked roof. "I've seen enough; I'm coming down."
* * *
The window in Halun's study stood wide open to the balmy breeze, and it faced westward, down the side of the Pass opposite the Vale. It was seductively easy to believe that the danger posed by the nomads simply didn't exist. Even the sight of the novices beyond the walls (cutting back all brush that could conceal anything bigger than a rabbit) didn't break the illusion of safety.
Halun was swiftly coming to the conclusion that he had been as much a prey to that illusion as anyone else. Young Zorsha's report of the afternoon's observations had been unsettling, to say the least.
"That many?" he asked again, still surprised. "Truly that many of them?"
"That many," Zorsha replied grimly, pushing his hair out of his grey-brown eyes. "Felaras was not exaggerating the danger, I can tell you that. We haven't heard from the Watchers she sent out to try and get a closer view, but from the size of the encampment these nomads are traveling with a population the equal of a small city."
"I never said she was exaggerating, lad," Halun answered, crossing his arms on the table between them and leaning his weight on them. "I just thought she might have been misinformed, or have miscalculated. She was right; I was wrong, and I should have known better than to challenge a Master in her own specialty." He produced a rueful chuckle. "Serves me right, too. Pride begins, a stumble follows."
Zorsha half-smiled, but his deep-set eyes were still shadowed with unvoiced worry. "Kasha thinks we're in even deeper trouble than Felaras has let on. It could be; of the three of us, she talks more openly to Kasha than to Teo or me, but even I can see she hasn't been sleeping much or eating regularly."
"I don't suppose you have any notion of what her plans are, do you?"
He was faintly disappointed when his former novice shook his head. "She's still collecting opinions," Zorsha told him.
There was silence for a moment. Sunlight was beginning to shine in through the window, and it made a square of bright gold on the satiny brown wood of the floor. Halun watched dust-motes dance in the sunbeam until Zorsha spoke again.
"I can tell you about those. Since they seem to fall into categories, she's been having me tally them. About a third of the ones we've
gotten so far are variations on the theme of running and hiding. About a third want us to stay where we are and pretend we're invisible. Another third are variations on negotiating with them—"
"Do we have any notion of what we're dealing with?"
"Well, Teo says they're definitely the Clan called 'Running Horse'; that's Vredai in their tongue." Zorsha managed the strange name with an ease Halun found enviable. He'd never been much good at speaking languages, although he'd mastered the written version of several. "He says this is a real Clan and not some outlaws, and something he uncovered in the Archives has Felaras a little more hopeful. But whether it's to give us an edge in frightening them off or in talking to them, I don't know."
"My personal choice would be to remove ourselves to one of the two sister-houses," Halun replied, "but I can see the difficulties. The only conceivable way we could get by with it would be to slip in a few at a time; otherwise the Prince of Parda or the Duke of Albirn would forbid any more of us within their borders. Failing that, we could pack ourselves up wholesale and try somewhere else, I suppose."
Zorsha sighed and shook his head, and his straw-gold hair tumbled back into his eyes. "I told that to Kasha," he said, raking it out of the way again. "She pointed out that more than half of our members are over forty; a third are over fifty. Can you see yourself making a trek across the mountains, when you've never been outside the Vale since you were a novice?"
Halun was forced to admit young Kasha had a point. "I suppose not. It is altogether galling, but I am afraid I must admit I couldn't make an unassisted trek to the caves, these days. And even with the help of you younger folk—Hladyr bless, but we'd have to devote four of them just to keep Diermud from following a portentous cloud-shape or mist-wisp right off the side of the mountain."
"And he's not the only one," Zorsha agreed. "Halun, at this point leaving is right out of the question. Kasha has been out of the Fortress this past month, out on the peaks, and she told me what a trip would be like if we tried to make it—"
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