by Dragon Lance
From her litter, Nacris watched and laughed. With a hundred Jade Men, she could have wiped out the nomads before her. With a thousand, she could have ruled the plains. How well they moved and fought! Those mortally stricken lay in the trampled weeds, she noted with a pang, like exotic flowers cut down by a scythe.
The surviving Jade Men swarmed over the confused riders, dragging them off their horses, stabbing, choking, even biting them into submission. A hollow space opened in the midst of the nomad formation as Karada’s warriors drew back from the bizarre green killers. When the dust cleared, the bows went to work again, this time with carefully aimed arrows. Jade Man after Jade Man was hit.
A loud murmur arose from the nomads. Even bristling with arrows, some of the green-skinned youths struggled to rise and carry on the fight. Nacris strained neck and arms trying to lift herself to see what was happening. As the breeze swept the dust aside, she saw a dark-skinned man with a bronze sword in his hand. On foot, he went among the wounded Jade Men, dispatching them with well-placed thrusts.
By the time Nacris hauled herself up to stand with her crutch, it was all over. Tears coursed down her weathered face, though she did not make a sound. Her ploy of waiting in the open had drawn Karada, just as she hoped. Her Jade Men had died well. She was so very proud of her children.
The dark swordsman remounted and rode through the nomad line. Leaning hard on her crutch, Nacris pulled her gaze from the sprawled forms of her young Jade Men and presented the point of her spear to the enemy.
Among the lead riders Nacris noticed a strikingly pretty girl with long black hair and jet eyes to match. Nacris knew that girl. Her name was...
“Beramun,” the girl supplied, seeing the crippled woman struggling to remember.
“You came back. Zannian will be pleased.”
“I don’t think so. I’ve brought friends, many friends.” To the dark man at her side, Beramun added, “Watch her, Bahco. She’s a snake!”
Nacris smiled through her tears. “And Karada? Where is she?”
Beramun turned and pointed to the cliff. “There. She sent us to fetch you.”
Nacris drew back her arm and flung the javelin. Unsteady on one leg, her cast was awkward, and the weapon flew low. It landed in the dirt in front of Bahco’s horse.
“Take her,” he said. Four nomads seized Nacris but found her unresisting. In fact, she broke into wild laughter.
“My design is almost complete!” she chortled. “Obey my will! Take me to Karada!”
*
Zannian couldn’t believe it. Victory had been his – the Arkuden himself was talking surrender – and now everything was falling apart! What capricious spirits were at work here? How could his glorious destiny have splintered so thoroughly, like a stick of rotten wood?
He abandoned the north baffle, for which so many had died, and got on his horse. The bulk of his once-numerous band was hotly engaged, and every man, every weapon, counted. He rallied his demoralized men and they pushed their new enemies back a bit, gaining room to breathe. The newcomers were not too numerous. Zannian guessed they totaled perhaps four hundred, similar to his on-hand strength, but they were powerfully armed, rode bigger animals, and both horses and riders were fresher than his own troops.
Slowly his men retreated westward, forced away from the village. During the running fight, Zannian rode through the site of another skirmish. The bodies on the ground were green-skinned.
Jade Men. This was his mother’s work. Only she or the Master could have commanded the Jade Men into battle, and Sthenn was certainly nowhere about. Zannian had no chance to look for Nacris’s body among the others before the swirling fight carried him and his men away from where the Jade Men perished.
He spotted Hoten in the fray, trading blows with a sturdy foe on a tall horse. The old raider was having the worst of it, so Zannian charged through the press and speared the nomad on his blind side. Hoten saluted wearily. Zannian started to ask about Nacris, but new enemies appeared, and he and Hoten were driven apart.
A new column of nomads appeared on the raiders’ left. Though smaller than the first group, they still numbered nearly two hundred robust warriors. Outnumbered and outridden, the raiders began to lose heart. Some threw down their weapons and whipped their exhausted mounts westward to the empty camp by the river. Zannian boiled with fury. The cowards would not dare quit the battle if Sthenn were present!
As one trio of deserters cantered away, watching anxiously over their shoulders for pursuit by nomads or Zannian’s loyalists, they failed to see a line of ogres stalking toward them. The biggest ogre raised his chipped stone axe and knocked the lead rider off his horse, cleaving him from shoulder to waist with one blow. The other horses reared, throwing off their startled riders. Two ogres picked up a deserter by his ankles. The terrified raider screamed as he was flung back into the churning battle. He vanished into the mass of fighting humans and stamping horses. The last deserter saw none of this. He ran like a rabbit. Sneering, the ogres let him go.
Ungrah-de hailed Zannian, saying, “We heard the fight coming our way and came to join you.” His brawny arms were stained to the elbows with his enemies’ blood. “Your men are running away.”
“Kill as many as you like, great chief!” Zan snarled. “It will encourage the rest to fight!”
Nearby, the nomads broke through the raiders. Upon seeing the ogres the nomads wavered, but they were many and the ogres few, so they resumed their charge. Ungrah’s warriors did not look as though they could withstand a mounted attack, but they turned the nomads’ spears with their stone-faced bucklers and chopped them down with broad sweeps of their axes. Zannian reorganized his remaining men behind the firm line established by Ungrah-de. The nomads made a few forays against the formidable monsters, but these were bloodily repulsed.
Horns blared, and the nomads drew back several score paces, forming into two blocks. Zannian saw the larger block, on his right, was commanded by a huge man riding an equally tall horse. The nomads on the left seemed to be led by a muscular young man with richly brown skin and short, black, tightly curled hair. There was no sign of a female chief, the Karada of legend.
There was much posturing and spear shaking, but as horses and riders calmed, the two bands drew farther apart. The sun was not long from setting, and the nomads had the blazing light in their eyes. Across from them, many raiders were reeling on their animals, nearly overcome by exhaustion.
Into the open ground between the two forces rode five nomads on four horses. The giant and the dark man were two of them. The third was a slender woman with long black hair. In the midst of the ruin of his dreams of conquest, Zannian felt a surge of fire in his veins when he recognized Beramun.
His elation was tempered by the sight of the fourth horse. It carried two women: one, a red-haired girl Beramun’s age, Zan dismissed immediately; the other, older and browned by years of sun, merited a longer inspection. The older woman wore a fine bronze helmet of elven make. Her jaw and throat were streaked with livid, white scars.
Beside him, Hoten drew in a breath sharply. “Karada!”
“Are you certain?” Zannian demanded.
“In my youth I rode with her band,” was the awed reply. “That’s her.”
Zannian gave a low growl of annoyance. “First the Arkuden and now Karada. Too many dead people are still alive.”
He and Hoten rode out together with Ungrah-de striding along between their horses. They came within six steps of the nomads and stopped.
No one spoke. The only sound was the ogre’s loud breathing and the sound of horses’ tails switching away flies.
Hoten broke the impasse. “Greetings, Karada,” he said, hailing his former chieftain.
She squinted against the flare of the setting sun. “I know your face. You’re... Hoten, son of Nito. You were in my band, many years ago.”
He nodded, thinking it strange that her recognition should please him so.
“Now you ride with these savages?” P
akito growled at him. “Yevi-spawn!”
So much for old memories.
Zannian said, “Speak, Karada. Why have you come here?”
“To save my brother and his people. I may be too late for one but not the other.”
Zannian did not enlighten her that Amero lived. “You don’t belong here. Go back to the east. Battle the Silvanesti, and leave this land to us.”
“You are the invaders!” Beramun spoke up. “Murderers and looters! Go back to the stinking forest you call home and tell your dragon master you have failed!”
The raider chief turned his horse’s head toward her. “I saved you from the Master more than once, girl. Have you no gratitude?”
“Speak to me, raider,” Karada said severely. “I give you this leave: he gone from the Valley of the Falls by sunrise tomorrow, or your corpse will rot where it falls.”
“This one is a warrior,” Ungrah said suddenly. His dark eyes had not left Karada’s face since she’d first spoken.
Hearing the imposing creature speak their language startled the nomads. Ungrah went on. “Even in the high mountains we have heard of the Scarred One. I see now the tales are true.”
“This is not your fight, ogre,” she replied. “Withdraw, and none shall hinder you.”
“My fight is any I choose. Killing the wall-people was just work, but now I think this fight will be good. I will wear your skull with pride, Karada.” He rattled the trophies hanging from his armored chest.
In answer, she drew her long bronze sword. Zannian and Hoten tensed, ready to fight. Ungrah stood his ground, feet planted firmly, both massive hands resting on the head of his axe, unmoving as a mountain.
“To the death then, is it?” said Karada, looking from the ogre to the raider chief.
“It is,” Zannian said.
Ungrah and the raiders turned to go. They’d taken several steps before she spoke again.
“I have Nacris.”
The simple words halted them. Hoten tried to see his mate’s fate in Karada’s expression, but the nomad chiefs face was like the eastern cliffs – hard and unyielding.
“Does my mother live?”
Something flickered across Karada’s face. “Mother?”
“Does she live?” Zannian snapped.
“For now. If I return her to you, will you leave the valley?”
“No.” Hoten’s protest was overridden as Zannian said, “We did not come all this way to fall short now! Karada is my mother’s blood foe. Nacris would rather die at her hands than be spared by her!”
The raider chief kicked his mount into motion, leading his sullen men back to camp.
Before he turned to follow them, Ungrah-de said, “When the sun is next overhead, we will meet here and test our strengths, arm to arm. Until then, savor your blood, Karada. Tomorrow it will stain the soil at my feet.”
Though the other nomads, even giant Pakito, were visibly affected by the threat, Karada turned her back on Ungrah and rode back to her band.
*
High atop the walls of Yala-tene, Amero and his companions watched the nomads and raiders parley, unable even to discern who the participants were. Yet, Amero was almost certain that one of the nomads was his sister. She was on a wheat-colored horse, and something about the way she sat the animal struck a chord in his mind.
When the two groups rode away from each other, he was filled with joy. Surely the raiders were defeated! What else could they do but abandon the siege and leave the valley?
Amero saw the nomads return to the north baffle and set up camp beneath the walls. A body of men marching in close order down Cedarsplit Gap joined the nomads. It wasn’t until they were much nearer that it became apparent the warriors on foot were elves.
“What does this mean?” asked Hekani, who’d come over from the west baffle once the ogres had retreated. “Silvanesti fighting alongside nomads? Such things don’t happen!”
“What about men allied with a green dragon and with ogres?” replied Lyopi tartly.
“I don’t know what’s possible, and I don’t care! It is a great day!” Amero declared. Worn down to raw courage and sheer nerve, the other villagers could only agree.
Amero hurried to the north baffle, eager to see his sister after so long a time. Beramun would be there, too – brave girl! He longed to see her again and do honor to her courage. Alone of the scouts he’d sent to find Nianki, she had survived and brought the nomads back to save them.
By the time he arrived at the entrance, nomads had already swarmed onto the baffle and were making their way into the village. The people of Yala-tene lined the walls to cheer them. Gratitude poured out of every hoarse throat.
Beyond the wrecked barricade, Amero stopped. He could see them coming. His throat tightened, and his hands trembled. Beramun’s raven hair was painted dark crimson by the setting sun. In front of her, a tawny woman of forty summers clambered over the boulders and rubble. It was Nianki indeed, and how strong she looked!
Where the obstructions ended and the wall began, Karada and her party halted. She looked up and saw the assembled villagers waiting for them. Standing on the wall directly above her was a bearded man in tattered clothes. He was hollow-eyed, battered, and cut about the hands and face. A handsome woman with a thick chestnut braid of hair stood at his side, gripping a much-used spear.
Karada felt her heart beat hard, the pulse pounding in her ears. The setting sun was behind the people on the wall, leaving their faces in shadow. Yet she knew the bearded man. Though her voice, when at last she could speak, sounded questioning and strained, she knew him.
“Amero?”
“Nianki!” the man called joyously, spreading his arms wide.
No one else in all the world called her by her birth name. It was Amero. He was alive.
She didn’t remember climbing the last bit. Next thing she knew she was on the wall, arms around the apparition of her brother. He was solid and real, no spirit, and when he drew back from her, she saw the old gleam of wit in his hazel eyes.
“I can hardly believe it! You saved us!” He was grinning so wide his face seemed ready to split.
“You called me,” she said quietly, moved. “I came.”
Chapter 11
Vast was the relief felt in Yala-tene that night. The desperate, hungry villagers poured from their homes, embracing any nomad who would stand still for it. Though not plentifully supplied themselves, the nomads shared what provender they had with Amero’s people. It was not a celebration – everyone was too tired for that – but the feeling of doom over the valley had eased.
Beramun was enthusiastically greeted by all. Even Lyopi, not overly fond of the nomad girl, honored her courage and perseverance. When Beramun told them Karada’s band had met the three children from Yala-tene and that the children were safely hidden with the non-combatants outside the Valley of the Falls, the villagers gained hope that the rest of their young might have made it as well.
Amero, Lyopi, and the village elders left the safety of the wall for the first time in many days and went to Karada’s camp. There they met Bahco and renewed their acquaintance with Pakito and Samtu, both of whom Amero had known from his sister’s last visit to Yala-tene a dozen years before. The villagers were presented to Balif, who greeted the Arkuden and his people with great courtesy.
Unlike his hard-riding captors, Balif had taken the time to wash after the day’s fighting. Dressed in a sky-blue robe and girded by a cloth-of-gold belt, he looked every bit the elf lord.
“How is it you’re here fighting alongside my sister?” Amero asked.
“It’s the fault of the moon,” was Balif’s reply.
Conversation around the great campfire died. “Moon?” asked Lyopi.
“Just so. I was on a hunting expedition north of the Thon-Tanjan during the dark of the white moon, and the catch was meager. My hunt master recommended we return to Silvanost and try our luck later, but I knew the moon would return soon and the hunting would improve. I insisted u
pon staying on the plain a few days longer.” He squared his angular shoulders and tried not to look irritated. “Two nights later we were taken unawares by Karada’s band.”
“You might as well blame Beramun as the moon,” Karada said, sipping cider. “It was she who brought us west.”
Sitting in the circle behind Karada, Beramun blushed as all eyes turned to her.
Balif explained that the ogre threat had persuaded him to offer his sword to Karada’s cause.
Amero gripped his sister’s hand and smiled. “I always believed you were alive,” he said. “I knew you would come.”
“Yes, he only feared you’d arrive after the village was razed,” Lyopi said dryly.
Amero protested amid general laughter. While he was distracted, Karada freed her hand from his and moved away, ostensibly to refill her cup.
Talk continued, with confessions of faith balanced against admissions of doubt. The conversation remained light until Pakito said, “Tomorrow, will the raiders really stand and fight?”
The camp grew quiet. Burning wood hissed and popped in the fire.
“They will, and so will the ogres,” Karada said.
“How many ogres are there?” asked Bahco.
“You saw them all today,” Hekani said. “About two dozen are still breathing. There were thirty, once.” Hekani smiled grimly. “We took care of a few already.”
“Beating them will take new tactics,” mused Karada. “Maybe new weapons...”
“Filthy monsters,” Samtu muttered. More loudly, she said, “These raiders are outnumbered. If they were wise, they’d ride out tonight and leave the ogres to fend for themselves!”
“You can’t count out the raiders,” said Beramun. “Zannian has spent his entire life preparing to conquer the plains. It’s all his mother and the green dragon have trained him for. He won’t give up that dream. As long as Zannian lives, there will be no peace on the western plain.” Since she knew the raiders better than anyone, her words carried weight.