Mathi got up, shaking. Artyrith stood guard from the edge of the road while Balif and the scribe went to Rufe. He was standing over the last captive, knives outthrust in both hands. His eyes were shut tight.
The shackled little man tugged Rufe’s jerkin. Dolanath’s bane cracked on eye.
“Hi,” he said.
“Hello,” said Balif calmly. To Mathi he said, “Do you know this person?”
Mathi admitted they had met before. “I didn’t know he was with us,” she said lamely.
Artyrith came trotting up. “You could have gotten us all killed!”
“Coulda but didn’t. Why cry for bread you didn’t bake?” said Rufe. He tucked away his wicked-looking knives and picked up one of the prisoner’s manacles.
“Riveted,” he said. “Can’t pick a lock where there ain’t one.”
“Never you mind.”
The captive grasped his own hand over the knuckles and bore down, grunting. Mathi watched him squeeze his bound hand until it was small enough to slip through the bronze ring. So that’s how little men were able to escape bonds so easily! She wondered if she was the first outsider to see it done.
“Thanks, brother,” said the little man. He stood up. Slightly taller than his savior, his hair was lighter too, more golden, though caked with dirt. His nose, though prominent, was less of a weather vane than Rufe’s. By little-man standards, he must have been considered rather handsome.
“What goes on here?” asked Balif.
“I’m the Longwalker,” said the little man. He held out his hand in human fashion. Balif knew the custom and shook the little man’s grubby hand.
“What’s a Longwalker?” asked Treskan.
“He’s a high and mighty fellow,” said Rufe. “The leader of his people.”
“You mean a chief?” Balif said.
Rufe nodded then shook his head. “Yes. No. The Longwalker leads the way for his people on the march. He makes the trail the others can follow. But he’s not a king.”
Balif and Artyrith cocked their heads in unison. “More horsemen coming this way. We’d better be gone.” Balif agreed. He offered his hand to the Longwalker, who grabbed hold and climbed on in front of the elf. Mathi did the same for Rufe, and together they faded into the grass. Artyrith and the scribe went ahead while Balif brought up the rear. As his horse walked single-file behind the pack ponies, Balif faced backward and leaned down over his horse’s rump. He brushed up the stalks of grass behind them, sometimes weaving the tips together with deft fingers. The effect was to erase all but the tiniest traces of their passage through the grass.
Announced by a whirlwind of dust, the nomad avengers halted at the scene of the earlier fracas. The dead were examined and the wounded treated. Listening in total silence, Mathi concluded that their presence was compromised. When the humans recovered elf arrows from their comrades’ bodies, they would know a party of armed Silvanesti were around.
As if reading her mind, Artyrith smugly whispered, “We weren’t here.” He and Balif had supplied themselves with centaur arrows at Free Winds, he explained. In the bloody confusion, the nomads might convince themselves they were attacked by a war party of centaurs instead of two elves and a crazy little man.
They stole away, grateful not to be noticed. The Longwalker contently rode with the general, but after a short distance, Rufe dropped off Mathi’s pony and slipped away in the weeds. Mathi started to call him, but fearing the humans might hear, held her tongue.
Not until they were half a day north of the road did Balif speak again. He reclaimed the lead from Artyrith then stopped the procession when he reached a small stream.
The horses watered themselves. Balif said, “Where is the other little fellow?”
“Run off,” Mathi reported.
“Explain how you know him, child.”
She described how she’d found Rufe prowling the fortress and sort of hired him. She admitted that Rufe was the author of the governor’s troubles, but since she had never met a being like him before, she had asked Rufe to come with her, ostensibly as a guide, but also as a living example of the kind of people currently flooding the eastern province of Silvanesti.
Balif listened without expression then asked his passenger: “Who are you people?”
“We have as many different names as the people we meet. We’ve been called golighters, halflers, tweeners, and wanderfolk. Among ourselves we are just People, although the human horse riders call us ‘kender,’ which in their tongue means ‘those who all look alike,’” the Longwalker said. “Which we don’t.”
“Where do you come from?” asked Artyrith.
“From the sunset.”
“Where are you going?”
“To the sunrise, by way of any place we haven’t been before.”
Artyrith clucked his tongue at the poetically evasive answers, but Balif accepted them as offered. The elves and Mathi passed around a water bottle while the horses’ finished. Without warning, the Longwalker slipped off the general’s horse.
“Wait,” said Balif. “Stay with us. I would know more about you.”
“I thank you for your help,” the little man replied, “but my feet itch too much to ride. Gotta walk. Farewell.”
Before they could do anything, he was in the high grass and gone. Mathi called loudly, “But what is your name? Your given name?”
“Serius Bagfull, your lifelong friend,” his voice came back, drifting over the grass from no real direction.
From two mysterious companions there remained none. Balif said, “Mathi, from now on you must get my approval before adding anyone to our party. Our mission is secret, after all.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“I do thank you for making contact with these newcomers. What did they call themselves? Wanderfolk? I see now how they could have driven Governor Dolanath to distraction.”
He looked over the sea of wind-tossed weeds. It was evident from his expression that not even he, a full-blooded elf, could detect any sign of the departed Longwalker.
Balif continued to call them wanderfolk for some time. Treskan adopted the name kender and used it in conversation and his notes. In time the elves forgot Balif’s term and used kender too.
CHAPTER 10
The sea of grass thinned out as they approached the Thon-Tanjan, becoming isolated tufts of tall grass in a sea of stony loam. Tracks appeared in the bare soil, lots of them. Not an hour passed that the elves didn’t spy other wanderers entering the great bend of the river. Many were humans, mounted and on foot. Balif said that the people he saw walking concerned him more than the riders. Nomads traveled constantly, moving their families and herds wherever water and forage was best. No one in a nomad clan walked unless they were in dire straits. Humans on foot meant emigrants, settlers. They were looking for a place to stay. Speaker Silvanos would not tolerate them on land he claimed as his own. There would be war.
In addition to humans, they also saw centaur bands in the Tanjan bend. The Silvanesti had never had too much trouble from the horse-men. They were even more footloose than human nomads, and if they caused trouble, a few flights of griffon riders usually sufficed to drive them out. Balif confessed he had never seen centaurs in such numbers. While the humans seemed to be moving west to east, the centaurs were coming down from the north. After a full day of watching horse-men streaming south, Balif resolved to speak to them.
“Is that wise?” asked Artyrith. Even from a distance, it was easy to see the centaurs were armed.
“Nothing about this journey is wise,” Balif replied. He smiled wryly. “That’s why it will succeed. No one expects us to behave so foolishly.”
He took a moment to don his most impressive outfit, white silk robes with a cloak made of cloth of gold. At the general’s insistence, Mathi, Treskan, and Artyrith smartened up, though there was little the scribe or the orphan girl could do about their poor wardrobe. Tidied as best they could, they abandoned stealth and rode forth as if they were lords of all they surveyed.