It didn’t take long to make contact with the centaurs. They found a band of close to a hundred males trotting along the bank of a dry wash ravine. They were a swarthy breed, dark coated and dark skinned. Balif noticed that they wore a lot of seashell ornaments. That meant they were a coastal clan. Why were they so far inland?
The outriders spotted Balif’s party. It was hard not to, what with the general’s golden cape billowing in the wind. Centaurs broke off in small groups, fanning out on either side of the elves. Everyone but Balif watched their movements with concern. It looked very much as if they were being surrounded, and there was no Rufe in a blanket to distract a large party of dangerous opponents.
The main band of centaurs, forty strong, descended the ravine bank, crossed the dry bed, and climbed out, coming straight for Balif. At a strategic point atop a rocky outcropping, Balif halted. Artyrith and Treskan drew up one either side. Mathi halted behind him. She had to admire Balif’s presence. Sitting there on his horse, dressed like a great lord of Silvanost, he looked fit to command any situation.
Whooping and whistling, the centaurs made a ring around the trio. Mathi rubbed her sweaty palms together and tried not to stare at the array of weapons around her, stone axes, mauls, bent and dented swords taken from metal-making foes. The centaurs often carried two weapons at once, one for each hand. Their favorite tool was the one they had invented, a long-handled club of dark, dense wood with a ball-shaped head. Swung in wide circles by madly galloping centaurs, the knob could easily crack an elf skull wide open.
The centaurs jostled each other, making loud whistling sounds through their teeth. Visible over their heads were an array of totems, or standards, brandished by the chief’s champions. With some shoving and loud rebukes, the champions bulled their way through their comrades. The totems were poles fourteen feet high with crossbars lashed along their length. Important spiritual and magical artifacts were fastened to the crossbars: skulls of slain enemies, crystals, shells, bits of metal chain gleaned from a despoiled caravan, and odder things such as dried hornets’ nests or painted gobs of molded clay.
When the champions reached the front, they made a lane for their leader. A centaur chief was always the eldest male in the clan, and he was ancient. His hair and coat were dappled with white. His left rear leg dangled off the ground. The muscle had been cut in some long-ago fight, and upon healing it had shrunk so much that the chief’s hoof no longer touched the ground. In many barbarous societies, a damaged warrior might have been turned out and abandoned but not among the centaurs. They esteemed the wisdom-and cunning-of the aged.
The seashell centaurs were beardless, either by heredity or custom. When the chief emerged from the pack, he limped up to the splendidly dressed Balif.
“May the sun shine only on your back,” he said gruffly. His voice was low and raspy. Mathi saw why. He had a huge scar across his throat, an old one.
“My greetings to you, mighty Chief,” Balif replied. “You honor me with your words.”
“Sky-folk are alone?”
“We three are part of a larger company, sent here by my great lord, the Speaker of the Stars. In his name I greet you. I am Balif, son of Arnasmir Thraxenath, of the Greenrunners clan.”
The champions around the chief muttered and shifted. The general’s name was well known and carried weight even out there.
“You are welcome, son of Arnasmir, but I must ask, why are you here?”
“I came to see you, Chief.”
The old centaur blinked his liquid brown eyes. He put a thumb to his own chest.
“Yes. You are Greath, are you not?” Balif pronounced the centaur’s name to rhyme with teeth.
The centaur spread his hands. “Greath I am. Have you seen our faces before, sky-folk?”
“Never, mighty Chief, but even in the Speaker’s land we know the name of Greath.”
The ancient horse-man made a horrible face. He was smiling. Mathi saw his front teeth had been knocked out long past.
Having made the old chief smile, Balif went on. “Mighty One, my great lord, the Speaker of the Stars, hears grave things about this land, his land.” All three elves watched closely for signs of resistance to the claim. Greath was in such good humor, he let it pass.
“It has come to the ears of the Speaker that many folk from outside his realm have entered his land, to pass through and to live. Those who pass through go with the Speaker’s blessing. Those who settle on his land without his leave are not welcome and will face his displeasure.”
The warriors shook their knobkerries and dented swords. They were proud creatures, not easily intimidated. Greath let them grumble a bit then silenced them with a bob of his shaggy gray head.
“It is not the way of the Hok-nu to grow in place like trees,” he said, naming the centaur tribe. “We have left our place of wandering, the land of Vesh, to seek grazing for our families.” Vesh was the centaurs’ name for the great northern coast.
In spite of their ferocious appearance, centaurs were vegetarians. They lived off roots and shoots of trees and grasses, enlivened by fruit in season. They regarded cultivated crops as travesties of nature and would often burn gardens full of produce rather than eat such unnatural bounty.
“The land is your land, as the Great Speaker knows,” Balif said. “Those who pass through the Great Speaker’s land are not the Great Speaker’s enemies, but there are those who come to take that which belongs to the Speaker of the Stars.”
“Vay-peh.” That was centaur dialect for humans.
Balif nodded solemnly. “Not only vay-peh. The wander-folk too.”
Mention of the kender caused the assembled centaurs to grimace and prance. More than a few looked back over their broad backs, as if to find Rufe or the Longwalker skulking there.
Mathi had not seen such reaction in centaurs before. They were very bold in their emotions-love, fear, hate, joy-but that was new. At the mention of kender, the Hok-nu were disturbed.
“We have met them. They are troublesome,” Greath declared.
“Do you know where the little people come from?” Balif asked.
Greath pressed a palm to his forehead, the centaur equivalent of a shrug. “It is said they came out of a crack in the ground, like vermin from a wound. Nothing is a barrier to them, not water, not the brown land, not the high mountains of Khal.”
With much flowery language, Greath explained further that the kender had been seen lurking around for the past four seasons, but the summer brought a torrent of them. At first the centaurs had no problem with them, but lately the newly arrived little people had taken to pilfering the centaurs’ meager possessions. That they would not tolerate.
“Him, little man.” The old chief hiked his dusky thumb at a totem held behind him. Balif, Mathi, and Artyrith followed his finger and saw a small, white skull attached to the lowest crossbar. The forehead had been crushed by a knobkerrie.
Sensing he would learn no more from the centaurs, Balif presented Greath a gift, a brightly polished bronze knife with a gold hilt and a round beryl stone in the pommel. The old roughneck was greatly pleased.
“You are Greath’s friend!” he vowed. “The people of Balif are the friends of the Hok-nu!”
“It warms my heart to hear you say so, mighty Chief. I will tell my lord, the Speaker of the Stars, the passage of the Hok-nu into his land should not worry him. You will return to the coast by autumn?” Flipping the shiny blade back and forth, the centaur chief agreed. “Then I shall tell my great lord, the Speaker, to be easy in his mind about his friends the Hok-nu.”
The assembled centaurs gave Balif their version of a rousing cheer. They reared back on their hind legs, pawing the air with their front hoofs and ululating deep in their throats. It was an uncanny sound.