He returned to his commander’s side. Ever loyal, Lofotan trailed behind Balif as the general stalked back and forth, drawing grandiose fortifications in the air.
Days passed. The oppressed did not flock to Balif’s banner.
A few kender arrived to look the place over, curious about the proclaimed safe haven. They looked at the pole with its flag, the empty hilltop, and went on their way. Mathi couldn’t blame them. The whole thing smelled like a nomad plot to concentrate their enemies in one spot to ensure their utter destruction. Only the magic of Balif’s name drew anyone there. Once they saw there were no defenses and no one to fight off Bulnac’s experienced warriors, the curious kender melted into the greenwood. If she hadn’t grown to care about the elf general, Mathi would have left too.
The Longwalker remained. At times in the following days he was the only one of two kender on the bluff. He had another with him-white-haired and wizened. The Longwalker produced swaths of different colored cloth, gave them to the oldster, and in a days’ time a second flag flew from the sapling. It was a bold blue rectangle covered in tiny brace-shaped crosses made of red silk. It was the banner of the united kender clans, the Longwalker explained. It attracted no more support than Balif’s.
The whole thing began to feel farcical until a band of centaurs arrived. They came through the lowland woods late one day. Their arrival sent ripples of alarm all the way to Balif. He ordered that the centaurs be welcomed as friends. The next morning they reached the hill. They were eleven strong, all warriors. It turned out they were all that was left of a much larger band wiped out by Bulnac’s tribe.
“Greath’s band?” said Balif, recognizing their tribal tattoos. Sadly, the centaurs nodded. “Where is the mighty chief?”
“Slain, wise one! Slain by the two-and-ones!” Centaurs, being half human and half horse, considered themselves whole people, while horse riding humans were only half normal. The combination of a human on horseback they called a two-and-one.
It was grave news. Greath had declared his friendship to Balif, an oath unbreakable. The general had hoped to cultivate Greath’s band as allies against the humans. Now they were gone.
“You are welcome to stay among us,” he told the centaurs. They were stout fighters, loyal and fierce, and they stayed. Whatever qualms the kender had about Balif’s fortress, the centaurs remained. Not one of them complained about their position. Why should they? They had nowhere else to go.
Each night Balif disappeared into the woods alone. That was unsettling enough, but on the third night Mathi discovered his clothes in a pile by the general’s tent. Balif had gone off without them, carrying only his knife. She told Lofotan. The old captain tried tracking his commander, but lost him in the swamp a few miles upstream from the bluff. When he returned to camp, Mathi questioned how an experienced Silvanesti soldier like Lofotan could lose anyone’s trail.
“All right, here is the truth: I didn’t lose him. I turned back. I did not want to see what my commander has become.”
On the sixth night after raising his banner, Balif returned before dawn dragging a heavy body. At first they took it for game, but the carcass wasn’t a deer or wild pig. Balif dragged it to the foot of the hill and left it.
The Longwalker, the centaurs, and Mathi gathered around. The curious kender turned the corpse over.
It was a human, a nomad by his clothes and hair. Evidently Balif had encountered him on his nightly prowl.
“A scout,” Balif said from the recesses of his tent. “I caught him in the forest not ten miles from where we stand.”
“I understand killing him, Lord General, but why fetch back his remains?’ asked the leader of the centaurs, Zakki by name.
“I didn’t want to leave him out there.” There was something very odd in his voice, a plaintive quality out of step with his new restive manner.
“Slain, he points to enemies,” Lofotan said, interpreting for the others. “Vanished, anything might have taken him.”
Zakki said, “We will bury him, Lord General.” Two centaurs dragged the nomad away by the feet.
Lofotan went after them to see that the grave was well concealed. That left Mathi, Treskan, and the Longwalker outside Balif’s tent.
“Chief, will you excuse us? I have some information to share with my scribe.” With a shrug, the Longwalker departed. “You remain, too, girl.”
“Yes, my lord?” Mathi said when they were alone.
“Bulnac will be here soon. Two days, maybe three.”
Mathi was astounded. “But how, my lord?”
“The scout was not alone.” He grimaced. “I could not get them all.” Bulnac was pouring south and east, driving everything before him. Greath’s centaurs were no longer a threat. That left only Balif and the kender.
“How many warriors does he have?” the scribe asked.
“Five thousand horse, plus many more on foot. Remember the road we found? He’s rallied every footloose and disaffected nomad in the eastern province to his banner.” All told, Balif estimated Bulnac’s force at nearly twenty thousand.
“We can’t possibly hold off such a horde!”
“There’s more.”
What more mattered? Treskan fingered his talisman nervously. Mathi noticed he always did that when confronted by the greatest danger.
“I will not be myself much longer,” Balif said. His voice, normally clear and confident, was choked. “Already I am … changed, and what is changed is not turning back to anything close to my normal self. In a week I won’t be able to command anything.”
Mathi was surprised. Her own reversion was very slow, almost imperceptible. Hair was returning to her legs and body, but as yet she thought as clearly as ever. It must be part of the Creator’s malediction, robbing Balif of his wits early. Taius and the other beast folk retained their powers of understanding, even as their bodies reverted to beastly form.
“I am not like them!” Balif shouted for both to hear. “I am being transformed into an animal, not from an animal into an elf. My mind is-is failing. The nomads escaped last night because I thought like a beast, not like a soldier.”
The truth dawned on Mathi. Balif’s strange attachment to the dead nomad wasn’t due to security or sentimentality. It was the bond between predator and prey.
“Don’t leave me, either of you. Not until the end. Do you swear?”
They swore, but Treskan asked, “Why me, lord? Don’t you want Lofotan at your side when-when the time comes?”
“Lofotan is Silvanesti. He is my comrade in arms, but he cannot comprehend what will happen soon. I think you can. And-”
He stirred in the darkness, putting out a hand to close the tent flap. It muffled his last words slightly.
“And you must tell history what became of Balif.”
The hand yanked down the tent flap was not a hand, but a paw, covered in fur.
CHAPTER 17
The birds gave the first warning.
A mass of men and horses on the move required food. On the open plain fodder was all around them, but foraging in the woods was far more laborious. When the outriders of Bulnac’s force entered the Haddaras watershed, their progress was marked by enormous flocks of birds fleeing ahead of them. Especially raucous were the crows, which the woods housed in great numbers. Clouds of black birds fled screaming as the nomads probed and plundered the greenwood.
After the birds came the wild creatures of the forest. At dawn and dusk Balif’s tiny camp was overrun by deer, wild pigs, and rabbits escaping Bulnac’s hungry horde. The advance of the nomads was easy to calculate. When the panicked animals came more than twice daily it meant the humans were drawing nearer.
Balif remained in his tent during the day. No one blamed him for hiding from the light. Mathi deflected queries by Zakki, the leader of the centaurs, and by the Longwalker, saying the general was ill. Lofotan did not try to see his leader. He knew the curse was advancing, and he did not want to see how the general was changing. Several times a day he stood outside the closed end of the tent, relating the latest news of nomad advance. Balif replied with single words when necessary, or dismissed his old comrade by not answering at all.