“Do you ride?” Verhanna asked, returning the poncho to Greenhands. “There’s room behind Wart if you do.”
“There’s room for most of Balifor up here,” opined Rufus.
Greenhands pulled the poncho on over his head. “I’ll walk,” he said.
“It’s a long way to the mountains,” she warned, leaning on the pommel of her saddle. “You’ll never be able to keep pace with the horses.”
“I’ll walk,” he repeated, with exactly the same intonation.
She shook her head. “Suit yourself.”
They topped a low rise and were out of the shallow valley cut by the river and back on the grass-covered plain. To the south, the blue humps of the Kharolis foothills were plainly visible in the clear morning sky, but Greenhands went resolutely west.
So intent were Verhanna and Rufus on keeping their eyes on Greenhands that neither bothered to look back at the riverbank. What had been a mud flat the night before was now a blossoming meadow. Grass had sprung up knee high in a few short hours, and a thousand colors of wild flowers bloomed where once there had been nothing but mud and cattails. Moreover, this strange growth narrowed as it entered the upland. Eventually it thinned to a point—the exact trail where Greenhands trod.
The day wore on, and Greenhands showed no signs of tiring.
Verhanna and Rufus ate in the saddle, passing a water bottle back and forth between them. Greenhands plucked a few stems of grass from the turf to nibble. He ate and drank nothing else.
By mid-afternoon the novelty of watching the strange elf had worn off. Rufus lay down on his horse’s back, clasping his hands behind his head and shading his face with his travel-worn hat. He gave his reins to his captain, and soon high-pitched snores whistled from his lips. Verhanna nodded a bit, but she was too conscious of her duty to falter and fought the sleep that tried to claim her.
Fatigue and the lingering shock of her healed goblin bite proved too strong, though, and she, too, eventually nodded off. When her charger stumbled slightly over a gopher mound, Verhanna jolted awake. Greenhands was no longer forging ahead on foot. The warrior maiden reined in and looked back. In the high grass fifteen yards behind them, the tall elf was kneeling.
“Wake up, Wart.” She called to the kender. Yawning, Rufus sat up and caught his reins as she tossed them.
“Hey,” the kender said sleepily, “where’d all the flowers come from?”
Verhanna looked past Greenhands and saw the vast trail of blooms that widened as it stretched out behind him. Not only flowers, but the dry prairie grass in the area had grown a foot taller.
“Look you,” she said, leaning down from the saddle. “What sort of magic is this?”
“Quiet,” he murmured. “The children call me.”
She bristled at his abrupt command. “I’ll speak when I like!”
The strange elf’s tense, prayerful posture suddenly relaxed. He inhaled deeply and said, “They come.”
Verhanna was about to make a rejoinder when a faint rumbling sound reached her ears. Heavy vibrations in the ground caused her mount to shift his feet and stamp nervously. Rufus sat up and called, “Captain, look!”
To the south, a dark brown line appeared on the horizon. It bulked larger and higher, and the rumbling grew louder. Swiftly the brown mass resolved into elk—thousands of them. A gigantic herd, stretching far to the left and right, was coming straight toward them.
“By Astra, it’s a stampede!” Verhanna cried. She twisted her horse around to ride hard in the same direction the elk were moving. Their only chance was to go with the flow and not fall under those churning hooves.
“Give me your hand!” she shouted to Greenhands. “We must flee!”
The elk were only a couple hundred paces off and gathering speed. Rufus turned his mount and urged it next to his captain’s. Bouncing to his feet in the saddle, he crowed with delight, “What a sight! Have you ever seen so many deer? If only I had a bow, we’d have venison for dinner forever!”
“You idiot, we’re going to be trampled!”
Then the elk herd was upon them like a living wall of hide, antlers, and sharp hooves. The musky smell of the animals mingled with the dry odor of trampled grass. Thinking first of her decision to bring Greenhands to Qualinost, Verhanna threw herself on top of the elf to shield him from harm. Only after an eternal, terrifying second did the realization sink in that the herd had split and was flowing around them. The patch of ground with Verhanna, Greenhands, Rufus, and the two horses had been spared.
Thousands of elk, with liquid brown eyes and gaping mouths, rushed past them, nose to flank, shoulder to hip. The noise of their passage was deafening. Verhanna raised her head just enough to see the kender, still standing on his quiescent horse, hands clamped over his ears. With great astonishment, the warrior maid discovered that the stupid fellow was grinning. His carroty topknot was whipped back by the wind of the herd’s passage, and a huge smile lit his pale eyes.
It seemed hours before the herd thinned. Alone or in pairs, the last few animals bounded in wide zigzags. In minutes more, the receding herd was again a brown line on the horizon. Then there was nothing but flying dust and the fading rumble of ten thousand hooves.
“E’li be merciful!” Verhanna breathed. “We are truly blessed!”
“Move away,” Greenhands grumbled from beneath her. “You smell terrible.”
She rolled smartly aside, and he sat up. Verhanna slipped the mail mitten back from her hand and slapped the elf across the jaw. She was instantly sorry, because tears formed in his vivid green eyes and his lips quivered.
“It’s the metal you wear,” he sniffled. One tear traced a shining path down his cheek. “It smells like death.”
“Yippee!”
The two of them turned to look up at Rufus. The kender was capering atop his horse. “What a sight!” he caroled gleefully. “That must be the biggest herd of elk in the world! Did you feel the wind they kicked up? The ground shook like a jelly pudding! What do you suppose made them run like that?”
“Thirst,” Greenhands said. He sniffed and touched a hand to his wet cheek. The sight of his own tears seemed to confound him. “The heat of days past made them mad with thirst.”
“How do you know?” Verhanna demanded.
“They called out to me. I told them how to get to the river.”
“You told them? I suppose you told them not to trample us, too?”
“Yes. I told the horses to stand still, and the elk would go around us.”
The tall elf rubbed his fingertips together till the tears were gone. Then he stood and walked slowly away, not west as they had been going, but veering south. Exasperated beyond words, Verhanna swung into her saddle and followed him. Rufus fell in beside her. He could hear her grumbling and grinding her teeth.
“Why so angry, my captain?” the kender asked, his eyes still bright at their encounter with the elk herd.
“We spend our time trailing after him like body servants!” She slapped her armored thigh. “And the lies he tells! He knows more than he’s telling, mark my words.”
The kender turned down his hat brim to shade his eyes from the lowering sun. “I don’t think he knows how to lie,” he said quietly. “The elk herd might’ve split by coincidence, but my horse just stood like a statue. It wasn’t even quivering. If you ask me my opinion, Greenhands did talk to the elk.”
11 — Rising Son
Kith-Kanan watched the sun set from the Hall of the Sky. He’d been alone there for hours, thinking. Since the day Irthenie had calmed the crowd in the market square, there had been other demonstrations in the streets in favor of Ulvian. Kemian Ambrodel, who sought no higher office than the one he held, was berated everywhere he went. Once he was even pelted with overripe fruit. The Speaker had to order him to remain in the Speaker’s house to protect the proud warrior from further humiliation or worse.