"That makes sense," Shana said, after thinking about that. "In their place, I'd have done the same. The way those elves use illusion, you'd never know if the trader you were dealing with was human or one of them, spying on you. The best way to eliminate spies from outside is to eliminate all contact from the outside."
Kalamadea gave her a lazy grin, full of teeth. "You're thinking," he said with approval. "Well, the grel-riders originally used only their grels for herd-riding and for packing, but when the grels turned out to be useless for fighting, they developed a special kind of cattle they used for warfare. They called them war-bulls; roughly twice the size of a horse, with long, wicked horns. The grel-riders taught them to use those horns in combat, and even an alicorn couldn't kill a war-bull."
"But that can't be the reason why the elves couldn't conquer them," Shana persisted.
Kalamadea nodded slightly. "The real reason was probably fairly simple, but Laranz would hardly have wanted to admit that. They were nomadic, after all, which meant they had no cities for the elves to attack. The elven lords didn't fare well when they lacked a large, specific target, and as far as I know, the grel-riders simply rode away when they got tired of fighting the elves. General consensus is that they went south. That is all I know about them."
"Huh." Shana plucked a grass stem to nibble on, and settled herself a little more comfortably in Kalamadea's shade, leaning up against the dragon's scaly flank. His hide felt cool under her hand, probably because he was absorbing the energy of the sun and storing it deep inside. Dragons could do that; it supplemented the energy they got from their food, which was probably the only reason they didn't eat the countryside bare of game.
The grel-riders intrigued her. The chronicle had hinted that the grel-riders had some sort of protection against elven magic, but hadn't offered any details. Given the writer's pomposity, that was possibly because he didn't
know
any details, and would never have admitted that. Still, no matter what Kalamadea thought, it seemed to her that anyone who pretended to the title of 'Truth-Seeker" (as the chronicler had) would not have mentioned arcane protection unless he had some reason to.
"You don't think we're likely to meet up with these grel-riders, do you?" Mero asked, slowly, as if he were following Shana's thought.
Shana favored him with a lifted eyebrow. "Why do you think I chose this direction in the first place?" she replied. "Collen knows the river, and the people who live near it, and he didn't know about any grel-riders, so that left south." She waved her stem at the rolling plains. "It would take people who were nomadic
riders
to live here, I think. It's a bit difficult to hide out here, and if there were any numbers of settled people, the elves would find them and eliminate them. I
want
to find the grel-riders. Kalamadea, I hate to contradict you, but I think you might be wrong about why the elves couldn't conquer them. I really think they know something we don't."
Mero sat up, suddenly, looking at something on me southern horizon, a view that was blocked for Shana by Kalamadea's bulk.
"I don't know if we're about to find grel-riders, Shana," the young wizard said, slowly. "But there is certainly
something
on the way towards us."
She scrambled to her feet, and moved around Kalamadea to where she could see what Mero was looking at.
It was a cloud of yellow dust rising up against the empty blue of the sky—a huge cloud of dust. And although it was fairly dry out on these plains, nothing would produce a dust cloud of that size except an enormous herd of thousands and thousands of beasts.
She shaded her eyes with her hand, and tried to see if she could come up with any clues—either visually, or with other senses. Was there anyone with magic out there? Or were there any humans with the mind-powers only human magicians had? She ought to be able at least to catch a stray thought or two from whoever or whatever was kicking up all that dust.
She came up against a curious blankness beneath that cloud. That, in itself, was odd. She couldn't detect even a single thought—and in the past, she hadn't had any trouble reading the shape-thoughts of creatures as small as a ground-dwelling rodent.
"Are you not-sensing what I'm not-sensing?" she said quietly to Mero, who nodded.
"Neither of us can sense anything either," Kalamadea said, speaking for himself and Keman.
"There
are
animals that can make themselves blank to the sense of magic power," he reminded her. "And there are beasts whose thoughts—such as they are—can't be detected either. Remember that leaping thing in the forest? The one that almost ate Valyn and me?"
She nodded. "But those were created, either by accident or deliberately, using magic. And if there is a
herd of
creatures like that out there, we need to know about it." She raised an eyebrow. "I think we need to go take a look."
This prairie land was not entirely flat; that was just as well, because Shana didn't want to get any closer to the strangers than she was right now. The ridge they'd hidden themselves on to wait for the makers of the dust cloud to arrive was just high enough to afford a bit of a prospect
The four of them—now all in halfblood form, since it was rather hard to hide something the size of a dragon—lay on their stomachs in the scant cover of some scraggly bushes growing at the top of the ridge. Prom this vantage, they waited with mounting impatience while flies buzzed around their ears, and ants explored the regions inside their clothing.
The objects of their study might well be the fabled "grel-riders," but if that was so, they had abandoned the grels entirely in favor of their cattle. There wasn't a grel in sight, only shaggy cattle; bulls, cows, calves, and oxen.
And there were thousands of them.
In the lead of the group, and riding guard along the side, were men and women with skins of the deepest brown Shana had ever seen, a brown that was a scant shade lighter than black. They all wore armor: tight scale-metal corselets that covered their torsos, metal gorgets, and arm guards on the lower and upper arms. Most wore wide-brimmed hats against the sun, but the few without head coverings had their hair cropped to scarcely more than a dark fuzz, and none of the men had even a trace of a beard or a mustache.
The beasts they rode were bulls with huge, wickedly pointed horns, as wide as Shana could reach with both hands outstretched as far as they could go. The tip of each horn had been sheathed with metal; the point on the end looked needle-sharp. The cattle were of many colors, from a solid brownish black like the skins of the riders, to pied in red and white, to a few who were probably pure white under the coating of yellow dust.
In the middle of the riders was an enormous cattle herd of cows and calves; all of the beasts were very hairy and not very tame-looking. Between the herd and the riders were the wagons, wide platforms supporting square felt tents with peaked roofs, and pulled by teams of four and six oxen hitched abreast.
The herd, the riders, and the wagons filled the plain for as far as Shana could see.
"No matter what your chronicle said, these people aren't barbarians, Shana," Mero whispered to her. 'Take a look at their metal work, at the fittings on that tent-wagon!"
She had to agree with that assessment. The work on the armor was some of the finest she'd ever seen, and the wagon-tent was of a very sophisticated design. Both the armor and the tents boasted refined abstract decorations, showing not a hint of crudity, either in pattern or execution.
"Well, look how the guard-riders are organized," she countered. "They're not riding randomly; each one has a place, and an assignment. No, I agree with you, that writer was just being pompous again. These people are quite civilized."
"These people are behind us," Kalamadea said, in a tone of strain.
She turned, to find herself staring at the point of a spear, held by one of the half-dozen warriors who had crept up behind her little party while they watched the group below. The warriors were all quite alert, quite competent-looking.
And she could not touch the minds of a single one of them. When she tried, she touched that curious blankness she had met before.
Behind the spear-carriers, the bulls stood patiently, watching them and their masters. She had the feeling that they wouldn't
stay
patient if she and her crew charged, however.
On the other hand, they didn't have much choice. If they didn't make an escape attempt now, they probably would never get another chance, assuming they weren't killed out-of-hand.
Mero launched the attack before she could say anything; he flung a levin-bolt at the nearest fighter. It crackled through the air between him and the warrior, blue-white as lightning, and just as powerful.
The levin-bolt touched his armor, and was deflected off into the grass, leaving a scorched mark there—despite the fact that the warrior made no move to counter it himself. Worse, he didn't seem at all startled by the attack. He hadn't moved, not even to step back involuntarily. It was as if he had known he was safe from magic attacks.
Blast
! Mero had taken care of any chance to parley—and it was obvious these people weren't going to be spooked off by a display of power.
I'd better try something quick
! Shana flung an attack of pain and blindness at the mind of the one holding the spear on her at the same time that Mero flung a second magical levin-bolt. This was a combination of the elf-shot magic that the elven lords used, and a mental attack of the sort the human wizards chose. It
should
have worked, felling her attacker. Even if he was protected against elven magic, he shouldn't have been proof against the combination of elven and human magics.
He didn't even blink. The attack went into that curious blankness that surrounded his mind, and was absorbed, effortlessly.
She stared back into the deep brown eyes of the warrior facing her, and took a deep breath.
"I think we're in trouble," Keman said quietly, getting slowly to his feet as the warrior nearest him gestured he should do so with his spear.
Shana did not bother to thank him for the observation.
"I think we should surrender," Kalamadea added, as yet more riders thundered up on their shaggy mounts, spears at the ready. "I really do think we should surrender."
"Fine," Shana snapped, without taking her attention from the spear pointed at her throat. "Now—just how do you pro pose we do that? These are strangers; they don't know our language, and we don't know theirs! One wrong move—" She didn't bother to finish the sentence.
Myre had led her two charges down into places that Rena had never dreamed existed in the estate cellars—not all of them very nice, most of them very dirty. The maid hadn't really wanted to take Rena along at all, even when Rena used the argument she'd used on Lorryn, but she had finally agreed when Lorryn told her flatly that
he
was not leaving without Rena. The maid had changed what had always been a faintly superior attitude to one that was faintly insolent. Yet Rena could not find it in her to object; they were, after all, at her mercy. She didn't
have
to help them.
They threw together what supplies and weapons they could as Myre led them to rummage through the storerooms; their short time before the household woke stretched considerably by Lorryn, and a magic he used to keep the inhabitants of the house sleeping soundly and a lot longer than they normally did. They didn't dare go out of the house itself, for there was no way of extending the magic to the stables and slave pens and beyond, so all of the useful weapons and gear (not to mention horses) that lay outside the house walls might just as well have been on the moon for all that they could reach it
They fled into the cellars carrying crude packs made up of bedding, with straps improvised from belts. Rena carried the food they filched from the kitchen, knives, a firestriker, and a single metal water bottle she'd found in the cellars. Lorryn carried his bow and his arrows, knives and sword, his own clothing and bedding, and things Myre had found for them: rope, a small axe, a huge square of waterproofed silk, and their heavy cloaks, which were too bulky for Rena to take.
There were exits to the outside from the cellars, doors through which barrels and boxes were delivered without having to take them through the kitchen or any other door. Myre tried all of them until she found one that was unlocked. They scrambled up over a pile of roots tumbled down through a hatchway from above, when she tried
that
and found it open.
The roots were filthy and hard as rocks, and Rena could hardly imagine how they could be made edible.
They popped out of the hatchway into the dim gray of false dawn, scuttled across the yard into the relative shelter of the kitchen gardens, and from there followed Myre across the paddocks and fenced-in home-fields toward the edge of the estate. Each field was bounded by hedges and ditches bringing irrigation water, ideal cover for someone who was escaping.
Except that they were going in the opposite direction from the gate and the road. Rena hadn't seen the point of that; the estate was completely walled in, and the only entrance was at the front of the manor. But she was afraid to say anything; Myre could decide to leave her behind "accidentally," and in this half-light, it wouldn't be difficult to do so. Then what would she do? It would be rather difficult to explain what she was doing, dressed in the clothing of a male slave, carrying a pack, with her hair hacked off at chin length. Even if she made her way back to her own quarters undetected, the hair would
still
be difficult to explain, and taken with Lorryn's absence, would be bound to get her into immediate trouble.
Finally they came to the wall; made of smooth stone, it was many feet thick at the bottom to prevent anyone digging under it. It towered above them, and as Rena already knew, the top was well protected by shards of glass set into mortar. There was no way to climb it, and no way around it.