The big barbarian whirled to appraise the battle. The travelers were twenty people, two or three families with many horses, more than twenty beasts. Tied head to head on long leads, the horses plunged and kicked and screamed so orcs and fighters ducked flying hooves. Humans grappled with orcs-there were nearly sixty villains-or else crouched behind packs and panniers dumped from the horses. Charging into this milling melee, dwarves with mattocks and warhammers chopped at orcs, hollering the names of their ancient G.o.ds and ancestors.

Knucklebones, not much taller than the mountain men, used the dwarves as shields, darting from behind to ply her dark elven blade. Even as Sunbright watched, she hung onto Cappi's belt to alert him that she was there and a friend. Working as a team with Pullor, the two dwarves carved into orcs that they had backed into a pocket of rock. Sunbright thought that action foolish, since even orcs would fight when cornered. Better to give them room to flee, then kill them from behind, but the dwarves were hot to destroy ancient enemies and win glory. One orc broke from the pack by hurling a spear at Cappi's face and bolting.

As the dwarf staggered, Knucklebones zipped around him and poised her blade. The orc ran right into it. Black steel sliced its guts just above the naked hipbone, slid out its back, and was ripped out its side by the thief's deft twist. The orc ran a dozen paces before shock and pain dropped it.

At Sunbright's feet, two dark-haired children, a girl and boy perhaps eight and six, hunkered behind wicker baskets and howled at their mother, fallen and masked in blood. Sunbright shifted Harvester and cuffed both across the heads. "Stop that!" the shaman said. "Help, don't squall! Here!"

He grabbed the boy's tattered smock and ripped it off his body, and left him standing in a loincloth, so surprised he stopped crying. Stooping, the shaman cradled the woman's head and wrapped the rag around her head and neck wound. That they still bled showed she was alive. Sunbright s.n.a.t.c.hed the boy's hand, and pressed it atop the crude bandage. "Hold this and don't let go or your mother will die,"

he said bluntly. "You, little sister, dig in these packs for blankets, wrap her tight, and keep her warm.

And feed her water, understand?" The teary-eyed girl nodded and jerked at the ties on a pannier.

Sunbright called, "Good work!" and raced off, Harvester winking in the early winter sunlight.

Dashing around a knot of tangled, kicking horses, the shaman ran smack into three orcs, looting.

Their hands overflowed with tin canteens, horse bridles, a knitted shawl, and other junk. One had even laid down his war club to dig in a saddlebag.

Sunbright didn't holler, just sucked wind for a stronger blow. He went for the armed orcs first. A big one, fast on its feet, held a war club of hickory and iron spikes-d.a.m.ned well-armed for orcs, the shaman noted-but few humans could stand up to a Rengarth Barbarian, and Sunbright was fitted with the finest sword his tribe ever knew.

Swung wide, Harvester didn't break the club's hickory handle, but snagged and ripped it from the orc's grasp. The big orc ducked the sweeping steel, but Sunbright stamped for balance, chopped his blade backhanded, and crushed the orc's collarbone. Yanking the leather-wrapped pommel past its ribs, Sunbright hooked the smashed shoulder into gray meat. Jerked like a pike on a line, the orc toppled at Sunbright's feet. The warrior-shaman kicked the gray head of lank hair, and stepped to kill the other two. The middle orc froze in fear, and Sunbright pierced its breadbasket, then twisted the hook to carve a hole that spilled guts. Leaving that one to die, the fighter lunged for the third, who ran.

Harvester's keen tip kissed the orc's shoulder, slashing muscle to white bone. Grabbing the spurting wound, the orc tripped over its own flying feet and crashed to earth. Sunbright scanned, found the gutted orc falling slowly. He batted it backward, then stabbed the p.r.o.ne orc behind the ear, snuffing the light in its sunken eyes.

Battle-l.u.s.t sang in his veins as Sunbright Steelshanks whirled to find more enemies, to drown his sorrows in an orgy of blood. It was hard to see now, for the horses had kicked up dust, but the action had died down. Most of the orcs had fled or been killed.

A scratching by his feet caught his attention. The big orc with the crushed shoulder struggled for the hilt of its spiked war club. Sunbright hooked a toe and flipped the orc like a turtle. Despite grinding pain from a bleeding shoulder, the creature still craned for its weapon. Sunbright stamped on its breastbone.

Harvester poised above the orc's throat, Sunbright growled, "What's your name, beast?"

The dying orc focussed yellow eyes and sputtered, "To-Toch."

"Tell your G.o.ds you died game."

And Sunbright plunged the blade into the gray, dirty throat. Blood welled like a red fountain, then trickled away. Sunbright wiped his blade clean on his foe's tunic: gray wool with a freshly-painted red hand. "Symbol of the One King again ..." the shaman mused.

Stooping, he picked up the war club. The long hickory handle gave a good heft, balanced, not nose- heavy, reminding him of Dorlas's warhammer. Chaffing the handle with dust to swab off blood, he slid it into his belt.

"Was that necessary?" Knucklebones asked. She stood nearby, small chest heaving, and buffed her bra.s.s knuckledusters on her lion skin jacket. The mane formed a curious hood. "He was dying anyway."

"I've left too many enemies alive."

Battle-l.u.s.t pa.s.sing, Sunbright was shaky and tired. He wore a brown bearskin vest but no hat, and never seemed cold.

"And I've paid for that mistake too many times," he continued. "It's a weakness, and I cannot afford to be weak. Besides, you never leave a throat uncut. Are you growing soft?"

The part-elf only polished her shiny knuckles. Raised to be ruthless, she couldn't argue, but one of Sunbright's major attractions had been his gentle kindness. Now, cut off from his people forever, he'd turned bitter, and she wondered if he'd ever be kind or gentle again.

Yet he sheathed Harvester to tend the bludgeoned woman, saw to her wounds while crooning to her children. His heart was still true, the thief knew. Only his mind was bitter. But his curt words, or lack of words, were a bugbear to endure.

Four dwarves joked and swapped boasts as they cleaned weapons and touched blades to whetstones. By contrast, the travelers grimly counted their dead, four lost out of twenty. A short, thickset man with ma.s.sive, hairy arms jogged to Sunbright. Hugging his cowed children, he gasped, "How is she?"

"To tell the truth," the shaman told him. "I'm not sure." Sunbright knelt with the woman's head in his lap. The children had stanched her bleeding with rags and bundled her in blankets. Sunbright plied his belt knife to shave her scalp around a seeping wound. He rolled the woman's eyelids, examined her pupils, found them the same size. Nor did they bulge, as can happen with a severe head wound. "She may take the day to awaken, or three days. Or not at all."

The thick man gulped. All the travelers wore the same outfit. Canvas vests, thick knitted sweaters without sleeves, trousers of leather, knee-high boots wrapped with rawhide, leather caps with bills.

Most had thick forearms and thighs, Sunbright noted, and wondered why. The man said, "I-we thank you for our rescue. We hoped to escape such troubles by fleeing the empire. But even here you're overrun."

Sunbright sliced up a skirt, and wrapped neat bandages around the patient's skull. "What troubles?"

he asked. "We've heard naught."

Thick-fingered hands waggled helplessly as the man told him, "These orcs with the red hand raid everywhere, all around the compa.s.s. The emperor's soldiers wear themselves to a nub fighting, but they're like gra.s.s fires in drought. And they carry disease. Men partake in raids too. Bandits and pirates loot whole cities and torch them. Cities and towns shut the gates and admit no one, not even their own peasants. Markets and fairs languish. We journeyed to Zenith for the Festival of the Harvest Moon and found naught but empty fields. We've met no buyers, no one with cash, yet everyone wants our horses.

The bandits are bloodthirsty, but imperial troops are just as bad. Twice we met small armies that threatened to take the horses in the empire's name, and give us nothing but wooden chits ..."

Talk of rampant raids and chaos intrigued Sunbright, the dwarves, and Knucklebones. While the horse traders untangled their mounts and picked up and packed, and Sunbright st.i.tched wounds, the dwarves brewed rose hip tea and unwrapped oak cakes. With the hostlers' permission, they butchered a dead horse and sliced the red meat into long strips. The dwarves cut wood and sc.r.a.ped a fire pit as the short winter day ended and brittle stars winked. Everyone feasted on horse meat and liver and brains that steamed in the frosty air like their breath. The hostlers unfolded curious s.h.a.ggy ponchos with slits that left their bare arms free.

The hostlers' news was patchy and shaded by personal escapes, but it was clear the empire was inundated by the One King's ravagers. Rumor said Lady Polaris had discussed truce with the One King, but they'd warred instead and blown the top off Widowmaker Mountain. No one knew who controlled what territories. Orcish and imperial armies alike splintered into raiding parties. All strangers were foes, and no place was safe. The hostlers, honest traders once welcome throughout the empire, were war refugees, as were many other folk.

Sunbright went quiet as Hilel, the leader of this horse-trading clan, spoke of meeting "tall men with horsetails like yours." Stranded on the gra.s.slands, the Rengarth Barbarians had dug sod houses into low hills. They foraged game from the gra.s.slands, ventured into the forests for food and firewood, but many were waylaid by orcs, and the surviving barbarians were a morose lot, Hilel claimed, starving and haunted-eyed. He'd feared a ma.s.sacre and the theft of their horses, but the barbarians let them pa.s.s without even asking the news. Some mothers and fathers had begged food for their children, who shivered with hunger.

Late in the night, Hilel asked for directions northwest. The brooding Sunbright didn't answer, so Knucklebones explained. "You can't go on. We've explored with the dwarves. This canyon rises too steeply for horses to mount, and cave bears are big as your horses. They'd eat you and your animals like blueberries.

"Nor can you pa.s.s south of the mountains, for the elves kill interlopers. Were it spring, I'd recommend you swing around Vandal Station and follow the Bay of Ascore to the Waterbourne River.

But in winter, that'll be frozen. So there really is no way northwest except through the Cold Forest.

"Perhaps they can advise you better at Bandor Village."

The negative news disheartened the hostlers, who quietly posted guards. Rolling in blankets, Sunbright, Knucklebones, and the dwarves curled by the fire.

But Sunbright didn't sleep.

In the morning, the hostlers buried their dead. Diota, Hilel's wounded wife, had not awakened, so they rigged a travois to ferry her. Thoughts of travois and traveling deepened Sunbright's gloom. With final thanks, the refugees tramped down the canyon. The dwarves, toting hides of horse meat, mounted stone slopes for their base camp. The headquarters was a high, stair-stepping cave that overlooked the High Forest: a place where, by standing on a jutting spire and leaning far out, Sunbright could just see the yellow gra.s.slands where his people huddled in starvation and misery.

While winter closed in, the dwarves had spent weeks exploring the Barren Mountains, which is how they'd stumbled on the orc raid. They crawled into every cave and cleft as if looking to buy the mountains, and indeed, Drigor finally admitted, that's what he intended. The distant Iron Mountains were played out, food and iron ore exhausted, and the encroaching yak-men were too numerous to withstand. So the old dwarf's mission had been two-fold: to warn Sunbright of the flint monster (this, the barbarian still didn't understand), and to seek a new homeland for the Sons of Baltar. With nothing better to do, and safety in numbers, Sunbright and Knucklebones helped, figuring to winter with the dwarves before moving on in spring. They didn't discuss where to go then, for the subject pained Sunbright too deeply. As did the word "homeland."

But today's return offered a surprise. For as they pa.s.sed the base camp's guard, she whispered, "Them elves are back."

"We ask again that you speak to your people about truce."

The same three elves on the same mission. They stood, not sat, in the lowermost cave.

From a broad ledge outside, a crack in the mountain only waist-high gave entrance to a squat chamber hardly head-high. The floor then slanted upward where dwarves had built ladders of tree branches to access the various splintered caves within the mountain. The damp cleft reeked of brown bears, the former inhabitants, and eye-watering smoke, the method that had evicted them. Outside, winter light glittered on frost.

"I cannot approach my people," Sunbright explained patiently. With him were Drigor, Knucklebones, and Monkberry. "I am no longer a member of their tribe."

"They are less a nuisance now," said the elven woman, "but we must still guard, and shoot those who trespa.s.s. We would rather you humans stay out, so we might better repel the orcs who stream over the mountains in hordes."

Sunbright was aware of the orc problem. Lately, orcs were thick as ants in spring.

"I'm sorry my people forage for food and wood in your forest." Sunbright said, tired and ironic.

"Yet there's nothing-eh?"

A tug on his belt. Monkberry's wrinkled face was thoughtful. "Son," she said. "I must talk to you."

"Now? Can't it wait?"

Monkberry caught Sunbright's ear and towed him toward the cave entrance. Bent almost double, the barbarian hobbled after.

Outside, in glittering cold and bitter wind, Sunbright rubbed his ear while Monkberry clasped arthritic hands and glared up at her son.

"I've thought about our troubles, Sunbright. A lot. You've been away and busy while I've tended the fire, and watching flames always gives one ideas. I have one for you. You must convey this truce offer to our tribe."

"Not I," he said, annoyed. "I couldn't walk within arrow range of the Rengarth."

Monkberry ignored his objections. "Our tribe needs help," she insisted. "They'll die on the prairie in winter. Already the children hunger, you tell me. They need help, and only you can give it. So you shall."

"What help?" Warriors were not to be scolded by their mothers, yet he fidgeted like a boy caught stealing apples.

"I don't know. I'm only an old woman who's outlived her usefulness. But you're shaman, because you're blessed-cursed, too-with imagination. You can't lounge around a drafty cave and mope."

"Mother," the man drawled, "if I go near them, I'll be killed!"

"So be it," she said. "Go anyway."

"Hunh?" Sunbright started as if his mother had pulled a knife. Monkberry took her son's calloused hands in her twisted ones. "Son, we mustn't question the will of the G.o.ds. Our job is to endure. Suffer sometimes, but endure. You've been selected as shaman by blood and birth, by the G.o.ds and the tribe. And by your father and myself. Your destiny was laid before you were born." Her voice grew softer and she said, "I have only one son. If I lose you, I have nothing. Then would I walk into the first snowstorm and lie down to pa.s.s into the next world. But I'll sacrifice you, and myself if need be, to save the Rengarth. For our people must endure. Do you understand?"

Tears in her eyes spoke louder than words. Sunbright Steelshanks of the Raven Clan hugged his mother, and said thickly, "Yes, mother, I understand. Thank you for reminding me."

The mother pushed her son away, wiped her wrinkled face, and said, "Now. What shall you propose? Those elves inside might help us. And the dwarves. And what you think up. You're clever when you don't mope. What shall we try?"

Sunbright sighed, scratched his head, fiddled with the thongs of his horsetail. "Well..." he said. "I had the germ of an idea, but it's probably stupid and won't work. Drigor's blather about a homeland planted a seed in my brain. And those hostlers we met, with the horses, made me wonder.. ..

"But come inside, Mother. It's chilly."

He steered the old woman into the cave. "You know, to claim you've outlived your usefulness is foolish talk," he told her. "Almost as foolish as mine ..."

Icy wind howled on the prairie. It bit through Sunbright's bearskin vest, stung his face so hard that ice particles drew blood, numbed his huge hands, and made his eyes water so he couldn't see. Dead gra.s.s crunched underfoot, frozen solid. Behind him trudged Knucklebones, huddled in her lion skin.

She'd insisted on coming, but shivered continuously.

In the long winter night, Sunbright worried they'd miss the barbarian camp, but then he whiffed smoke. Rounding a ridge no higher than his shoulder, he spotted crude sod houses. Only half a dozen, for the tribe had scattered over miles to hug behind ridges, pitiful shelter from man-killing wind.

Sunbright staggered to the biggest sod hut, perhaps twenty feet across and knee-high, put his mouth to the smoke hole, and shouted, "Meet me outside!"

His small party shivered while sods were unpacked from a hole in the hut's side. Finally, hunched and dirty as moles, a few barbarians crept out with bronze swords in blue fists. They were so filthy, with hair grown in and thick beards on men, it took Sunbright a moment to recognize Forestvictory, no longer fat, and Strongsea, who resembled his long-dead father, Farmyouth.

At sight of the shaman, Strongsea hefted his sword. Sunbright stepped aside to reveal his companions. Three elves in black capes and armor, pale as vampires, not shivering. Two dwarves bundled in bearskin and horsehide.

The shaman warned, "Don't!"

"What do you want?" asked Forestvictory. The former trail chief's eyes were pouchy.

"You're invited to council!" Sunbright had to shout above the wind. "With the elves and dwarves and me. Don't protest, just shut up and listen. We can hammer out our differences, and get you off this benighted plain, if you'll listen. Tell the others, the whole tribe, to come to the vale where we camped.

You'll be unharmed if you keep swords in sheathes, and there'll be food. The elves and dwarves will feed you while we council. Bring the children, if only for that. Tell the rest. Tomorrow!"

"It could be a trap!" Strongsea wheezed.

Forestvictory stared as if her brain were frozen. "What if we refuse?" she asked.

"Then keep your pride and die! It's nothing to me!" Sunbright lied. "I'm no longer Rengarth. Tell the others. Tomorrow."

Without waiting for an answer, he let the wind push him and his guards back toward the forest and the mountains.

"They killed Darkname! And Lightrobin! Shall we take blood money, and stain our name?"

"How do we know they won't kill us in our sleep? Lure us with kind words, and a knife behind their backs!"

"Aye, or poison the food?"

"I'd take orcs over these soulless monsters! An enemy you know is better than an unknown!"

"Elves eat babies! And suck the goodness out of food so there's nothing left to sustain a body!" "I say we turn back for Scourge! We were happy there!"

Wrangling rang round the amphitheater. The barbarians had come, of course, lured by food.

Sunbright and his protective elves and dwarves met them on the ill-fated camp between the sheltering highlands, then led the straggling band into the dark forest for nearly three miles. Here the barbarians found a natural amphitheater sunk into the ground below trees and wind. Ancient stones covered with moss ringed the circle, and at the bottom, a blazing bonfire consumed entire trees. Shivering, starved, dirty barbarians crept into the bowl so close to the fire their eyebrows singed. Set on stones were elven winter rations and fresh game: oat cakes with salt and maple syrup, dried herring, hunks of deer and bear and bison, even barrels of ale and a trough of spring water. The hungry barbarians fell on the meat barehanded and ate it raw.

During this orgy of warmth and food, Sunbright sat with his personal bodyguard: Knucklebones and Monkberry, three elven archers named Gladejoy, Deerspirit, and Lionmoon, and the two dwarves, Cappi and Pullor. They occupied a stone midway between the barbarians, the chief elven negotiators, and Drigor's band in s.h.a.ggy winter hides.

The elven contingent was a vision from a dream. Thirty of them were led by a tall elven woman with cascading white hair. They were mostly dressed alike, in soft green shirts and fine boots and armor, with some differences in rank. The leader, Pleasantwalk, wore no boiled breastplate, instead a pair of black epaulets on a harness, gem-studded black gloves, and a black helmet adorned with black leaves. She sat on a throne of blond wood ornately carved with birds and animals, worn smooth by ages of monarchs. The throne had been toted through the forest on the shoulders of courtiers, who were armed with curved black bows and sheaves of slim, black arrows. Sunbright had not spoken to this elven queen (if such she was), but only to Tamechild, her chancellor, who conveyed the shaman's messages to the queen only twelve feet away.

For the first time in a long time, Sunbright wore no sword. Harvester's baldric and scabbard hung from a peg on a tree above the amphitheater. The barbarians had also left all weapons at the upper rim, while protesting they were being rounded up for slaughter. But the elves' calm poise, and the lure of heat and meat had finally spilled them over the edge like lemmings.

Now, with hunger and thirst and cold sated, the Rengarth Barbarians counseled-for Sunbright had added prayers and offerings to the elves' bonfire. As barbarian bodies warmed, so did tempers and grudges. Some humans hurled accusations and threats, hinted darkly of treachery and collusion between Sunbright and the Shadow Walkers. But most barbarians recognized that the elves were their hosts, had fed and warmed them, and so held their tongues. Sunbright was proud of them, but his heart was stricken as he counted their numbers. Just under three hundred arrived, while they'd enter the ancestral gra.s.slands with over four hundred thirty. Still, Tamechild murmured, it showed the barbarians' toughness to survive this long on winter prairie.

Finally, after the stupid and stubborn aired their empty heads, Sunbright dusted his seat and walked to a small dais that each ring of the theater sported. He raised both hands and waited for silence, which meant from the barbarians, for the elves were quiet as graveyard ghouls.