“Well, the originals of those grels are about as different as—as an alicorn and a goat,” Kalamadea told her. “The elves took some liberties with them. The original grels are just as ugly, but not as tall, and can’t go without water for quite as long. The grel-riders used them as mounts for controlling their herds; they started out as nomadic cattle herders, but when the elves began their conquests, they withdrew from the civilized lands altogether. They didn’t even trade with other humans in or around elven territories anymore. They just went away, as far away as they could.”
“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.”