3

      Ekial felt just a bit queasy during the voyage north to the mouth of the River Vash on board Skell’s ship, the Shark. The Maags advised him that what they called ‘sea-sickness’ was not at all uncommon. Even men who’d spent most of their lives at sea had occasional bouts of the malady.

      His stomach settled down when the Shark sailed into the river Vash, and he started to feel better as soon as the ship stopped bouncing up and down on the waves.

      There were some fairly extended discussions about just how many men should form what was called ‘the advance party,’ but Ekial had already decided that he wanted no part of creeping through the trees to reach the land at the top of the narrow draw the shepherd had discovered. ‘I wouldn’t be much good at that,’ he advised Longbow. ‘I don’t like trees and bushes all that much. I start to get very jumpy when I can’t see for at least five miles.’

      ‘I think I can understand that,’ Longbow said. ‘I feel much the same way when there aren’t any trees in the immediate vicinity. I’ll let you know what it’s like up there after I’ve had a chance to look it over.’

      The scouting party left at first light the following morning, and Ekial drifted on over to the Lark, the ship of Skell’s younger brother. ‘I wonder if you could give me any details about the war last spring,’ he said to Torl.

      ‘It made me just a little nervous.’ Torl admitted. ‘I guess trees are very pretty when you look at them from some way off, but when they’re gathered up all around me, it tends to tighten up my nerves.’

      ‘I know the feeling,’ Ekial said. ‘There aren’t very many trees in the meadowland, and I think we’d like to keep it that way.’ He hesitated. ‘As I understand it, you Maags have been at war with the Trogites for quite a long time now.’

      ‘I wouldn’t exactly call it a war, Ekial. We don’t have to fight them very often. When a Trogite ship-crew sees one of us coming, they usually just jump over the side into the water. They know that all we really want to do is rob them. We’ll kill them if it’s necessary, but we want their gold, not their lives.’

      Ekial laughed. ‘It seems that civilization is much more confusing than I’d thought.’

      ‘The Trogs would probably be offended if you called us civilized, ’ Torl said. ‘Do you have many wars in the Land of Malavi?’ he asked.

      ‘A few, but only occasionally – usually when somebody tries to change the shape of the land. There were some fools a while back who wanted to try farming, but that didn’t turn out too well for them, since the horsemen kept burning off their crops. Then there was a clan just to the south of ours that dammed up a brook that had been our source of water for generations. I took a few friends along and we walked on up the stream-bed and tore their dam down. Now that I think about it, that’s the longest walk I’ve ever taken. The war lasted for a couple of years, but, since our land lay between their territory and the coast – where all the cattle-buyers do business – they couldn’t get rid of their cows. They gave up at that point.’

      ‘Did you ever have to fight the Trogites?’

      Ekial shrugged. ‘They invaded us once, but our clan-chiefs all went off to the coast and told the cattle-buyers that we wouldn’t sell them any cows until all their soldiers went home. That stopped their invasion right then and there. It would seem that the cattle-buyers pull a lot of weight in the empire, because the invading armies were ordered to go back home immediately.’

      ‘Money is sort of important to the Trogs, I guess,’ Torl agreed.

      ‘Particularly when they can cheat people out of it,’ Ekial added. Then he told Sorgan’s cousin about what young Keselo had told him about how much the Malavi should be demanding for their cows. ‘As soon as this war’s over, I’m quite sure that there’ll be quite a bit of weeping and wailing in the cattle-towns along the coast. When the price of a cow suddenly goes up to where it really ought to be, every cattle-buyer in those towns will break down and cry.’

      ‘Poor babies,’ Torl said with mock sympathy. Then he squinted at Ekial. ‘As I understand it, your horses are usually just wild animals – until you and your people tame them. Is taming a horse very hard?’

      ‘That sort of depends on the horse,’ Ekial replied. He told Torl about Beast and his nasty habits. ‘Poor old Beast died last year, and I sort of miss having him around,’ he admitted.

      ‘Nothing lasts forever, Ekial,’ Torl replied, ‘ – except for the sea, of course.’

      The war in the basin above the Falls of Vash turned out to be much more complicated than Ekial had expected. The invasion of the bug-people was pretty much as Dahlaine had told him it would be – except that the bugs were larger but not quite so agile. Gunda’s wall and Keselo’s breastworks seemed to be doing what they were supposed to do, and the machines that threw fire at the enemies would have made horse-soldiers redundant.

      It was the second invasion that involved Trogite soldiers which opened all sorts of possibilities. It seemed to Ekial that the second invasion almost invited the standard Malavi ‘slash and run’ tactics. Foot soldiers sort of plodded along without paying too much attention to what was going on around them, and that would have made them almost perfect victims had there been any Malavi horsemen in the vicinity. Ekial frowned then and made a slight correction. If the red-uniformed church soldiers had been carrying bows and quivers of arrows, a Malavi charge could have turned into an absolute disaster. A sudden storm of bronze-tipped arrows raining down on a charging body of Malavi would kill men and horses indiscriminately, and the charge would never reach its goal. He made a mental note of that. No horsemen should ever attempt