Exile's Children by Angus Wells Read Free Book Online Page B

needed the tiswin to fortify his tongue against the telling.
    â€œThey came like a storm, like a grass fire. Swift as that, and as heedless.” He paused and drained his cup, shaking his head. “By night, it was. I think they prefer the night: they fight fiercest then, as if they are creatures of darkness and abhor the sun. It was in what you name the Moon of the Turning Year: the time before your New Grass Moon rises, when snow still covers the high hills and the rivers run strong with melt. We saw them from our heights, like a black wave lit by the moon, rolling across the grass to where the Whaztaye had set their lodges. They came so swift! Nor was there halt or hesitation—they only attacked, like rabid wolves, and just as senseless. They seemed uncaring of hurt, almost—Almost, it seemed they welcomed death, as eager as they slew.
    â€œIt was a terrible slaughter. The Whaztaye are not fighters, and they fell before these … creatures … like … like their sheep to wolves! The children and the women, the old folk—the defenseless ones were slaughtered as thoughtless as you’d crush a bug. I confess that I wished then we had granted them leave to enter our tunnels! I’d sooner we had done that and asked the Maker forgive us after, for I wept at what I saw done there.”
    He broke off, reaching for the pitcher. Morrhyn wondered, as his head lowered, if he hid a tear.
    â€œThe men died too. Some fled and were cut down; others stood their ground and died. We Grannach are of sterner stuff, however, and rallied to defy the horde. It was like …” He frowned, staring awhile into the flames of the cookfire as if he saw the battle refought there. “It was like defying an avalanche, like damming a flood with no more than your bare hands. Remember, we fought on our own ground, those hills as familiar to us as your plains to you—we’d that advantage. But even so we were driven back, steady as snow under the springtime sun. We retreated, so ferocious were our enemies, and had we not our caves and tunnels, I think we should have died there, like the Whaztaye.
    â€œAch!” He chopped air as if he held his battle-ax still. “It shames me to say it, but retreat we did. Though”—he smiled wickedly—“we left not a few of them slain. I believe we taught them not all the world’s folk are such easy prey as the poor Whaztaye.”
    â€œWhat are they?” Racharran’s voice was soft, his expression troubled. “What cause do they follow?”
    â€œI did not,” Colun said somewhat tartly, “engage them in conversation. What they are, where they came from, why they engage in such slaughter—these are things I do not understand. I know only that they are savage beyond belief, and now command all the land of the Whaztaye. For all I know, they hold the lands beyond too.”
    He shrugged and drained his cup, his face abruptly a mask of disappointment when he found the pitcher empty. Unspeaking, Lhyn brought another, and he drank with relish.
    â€œBut you held them?” Racharran asked.
    â€œIn a way.” Colun nodded doubtfully. “We slowed their advance somewhat in the ravines and the defiles. But only slowed it—they are careless of losses. In the Maker’s name! I saw them press on across the bodies of their dead and wounded with no more thought than they gave the Whaztaye fallen. On and on they came, even when we sent rocks crashing down, avalanches that buried them by the score; and every time we thought them halted, they came again. Like ants, they were: remorseless. We had no choice but to fall back until we reached our secret places. Had we not those refuges …” He sighed and shook his head. “We went into the tunnels and sealed the entrances behind us. Then we licked our wounds awhile and debated what to do.”
    Morrhyn asked, “The seals held?