The Torian Pearls

The Hauri would do well to accept this agreement, he said. They had seen that the Kargoi were strong and brave, quite able to conquer this land if they wished. They would rather march west, to find pasture for their drends and measure their strength against the riders of Tor. They were making the Hauri a free gift of peace, and the Hauri would be wise to accept that gift.

None of the Hauri showed much reaction to Blade's proposal. Silently they gathered up their clothing and weapons, and just as silently they slipped off into the forest. The last one to go was Loya. She said nothing, but her eyes met Blade's for a moment, and he thought he saw her smile faintly. Then she was gone into the forest after the others.

The fort built on the shore was no more than a ditch and a rough wall of logs dragged into place and piled up. The place to build a fort that could stand up against a strong attack was farther to the west, on the Torian frontier. The warriors Blade sent west had orders to pick a site for that fort, while avoiding encounters with the Torians as much as possible.

Meanwhile, the wagons and the rafts were starting to cross the water. At Blade's request Paor sent across two hundred riding drends and their riders before letting any of the family wagons and wagon drends make the crossing. Blade was determined to get a line of mounted scouts thrown out to the west as soon as possible. The Hauri might already have sent word to the Torians that the Kargoi were in the land. Then the Torians would come riding east, perhaps in force, and Blade wanted to make sure they did not come by surprise.

The days passed and the shore came alive with the sounds of drends bellowing, axes chopping, trees crashing down, war songs and camp songs, the clatter and banging of craftsmen at work repairing wagons and rafts-all the sounds of the Kargoi hard at work. On the fifth day Naula came over, and Blade was able to spend a few hours with her in his tent.

On the sixth day Rehod came over. He was rather less welcome than Naula, and Blade almost wished Paor had come over instead. Yet it was probably better to have the trustworthy Paor on the far side of the water and the treacherous Rehod over here where he could be watched.

In any case, the Kargoi needed to cooperate more than ever now. Beyond the land the Torians and the Hauri shared uneasily lay the sea-nothing but the sea, on all sides and in all directions for as far as anyone knew.

The Kargoi had reached the end of their journey. They would either live in this land or die in it.

Chapter 19

Blade stood on the wall of the West Fort and looked out across the plains of Tor. To the west they stretched away to a green horizon as featureless and nearly as level as the sea itself. Mounted scouts of the Kargoi were out there beyond that horizon now, and no doubt so were the riders of Tor.

The West Fort had been finished for ten days now. A double log wall twelve feet high enclosed a square two hundred feet on a side. The two walls stood eight feet apart. The space between them was filled with earth, and the top of the outer wall set with a waist-high railing of sharpened stakes. Inside were huts, stables, and storehouses holding drend meat and kaum. Two wells of sweet water were dug at the opposite corner of the square from the stables.

The West Fort stood ready, a base for the scouts and the permanent home of a garrison of four hundred Kargoi warriors. That was too many for the Torians to leave in their rear if they chose to ride east. They would have to eliminate the West Fort before they could feel safe, and Blade knew the fort's garrison could hold it against any army five or six times their strength if they had to.

So far the Kargoi and the Torians had both been sending out their scouts and nothing else. Little skirmishes flared across fifty miles of plains, with blue horses and drends both dashing off riderless afterward. So far honors were about even.

Sooner or later the collision would come. The Kargoi and the Torians could not ignore each other this way much longer. The Kargoi needed to move well out onto the plains to graze their drends freely; the Torians needed to protect their eastern borders.

Even if the Kargoi were willing to give up their drends, Blade wondered if there would be peace between them and Tor. The Hauri certainly would have something to say on the matter. So far the fishermen were keeping the truce Blade had offered them. So far they were also expecting to see the Kargoi move on to the west and fight the Torians. It didn't matter greatly to the Hauri who won that fight, as long as the Kargoi went west. If the Kargoi showed signs of actually settling in the land that had been theirs for so long, the Hauri might start having second thoughts about the truce.

How far west the Kargoi would be able to get was still very much an open question. Tordas was nearly impregnable behind its walls, and so were most of the other towns. The farmlands of Tor were largely intact in spite of the rising waters. So was their army of horsemen that could maneuver as freely across the plains as a ship on the sea. If the Torians wanted to fight for every mile of plain, they were more than strong enough to do so. From their Queen Kayarna on down, they were a proud and determined people, who would almost certainly choose to make that fight.

So the Kargoi and the Torians would meet in all-out battle, and then what? The Kargoi were confident of the outcome-more so than Blade was. He knew the Kargoi would be badly outnumbered, and their drends could never match the nimble-footed horses of the Torians. The line of spearmen might stand against Torian charges, but they could hardly attack. There would be a whole new set of military skills for the Kargoi to learn, and perhaps not enough time for learning them.

Perhaps the Kargoi would not learn fast enough. Then they would find only a grave instead of a home in this land. Blade knew the Kargoi did not fear that. They had come far, and now they would rot give up their drends and their way of life merely because the Torians could ride circles around them.

From inside the fort Blade heard the sound of the gong beating out the call to di

Since the last time he'd looked that way, the horizon had sprouted two thin columns of dark smoke. As he watched, a third column curled up to join the first two. The sentries along the wall saw the smoke too. One of them leaned over the inside railing and shouted. He was answered by the sound of the gong and the signal drums. For a moment everyone Blade could see stood in frozen silence. Then chaos seemed to descend on the West Fort, as everyone dashed to his post, grabbed up his weapons, or simply got out of the way.

The smoke to the west meant the Torians were at last coming in force. Blade knew the drend-mounted scouts might not be able to escape from such a force after they detected it. So he'd worked out a code of smoke signals. The distant scouts could alert the fort, whether they lived or died.

As the sunset flamed in the sky, two of the scouts rode up to the waiting fort. One of them was wounded in the arm, the other on the thigh, and both their drends were staggering with exhaustion. Blade had them fed and their wounds cared for before he asked for their reports.

Three thousand Torians at least were coming, all Mounted, with a number of wagons that seemed to be carrying siege equipment. That was no surprise. The Torians would not be sending three thousand men to merely ride around the walls of the fort and hurl arrows and curses at its garrison.