had some sort of mystical bond with their monstrous mounts, and after serving on the Plains for the last month, he believed it.
The halflings resembled elves after a fashion, though they were of shorter stature and possessed deeply tanned skin. They wore ritual hunting masks fashioned from clawfoot jaws, tunics made from animal skin, and armored vests constructed from clawfoot hide. They were beardless, and their long hair trailed out behind them as they rode full out toward the Karrnathi outpost.
As Ghaji drew near the outpost, he noticed one thing more. He’d been mistaken in his first assessment of how the halflings were armed. Of the ten riders, only
nine
carried spears. One halfling rode in the middle of the group, and instead of a spear, he carried an ivory bone-staff with runes carved deep into its surface. This halfling appeared older than the others, his hair white, skin wrinkled and leathery.
He’s a shaman, Ghaji realized, and he felt a sudden unease. He’d never heard of a halfling shaman riding into battle before. Maybe the halflings hadn’t come to fight, but rather were here for a different reason.
Yeah, right.
Ghaji put on a last burst of speed and reached the tower’s entrance. One of the Karrnathi soldiers—a woman who normally refused to look at Ghaji, let alone speak to him—was already standing inside the doorway.
“I’ll bar the entrance, half-blood” she said. “You and the zombies can deal with the halflings.” She gave Ghaji a smirk before slamming the iron door shut in his face. A second later he heard the sound of an iron bar being slid into place.
Fury surged through Ghaji, and he felt like pounding his fist on the door and calling the woman a few choice names. But he didn’t have time to give in to his emotions. Not if he wanted to survive the next few moments. War-axe gripped tight, lower incisors bared in a snarl, the half-orc spun to face the oncoming riders—
—and saw that they had stopped.
Not a dozen yards from where Ghaji stood, the halflings had formed a semi-circle behind the shaman. The shaman wore the same animal-hide tunic as the other riders, but without the extra protection of a clawfoot-scale vest. Bone-staff held lightly in his left hand, the shaman sat relaxed but alert in the saddle of a clawfoot whose head was marked with a patch of deep red that might or might not have been natural. The shaman regarded Ghaji for several seconds with the confident, unconcerned air of a man who was completely in control of the situation.
The shaman spoke with the lilting accent of the Talenta halflings, his voice surprisingly deep for one of his diminutive stature.
“You are not Karrnathi. Why do you stand guard before their outpost?”
Ghaji glanced sideways and saw the zombies, scimitars and shields grasped in their undead hands, lumbering toward them. The halflings couldn’t have been unaware of the approaching undead, but they appeared not to notice, let alone care. Ghaji wasn’t sure why thatwas so, but if he could keep the riders distracted for a moment or two longer, the zombies would arrive and the half-orc just might be able to take to his sleeping pallet tonight with the same number of limbs and major organs he’d started the day with.
“Because the Karrnathi pay well and they pay on time.”
The shaman’s lip curled upward in distaste. “A mercenary. You fight for profit. We fight to repel invaders from our land.”
Ghaji didn’t know this man, didn’t have any reason to care what he thought. Yet the shaman’s blunt assessment of Ghaji’s motives cut through him as sharply as any blade ever had, and he felt ashamed.
Ghaji intended to say something bold and equally cutting to show the shaman that his words hadn’t bothered him—even if it was a lie. But before he could speak, the shaman raised his bone-staff high and spoke a series of rapid syllables in a strange language that hurt Ghaji’s ears to hear.
Ghaji risked another glance to check
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