Sachkor rode in the middle of the group, on one of the biggest of the scarlet animals. They had given him a helmet too, smaller than any of theirs but just as strange, with curving iron plates arranged like the petals of an inverted flower, and a golden spike rising above it. His slender form seemed lost atop the vast creature, and he sat quietly, as if dreaming. His face bore no expression.
Surely this tribe is a tribe of monsters riding upon monsters, Koshmar thought. And they are through the gateway; and all is over for us. But we will die bravely before we give up Vengiboneeza to them.
She looked toward Konya, toward Staip, toward Orbin.
“Well?” she cried. “Will you just stand there and let them advance? Attack! Kill as many as you can before they kill us!”
“Attack? How can we attack?” Konya said, speaking very quietly but in a manner that would carry great distances. “Look at the size of the animals they’re sitting on. There’s no way we can reach that high. Those things would simply trample us as if we were beetles.”
“What kind of foolishness is this? Simply thrust at the legs and bellies of those beasts, and bring them down. And then slay their masters.” Koshmar brandished her spear. “Forward! Forward!”
“No,” Hresh said suddenly. “These are not enemies.”
She looked toward him, bewildered. Then she burst into harsh laughter. “Right, Hresh. They’re simply guests. Sachkor has brought them to visit us, them and their little pets, and they’ll have dinner with us and leave tomorrow. Is that what you believe?”
“They aren’t here to do battle,” Hresh said. “Put forth your second sight, Koshmar. They come in peace.”
“Peace,” Koshmar said derisively, and spat.
But there was a look on Hresh’s face that was new to her, a look of such strength and insistence that she was shaken by it. It seemed to Koshmar suddenly that it might not be wise to set herself against him in this, for Hresh, she knew, sometimes saw things that no one else was capable of seeing. With an effort she calmed herself, forcing the juices of war to subside within her soul, and sent her second sight toward the advancing horde.
And what Hresh said was true.
She could detect no enmity there, no hatred, no menace.
Yet even now Koshmar could not let herself yield to the boy. Angrily she shook her head. “A trick,” she said. “Trust me in this, Hresh. You are wise, but you are young, you know nothing of the world. These people have some way of making it seem as if they pose no threat. But took at the armor they wear. Look at the monsters they ride. They’ve come to kill us, Hresh, and take Vengiboneeza from us.”
“No.”
“I say yes! And I say we have to slay them before they slay us!” Koshmar stamped her feet in fury. “Harruel! Where’s Harruel? He would understand! He’d be up there among them already, knocking them down from their beasts!” Looking around at them all, from Orbin to Konya, from Konya to Staip, from Staip to Lakkamai, she said, “Well? Who’ll come with me? Who will fight by my side? Or must I go out there and die alone?”
“Do you see, Koshmar?” Hresh said, and pointed past her shoulder.
She turned. The thunder of those great black-clawed feet had ceased. The oncoming horde had halted, perhaps a hundred paces down the boulevard, or even less. One by one the huge red animals were beginning to kneel, bending in a bizarre way on those peculiarly constructed knees of theirs, and their helmeted riders were jumping to the ground. Already half a dozen of the invaders, with Sachkor in their midst, were coming up the center of the grand boulevard toward her as though to parley.
“Koshmar?” Sachkor called.
She held her spear in readiness. “What have they done to you? How did they capture you? Have they tortured you, Sachkor?”
“You misunderstand,” said Sachkor calmly. “They’ve done me no harm. Nor did they capture me. I left the city to go in search of them, for I thought they were somewhere nearby, and when finally I found them they received me gladly.” His voice was steady. He looked older, wiser, deeper than he had been when he had disappeared earlier that year. “These are the Beng people,” he said, “and they have been out of the cocoon longer than we have. They come from a far place on the other side of the great river where we once lived. They are different from us, but they intend us no injury.”
Hresh nodded. “He tells the truth, Koshmar.”
Koshmar still could grasp none of this. She felt as though she were adrift on the breast of a rushing torrent, carried helplessly along. War she could understand, but not this.
“They’re lying to you,” Koshmar muttered dourly. “This is some trick.”
“No. No trick, Koshmar. And no lie.”
Sachkor indicated two of the Helmet Men, who stepped forward beside him. One was old and shrewd-eyed, with a dry, wizened look about him that reminded Koshmar somewhat of Thaggoran the chronicler. His fur was a pale yellow, almost white; and he wore a tapering conical helmet that was made of richly embossed bands of different-colored metal, dwindling to a rounded top. Huge black metal ears sprouted from its sides like wings.
“This is Hamok Trei,” Sachkor said. “He is their chieftain.”
“He? A man as chieftain?”
“Yes,” said Sachkor. “And this is their wise one, what we would call their chronicler. His name is Noum om Beng.” He gestured to a wispy-bearded man nearly as old as Hamok Trei and even more withered, even more wizened. He was of astonishing height, far taller even than Harruel, but so slender and frail that he seemed to be hardly more than a reed. Noum om Beng stood bending forward in a stooping way. His helmet was a stupefying thing of black metal covered with clumps of coarse black hair, from the corners of which rose a pair of long curving purple projections, jointed and jagged, that looked something like the wings of a bat.
Noum om Beng came a step or two closer to Koshmar and made a series of signs in the air before her that might almost have been the signs of the Five, except that they were not. The gestures were different ones and they had no meaning that Koshmar could fathom. Holy signs of some kind they surely were, she thought, but they must be signs sacred to some other set of gods.
How, though, could there be other gods? The thought made no sense. She remembered how Hresh had tried to tell her, that time when they were interrogating the first Helmet Man, that the stranger might speak another language — that is, that he used words different from theirs, though his meanings were the same. Grudgingly Koshmar had accepted that possibility, bewildering though it was. But other gods? Other gods? There were no gods but the Five. These people would not worship unreal gods unless they were crazy. And Koshmar did not think they were that.
To Sachkor she said, “How do you know their names and stations? Are you able to speak with them?”
“A little,” Sachkor said. “At first it was impossible for me to understand them at all, or for them to understand me. But I applied myself to the task and a little at a time I was able to learn their speech.” He smiled. He seemed to be struggling, but not very hard, to conceal how pleased he was with himself.