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That far north during the summer months the days were long, but the scouting party preferred to move under cover of darkness as much as possible. That only made their work that much more difficult, for sheer drops and sudden rock slides were even harder for them to protect themselves against when they were unable to see them.

Horses had been injured, one after the other, and then finally, regretfully, abandoned; turned loose to find their own way, if they could, to the relative safety of the lowlands to their south and east.

The few sure-footed pack-donkeys, which had at first been ridiculed by the arrogant knights because of their small bodies and short legs, were forced to take added burdens on their sturdy backs until they appeared little more than small hooves dancing lightly along beneath moving mountains of baggage.

The soldiers didn't laugh at them any longer. They didn't laugh at much of anything. Their faces grew gaunt and harsh. Always on short rations, bitterly cold at night and seldom warm even in the blazing, high-altitude sunlight, struggling to march in expensive boots intended only for riding, balancing on broken stones the size of a man's head, scrambling up wet clay bluffs and dank, ash-gray snow banks, only the knowledge that they were doing their duty kept them to their task. By then, after months of beating their fists hopelessly against the agonizingly high mountains boxing them in on the north and west, they knew they would never succeed in finding a way through it, but they had their orders, and so they kept looking.

The officers posted a watch every night, forcing exhausted soldiers to patrol endlessly around the camp, in bitter cold and harsh moonlight- for once they had advanced into the mountains, the moon was always full, there, though everyone knew that to be impossible- listening to occasional wolves howling far in the distance or, at times, hearing heavy bodies that could not be seen even in the brightest moonlight shifting and stirring the slab-like stones on every side of camp, as if searching for something hidden beneath them.

Being Hithans, none broke from the strain, but not a few became ill with chills and nausea so that they could hardly eat, and even more lived through every day as tense as a clenched fist.

But the officers had been certain that nothing could live in the upper mountains, nothing more dangerous a few half-starved, nearly-insane wild animals and screaming birds of prey that soared high over their heads, as if mocking their slow, painful progress across the rugged ground below. So their watches at night were set up more because they were soldiers, because they were a military expedition and that was what was expected of them, than because they expected attack. And in the daytime their scouts were concerned only with searching for a way through the mountains, not with spying out potential foes.

But the raiders attacked in the daylight, catching the entire scouting party completely off-guard. Without even a single shouted warning, a score of centaurs- mottled, gray and light brown and small for their kind but tough and wiry- swept down upon them. They gave neither cry nor exultation of warning. Only the dry rhythmic clatter of their hooves on the stones and dry, chalk-white earth gave away their charge.

The Hithan band was only several hundred strong, but still, they far outnumbered their attackers. Even so, their position wasn't good. They had been advancing up a gully of bare earth perhaps twenty feet wide with a fiery mountain stream a yard or so across raging down its center, its high banks blocking their view to left and right.

The centaurs had hidden on the far side of the low bluffs, somehow approaching without being spotted across a barren, lifeless landscape without even the hint of a bush, clump of grass, or so much as patches of spiky, low moss.

Quickly, silently, they closed in behind them, cutting off any possible retreat downstream. The scouting party barely knew they were under attack before they were surrounded.

When finally they realized what was happening the officers began shouting out quick, sharp commands but were cut down before they could finish them. Not with swords, for their centaur attackers had no weapons of iron or other metal, but rather with staffs, spears and arrows- though few of those- and with their small, strong bare hands.

The donkeys disappeared almost before anyone knew that there was anyone there to take them. Those who might have been in any position to notice would have realized that the expedition was doomed by that alone, for they wouldn't have been able to survive for a single day in those barren mountains without their supplies.

But the Hithans had other things on their mind, right then, as the small band of raiders swept ruthlessly through their ranks. The attempts to pull themselves into fighting position only left them more vulnerable, for the time they wasted seeking their assigned places allowed their attackers to pull their lines apart even before they could form them.

The dust-colored centaurs took casualties. A young male, not much larger than one of the missing donkeys, was stabbed in the throat and fell heavily to his side, drowning in his own blood. The solider who felled him, a large, muscular man of middle-age built like an upright gorilla, quickly withdrew his blade and cut off the centaur's head with a single, smooth blow. But before he could turn another centaur swept him up over her head, armor and all, and threw him a half-dozen yards across the field of battle. He landed on his helmet, snapping his neck sharply to one side, and then was still.

Another centaur took a blade in his equine abdomen, spilling his intestines out onto the ground. Shuddering with pain and shock, he crumbled onto his side but as he fell he managed to catch hold of the ankle of the human who had eviscerated him. The man screamed and tried to pull away as the dying centaur crushed his chest with his bare hands.

But there was no question how it would end, and in a very short time the fighting was over. An unknown number of humans were dead on the ground and perhaps twice that many were wounded. Two centaurs had been slain, and if any were injured no one bothered to tend to them, least of all themselves. For to a centaur's way of looking at things, one is either alive or one is dead. If one is dead, there is nothing to worry about any longer. If one is alive, one is expected to carry on, without pampering.

Not that they were insensitive to pain or to the suffering of their fellows, but centaurs were a hardy breed. Wounds that would have meant sure death for human, they considered to be little more than an annoyance. If they were not killed outright, they usually recovered from even the most gravest of injuries.

When the battle was over (if such a rout can be so dignified) the surviving humans were herded together into a tight group by their grim-faced centaur captors. Their serious expressions seemed ludicrous on such childlike faces, but no one was in a mood to laugh or jeer.

The Hithans' weapons were yanked from their hands, their armor stripped from their bodies, every bit of metal taken from them and set carefully aside. Then one of the centaurs, his human body reddish as if burnt from the high sun, his horse body mottled gray and light brown like those of all of his companions, with long, wild hair the color of ashes merging into the mane that ran down the middle of his back, stood with his forehooves on a low clay rise the size and shape of an overturned washtub.

"Who among you is in authority, here?" he called out in accented but understandable Rathan, the language of the centaurs of the Infinite Plains far to the east.

For a moment it looked as if the surviving soldiers weren't going to give him that satisfaction, but finally a tall man of middle age, lean as a whip with pale white skin but dark eyes and hair as black as a raven's wing where it wasn't streaked with silver, stepped forward. He had a gash along one cheek, bleeding freely down onto his throat and what was left of his uniform after the breastplate with its insignia had been stripped from him. "My name is Colvanius Ollium," he said quietly. "These are my soldiers, under my command."

The centaur studied him gravely for a moment. Then he dismounted from the low clump of chalk-colored mud and stepped forward until they were looking very nearly eye to eye. A centaur from the plains would have towered over him, but the mountain centaurs seemed a different breed altogether. Colvanius wasn't reassured by their small size, however. He had seen for himself just how deadly they could be when they chose.

"You have attacked us without warning or justification," the Hithan officer said in careful centaurian. "We are mere peaceful travelers, passing through-"

"You are scouts and spies, sent to search out the land for the best route of invasion," the centaur interrupted sharply. His voice was harsh and coarse, as if he perpetually needed to clear his throat but never did. It reminded Colvanius, incongruously, of the artificial voices puppeteers used for their dummies.

"Not so," Colvanius lied. "The Empire has no warlike intentions toward you. We are mere explorers, here to learn what we can for the sake of knowledge alone."

The centaur grinned like a sneering ten year-old boy. "Then it is unfortunate for you that in your innocence you fell afoul of us," he told him. "For we are always at war, and our intentions are never peaceful."

He turned sharply, spinning on his hind hooves. His coarse ash-gray tail struck Colvanius in the face, a glancing blow that may have been mere accident. The officer was certain that it was a studied insult, but he hid his outrage beneath a mask of stern self-control.

"Bind them with their own ropes," the centaur called to his fellows. "Tie their hands behind their backs but leave their feet free. They will have far to march yet tonight, if we are to be in the Chest before the Skull sets."

A coarse laugh went up among the centaurs and they set to their task with a will.

Part Two 

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