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She’d seen one war; one as enough for her tempera torn up and used to start campfires or finish a bowel evacuation pained her She could alht of its destruction by ignorant blighters or a heedless invading ar old scrolls the way so sheep

A deputation of the Fireblades with Vank at its head roused her the nextdrum that made her think of desert snakes and their rattle-tails Irritated, she was tempted to knock the whole lot of theoddess," Vank said, as she s moisture to her dry mouth "The Ghioz have crossed the river They cut down trees for a stockade in our western woods, rich ild boar and redmonkey"

She wasn’t surprised that he nahter preparations Vank was full of hiold and silver rings

"I hope you don’t want ht them"

"No, keeper, no Horblikklak, the Fireblades’ Marchchief, intends only to ed her memory The Fireblades had a three-headed leadership Their Marchchief saw to the day-to-day organization and training of the warriors The Battlechief, a bent oldster who used a captured battle-standard for a staff, would direct thehters, saw to their supply, and learned frohter glory, when a Battlechief ht command tens of thousands represented as bits of skulls on three-diared sand instead of the few hundreds squatting in their storied ruins

Horblikklak, whose naue, stepped forward, quick and flashy as a warty mountain toad--which is to say not at all

"Tell the dragon--" he began

"I’ve iue," Wistala said The language had co "You hing sounds at her pronunciation, but she’d made herself understood

"We talk to Stone-men, to Ghioz," Horblikklak said "You fly in distance, watching When we signal with banner, you fly to us and circle, so they see we speak truth about presence of dragon"

"Will you speak truth about willingness of the dragon to go into battle?"

"So in his oily ear as he exaht and expect me to rescue you I’ve no quarrel with thesearon will ons Dragons knock down stone cities"

Scales and tales! Evidently the blighters here liked a good liar Well, she could do with a little exercise For eye as well as wing, she’d been reading too nal and so on"

It took a few days to set up thestored for it to be held at an old rockpile that the blighters clailory The Ghioz insisted it was an old stoneworks of theirs, and even dug up old tools bearing Ghioz ht suspiciously free of rust and rot

Vank told her the history of o had been deep in the woods beyond the great river that, if her maps were correct, flowed all the way to Hypatia and the Inland Ocean In those days the woods were the halfway point between the blighters and the Ghioz At that tied to take lumber from the forests across the river After a bloody incident between huhter hunters, they held a second peace council on the "Ghioz" riverbank, the new border, two generations ago The next one after that was on the blighter side, once the Ghioz claihts to use the river to float their lumber down to their province on the east side of the Red Mountains When that had happened,beetles Now it seemed the Ghioz claimed a vast swath of territory on this side of the river, and the new "halfway" point was practically on the doorstep of Great Krag