Like the tide retreating from jetsam on the shore, the elven army flowed away, leaving the small Silvanesti force alone on the stony knoll. Seventy-five hundred warriors, mounted and on foot, vanished among the pines and junipers. Despite weariness and heavy hearts, they made no more sound than the soughing of the wind. The volunteers watched them go.

The Lioness twisted around in Eagle Eye’s saddle. From a long, leather-covered tube tied across the animal’s hips, she withdrew three lengths of polished steel, each about four feet long. Screwing the threaded ends together, she s oon had a formidable lance, a griffon-rider’s deadliest weapon.

The archers lifted their heads. They heard a single voice, far deeper than any elf’s, deeper even than a human’s, roaring from across the distance. The minotaur commander was challenging his troops. Everyone looked to Baranthalonus. He in turn looked to the Lioness.

“I’ll not rise yet,” she said, tugging on mail gauntlets. Even though they were sewn of light-colored cloth to reflect the sun, donning them was like putting her hands into a hot frying pan. “No sense giving our position away.”

The dust clouds grew thicker, spreading out in a semicircle from south to north, fully encompassing the small hillock. Clanking and clattering, the great armored host of minotaurs drew nearer. Loose stones danced as the desert trembled under the tread of two thousand bull-men. Eagle Eye no longer shifted his clawed forefeet on the hot sand. The griffon stood unmoving, his golden-eyed gaze fixed upon the approaching enemy, alert for his rider’s slightest command.

Kerianseray tightened the straps of her helmet beneath her chin. It wasn’t a fighting helm, made of steel or iron, but a soft leather cap, designed chiefly to keep her thick golden hair out of her face while she was airborne. She shifted the steel lance off her knees and couched it under her arm. Thoughts crossed her mind: What a long way she’d come from the woods of Qualinesti. There she’d first fought the Nerakans with a simple leather sling. Now she commanded Silvanesti lords from griffonback, with a knightly weapon in her hand. A strange fate had led her here.