Terrible Swift Sword Read Online Free PDF

paused, as if searching for the right words.
    "We live without changing, they live in order to change."
    "And you are telling us to change," Muzta said, filling the silence.
    Tamuka nodded in reply.
    "If we wish to survive we must make change a part of our lives, casting aside what was for what is."
    "Forever?" Muzta asked.
    "At least for now, at least until this thing is settled, but even then it will never be the same again."
    "And why not?" Tayang interjected. "I still do not see it as a concern even for us."
    "I laughed when I first heard of the discomfort of the Tugars," Jubadi said. "My laughter is silent now."
    The Qarths of the Bantag Horde looked up to their lord, waiting for his reply.
    "What is it that you want, then?" Tayang asked, "You who speak for the Qar Qarth of the Merki."
    "Annihilate them all," Tamuka said coldly.
    "Kill all the cattle?" Tayang replied in shock. "You are mad. They raise our food, they make all that we have. They fashion our clothes and armor, they forge our swords, fletch our arrows, and make our bows. They raise the grains, the lower forms of meat that we eat, and they are the noble food that fills our stomachs. If we follow your mad plan, then what are we to eat, Merki? Grass?"
    "Do not slay them, and in twenty years, when we ride again to this region, it will be they who ensure that we will feed the grass."
    Muzta sat back in silence. Until this moment he had thought that the problem that the Yankees had presented could be contained. That in the end, even if it took twenty years of riding yet again around the world, they would return and have their vengeance.
    Yet what would they meet in twenty years? Tamuka now drew the picture in his mind with a clarity that he had once turned to Qubata for. He had seen the Yankee machine that moved upon the land while breathing smoke. He had thought it curious at the time. But with such a thing the Yankees could, in a day, cross a distance that would take a week by horse.
    "This Yankee machine, this machine that moves on land . . ." Muzta said.
    "They call it a 'train,'" Tamuka replied.
    "Yes, a train. If we, all of us, continue our ride eastward, when we return in twenty years they will have built these machines to unite a hundred of their cities against us. That is why it is your concern as well, Tayang. Ignore it now, and when your son brings his horde back to this place, a cattle army as numberless as the stalks of grass upon the endless sea of green will be arrayed against you, their armies moving ten days of ride in one."
    Tayang looked down from his throne at the one Muzta knew must be the heir.
    "Then what do you want of us?" Tayang finally replied.
    "Peace, so that the entire might of the Merki Horde can march against the Yankees in the spring."
    Tayang laughed softly.
    "And in return?"
    "An end to their threat," Jubadi said forcefully.
    Tayang laughed.
    "Am I a fool? What of these new weapons? I have heard how Merki can even fly. What of that?"
    "It is true," Jubadi said. "We can fly."
    There was a murmur of disbelief from the clan Qarths surrounding Tayang.
    "It is true," Muzta replied. "I have seen the sky-riders, machines made by the Merki that can fly."
    "How?" Tayang asked, unable to contain his curiosity.
    Tamuka looked back at Jubadi.
    "One of the Yankee traitors knew the secret of making an invisible air that enables one to float."
    "Wind from his backside, most likely," Tayang said, laughing coarsely.
    Jubadi smiled.
    "A deadly wind that explodes when fire touches it. It is trapped inside a vast tent sewn together into a bag, and when filled it floats away. Beneath the bag we took machines found in the barrows of ancestors from before the circling. The rotted wheels of the carts were removed, and blades that spin in the air were fashioned to push the floating tents of the light air from place to place."
    "The burial carts that move without horses?" Tayang asked.
    Jubadi nodded.
    "You violated the graves of ancestors. It will be your