The Shasht War Read Online Free PDF Page B

them to make war. They were conquerors, enslavers. They seemed to have no sense of the harmony of life and the way of the Great Spirit. Thru wondered how they could possibly be so bereft.
    The stench of the ship on which he'd been briefly kept captive came back to him. Perhaps living in such a stink had driven them mad. Perhaps that was how they always lived, packed together in huge buildings, so close that they had no privacy. The stench of their wastes in their nostrils every day. They had no concept of the inner life of the spirit. They had gone insane, locked away from the natural world.
    Simona, his human friend, had told him many things while they taught each other their respective languages. The land of Shasht had once been green and fertile. A dozen small nations had expanded to fill the arable land, and as a result there had been endless war, which was only curbed by the creation of the Empire. That had been the work of the First Emperor, Kadawak the Great. Since then the Empire had ruled all the lands of men. Its enemies were always broken, always brought to the temple pyramid and sacrificed to the Great God while the multitudes bayed below, the priests tearing open their victim's chest to rip out their still-beating hearts to offer to their cruel and bloodthirsty God.
    And yet, these harsh people dwelled in a high city, carved in white stone, draped in the scarlet cloth that honored the Emperor. Great song festivals were held where choirs and musical ensembles strove to produce great music. They produced paintings and rugs and many other beautiful objects.
    It was all a huge puzzle to Thru. How did they turn from the harsh world that Simona described to sing of love and the caress of the infinite?
    And again, just for a moment he had that thought of the entirely new mat design that had come to him in a flash of insight. The excitement he felt at this idea left him acutely uncomfortable, as if he'd done something completely forbidden. So he shrugged it aside, suppressing the idea once more.
    They came out into a place where the stream broke into dozens of channels on flat ground. Dwarf pine competed with the birches here, and they watched a pair of storks fly up in alarm.
    They were a good distance from the storks. And storks were never hunted or killed except when they raided sea-pond. All three mots exchanged a look, but after careful study of the ground ahead of them, they moved on through the dwarf trees, across the braids of gravel in which the stream wandered.
    At the far side of the open space, the stream fell more steeply. Huge hemlocks towered up above, leaving only dimness on the forest floor. After the dwarf forest it was like walking into a quiet vault.
    Suddenly, Beerg froze and raised a hand.
    "Look!" he whispered.
    Lying on the gravel bed, beside the stream, was an old mor. She was wrapped in a thick, homespun cloak and appeared to have died peacefully, most likely from exhaustion and exposure.
    "Refugee," said Natho before offering a short prayer for the dead mor.
    Beerg had found tracks.
    "There are many, and some are not from mot or brilby foot."
    Mot eyebrows flashed up and down in the universal sign of apprehension.
    Men!
    They studied the ground. Beerg pointed out the details that showed which marks were made by mots and which by something else.
    "May the spirit be with us," whispered Natho.
    There were at least ten men somewhere ahead of them. Before that a party of mots, many mots, had passed across the streambed.
    "Scouts from their army, I guess," muttered Thru as he studied the ground.
    They went on down the tumbled stone of the streambed, then again they halted. They heard sounds from up ahead. Moving with extreme care, they drew back and shifted off the streambed and into the forest. After a while they peered over a huge fallen tree trunk and saw a party of men, lounging by the side of the stream. Thru saw the straggly dark beards, the metal helmets, their swords and spears. These men were