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Jalav 5: To Battle The Gods




Jalav 5: To Battle The Gods
by Sharon Green

CH 1. An arrival-and a decision disputed

Mida's light touched me strongly where I sat upon my kan, not so strongly as it had in the lands of
Midanna, yet sufficiently warming in what was, in truth, the land of males. The skies were bright and
clear of clouds, the land all about us open and green, and beyond the rise of ground we had halted
behind lay the city of Bellinard. I had returned at last to the place where my sister clans awaited me,
warriors who would follow me into battle against the coming strangers, and I would have rejoiced at my
return-had my humor not been so foul.

"Now comes Ennat," said Chaldrin from where he sat his own kan nearby; the rumble of his words did
not intrude upon my thoughts. "As Wedin and Dotil accompany her, the wenches are likely all in their
assigned places."

"More quickly than the legions of Sigurr," said S'Heernoh, amused, as he often was. The male who was
called Walker sat his kan somewhat behind, his observation exceedingly soft, yet not so soft that I was
unable to hear it. Few others would have had the courage to jest in my hearing just then, yet S'Heernoh
always faced my displeasure with little more than innocent curiosity.

"Though the Sigurri are warriors, still they are no more than males," said Ilvin to S'Heernoh, amused
herself. "Midanna are true warriors, and take the field of battle more swiftly and with greater eagerness."

"Not to speak of the fact that there are more than twice the number of Sigurri than Midanna," said
Chaldrin calmly. "The Sword will see them properly deployed, and then he and Aysayn will join us as
agreed. They undoubtedly give thanks, as do we, that this journey is done at last."

That this journey is done at last. Chaldrin's words caused me to consider the journey just completed and
the manner in which it had begun. I, Jalav, once war leader of the Hosta clan of Midanna, had set out
with my Hosta warriors to retrieve the Crystal of our goddess, stolen from us by northern males. First
had there been the city of Bellinard, ruled then by males, a place where I and a small number of my
warriors had been enslaved. It was there that Ceralt and Telion had bought me, two males with unspoken
purposes of their own; we all ended at last in the city of Ranistard. After much struggle, the lives of my
warriors lost at the time of the theft of the Crystal had been avenged, yet had our Crystal, and the one
which should have been guarded by the Silla clan, and a previously unknown third, all been irretrievably
lost to the males of Ranistard. They had placed the Crystals within a device of evil, a device supposedly
of the Ancients, and the device could not again be made to release them.

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 Jalav 5: To Battle The Gods



I sighed at the memory of that doing, for the males had thought to use the device to speak with the gods,