Into the thinking kingdoms - Alan Dean Foster [31]
“No.” The litah spoke without looking up from its kill. But it began to eat a little faster. “Heard something.”
“The cat is right.” Wishing he were taller still, Ehomba was straining to see off to the west. Nothing unusual crossed his field of vision. But several large wading birds tucked their long legs beneath them and unfurled imposing wings as they took to the saturated sky. “I cannot see anything, but I can hear it.”
Simna had always believed he possessed senses far sharper than those of the average man, and in this he was in fact correct. But as he had learned over the past weeks, he was blind and deaf when compared to both his human and feline companions. It was all that time spent herding cattle, Ehomba had explained to him. Alone in the wilderness, one’s senses naturally sharpened. Simna had listened to the explanation, and had nodded understanding, because it made sense. But it did not explain everything. Nothing that he had heard or seen since they had first met quite explained everything about Etjole Ehomba.
With a grunt of contentment, the satiated Ahlitah rose from the neatly butchered remnants of his kill and began to clean himself, massive paws taking the place of towels, saliva substituting for soap and water. Ignoring him, Ehomba continued to stare stolidly westward.
“I still don’t hear anything.” Simna strained to listen, knowing that with his shorter stature there was no way he would see something before the beanpole of a herdsman did. “By Gyiemot, what are you two hearing, anyway?”
“Splashing,” Ehomba informed him quietly.
“Splashing? In an endless marsh? Now there’s a revelation. I certainly wouldn’t have expected to hear anything like that.” As usual, his sarcasm had no effect on the southerner.
“Feet,” Ehomba told him somberly. “Many feet.”
The swordsman tensed slightly. Looking around, he made certain he knew the location of his sword, removed and set aside during the night. “Hoy. Feet. How many feet?”
The fine-featured herdsman glanced down at him, his voice unchanged. Sometimes Simna found himself wondering if it would change if its master suddenly found himself confronted with the end of the world. He decided that it would not.
“Thousands.”
Nodding somberly, Simna ibn Sind turned and bent to pick up his sword.
VI
The pulsing, living wave came at them out of the west, inclining slightly to the north of the island. For a brief moment Ehomba and Simna thought it might pass them in its inexorable surge eastward. Then it began to turn, to curl in their direction, and they knew it was they that the wave sought, and that it would not rush on past.
Its leading edge was uneven, not the regular, predictable curl of a sea wave but a broken, churning froth. The reason behind the raggedness soon became apparent. It was not a wave at all, but water thrown up from beneath thousands of hooves. The horses were driving the water before them, the flying spume like panicked insects fleeing a fire.
The two men and one cat stood their ground. It was an easy decision to make because they had no other choice. The island on which they had spent the night was the only ground on which to stand, and despite their most vigorous poling, the sturdy but unhydrodynamic flat-bottomed boat would have been hard pressed to outrun a determined turtle, much less a stampeding herd. So they stood and watched, and waited.
Potential for trampling aside, it was a magnificent sight. For Ehomba, who had never before seen a horse, the beauty and grace of the massed animals was a revelation. He had not expected that such a variety of size and color might be found within a single fundamental body type. Simna’s description had been accurate—within its limitations. These horses were much like zebras, but whereas the herdsman knew only three