The Goblin War by Hilari Bell

Duri gave to those “blood traitors” that they were almost crippled. And those who were useless were next in line for the knife.
    Yes, Tobin understood Vruud’s determination to escape. But that didn’t mean the storyteller’s nebulous plan to observe the next battle—“so I can make the bravery of the Morovda camp a legend for the ages”—and thus get them closer to the border before they made a run for it, would work.
    “Because even if your chief . . . Morovda, was it? Even if he agrees to let you ride with the Duri, and take your servant along with you, we can’t simply start running from your side of the battlefield to the Realm’s. Because first the Duri will shoot us full of arrows, and then the Realm knights will take us for attacking warriors and kill us before we can identify ourselves.”
    They were traveling down the dusty road to Vruud’s home camp when he brought up the subject. The open road was the only place Tobin could be certain no one could overhear them.
    “It’s not perfect,” Vruud conceded. “But we’d only have to cross a few hundred yards, in the midst of the chaos of battle, instead of twenty miles of open territory with every patrol on the alert. And when the time nears, something might occur to give us an opportunity.”
    Tobin was dubious about that, but he had to admit that Vruud’s mad scheme had worked so far. His steps still began to drag as they mounted the rise and the Morovda camp appeared below them. After spending the last few weeks touring Duri camps, Tobin realized how small and isolated it was. Morovda had quarreled with a couple of other chiefs on the Heron Clan council and had chosen to set his camp apart from the others.
    “Did I mention how many of the Duri got a good look at me?” Tobin said nervously. He was walking beside his “master” now and had to look up to see his face. The mule Vruud rode had been named Mouse, not only for his gray hide but because he was remarkably timid for a creature who was almost as tall as a horse.
    “You’ve been around the Duri for weeks,” Vruud told him. “You know they never look at a chanduri’s face. And there’s no reason for anyone to look twice at a servant I hired from another camp.”
    That was true. The Duri regarded the chanduri like a farmer regards livestock he knows will be slaughtered—he might treat them kindly, but he’d never allow himself to form an emotional attachment. And, like livestock, servants were traded from one clan to another.
    Along with their daughters. The Duri were careful not to become too inbred, lest it weaken the warrior lines. In fact, Vruud told him, in some clans it was forbidden for a woman to marry a man of the camp in which she was born. In others it was frowned on, and young women were expected to go to men from another camp, but they weren’t exiled if they didn’t. In yet another clan all girls were fostered to different camps at the age of thirteen, and returned to their childhood homes only to visit.
    The Realm was much bigger than the Duri army, and its population was scattered across a large area, but it had a common language, common customs and laws. Had the Seven Bright Gods given them this gift when the church was founded? If so, Tobin owed them more prayers than he usually offered.
    Despite his nerves, and despite the fact that he recognized half a dozen of the Duri, when Tobin entered the Morovda camp and Vruud introduced him as “a servant I picked up from a Bear Clan camp to tend the mules,” no one looked at him twice.
    He knew without asking that Bear would be one of the clans with a very different language base. Vruud might not be his friend, but Tobin never underestimated the man’s intelligence.
    In a way, he thought, as another chanduri showed him the horse line and gave him instructions about where to go for grain, he was grateful to the storyteller for keeping their relationship on a remote, aid-traded-for-aid level. He would take the