The wonderful Ladycroc Detts detts made this picture for me.

A few weeks ago a caravan delivering seeds and various compounds needed for farming as well as medicines got attacked in the desert near the city of Thebes.
However, thanks to the caravan's scout they had been forewarned and gave the raiders a warm welcome, resulting in the caravan experiencing no losses at all, whilst the raiders got mostly killed.
A few survivors fled into the desert, and, as was custom, those that were wounded, but alive , got patched up by the caravan as best as they could.

It is not often, but each time counts, and this time it paid back:
One family within the raiders group split off from the other survivors, and sneaked after the caravan, and after camping in what they believed was outside the viewrange of the city for a few days to make up their minds, they approached the city's gate.

The father had weak knees approaching the giant walls, so much bigger than the earthen walls his tribes kraal in the green lands had had before one day a neighboring tribe had ousted them.

He had been a young one back then, and barely escaped with his girlfriend. Being of small build only, no other tribe would even look at him, and so he and his by-then-wife banded together with other outcasts and travelled into the desert, hunting small game and moving from one water hole to the next. Tales of rich cities and meat rich caravans had lured the small band deeper and deeper into the deserts.

Finally they found a city, but it was gigantic, several times the size of the biggest kraal any of the raiders i nthe small group had ever seen, and with walls that would need scaling equipment which they did not have.

However near the city, with its irrigated green fields surrounding it - which was weird, for there were no meat animals on the grassland - was good hunting of small animals. They stayed outside the viewrange of the city, as great groups of armored people came out of it every day at dawn and others, guarded by those , most likely serfs, cut the grass and brought it back into the town - they kept their meat animals inside!
That explained the town's size.
They remained near the town until one day there was a caravan leaving its gates.
The caravan was big, and there were plenty of guards.

However, the smal lraider band followed the caravan. Maybe it'd be possible to attack the rearmost part of the caravan and grab some spoils. The caravan was moving only slowly, after all.

After about a week of travel the bolder members of the small band of raiders couldn't control their tempers anymore. The caravan was moving slowly only, but it seemed to never stop. They had spied so far that the large lizards that were loaded with goods ( pottery, bales of cloth, chests ) were moving slowly, but relentlessly, and there were large and small people around them, the smaller often picked up by the taller ones or sittign on the lizards who didn't mind their weight.
But there was the scent of meat in the air, and it drove the exhausted raiders slowly mad, until one day they noticed the ground got greener again - they were approaching another area of green land, so a city might be close by!

The bolder members of the smal lband decided that it was now or never, and beat those that advised caution into submission.

The father remembered those undignified beatings still well, and only the threat that his wife would be raped by the entire band made him agree to help the attack personally and with his two sons.

It was, in short a fiasco. They had hidden behind a dune near the caravans path, and when the caravan was almost past them, they had dashed over it - and barely four steps downhill small madmen had attacked them clung to their legs and arms, made several of them topple and fall.
That hadn't been the worst yet. The small knifes the mini-berserkers used were barely more painful that the claws of an antagonist when discussing something using brute force.
Worse was the solid wall of armored bodies standign between them and the lizard with the cargo - and then the father learned to fear those armored beings.
Stupid were those that had fallen and got up - they got the first volley of arm long serrated bolts. Those most lucky were those that had fallen down and that had knocked themselves unconscious on a stone. Those in between were thsoe that were still running downhill like the father and his older son. They brandished their clubs and sought cover by running behind whomever else was faster than them.

Too late they realized that the wooden stakes driven into the ground far to the right and left of where they had been encamped on the dune had a deeper meaning.
The first of the raiders, a giant brute that had left the green lands most likely because he wanted to do his own thing, and who'd become the leader of the small raider band was the first to fly headlong over a thin rope that had been strung betwee nthe wooden poles. He flew headlong over it, rolled over his head and came sittign only a step in front of the armored warriors. dazed he lifted his giant club to strike at the nearest of the warriors, but he was too badly disoriented , too slow from the tumble.
With a single, almsot, the father had to admit, elegant stroke, the warrior decapitated the brute with a shimmering long sword. Father shouted to his son, warning him from the rope and managed to jump over it, diving through between two of the warriors.

He rolled sidewards, and looked for his older son - the younger he had ordered to remain behind the hillcrest and sneak back to protect the mother in case things went badly.

To his horror he saw that his son had stumbled over the string. He rested directly beside the decapitated corpse of the brute.
Father snarled and screamed, ducked under the swords of two of the armored warriors that had turned around to take care of him, and he jostled through between them, bruising himself on their armors spikes.
He knelt over his sons body, saw him breathign calmy, unconscious, knocked out by having stumbled full speed over the string.
With raised club father stood over his son, threatening the warriors who seemingly ignored him, making however short process with the other raiders who attacked them.
Father was scared seeing how the other raiders blindly ran against the armored warriors. The small band of Raiders had been worn out and exhausted, starved at times, so they were really not up to their best, and it showed. Two of the other brutes managed to get into close combat with two of the warriors, and might have overcome them, but the warriors stood so close to each other that the warriors beside them just needed to lash out with their swords, and soon only one of the brutes made it back over the dune, with only a very, very few others.

And father still stood over his son, none of the warriors which could have easily got rid of him now that he alone was left standing.

But they did not.

When Father saw how some of them hung their swords on their backs and went toward the returning small berserks, lifting them up, checkign over each other, father was puzzled, for such familiarity no Raider would have dared to show in the presence of others, only out of sigh with ones direct family maybe.

Soon they were walking and turning over the raiders that littered the dune, and father ghuessed they'd finish them off and would start feastign on the corpses, as most of the brutes enjoyed to do, and asfather had done a few times , disgusted of himself, to be accepted amongst the more fierce members of the band.

Instead they started to carefulyl remove the bolts - sure, as thsoe bolts were expensive to manufacture most likely, but then father was even more astonished, for the big warriors and the small berserkers started to clean the wounds of the raiders and gently bandaged them, sometimes, when one of the raiders came to himself, four of the warriors knelt on his limbs to keep him immobilized unti lthe bandaging was done and the wounds treated better than Father had ever seen it being done.

He didn't understand it.
Only two warriors stood still there, four steps away, thus comfortably out of each others striking range, watchign into his direction. They could have loaded their large crossbows, but instead they held their swords up over their shoulders, ready to strike when he'd try to attack them.
One of the small berserkers approached , lifting his hands up, the large ears erect. The berserker was barely as large as a two year old cub, but did wear an elaborately embroidered leather armor over his chest, and a short kilt around his waist. Behind him he lugged a big water bottle and a leather bag, and he moved extremely slowly, or so it seemed. Father was unsure, and looked over his shoulder to the dune.
The small one spoke up:"Your son is still on the dune, and is watching. He is safe, for all the other raiders fled in panic. Your wife is with him, too."

Father looked at the small one, the berserker, and flicked his ears:"You, you speak my language?"

The small one mimicked his ears motions with his large ears:"Yes. It's pretty handy to tell somebody that he is safe now, isn't it?"
Then the small one lugged the bottle around and pushed the bag forward to within Fathers reach:
"Dried meat, and water. It should last you and your family for a few days. Your son has a concussion I think.. Should I check him over?"

Father let his club drop and knelt down beside his son, carefuly lturning him over.
"I.. I don't think he'll need help..." he tentatively spoke more to himself:
"Why aren't you killing us all? Why not eat us?"
The small one shook his head and then burst into laughters:
"Eat people? Bah! Us Fennekim eat bugs, which don't know whether they're alive or not - and the casual sweet fruit. And our tall friends here," and there he pointed to the warriors, "eat nothing that moves on its own. They only eat green things and fruits."
The small one, the fennekim, sat on his haunches in a familiar manner, and looked up to Father who towered twice as high as him, absolutely unafraid.
"The town we're going to is on a large river, why this countryside here is much more fertile that the desert we passed through the last days. They have lots of lizards grazing around there, and also they do catch fish in the river. When you don't mind using your strength and agility to catch fish, then you're going to be most welcome there."
And with a friendly smile he flickered his large ears. "Your wife and your younger son are coming down the dune. We will have to set forth. Do you mind us to burn the corpses," and there he kicked the beheaded brutes body, "so that none of the larger beasts of the deserts become attracted by them?"

Father shook his head and spit onto the corpse of the brute that had lead the pack, seeing that those Raiders that had awakened already and had found themselves patched up sneaked up and away over the dune, watched by a few guards, but not at al lpursued, each clutchign a bottle of water and a bag with , as it smelled, dried meat.
Mother and the younger son arrived, timidly, wary of the warriors who, seeign them approach, hung their weapons away and even took off their helmets.
"Well, I take that as a 'Yes, we can', " the fennekim nodded and got up, waving to some of the nearby warriors who bowed visibly toward Father - not the fennekim, and then started to collect the corpses, gently liftign them like if they'd be sleeping babes, and carefully laid them to rest aside and then upon each other, on a thin layer of dry wood.
"By the way," the fennekim said over his shoulder to Father, "The meat in the bag is dried fish. When you like it, you know now where to get more of it. You're welcome in Thebes. Just follow the caravan and you'll be there day after tomorrow morning."
Then Father knew no more for mother hugged him , crying silently, sobbign having been worried for him and asking what it was with their eldest son, but Father calmed her and showed her that he was just unconscious. At that, the last of the armored warriors turned away, except for one, who came, carrying a set of waterbottles, and three more bags with meat.
Carefully, slowly, the warrior knelt down and placed the bottles and the bags down nearby , then unwrapped a fine cloth from a pouch at the belt and poured some water over it, reaching out and holding it to within Fathers reach:"Here, place that on your sons forehead. it'll help him get up faster again and with less of a headache."

Father took the cloth, a fine weave, yet incredible robust, and looked at the warrior, for the first time realizing that part of the appetizing smell in the air did come not only from the bags with the dried meat, but from the warriors, and then, looking for real at the warrior, the long muzzle with the blunt herbivore teeth, he realized that those warriors were females actually.
In the heat of the attack before he had just perceived them as steel clad monsters.
He dipped his head lightly and placed the cloth on his older sons forehead, where mother arranged it more neadly and then massaged her sons temples slowly.
"Will we .. really be welcome in that town you head for?"
The warrior nodded:
"There is a small enclave of your people in the town. They are artisans, musicians and fishermen."
Mother looked at the warrior, and, too, realized it was a female, and hesitantly she asked:
"You are a woman... why do you fight?"

The warrior whinnied, a strange noise, but the laughter in it was gentle and caring:
"You are a mother... Would you not fight for your children?"
The two females looked into each others eyes and then Mother nodded silently, her muzzle an expression of chiseled stone.
"You understand." was the short response of the warrior, who then got up and went her ways.
Father had not understood it, same as the younger son, but mother was reluctant to explain it to them beyond a short "They do really care."

And all that moved in Fathers heart when he stood in front of the gate and hailed the two figured upon the gatehouses wall.
And they greeted him back, respectfully, and soon the gates of the town opened, and one of each kind of the towns inhabitants stepped forth from the gate to welcome them in...