Treasured One

by David Eddings

  “You’re in charge of them, Keselo,” Narasan said. “The decision is yours.”

  “And so are any mistakes you happen to make,” Gunda added with a slight smirk.

  “Thanks, Gunda,” Keselo replied sourly. Then he looked directly at Narasan. “I had a notion just after the enemy pull back, sir,” he said. “If we were to wait until it gets dark and then pull back to the next line of breastworks and plant a good number of poisoned stakes in the open ground between the two, the enemy will probably be more than a little confused if they attack again tomorrow.”

  “That’s not a bad idea at all, Keselo,” Gunda said approvingly. “And then you could move your men back to the outermost breastworks tomorrow night. If the enemy thinks you’ve deserted that first breastworks, he’ll probably just try to romp on over it, and your people could delete half an army without much trouble at all.”

  “And then fall back to the third line during the second night?” Keselo suggested.

  Gunda blinked. “Now why didn’t I think of that?” he said. “You’re a very nasty young man, Keselo. After a week or so of bouncing back and forth like that, the enemy’s going to be so confused that he won’t know which way to turn.”

  As night fell, the Trogite soldiers atop Gunda’s wall unrolled the fish-netting to hold back the bug-bats. Longbow was almost positive that the Vlagh’s imitation bats were primarily scouts, but Narasan preferred not to take any chances.

  Dahlaine, the grey-bearded eldest of Zelana’s family, joined them on the central tower. “They don’t seem to move after dark, do they?” he observed.

  “There are plenty of bug-bats out tonight, big brother,” Veltan replied. “They may not bite, but they are flying around out there in the dark.”

  “You did give your men down on the slope enough of that netting to protect them, didn’t you?”

  “We gave them netting, Dahlaine, but I don’t think they’ll really need it. So far as we’ve been able to determine, the bug-bats never bite anybody. Their job seems to involve watching us and then carrying what they’ve seen back to the Vlagh.”

  “You’re wrong, Veltan. Once the actual fighting starts, all of the servants of the Vlagh turn belligerent. Right now, those fishnets are the only thing that’s keeping your soldiers alive.”

  Longbow, however, had come up with an alternative. “Night vision would be absolutely necessary for a creature of any kind to have if it was watching other creatures after the sun goes down, wouldn’t it?” he asked Veltan’s older brother.

  “I’m sure it would,” Dahlaine agreed.

  “And wouldn’t a very bright light almost blind a creature that never comes out of its hiding place until after darkness sets in?”

  Dahlaine blinked, and then he suddenly burst out laughing. “Don’t go away, Longbow,” he chortled. “I’ll be right back.”

  There was a sudden flash of light and crack of thunder and Dahlaine was gone.

  Moments later, there came another flash and a sharp crack. Dahlaine had returned, and he was holding a small glowing ball in his left hand. “Don’t look at her too closely, friends,” he cautioned. “That’s very bad for your eyes.” Then he opened his hand, and the small object rose up into the air, glowing brighter and brighter as it moved upward. Then, when it was perhaps a quarter of a mile above Gunda’s wall, it stopped, and the light emanating from it grew so intense that it flooded the wall and the slope leading down to the Wasteland as if noon had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

  The bat-bugs in the vicinity shrieked in agony, and immediately fled from the light.

  “What in the world is that little thing?” Gunda asked in an awed voice.

  “Just one of my pets,” Dahlaine replied. “If she were larger, we’d probably call her a sun.”

  2

  At first light the following morning, Longbow climbed down the rope ladder on the outer side of Gunda’s black wall and went down the slope, easily leaping over the rough-stone barricades Padan’s men had erected. Given the agility of the smaller servants of the Vlagh they’d encountered back in the ravine, it seemed to Longbow that the barricades might be more effective if they were higher, but he decided not to make an issue of it.

  His primary reason for this early visit to the outermost barricade was to speak with the men who’d actually encountered the Vlagh’s most recent experiments.

  He found Brigadier Danal and Subcommander Andar, garbed in the standard Trogite black leather and bright-gleaming iron, talking quietly together near the center of the barricade.

  “You’re up early,” Danal said as Longbow joined them. “Is there something afoot?”

  “Not yet,” Longbow replied. “I haven’t seen any of the newer creatures up close, so I thought that I should talk with some people who’d actually encountered them. Did you notice any significant differences?”

  “They’re much more clumsy than the ones we fought back in the ravine were,” Danal said. “Sometimes it almost looks like they’re stumbling over their own feet.”

  Longbow nodded. “That’s not uncommon,” he replied. “If I remember correctly, when I was still growing I had the same problem. If your body grows so fast that your mind can’t adjust to the new size, you’ll probably trip over every blade of grass you come across. Were there any of the ones with turtle-shells involved in yesterday’s attack?”

  “None that I saw,” Subcommander Andar replied in his deep, rumbling voice. “Did you happen to see any, Danal?”

  “No,” Danal replied, “and I think I’d rather keep it that way too. A poison-fanged enemy is bad enough, but a poisonous one with armor added might just be a lot worse.”

  “Did Keselo mention his notion of falling back to the next breastworks after nightfall?” Longbow asked them.

  Andar nodded. “It’s an interesting idea, but I don’t think it’ll work very well unless somebody can come up with a way to put out that bright light hanging over this slope. We’ll need darkness to hide what we’re doing.”

  “Smoke might work,” Danal suggested.

  “Only if you can find enough firewood,” Andar disagreed.

  “We won’t have to come up with anything until this evening,” Longbow told them. “How are your archers doing?”

  “They’re better than they were before,” Danal replied. “They aren’t as good as your people are yet, but they seem to be able to hit what they’re aiming at about half the time.”

  “They’re probably letting their arrows fly too soon,” Longbow advised. “You might want to lay out a line of some sort—twenty or thirty feet out to the front. Then tell them not to release any arrows until the enemy crosses that line.”

  “We’ll give it a try.” Andar rumbled.

  Longbow drifted off to one side, and then he sent a silent thought out to Zelana.

  “Was there something?” she asked in a lofty-sounding voice that she knew very well irritated him.

  “Your brother’s little sun is very nice, Zelana,” he said, “but if the men out here are going to try Keselo’s deception, they’ll need darkness to conceal what they’re doing.”

  “If Dahlaine puts his little sun away, the bats will probably come back out again, Longbow,” she reminded him. She paused. “Wouldn’t fog conceal them almost as well as darkness?” she asked. “Dahlaine’s little toy sun would still keep the bats away, and the fog would conceal the movements of Narasan’s forces from the other servants of the Vlagh.”

  “I hadn’t even considered fog,” Longbow admitted, “probably because fog’s very rare in the mountains at this time of year. Could you really bring in a fog-bank along about sunset today?”

  “Of course I can, Longbow. You should know that by now.” She paused. “It’ll cost you another kiss-kiss, though.”

  Longbow was almost certain that Zelana’s imitation of Eleria’s favorite expression was nothing more than a form of teasing, but then again . . . ?

  As the sun rose, the inhuman roar from out in the Wasteland announced
the beginning of the second day of the war in the south. Longbow moved along behind the breastworks advising the marginally trained Trogite archers to wait until the enemy force was almost on top of them before they loosed their arrows.

  “Is it really a good idea to let them get so close, sir?” one earnest young archer asked.

  “It’s better to wait than it is to waste arrows,” Longbow replied. “If they’re close enough, you can’t miss. Then too, if there’s a big pile of dead ones out in front of this barricade, it’ll hinder the ones coming along behind. Look at it this way, young friend. What you’re really doing with your bow is constructing another barricade, and you’re using dead enemies as building blocks.”

  The young Trogite laughed a bit nervously. “I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way, sir,” he admitted. “The nice part is that I won’t even have to pick up any heavy blocks to build that wall, will I?”

  “Always let your enemy do the hard work,” Longbow agreed.

  “I’ll remember that, sir, and I’ll tell all my friends as well.”

  “Good idea.”

  “Sergeant Red-Beard should have told us to do it this way when we first started.”

  “Sergeant Red-Beard?” Longbow demanded incredulously.

  “That’s what we all called him when he started training us. Do you think it might have offended him?”

  “Oh,” Longbow replied, trying very hard to keep from laughing, “probably not. Red-Beard’s fairly relaxed.” Then he had a thought. “If you want to be correct, though, his real title is ‘Chief.’”

  “I’ll tell all my comrades about that. It’s always best to use correct titles, don’t you think?”

  “I couldn’t agree more, young friend,” Longbow replied with a perfectly straight face. Red-Beard was always waving his sense of humor in everyone’s face, but Longbow was almost positive that his friend wouldn’t laugh very much when the Trogite archers all began to address him by the title he’d desperately tried to avoid back in Lattash.

  The recent experiment of the Vlagh had produced woefully inept warriors, Longbow concluded as he watched the attackers come lumbering up out of the Wasteland. His past experience made him quite certain that they would improve as newer hatches succeeded these early generations, however. The smaller version had almost certainly been lurking in the forests of Zelana’s Domain for centuries, so they’d had plenty of time to correct most of the earlier defects. It had taken One-Who-Heals quite some time to explain this to his pupil, Longbow ruefully recalled. The individual servant of the Vlagh was incapable of learning anything. Modification of any kind came only with the passage of generations.

  As time went on, this new modification would quite possibly improve and become more dangerous, but for right now it didn’t pose much of a threat.

  The mindless charge of the overgrown servants of the Vlagh continued until late afternoon, and by then the pile of dead ones some twenty feet to the front of the Trogite barricade was even higher than the barricade itself.

  Then that hollow roar from out in the Wasteland halted the attack, and not long afterward, Zelana’s fog-bank came rolling in.

  “Not a bad day, really,” Subcommander Andar growled. “We’re still here, and they’re still out there, so I’d say that we won this one.”

  “Let’s take advantage of this fog while it’s still here,” Brigadier Danal suggested. “It’s probably going to take most of the night to plant the poisoned stakes in the open ground between this breastworks and the one behind us.”

  Andar shuddered. “This business of using poison to fight a war makes me go cold all over,” he declared. “Who came up with the idea anyway?”

  “It was my teacher, One-Who-Heals,” Longbow explained. “Our enemies are venomous, and the ones we killed today will provide the poison we’ll use to kill the ones who’ll attack us tomorrow.” Then he suddenly laughed.

  “What’s so funny?” Andar demanded.

  “You’ve met Red-Beard, haven’t you?”

  “He’s the one who trained our archers, isn’t he?”

  Longbow nodded. “Red-Beard’s got a very peculiar sense of humor. I’m quite sure he’d try to take what I just told you about one step further and suggest that since today’s enemies will kill tomorrow’s enemies, we could probably just go fishing and let our enemies fight this war all by themselves.”

  “We should at least go through the motions here, Longbow,” Danal objected. “If we don’t look busy, our employer might decide that he doesn’t need us, and we won’t get paid.”

  “Bite your tongue, Danal,” Andar said.

  Zelana’s fog-bank, illuminated by her brother’s bright little sun, not only concealed the activities of Narasan’s men from the enemies out in the Wasteland, but also provided them with all the light they needed to plant the poisoned stakes between their outermost barricade and the one behind it. And so it was that they’d completed the task in about half the time it would have taken during an ordinary night.

  “Now we get to wait,” Andar grumbled.

  “You could always catch up on your sleep,” Danal suggested. “I’m sure that big-mouth out here in the red desert will wake you up in time to watch the bug-people start trying to tiptoe through our stakes.”

  “I’m an awfully sound sleeper, Danal.”

  “I’ve noticed. The sound of your sleeping reaches for miles sometimes.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You snore, Andar. Sometimes you snore so loud that the sound alone could shake down a stone fortress.”

  Just then the familiar roar came from out of the Wasteland, and the new breed of snake-men shambled forward in the early-morning light.

  “So much for your nap, Andar,” Danal observed.

  The awkward enemies clambered over their dead companions to reach the outermost barricade, and they seemed to be more than a little confused when they didn’t encounter any resistance there.

  “Let them know where we are, Danal,” Andar suggested.

  “Right,” Danal agreed. “Let’s hear a battle-cry, gentlemen!” he commanded, and a great shout arose from behind the second barricade.

  The enemies at the first barricade milled around in confusion for a while, and then another roar came from the Wasteland.

  “That was quick,” Longbow said as the creatures of the Wasteland began to move up the slope toward the second barricade.

  “I didn’t quite catch that,” Andar said.

  “Veltan advised us that the bug-people have what he called an ‘overmind,’” Longbow explained. “What one of them knows, they all know, and it appears that what one of them sees, the others also see.”

  “Are you saying that they can pass their eyeballs around?” Andar demanded.

  “Not quite,” Longbow said. “I think that touch might be involved. When they’re spread out like they are here, they’re always close enough to each other to pass information on back to the Vlagh in a very short time.”

  “That would be a lot like that notion Rabbit came up with back in Lattash, wouldn’t it?” Danal suggested.

  “Very close,” Longbow agreed.

  “I didn’t exactly follow that,” Andar said.

  “There was a lot of snow up in the mountains,” Danal explained, “and the natives warned us about a seasonal peculiarity. As I understood it, every year a very warm wind blew in from the sea and melted the snow overnight. That caused a flood. There were Maags part way up the ravine above Lattash, and we had to warn them that the warm wind was coming their way. The clever little Maag called Rabbit suggested using horns to pass a warning to the Maags up in the ravine that it was time to head for higher ground. That warning moved from out in the bay to the Maags up in the ravine in just a few minutes. The Maags climbed up to safety, but the snake-men who were invading didn’t get the point. You wouldn’t believe how many enemies were drowned in that flood.”

  “Good comparison, Danal,” Longbow said. “The creatures of th
e Wasteland don’t blow horns to pass things along, though. They use touch instead. The Vlagh almost certainly knows what’s happening here within a few minutes. That shout we just heard was probably a command to continue the charge.”

  “That suggests that they’re more efficient than I’d been led to believe,” Subcommander Andar said. “If they can pass information to each other instantly, they’ll have quite an advantage, wouldn’t you say?”

  “They didn’t do that during the war in the ravine,” Danal recalled.

  “Not that I noticed, no,” Longbow agreed. “I’d say that the Vlagh learned quite a bit more from that first war than we’d realized.”

  “It looks to me like there’s one thing they didn’t learn,” Danal observed. “They don’t seem to realize that our stakes have been dipped in venom. They’re dropping like flies out there.”

  Longbow peered over the barricade and saw that the enemy charge was faltering as the front ranks began to topple over when they reached the poisoned stakes.

  Then a somewhat sharper roar came from the Wasteland, and the more awkward enemies abruptly stopped their charge and stood in place.

  Longbow muttered an oath.

  “What’s the problem?” Andar asked.

  “Your poisoned stakes aren’t going to help this time, I’m afraid,” Longbow replied. “It appears that the Vlagh has finally realized how lethal they are, so it just ordered its army to stop the advance.”

  “That’s not really a bad thing, Longbow,” Danal noted. “If the enemy army can’t advance any farther than this, the war’s over, and we just won. Our stakes stopped them dead in their tracks.”

  “Not quite dead, Danal,” Andar disagreed. “Most of them are still standing.”

  “Maybe they’ll get hungry after a while and go someplace else to find something to eat,” Danal suggested.

  It was about midmorning when the eight-legged turtles came scampering over the outermost barricade. The terms “scamper” and “turtle” seemed almost contradictory, but Longbow couldn’t come up with any alternatives. With only a few exceptions, turtles were slow-moving reptiles whose body armor made anything faster than a slow creep almost impossible. The long, hard-coated spider-legs, however, lifted the shell-encased body above the ground, so the creature was able to move at a surprising rate.