“Shrewd,” Padan said. “After two or three more trenches, I’d say that all five Church armies will be up here jumping up and down and waiting for the time when they can run out into the desert to gather up as much imitation gold as they can carry.”
But it didn’t turn out that way, Sorgan was forced to admit. There was another get-together of the Regulators, and the one who was apparently their leader snapped out some fairly blunt instructions. Then the Regulators moved out again grabbing hold of more soldiers. This time, however, the Regulators didn’t just push the soldiers over the edge of the trench.
They threw them instead—just as far as they could—and the pile of dead soldiers began to stretch farther and farther out into the trench as the Regulators carpeted Sorgan’s trench with people.
“That does it!” Rabbit exclaimed in a voice that didn’t have the slightest trace of his usual timidity. He raised the short bow that Sorgan had assumed was a little more than a decoration and drew an arrow from the quiver belted to his back. “Which way did that one called Konag go?” the little man asked Torl.
“Ah . . .” Torl’s eyes swept across the far side of the trench. “I think he’s that one standing off to the right side, Rabbit,” he said. “Do you think you can take him from here?”
“I’m definitely going to try,” Rabbit announced, drawing his bow and sighting along the arrow-shaft.
His bowstring sang when he released it, and his arrow arced slightly as it flew over the trench.
The black-uniformed man who’d ordered his subordinates to throw live soldiers out into the trench to carpet over Sorgan’s stakes had been watching with an expression of bleak satisfaction, but that expression faded as he stiffened with Rabbit’s arrow protruding from the middle of his forehead. Then he fell on his back with his blank eyes staring at the sky.
“How did you do that?” Sorgan demanded of his little smith.
“We call this a ‘bow,’ Cap’n,” Rabbit explained, “and the thing that’s sticking out of that fellow’s head over on the other side of the trench is called an ‘arrow.’ If you put them together just right, they’ll do all sorts of nice things to people who aren’t nice.”
“That’s not what I meant, Rabbit,” Sorgan said. He turned to look at Longbow. “Have you been giving him lessons on the sly, maybe?”
“Not me, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied. “It’s quite possible that he just picked it up himself after he watched us shoot arrows into the creatures of the Wasteland back in the ravine.”
“That comes fairly close, Cap’n,” Rabbit conceded.
“You must have spent hours and hours practicing, Rabbit,” Torl said.
Rabbit shrugged. “It doesn’t really take all that long, Torl—especially if the only thing you practice is hitting. I didn’t waste any time practicing missing.” He frowned slightly. “I suppose I could teach myself how to miss,” he said, “but it might take me quite a while to learn how. Maybe if I work on it a bit, I will learn how to miss.” And then he laughed with an almost childish delight.
Sorgan was fairly sure that Longbow had trained Rabbit in the secrets of fine archery. “We’ll worry about that some other time,” he muttered.
“What was that?” Padan asked him.
“Just thinking out loud,” Sorgan replied, staring across the trench. “I think that one arrow might have changed a few things,” he said.
“I’ve heard a few stories about that Konag,” Padan replied. “I’ve heard that even the highest-ranking churchmen are afraid of him.”
“Were afraid,” Sorgan corrected. “Now that he’s dead, I don’t think anybody’s afraid of him anymore.”
“Maybe,” Padan said, still looking across the wide trench. “It looks to me like those Church soldiers are starting to shed some of their timidity. One of the Regulators just got a sword in the belly.”
“What a shame,” Sorgan replied sardonically.
“There goes another one,” Padan reported. “Things seem to be getting a bit exciting over there.”
“Don’t start cheering yet, Padan,” Sorgan growled. “If those soldiers over there work up enough nerve, they’ll kill all of the Regulators, and then they’ll go right back to ‘I can run faster than you can’ and they’ll all start dribbling down the north slope in twos and threes, and the bug-people will have them for lunch.”
“Not as long as your poisoned stakes are in place, they won’t. They’ll have to crawl along on their hands and knees, pulling those stakes out one at a time. That should slow them enough for the rest of their forces to catch up with them.”
“We can hope, I guess,” Sorgan replied dubiously.
It was not long after noon when there was a sudden flash of intense light and a shattering crash of thunder.
“Do you have to do that, Veltan?” Sorgan demanded irritably.
“She gets me where I need to go in a hurry, Sorgan,” Veltan explained. “Please don’t irritate her. I need her right now.”
“What’s happening, Lord Veltan?” Padan asked Zelana’s younger brother. It seemed to Sorgan that Padan sometimes overdid his pretended politeness.
“My big sister’s Dreamer just solved a number of problems for us, gentlemen,” Veltan replied. “If you look off to the west, you’ll see her solution boiling this way.”
Sorgan jerked his head around and saw a seething yellow cloud streaming over the ridge-top. “What is that?” he demanded.
“It’s called a ‘sandstorm,’ Captain Hook-Beak. You probably don’t see very many of those out on the face of Mother Sea.”
“Almost never,” Sorgan agreed.
“I don’t think that’s a very good idea, Lord Veltan,” Padan objected. “Won’t that pretty much stop the Church soldiers still coming up that ramp dead in their tracks?”
“The sandstorm’s out here, Subcommander, not down there,” Veltan replied with a broad grin. “The soldiers who are already here will have to take cover, but the ones coming up that ramp and crossing that bridge won’t even know what’s happening up here.” Then he suddenly laughed. “And it gets even better.”
“Oh?”
“The sandstorm’s blowing in from the southwest, and after it sweeps past Gunda’s wall, it’ll almost certainly roll on down the slope leading up from the Wasteland.”
“That might just disturb the bug-people a bit,” Padan suggested with a broad grin.
“Quite a bit more than just ‘disturb,’ Padan,” Veltan replied. “The servants of the Vlagh will need shelter even more than these Church soldiers will. That lovely sandstorm’s going to freeze everything in place—except for those Church armies that’re still coming up out of the gorge. They’ll keep moving, but nobody else will.”
“Not even us,” Sorgan reminded him.
“Don’t rush me, Sorgan,” Veltan said. “I’m still working on that part.”
5
Keselo was very close to exhaustion. It made sense, certainly, to do these periodic retreats under the cover of darkness and Lady Zelana’s helpful fog-banks, but a night without sleep came very close to cutting Keselo all the way down to the bone. He stood wearily with his new friend Omago near the center of the sixth breastwork pushing out from Gunda’s wall as the first light of morning stained the edge of the eastern sky.
“Why don’t you try to catch a few winks, Keselo,” Omago suggested. “I can keep an eye on things, but I don’t think any of those bug-people will start to move before sunlight.”
Keselo shook his head. “I couldn’t sleep right now, Omago,” he said. “I’m positive that our enemies will be coming up the slope before long, so I’m wound just a little tight.”
Though it seemed a bit unnatural in light of the differences in their cultures, Keselo had developed a strong friendship with Omago. They got along very well, but Keselo had frequently been startled by the frequent leaps in Omago’s thinking. “Have you come up with any new ideas, my friend?” he asked.
“Nothing that might be useful,” Omago co
nfessed. “I’m just a bit tired too.”
“That’s been going around here lately,” Keselo said. “Andar’s a very good officer, but he pushes his men a bit harder than necessary. There’s an idea. Maybe if we sang lullabies to him for a couple of hours, he’d drift off to sleep and we could all get some rest.”
“I sort of think that your Commander Narasan would jump all over him for that,” Omago suggested.
“Probably so,” Keselo agreed. “It was just a thought. Why don’t you see if you can keep me awake by telling me stories about Veltan? I never got to know him very well back in the ravine in Lady Zelana’s Domain.”
Omago smiled faintly. “I could tell you stories about Veltan all day if you wanted to hear them. He used to spend a lot of his time in my father’s orchard when I was just a boy.”
“Stealing apples?” Keselo asked.
“No, it was usually in the springtime when the trees were in bloom. An orchard in the spring is more beautiful than any flower garden, and Veltan always spends several weeks in that orchard when the trees are in bloom. We’d sit there and talk—well, he would. I just listened. There are things about Veltan that only the people of his Domain know about.”
“Really? Such as what?”
“He offended Mother Sea once, and she banished him to the moon.”
Keselo’s eyes had almost closed, but they popped wide open. “Did I hear what you just said right?” he demanded. “Did you say that Veltan’s been to the moon?”
Omago laughed. “Oh, yes. Mother Sea was very irritated. Veltan had to stay on the moon for thousands of years. That was the moon’s idea, actually. She enjoyed his company, so she lied to him and told him that Mother Sea was still angry about something he’d said. Veltan was really put out when Mother Sea told him that he could have come back home after a month or so.”
“You’re just making this up, Omago,” Keselo accused.
“I’m just passing on what Veltan told me,” Omago said. Then he paused. “I notice that it did wake you up a bit,” he added. He glanced off to the east. “We’re getting closer to sunrise, I’d say. Unless the bug-people have changed the rules, they should be coming back up the hill before too much longer.”
“You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to,” Keselo said then, “but how is it that an ordinary farmer like you managed to snare a beauty like your wife.”
“I didn’t,” Omago replied. “She snared me. She came past my orchard once in the early summer when I was thinning out my apples, and she wanted to know what I was doing. I explained thinning to her, and then she went off down the road. I couldn’t think of anything but her for weeks after that. Then she came there again and made the bluntest announcement I’ve ever heard in my whole life.”
“Oh? What did she say?—if you can remember.”
“Oh, I can remember it, all right. She said, ‘My name is Ara. I’m sixteen years old, and I want you.’”
“That gets right to the point,” Keselo said. He was just a bit surprised that Omago’s story had pushed his weariness aside. He was wide awake now, for some reason.
“There is something I should really tell you, Keselo,” Omago continued. “I don’t want to offend you, but I don’t really like this soldiering very much. I don’t like to tell others what to do, and the idea of killing things that look like people—even though they aren’t—makes me sick at my stomach.” He shrugged. “I guess somebody had to do it, though, and Veltan sort of depends on me. I just hope I don’t make too many mistakes.”
“I’d say that you’re doing very well, Omago,” Keselo replied. “You invented the spear. If my history professor back at the university knew what he was talking about, you compressed about a thousand years of human history into a couple of weeks.”
Omago looked just a bit embarrassed and he glanced off to the east again. “The tip of the sun just came up above the horizon,” he reported. “I expect that the bug-people will be coming up the hill before long.”
From out in the Wasteland there came that now-familiar roar that echoed back from the nearby cliffs, and once again the lumbering, oversized (and, Keselo believed, underbrained) new breed of bug-people came shambling up the glittering slope toward the now-empty breastworks which had been abandoned by Narasan’s forces the previous night. As had happened several times before, the empty-headed servants of the Vlagh were completely baffled by the absence of soldiers behind the now-vacant breastworks.
“Bugs aren’t too intelligent, are they?” Omago suggested.
“Rocks are probably more intelligent,” Keselo replied, carefully feeling for the pulse in his left wrist with the fingers of his right hand.
“Are you hurt, Keselo?” Omago asked with some concern.
Keselo shook his head. “Just counting,” he replied. “If I’m right, we’ll hear another roar from out there in just about fifty-seven heartbeats.”
“Your heart, maybe,” Omago disagreed. “Mine seems to be beating just a little faster.”
They waited, and sure enough, the voice of the Vlagh roared forth the command to charge yet again.
“Fifty-three,” Keselo reported. “Something out there appears to be a little faster than the others.”
“Where did you come up with that idea?”
“It was one of the things we were trained to do when we were student soldiers,” Keselo explained. “Precise timing can be crucial in certain situations. It doesn’t work too well if you’ve been running, but I’ve been standing in one place since first light.” He nodded toward the now-occupied breastworks they’d abandoned the previous night. “Here they come,” he said.
“And there they go,” Omago added as the attacking force encountered the reintroduced poisoned stakes. Keselo had been very relieved when Commander Narasan had rescinded his earlier command and allowed his men to go back to the previous practice of planting those stakes to slow the attacks of the bug-people. If things went the way they were supposed to, the Church armies would soon arrive to take over for Narasan’s army, and Gunda had bluntly advised his friend that keeping as many of his men alive as possible was far more important than maintaining their supply of snake venom.
“It’ll take a bit longer for the word to get back to the Vlagh this time,” Keselo predicted. “The stakes always confuse them, and it takes them more time to send the report back.”
“And then the Vlagh will shout again and the ones wearing armor will rush up here and start rolling over the stakes?”
“Exactly. Then, as soon as the turtle-people get close enough, the archers will start shooting arrows at their eyes, and that should just about end this particular attack.” Keselo yawned at that point. “Then we’ll all be able to get some sleep,” he added.
“What if they charge us again?”
“Not very likely, my friend,” Keselo said. “They never have before. It takes a very long time for this particular enemy to modify its tactics—months usually—maybe years, for all I know. Wake me if anything interesting happens.” Then he found a relatively comfortable corner in the breastworks, settled down, and promptly fell asleep.
It was early in the afternoon when Brigadier Danal woke them. “Andar wants to know if you can come up with some kind of explanation for something that’s a bit peculiar, Keselo,” he said.
“Oh?” Keselo said, struggling to shake off his sleep. “What’s that?”
“Take a look at Gunda’s wall—assuming that you can still see it.”
Keselo rose and looked on up the slope at the yellow cloud billowing over Gunda’s wall. “I think that’s what’s called a ‘sandstorm,’ Brigadier Danal—or possibly a duststorm. As I understand it, they’re fairly common in desert country.”
“You’d better let Andar know that it’s something ordinary, Keselo. That thing up there’s making him just a bit edgy. A lot of strange things keep popping up here in the Land of Dhrall, and they’re making Andar sort of jumpy.”
The three of them went on along the breastwor
ks to join Subcommander Andar.
“Keselo says that it’s only what’s called a ‘sandstorm,’ Andar. The world didn’t just split open or something like that.”
“Could you give me a bit more in the way of an explanation, Keselo?” Andar asked.
“I’ve never actually seen one before, sir,” Keselo replied, “but one of the professors at the university told us that in the dryer parts of the world where there aren’t very many trees or much grass, a strong wind can pick up dust or sand and send it billowing along the ground for miles and miles. When the wind dies down, everything settles back to earth again.”
“How long do they usually last?”
“As long as the wind keeps blowing, sir.”
“That’s not very precise, Keselo,” Andar complained.
“That’s always a problem when you’re dealing with the weather, sir,” Keselo replied. “The study of weather involves a lot of things that we don’t understand very well yet. We know that winters are cold and summers are hot, but that’s about as far as we’ve been able to go with any degree of certainty. You might want to tell the men to cover their noses and mouths with cloth, though. I don’t think breathing in sand would be very good for them.”
They all stood watching as the yellow cloud began to roll down the slope.
“I’d say that we aren’t the only ones having trouble with this,” Danal said, looking on down the slope. “The bug-people are streaming out of the breastworks we abandoned last night like something awful was about to happen to them.”
Keselo frowned, probing through the memories of the various courses he’d taken at the University of Kaldacin. Then he remembered something. “I think it might have something to do with the way bugs breathe, Brigadier,” he said.
“Breathing is breathing, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly, sir. Bugs, insects—whatever we call them—don’t have noses like people or animals do. They breathe through a series of holes down their sides instead. A small, ordinary bug wouldn’t really have many problems with a sandstorm because those holes along their sides are very thin. These giant bugs we’ve encountered here, though, would have much larger breathing holes. If one of them happens to take a deep breath in the middle of a sandstorm, there’s a very good chance that it’d suck in enough sand to clog up the breathing holes. If that happens, it’s entirely possible that the bug will die of suffocation.”
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