The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  1

  Torl Jodanson of Kormo was somewhat relieved when cousin Sorgan volunteered to fight this particular war at sea. The mountains were pretty to look at, but Torl didn’t really enjoy fighting wars in places where the enemies could hide behind trees or jump on him from behind. He much preferred open spaces where he could see just exactly what the enemy was doing. Then too, he was almost positive that the Lark would start feeling sulky if she wasn’t allowed to join in the fun.

  Some ships are like that.

  After they’d eaten supper and strung out the fishnets to keep the bug-bats away, Skell raised a point that cousin Sorgan had possibly overlooked. “I think we might have a problem, Sorgan,” he said.

  “Oh? What’s that?”

  “That little creekbed that comes up here from the river isn’t very wide, and right now it’s filled with Narasan’s soldiers. They’re coming up, and we want to go down. I suppose we could fight our way back down to the river, but that might irritate your friend Narasan just a bit.”

  Sorgan frowned. “You could be right, Skell,” he conceded.

  “I’ll go have a talk with that sheep-herder who showed us how to get up here,” Torl volunteered. “He knows this country better than anybody else, so if there is some other way for us to get back down to the river, he’d be the one who’d know about it.”

  “It makes sense, Sorgan,” Skell agreed with his brother.

  Sorgan nodded. “Why don’t you go see what he has to say, Torl?” he agreed. “We’ve got work to do down south, and we won’t get much done sitting around twiddling our thumbs.”

  “You know, cousin,” Torl said, “I can’t remember the last time I twiddled.”

  “Go, Torl,” Sorgan told him wearily.

  Omago’s friend, Nanton the shepherd, had moved his flock to the southern end of the grassy plain, probably to keep the various soldiers up near the north end from poaching his sheep when suppertime rolled around, and Torl found him sitting beside a small fire and looking up at the starry sky.

  “Doesn’t it get awfully lonesome when you’re the only person around for miles and miles?” Torl asked. “I mean, there’s nobody around to talk with, is there?”

  “I can always talk to my sheep,” Nanton replied. “They don’t answer very often, but they listen fairly well. Is there something wrong?”

  “Well,” Torl said, sitting down beside the fire, “that little creek of yours was quite handy, but right now it’s running bank full with Trog soldiers. Cousin Sorgan and the rest of us from the Land of Maag need to get back down to the river in a hurry.”

  “The waterfall would get you back down in the blink of an eye,” the shepherd replied with no hint of a smile, “but that might not be the best idea in the world.” He frowned slightly. “There is a streambed a mile or so north of that one I showed your brother. I don’t think anyone would want to come up that way, but if a man had enough rope, he could go down easy enough. It’s not quite a sheer cliff, but it comes fairly close. Would climbing down a rope bother you and your crew very much?”

  “We’re sailors, Nanton. We spend at least half of our time climbing up and down ropes. How long do you think it might take us to get back down to the river?”

  “Not much more than half a day. Downhill’s always been faster than uphill.”

  “Why, I do believe you’re right, Nanton!” Torl exclaimed in mock surprise. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  The seemingly humorless native actually laughed, and that brightened Torl’s day. Making people laugh always made him feel very good.

  Torl was about halfway back to the Maag encampment when he realized that just getting back down to the riverbank wouldn’t solve all the problems they were likely to encounter, so he went looking for Commander Narasan.

  The Trogite encampment was quite a bit more orderly than cousin Sorgan’s disorganized cluster of tents and barricades. Trogs seemed to be obsessed with straight lines, for some reason. After Torl had asked a few soldiers where he might find Commander Narasan, he finally found the somewhat larger tent of cousin Sorgan’s friend.

  “We’ve got a bit of a problem, Commander,” Torl said after he’d entered the tent.

  “Oh? What’s troubling you, Captain Torl?”

  “I hope this won’t offend you,” Torl said, “but your ships are cluttering up that river down below so much that cousin Sorgan’s fleet won’t be able to get close enough for us to get on board our ships once we get back down there. If we’re going to block off that second invasion, we’ll have to get on down south in a hurry. Is there some way you could order your ships to move aside so that we can get through?”

  “Not personally, Torl,” Narasan replied, “but I know of a way that you’ll be able to take care of it.”

  “You’re going to promote me to the rank of a general in your army, Narasan?” Torl asked. “I’m very flattered, of course, but won’t that make the captains of your ships down there just a little suspicious?”

  “Very funny, Torl,” Narasan said. “All I have to do is write down orders, sign the piece of paper, and then give it to you. When you get down to the river, wave the paper around, and my ships will get out of your way.”

  “What a brilliant idea!” Torl exclaimed. “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

  “Do you really have to try to make a joke out of everything, Torl?” Commander Narasan said. “Sometimes you’re as bad as Red-Beard.”

  “Laughter’s good for people, Commander. I owe it to all my friends to make them laugh as much as I possibly can.”

  “Why don’t you go make Sorgan laugh for a while, then—or maybe your brother. I don’t think Skell even knows how to laugh.”

  “Oh, he knows how, Commander, but he doesn’t like it. Our papa ordered him not to ever laugh, and Skell always does what papa tells him to—or not to do, in this case. I can make Skell laugh if I really have to, but I have to take off one of his boots first.”

  “That went by just a little fast, Torl.”

  “It’s terribly hard to tickle the bottom of a man’s foot when he’s wearing boots, Commander.”

  Cousin Sorgan was talking with Veltan when Torl found him. “I think I’ll need to visit your map-room when we get back down to your house,” Sorgan said. “We weren’t paying very much attention to the southern part of your territory when we were studying your map before we came up here. We weren’t expecting any trouble down there, since the snake-men would almost certainly be coming at us from the north. Do you have the doors of your house locked or anything?”

  “We don’t lock doors here in the Land of Dhrall, Sorgan.”

  “How do you keep people from stealing everything you own, then?”

  Veltan smiled, but he didn’t answer.

  “Oh,” Sorgan said, looking slightly embarrassed. “Your people wouldn’t do that, would they?”

  “No, Captain. We don’t steal from each other around here. We leave stealing things to the Vlagh and its underlings. The map-room’s there. Look at it all you want to.”

  The Maags of cousin Sorgan’s fleet had found that the standard rope ladders had been very useful during the war in the ravine above Lattash, so they’d brought dozens of them along when they’d come up to the basin above the Falls of Vash. Nanton’s description of the alternate route had been quite accurate, Torl noted, and the rope ladders turned out to be an almost perfect solution to what might have been a serious problem. It took Sorgan, Skell, and Torl less than half a day to reach the bottom of the almost perpendicular creekbed.

  Then they went along the riverbank looking for Padan’s friend, Brigadier Danal.

  “Absolutely not!” the lean, dark-haired officer replied when cousin Sorgan bluntly told him to get his ships out of the way.

  “Ah—why don’t you let me deal with this, cousin?” Torl suggested.

  “He won’t listen to you any more than he’ll listen to me, Torl.”

  “I just have to speak to him in a different voice, cou
sin Sorgan,” Torl replied mildly, handing Narasan’s note to the stubborn Trog.

  Danal read Narasan’s written command twice, and then he gave up. “It’ll take about an hour to get all of our ships over to the other side of the river,” he said. “Will that cause you any serious problems?”

  “Not really,” Torl replied. “Our men are still climbing down that steep streambed, but we’ll need to have our ships up here so that we can get everybody on board. We’ll probably be out of your way by midmorning tomorrow.”

  “I’d appreciate that, Captain Torl,” Danal said. He hesitated slightly. “Is the commander absolutely certain that this second invasion will involve Trogites?” he asked.

  “Our information came from a very reliable source, Brigadier. Evidently, the Trogite church is very interested in the Land of Dhrall.”

  “The Church?” Danal exclaimed.

  “That’s what our source told us.”

  “Would you like some help?”

  Torl grinned. “I think we can handle it, my friend,” he replied. “I gather that you’re none too fond of Church people?”

  “Try the other side of ‘fond,’ Captain Torl. I hate the Amarite church!”

  “We’ll go on down there and spank them for you, then—and probably send them to their rooms without any supper.”

  “I was thinking of something just a little more severe.”

  “So was I, Danal. ‘Spank’ doesn’t even come close to what we’re going to do to those rascals.”

  “Good. I’ll go get my ships out of your way.” Danal turned and went on down to the riverbank.

  “What was that piece of paper all about, Torl?” Sorgan asked.

  “It was an order from Commander Narasan, cousin. Did I forget to tell you that I had it tucked up my sleeve? I’ve really got to start paying closer attention to all these picky little details. It must have just slipped my mind.”

  2

  You’ve got to pull the bowstring all the way back, Iron-Fist,” Torl chided his first mate. “We’ll be a good hundred paces away from those Trog ships when we go past them, and I want our burning arrows to hit the ships, not to come down in the water. Water doesn’t burn very well.”

  “Where in the world did you come up with this here idear, Cap’n?” Iron-Fist demanded.

  “Have you ever seen the native called Longbow skewer a snake-man, Iron-Fist?”

  “I was lucky enough t’ be stuck here on board the Lark when ever’body went a-runnin’ on up the ravine, Cap’n.”

  “I wouldn’t exactly call a broken leg a stroke of luck, old friend,” Torl disagreed.

  “It kept me off the beach, Cap’n, an’ around here that’s about as lucky as a man’s a-goin’ t’ get. Is this Longbow ever’body keeps a-talkin’ about really that good?”

  “He’s probably the best in the whole wide world. Anyway, I’m sure that cousin Sorgan and big brother Skell will fall back on the idea of throwing torches at those Trog ships we want to destroy, but I got to thinking that a bow could shoot a burning arrow five or six times farther than anybody in the whole world can throw a burning torch, and if I’ve got a dozen or so men with bows and bundles of arrows, they’d be able to rain burning arrows down on the Trog ships in no time at all. That way, we won’t have to swing in and slow down every time we see one of them. If you and the other men can do this right, we’ll just fly past those scows and leave every one of them looking like a floating bonfire after we’ve gone by.”

  Iron-Fist grinned broadly. “Somethin’ like that would purty much roon the day for any Trogs a-standin’ on the beach, wouldn’t it, Cap’n?”

  “That was the whole idea. Ruining the day for Trogs is almost as much fun as having a winning number come up on your dice.”

  Iron-Fist squinted out across the choppy waves at the other longships nearby. “Didn’t you say that your cousin wants to go ashore when we get down to the beach near Veltan’s house?” he asked.

  “That’s what he told me. Why do you ask?”

  “I think that maybe I might want to drift around a bit when we get there and find out if anybody just happens t’ be in a bettin’ frame of mind—with the bets based on some sort of number.”

  “Something on the order of ‘I’ll bet that we can set more Trog ships on fire than you can’?” Torl asked.

  “That’s purty much the way I’d put it, Cap’n.”

  “How are you fixed for money, Iron-Fist?”

  “I ain’t quite all bent over by the weight of my purse, Cap’n.”

  “I think I might be able to help you out a bit if you start to run short.”

  “Share and share alike?”

  “Sounds fair to me.”

  “I’ll put the other men as knows a bit about shootin’ arrows t’ practicin’, Cap’n. I think we’ll want ’em all t’ be a-rarin’ t’ go when we start a-burnin’ ever’ Trog ship in sight—particularly if’n we happen t’ have money a-ridin’ on it.”

  Torl scratched his chin. “I think maybe I might want to see how my cousin and my big brother feel about some of those same kind of bets,” he mused.

  “If they’ve got money a-ridin’ on it, I don’t think they’ll be just too happy when they see us a-buildin’ floatin’ bonfires all along that south coast, Cap’n.”

  “What a shame,” Torl said with mock regret.

  The beach near Veltan’s house came into view about noon on the following day, and cousin Sorgan led Skell and Torl on inland to take a long look at Veltan’s map. There were several peninsulas jutting out into the sea down there, and the peninsulas formed bays. “I thought so,” Sorgan mused. “The best way to do this will be to block off the mouth of each bay and then sweep on in and set fire to every Trogite ship anchored in that bay. Then we’ll move on to the next one. We don’t want a single one of them to get away from us. If even one gets clear, it’s altogether possible that it’ll sail back down to the Trogite coast and gather up more ships and men. What we really want to do is make sure that the ones who are already here are trapped so that the only way they’ll be able to go for more help will be to walk.”

  Skell was leaning over the rail of the balcony above the map, squinting down at the replica of the south coast. “I don’t see any towns of much size down there,” he noted. “It sort of looks to me like there are a lot of small villages along that coast. If the Trog churchmen are trying to round up all the natives so that they can sell them to the slavers, there’ll only be four or five ships anchored just out from each village. That should make things a lot easier for us. We’ll never come up against a massed fleet, so all we’ll have to do is just sweep in and set fire to every Trog ship we come across. One sweep along that coast will eliminate their whole fleet.”

  “That sounds about right to me, Skell,” Sorgan agreed. “Then we can go on out to sea a ways, spread out, and make sure that no more Trog ships ever reach that coast. The ones who are already there will be trapped with no hope of reinforcements ever reaching them. Once their fleet’s been destroyed, I don’t think they’ll try to go on up toward the mountains. Without those ships, they won’t have any way to fall back if they meet an overwhelming enemy force. Only an idiot would take that kind of a chance. First we burn, and then we blockade. That second invasion stops right there.”

  “Sounds good to me, cousin,” Skell agreed.

  Torl had a few doubts, though, but he kept them to himself.

  “I think tar would work better, Cap’n,” Buck-Teeth, the second mate of the Lark, said. “When you set fire to tar, it sticks to anything it touches, and it spreads fire a lot better than oily rags.”

  “He might have a point there, Cap’n,” Iron-Fist agreed. “And we could have a big pot filled with boilin’ tar right on the deck where the arrow shooters are workin’. We could have a whole lot more burnin’ arrows a-stickin’ outta them Trog ships if we did ’er that way.”

  “It’s worth a try, I guess,” Torl agreed. “We’ve got a lot of money riding on this, so let�
�s not pass up any opportunities to make things turn out the way we want them to.”

  “We got us some time t’ play with, Cap’n,” Iron-Fist said. “Sooner or later we’ll come up with the best way t’ do this.”

  “Have you come up with a way to keep the men on the other ships from seeing what we’re doing? If they start imitating us, our bets might just start falling apart.”

  “We got all our arrow-shooters a-practicin’ down below deck, Cap’n,” Iron-Fist answered. “It’s a little dark down there, but we put a lantern over the target so’s the shooters can see where their arrows are a-goin’. It ain’t quite as far as we’ll be a-shootin’ when we’re a-doin’ it fer real, but it’s prolly close enough. Trog ships are mighty big, so they’ll be awful hard t’ miss.”