“I’m an Adnari in the Church of Amar, Brulda,” Estarg proclaimed in a haughty tone of voice. “Your men have a religious obligation to serve me in any way I think is proper. It’s beneath me to walk as a commoner would.”
“Stay here, then. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going north, though—just as fast as I possibly can.”
“I forbid it!” Estarg shouted.
“Forbid all you want, fat man,” Brulda replied, “but I stopped taking orders from you when my ships were all burned. The way things stand right now, it’s every man for himself. If you want to go north with the rest of us, you’re going to have to walk—with your very own feet.”
“That’s outrageous!”
“You do remember how to walk, don’t you, Estarg?” Brulda asked with an evil grin.
“But—” Estarg put both hands under his belly.
“It’s walk or die, Estarg, and it’s entirely up to you.”
Ara despised the slaver Brulda, but she was forced to admit that he did have a way with words.
All in all, Ara was quite pleased with the way this had turned out. There were now two enemy armies in Veltan’s Domain, but they were not really armies in the conventional sense of that word. The servants of the Vlagh were driven by the need for more land and more food, so they would mindlessly rush south, no matter what—or who—stood in their path. The servants of Jalkan—or Estarg, actually—were driven by their hunger for gold, and they would just as mindlessly rush north, no matter what stood in their path.
At some time in the far distant past, Ara had heard someone speak of “a war of mutual extinction.” It was a rather stuffy sort of term, but in this situation it seemed to come very close to what was really going to happen.
THE GREAT WALL
1
Subcommander Gunda had sailed south to the seaport of Castano on board the Ascendant, the ship of a distant cousin, and when they reached their destination, Gunda realized that his ancestral home was not nearly as attractive as he remembered. The harbor itself was littered with floating garbage, and the stone columns that supported the piers extending out into the harbor were covered with slimy green algae. The “magnificent” buildings had all been turned a dirty grey by the perpetual cloud of smoke that came belching out of every chimney in town.
Gunda set aside the more comfortable clothes he’d worn on the voyage south and pulled on his black leather uniform and his polished breastplate and helmet and belted on his sword. This was something in the nature of an official call, so it was appropriate for him to wear his uniform.
The waterfront of Castano was laced with stone piers, and it had that distinctive odor of rotting fish that quite probably hung over every seaport in the entire world. The streets of the town were narrow and dirty, and most of the people Gunda encountered had that lofty expression that virtually every Trogite in the Empire seemed to be born with. The Land of Dhrall was very primitive, but it was clean—cleaner by far than the birthplace of civilization. Gunda sighed and went on through the port city to the south gate.
It was early summer now, and Gunda was quite sure that the gently rolling hills to the south of Castano would push his disappointment aside, but the hills were not nearly as impressive as he’d remembered them to be. His memories of the western part of the Land of Dhrall, where towering mountains ran down to the sea and gigantic trees reached up toward the sky, kept intruding, and Gunda found the hill country to the south of Castano rather skimpy by comparison.
The temporary encampment of the bulk of Commander Narasan’s army lay just to the south of Castano, and it was more or less a canvas-tent duplicate of the army compound back in Kaldacin. That similarity made entering the camp almost like coming home for Gunda.
He walked through the open gateway in the log palisade surrounding the camp, sharply returning the salutes of the pair of guards, and went directly to the only building in the compound. Tents were adequate for sleeping, but army headquarters required something just a bit more substantial.
The clerks and various administrators in the large central room of the headquarters building all rose and came to attention as Gunda entered.
“Relax, gentlemen,” Gunda told them. Strict military courtesy had always irritated Gunda, for some reason. “Where’s Andar’s office?”
“Back through that hallway, Subcommander,” a very young officer replied, pointing toward the rear of the central room.
Gunda nodded and went on through the office.
Subcommander Andar was a bit taller than the average Trogite, and, like most of the higher-ranking officers of Narasan’s army, his hair was touched at the temples with silver. He was a solid, dependable man, and Narasan had left him in charge of the bulk of the army that was still here in the Empire.
Andar was dressing down a very junior officer for some blunder when Gunda entered the office. Andar had a deep, rolling voice, and he could turn oratorical at the drop of a hat. When he saw Gunda enter the office, though, he abruptly dismissed the young soldier.
“Did that boy make a serious mistake?” Gunda asked.
“Not really,” Andar replied. “He’s been getting just a bit full of himself here lately, is all, so I thought it was just about time to take him down a peg or two. How did things go up north, Gunda? We haven’t heard a thing since the advance force left Castano.”
“Well, I guess we won the war in the western part of Dhrall—sort of,” Gunda replied a bit dubiously. He took off his helmet and absently brushed his hair forward to cover his receding hairline. “There were a lot of things going on there that I didn’t entirely understand.” He looked around at Andar’s office. “Are the walls here fairly solid?” he asked his friend. “Some things happened up there in Dhrall that we probably wouldn’t want to get spread around.”
“It’s secure, Gunda,” Andar assured him, “as long as you don’t shout.”
“Good.” Gunda sat down in the chair beside Andar’s desk.
“You encountered a few problems, I take it,” Andar rumbled.
“More than just a few, old friend,” Gunda replied. “You probably won’t believe this, but our revered commander has come down with a bad case of friendship for a Maag pirate who goes by the name of Sorgan Hook-Beak.”
“You’re not serious!”
“I’m afraid so. The peculiar thing is that it worked out quite well. The Maags are undisciplined, but they’re very good fighters.”
“They’re monsters, Gunda!”
“Maybe, but they’re not nearly as monstrous as the things we were fighting.”
“Barbarians, I take it?”
“Several steps below barbarians, Andar. I don’t think they even qualified as animals.”
“Could you be a bit more specific, Gunda? I want to know just exactly what we’re likely to be coming up against.”
“You’re not going to like it much,” Gunda said glumly. “I think Narasan should have held out for more gold.”
“That bad?”
“Even worse, I think. If I understood what I was told correctly, the things we were fighting were only part human. The rest was a mixture of bugs and snakes.”
“I think your load’s starting to shift,” Andar scoffed.
“Everybody’s load shifts up in that part of the world, Andar. We kept coming up against a nightmare while were still awake. One little nip from those bug-snakes will put you in your grave right there on the spot.”
“That’s not the least bit funny, Gunda.”
“Do you see me laughing? I’m not making this up, Andar. You’d better take everything I tell you seriously, because your life could depend on it.”
“Are the natives up there as helpless as our employer suggested?” Andar asked.
“The natives of Veltan’s Domain might be, but there’s an archer up in Zelana’s Domain who doesn’t seem to know how to miss. He was the one who told us how to use the enemy’s own venom to kill other enemies.”
“Is that really ethical, Gunda?�
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“We were fighting bugs, Andar, not people. Ethics aren’t relevant when your enemy isn’t human.” Gunda paused. “It’s going to take you a while to hire enough ships to carry all of our men on up to Veltan’s Domain, wouldn’t you say?”
“Quite a while, I’m afraid. Sea-captains love to haggle, for some reason, and sometimes it takes half a day to hire just one ship. Were you planning an extensive visit to the local taverns to celebrate your homecoming?”
“Not really,” Gunda replied. “I’m fairly certain that I know approximately where the commander and the rest of the advance force is likely to be bound for, but I’m not sure that’s where we’ll be fighting the next war. I think I might want to drift around the waterfront just a bit and find one of those dinky little fishing sloops—like the one Veltan used to take Narasan on up to the Land of Dhrall before the rest of us in the advance force went on up there. I’ll have one of the clerks draw you a copy of my map so that you’ll be able to find your way through the channel to the southern part of the Land of Dhrall. Then I’ll go on ahead and talk with Narasan and find out just exactly where he wants us to go ashore. Then I’ll come on back. I’ll probably meet you somewhere in that channel through the ice, and I’ll be able to guide you to the place where Narasan wants us to land.”
“That probably would save us quite a bit of time, Gunda.” Andar squinted slightly. “Did we lose very many men up there?”
“Several thousand at least.”
“I don’t suppose that Jalkan happened to be one of the casualties,” Andar said rather hopefully.
“I’m afraid not. The commander had to reprimand him a few times, but that’s about as far as it went.”
“What a shame,” Andar said regretfully.
“Don’t give up hope, my friend,” Gunda said with a tight grin. “It’s only a question of time. Sooner or later, somebody will kill Jalkan, and then we’ll be able to mark the date on our calendars.”
“What for?”
“I was thinking along the lines of something in the nature of a national holiday.”
“I’d be more than happy to celebrate that one, my friend,” Andar agreed.
Gunda moved around the seedy-looking waterfront of Castano looking for a reasonably priced fishing sloop for the next few days while Andar went through the tedious business of hiring enough merchant ships to carry the bulk of the army up to Veltan’s Domain. Although Andar had access to the army treasury, Gunda was fairly certain that his friend would go up in flames if his sloop cost the army too much.
Gunda finally located a yawl that seemed to suit his purpose, and then he introduced Andar to the scruffy old fisherman who wanted to sell it. The two of them were haggling spiritedly when Gunda left the shabby waterfront tavern to have a word with his distant cousin, the captain of the Ascendant, about the rudiments of steering a boat. Despite his family background, Gunda knew next to nothing about boats.
The sun rose bright the following morning, and there was not a cloud in the sky, so Gunda went down to the harbor of Castano to play with his new toy.
He was moderately inept right at first, and he stirred up quite a few curses from other ships as he floundered around in the harbor, but after a few days he grew more practiced. He was quite certain now that, barring some natural disaster, he’d be all right at sea.
Then he went back to the army compound to see how Andar was coming along.
“I’ve still got a ways to go,” Andar admitted. “I’m having a bit of trouble finding enough ships.”
“How many more do you think you’ll need?”
“At least a hundred. You’re not going to move eighty thousand men on a handful of ships.”
“I’ll take the Albatross and go on ahead, then.”
“Albatross?”
“It’s a nice, seagoing sort of name, wouldn’t you say? I mean, an albatross is a sort of second cousin to a seagull, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know if I’d use that name, Gunda. I’ve heard that sailors aren’t really very fond of those particular birds. They seem to think that the presence of an albatross is bad luck, or something like that.”
“That’s just a superstition, Andar.”
Andar hesitated slightly. “Has Narasan finally got his head back on straight?” he asked quite seriously. “He sort of went all to pieces after his nephew was killed in that war on down to the south.”
“He seems to be pretty much all right now. I think taking on this war in a different part of the world has helped him get over what happened to his nephew. Padan’s keeping an eye on him, and he’ll let us know if our glorious leader’s still all in one piece. I’ll go on up there and find out where Narasan wants us to put the army ashore, and then I’ll come on back to lead you on in.”
“That’s assuming that I can find enough ships to get everybody up there all at the same time,” Andar rumbled. “I might have to make two trips, though. Ships of any kind are getting very scarce here in Castano, for some reason.”
“Do the best you can, old friend,” Gunda said. “I’ll see you in a couple weeks anyway.”
“You don’t have to rush on my account, Gunda. I’m getting paid no matter what I do.”
Gunda set sail from Castano at first light the next morning, and when the Albatross moved out of the choppy water in the harbor and reached the open sea, she opened many new doors for him. He found that once he’d adjusted the set of the sail just right, she’d cut through the waves like a well-sharpened knife. The ropes creaked pleasantly, and the sharp bow seemed to hiss as the Albatross raced north. After an hour or so, Gunda realized that he could actually feel her reaction to the waves as she sliced through them.
The sun was going down when Gunda decided to put out a sea anchor to hold the Albatross in more or less the same location until morning, and then he bailed out most of the water that’d come seeping in during the day. She was a nice enough boat, but it seemed that she had a few leaks that really needed some attention.
He sailed on the next morning and by late afternoon the southern edge of the ice zone came into sight. The Albatross obviously moved much faster than the wallowing Trogite merchant ships that had carried the advance army to the Land of Dhrall. “Aren’t you the little darling?” he said to her quite fondly.
As the sun was going down, Gunda entered the southern end of the channel through the ice zone and prudently moored the Albatross to a towering ice floe. This wouldn’t be a good time to start taking chances.
He slept well that night as the Albatross rocked in the gentle waves almost like a baby’s cradle. He awoke at first light, raised his sail again, and cautiously moved on up through the mile-wide channel as the sun rose to greet him.
It was about noon on the following day when the Albatross reached the northern end of the channel, and Gunda relaxed a bit as he came out. There hadn’t been any real danger involved in sailing up through the channel, but the towering ice floes had made him a bit edgy.
Once he’d cleared the ice zone, a good following breeze came up, and the Albatross leaped ahead with unbridled enthusiasm. Gunda tried to shake off all of his almost poetic responses to things that he was fairly certain most sailors had learned to take in stride, but he finally gave up. “Oh, well,” he murmured, “as long as we’re enjoying ourselves, what difference does it make?”
It took him almost two days to reach the south coast of Veltan’s Domain, and another day to reach the easternmost peninsula. The south coast, he noticed, was primarily farmland, and the little villages along the coast seemed neat and orderly. Now that summer had arrived, the farmland that lay inland from the snowy-white sand beaches was bright green with newly sprouted wheat, and the blue summer sky was dotted with fleecy white clouds.
As he turned north to sail the Albatross up along the east coast of Veltan’s Domain, Gunda came to realize just why he’d found Castano revisited so ugly. He was ruefully forced to admit that in comparison to the clean openness of the Land of Dhrall, the glorious
Trogite Empire was cramped and dirty, and it reeked like an open sewer.
It was midafternoon of the following day when he saw the peculiarly mixed fleet of broad-beamed Trogite tubs and narrow Maag longships anchored just off a white sandy beach. He approached the Victory, the ship of his cousin, Pantal, and he saw that his friend Padan was watching him very closely.
“Ho, Padan,” Gunda called.
“Is that you, Gunda?” Padan demanded, seeming just a little surprised. “Where’s the rest of the army?”
“Probably still back in Castano. Andar’s having some trouble finding enough ships to carry all the men on up here. I’m not positive, but he might have to make two trips to get them all up here.” Gunda tied the bow of the Albatross to the anchor-chain of the Victory. “I need to talk with Narasan. If he’s found out where we’ll encounter the enemy, I’ll need to know the exact location so that I can put the army ashore there.”
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 28