The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers

by Eddings, Leigh;Eddings, David

  Padan’s men used the simplest means of delivering the trees they’d cut down to the Church armies below. They simply pulled them down the slope and rolled them into the River Vash. The two-hundred-foot-high waterfall effectively put the trees fairly close to the Church soldiers.

  It took the armies below a while to come up with the concept of a bridge, and their first attempt was woefully unstable.

  “If those amateurs down there try to roll one more log out on the ones they’ve already got in place, the entire thing will tumble down into the gorge and the whole crew will get killed,” Sergeant Marpek predicted.

  “Oh,” Sorgan said with mock concern, “what a shame.”

  The always serious Marpek actually broke down and laughed along about then.

  There were several minor disasters during the next few days as the Church soldiers kept trying various shortcuts to avoid building a bridge in the standard manner. Padan found the blunders moderately amusing, but the despairing screams of soldiers falling to their deaths on the rocks far below started to get on his nerves after a while.

  Sorgan dropped back from the region just upstream where his men were digging deep, twenty-foot-wide trenches and erecting rudimentary barricades on the far sides of each trench to check on the progress of the Church soldiers. He arrived at the edge of the gorge just as another bridge collapsed, carrying yet another bridge crew plunging to their deaths.

  “How many times has that happened so far?” Sorgan asked Padan.

  “I think I’ve lost count,” Padan replied. He looked over at Rabbit. “Is that the sixth failure or the seventh?” he asked.

  “I make it seven,” Rabbit replied.

  “They’re just wasting time,” Sorgan fumed. “Maybe we should stop giving them all those trees and build a bridge for them ourselves. Lowering the south end of the silly thing down to the upper edge of their ramp would be quite a bit easier than trying to lift the upper end here to the brink of the gorge. Lowering is always easier than lifting.”

  “It might come to that,” Padan conceded. “How are your trenches and barricades coming along?”

  “The first three are all complete,” Sorgan declared. “All except for the final decoration.”

  “Decoration?”

  “Ox came up with the notion, and I think it’ll work out just fine.”

  “What is it, Sorgan?”

  “We go back to using those poisoned stakes,” Sorgan replied. “We want them to slow down, don’t we? After a dozen or so of a man’s close friends fall over dead when they’ve stepped on those poisoned stakes, that man will start to be very careful where he puts his feet down. The ones who come across that bridge later will see all that imitation gold out there and start running as fast as they can, but when a man comes to a ditch that’s about half-full of his dead friends, he’ll stop running right there, wouldn’t you say? And the more they slow down, the more of their friends will catch up to them. If they dawdle around building that bridge right, they’ll give my men enough time to dig two more trenches, and that’ll probably fix it so that their whole army is up here before any of them come out of that last trench. Then we’ll warn Narasan that they’re coming and run off to the west just as fast as we can.”

  “Slick, Sorgan,” Padan complemented the burly Maag. Then he paused. “Don’t you mean east?” he asked. “That’s where Nanton’s pass is located.”

  “I know,” Sorgan replied, “but the river runs along the east side of those trenches and barricades. I swim fairly well, but the current in that river is fierce. I don’t think I’d care to get swept over those falls, would you?”

  “Not one little bit,” Padan agreed.

  It was early the following morning when Narasan came down to Padan’s temporary camp on the west side of the River Vash. Padan had just awakened and he was kneeling by the river, splashing icy water on his face to push away the usual grogginess that clouded his mind every time he woke up.

  “I thought you quit doing that a long time ago, Padan,” Narasan said.

  “Not too likely, Narasan,” Padan replied. “I need to be alert.”

  “The world always needs more lerts,” Narasan repeated the tired old joke. “How are the Church armies doing now that they’ve decided to build a bridge instead of a ramp?”

  “Quite a bit better than they were right at first,” Padan replied. “They were in such a hurry to get to the land of gold that their first eight or ten bridges were awfully sketchy—like three trees tied together end to end with chunks of twine. After a goodly number of soldiers, priests, and Regulators took up high-diving for a hobby, though, the rest of them started to wake up. A man who’s just been splattered all over a few hundred feet of river beach after he’s fallen about a hundred and fifty feet is a fairly convincing object lesson, wouldn’t you say?”

  Narasan winced.

  “Their latest bridge—which isn’t finished yet—looks to be strong enough to stay in place even if a thousand men try to come across all at the same time. They’ve got braces jammed up against the underside of their new bridge every few inches, I’d swear.”

  “How much longer do you think it’s going to take them to finish?”

  “A couple more days is about all. Then they’ll all dash north, shouting ‘Gold! gold! gold!’ right up until they reach Sorgan’s trenches and those poisoned stakes.”

  “He told me about them when I passed through his camp. He can be a very evil man when he sets his mind to something, can’t he?”

  “Fun, though,” Padan replied with a broad grin. “Those poisoned stakes at the bottom of his trenches will make it almost certain that the entire five Church armies will be coming up to Gunda’s wall all at the same time, and that’s all we’ve ever wanted.”

  “I think I’ll need to reconsider my original plan, though,” Narasan said glumly. “I thought that falling back to the next breastworks every night would give the Church armies enough time to get up there—in small groups, anyway. Sorgan’s stakes will delay them, I’m afraid. We will get more men up there, but it’s going to take them longer. I think I’ll revise the plan and tell the men to hold each breastworks for two days instead of only one.”

  “Whatever works the best, old friend,” Padan agreed.

  Narasan looked off to the north. “It’s just a bit skimpy, I’m afraid,” he said with a slight frown.

  “You missed me there, Narasan.”

  “There are a couple of crags and such sticking up out of the Wasteland out there, and that’s about all that those Church soldiers will be able to see when they get up here. Those crags have a sprinkling of the imitation gold on them, but they aren’t nearly as impressive as the flatter, sandy areas are.”

  “If Sorgan’s cousin Torl was anywhere close to being correct about what brought the churchies running up here, a few sprinkles should be all it’s going to take,” Padan disagreed. “It’s what they’ll see when they reach Gunda’s wall that’s important. That’s when we’ll want their minds to shut down to the point that it won’t matter what sort of monsters are running up the slope toward them. We want greed to overcome terror at that point.”

  “We can hope, I guess,” Narasan said.

  MANY VOICES

  1

  Andar of Kaldacin was standing behind the eighth breastwork on the slope that ran down from the north of Gunda’s wall, and he was seriously discontented. He kept encountering things here in the Land of Dhrall that seemed to be absurdities. Andar had fought in many wars during his career in Commander Narasan’s army, but the enemies in those past wars had always been human.

  Gunda and Padan had been given some time to adjust to the enemy’s peculiarities during the previous war, but Andar had been left behind in the army encampment near the port city of Castano. He’d felt a bit flattered by Narasan’s decision to place him in command of the bulk of the army that had remained behind, but that had also left him behind, and he resented that.

  In a certain sense, Narasan’s habit of a
lways pushing Andar aside had probably been the result of the fact that Andar’s father had been housed in a different building from Narasan’s when the current officers were all children. Narasan’s almost automatic reliance on Gunda and Padan had obviously derived from early childhood. Narasan trusted Gunda and Padan more than he trusted other officers of equal ability because he knew them better.

  Andar ruefully admitted to himself that he would most certainly have relied on his boyhood friend Danal in much the same way he had become the army commander.

  The early light along the eastern horizon began to climb higher and higher, tinting the few clouds in that area a glorious pink.

  “Any activity out there?” Danal asked as he joined Andar behind the crudely built breastworks.

  “Nothing yet,” Andar replied in a hushed voice.

  “At least we won’t have to worry about those cursed burrows that kept cropping up back in the ravine during that last war,” Danal said.

  “I never did get the straight of that,” Andar admitted.

  “It’s one of those things that people don’t like to talk about,” Danal said with a shudder. “The bug-things had most probably been planning that attack for a long, long time. First they bored holes through the mountains, and the holes came out high up on the sides of the ravine. We didn’t know about them, so we just marched on up to the head of the ravine, built a nice sturdy fort, and waited for the bug-things to attack us. They wasted quite a few of their fellow bugs to keep us occupied while their friends crept through those burrows and came out behind us. That pretty much trapped us, because there was no place for us to go.”

  “I never really understood that very clearly. How could bugs chop holes through solid rock?”

  “Chew, not chop, Andar,” Danal corrected. “From what the natives up there told us, the thing they always called ‘the Vlagh’ had been preparing for that invasion for centuries.”

  “Bugs don’t live that long, Danal,” Andar scoffed.

  “We’re not in the land of reality anymore, Andar. Things happen here that couldn’t possibly happen anywhere else in the whole wide world. We had floods and volcanos working for us during that last war, and you don’t see things like that out in the real world.”

  Andar peered down the slope in the growing light of dawn. “It looks to me like a few things have changed, Danal,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “It would appear that the bug-people don’t go back out into the desert when the sun goes down like they used to. It looks like they’ve set up camp in those two outermost breastworks. I think that the Vlagh thing’s still back out in the desert, though. I’ve heard it bellow a few times since its soldiers—or whatever you want to call them—occupied those last two breastworks, and the bellow was still coming from a long way off.”

  “The bug-people protect the Vlagh with everything they’ve got, Andar,” Danal said, “which does make some sense, I suppose. It is the mother of every single bug out there, and children really should protect their dear old mommy, wouldn’t you say?”

  “That’s going to take a bit of getting used to,” Andar said, shaking his head. “I’ve never had occasion to fight a woman’s army before.”

  “We were on the receiving end of several lectures that dealt with the creatures of the Wasteland when we were back in Lattash waiting for the snow to melt,” Danal told his friend. “There was a very skinny old man—who I was told educated that archer named Longbow. He told us that almost all of the bug-people are females, but only the Vlagh lays the eggs that produce new variations of the original bug-people. The old man told us that the Vlagh steals characteristics from other insects—and even animals. The tiny ones we met in the ravine had snake-fangs—complete with venom—but after we’d whomped all over them, I guess the Vlagh decided that it was going to need big ones.”

  “Whomped?” Andar asked curiously.

  Danal shrugged. “The Maags use that word all the time,” he said. “It’s sort of colorful, so most of the younger soldiers in Narasan’s advance army started to talk about ‘whomping’ other creatures—or each other, for that matter. If you listen carefully, you’ll probably hear those young men threatening to ‘whomp’ just about anybody who walks past. It’s the newest ‘stylish’ word, so they’ll all keep repeating it until they’ve worn it out. Then they’ll find another word to play with.”

  Andar smiled. “It’s just a symptom of a fairly common disease, Danal. It’s called ‘youth.’ They’ll all get over it—eventually.”

  “You’re a cynic, Andar.”

  “I know. It’s quite possible that’s a symptom of still another disease, the one that’s called ‘old.’ Unfortunately, people don’t get over that one.”

  It was early that afternoon when the buckskin-clad archer Longbow led a sizeable party of native bowmen down the slope to join Narasan’s force in the breastworks, and that quite obviously brightened Commander Narasan’s day. Despite the training Longbow’s friend Red-Beard had given the amateur Trogite archers, they were still fairly inept. From what Andar had heard, the native bowmen were much more skilled.

  “Have those Church armies finished building that bridge yet?” Narasan asked the tall archer.

  “They’re fairly close, I think,” Longbow replied. “Sorgan’s finished his trenches and barricades, so we’re ready for those Church armies. I think you should probably follow that plan you came up with earlier, though. We can’t be completely sure how long it’s going to take the Church armies to get through Sorgan’s defenses, so you’d probably better continue to delay the creatures of the Wasteland until we’re more certain just exactly when our friends—who don’t know that they’re our friends—are going to reach Gunda’s wall.”

  “We’re in a position to be fairly flexible here, Commander,” Andar said. “We can continue to hold each breastwork for two days, if it’s absolutely necessary, but if it starts to look like the Church armies are going to arrive early, we can skip over a couple of our defense lines to make our time match theirs.”

  “You could be right there, Andar,” Narasan agreed.

  “Our army and theirs need to be closely coordinated,” Andar added, “but, since their people are a little distracted right now, we can take care of the coordination for them, and they’ll be able to concentrate on how they’re going to spend all that gold they’ll have in their purses before very much longer.”

  “I like the way this man thinks,” Longbow said with a broad smile.

  “So do I, now that you mention it,” Narasan agreed, giving Andar a speculative sort of look.

  At sunrise—as always—the voice of the Vlagh roared its command, and the lumbering, awkward new breed of bug-warriors came mindlessly shambling across the open spaces lying between the several now-abandoned breastworks. The amateur Trogite archers held back, but the far more skilled native bowmen unleashed their arrows with a stunning accuracy, and the plodding, mindless attack faltered as the clumsy bug-men were suddenly obliged to clamber over heaps of their dead companions.

  “That’s pure idiocy!” Andar declared in disgust.

  “Actually, it’s about ten steps below idiocy, my friend,” Danal corrected. “In the world of bugs, an idiot would be a genius.”

  “Here come the turtles!” a soldier standing on top of the breastworks shouted.

  “That’s odd,” Danal noted. “We didn’t bother with those poisoned stakes this time, and I was fairly sure that the main job of the spidery turtles involved breaking off the stakes.”

  “Not entirely, Danal,” Andar disagreed. “Their shells also protect them from arrows. It’s quite possible that the Vlagh might have graduated from idiot to imbecile. Go tell the catapult crews to get ready. I’d say that it’s just about time to reintroduce the servants of the Vlagh to the wonderful world of fire.”

  “If that’s how y’ want ’er, Cap’n, that’s how we’ll do ’er,” Danal replied.

  “I think you’ve been spending far too much time with Pa
dan here lately, old friend,” Andar observed.

  A bank of clouds had built up along the western horizon that day, and the sunset was glorious. The Land of Dhrall had many faults, Andar felt, but the beauty of the place was almost heart-stopping. Civilization was all right, perhaps, but it fouled the air to the point that sometimes it was nearly impossible to see across the street.

  The sun was still painting the sky a glorious red when the earnest young Keselo came down to the breastworks. “Good evening, Subcommander,” he greeted Andar rather formally. “Commander Narasan suggested that you might want to consider pulling back to the seventh breastwork tonight.”

  “Suggested?” Andar asked.

  “Well,” Keselo replied, “actually he was issuing a command, but commands aren’t really very polite, so I almost always modify them a bit before I pass them on.”