“This young fellow’s the only man I know who apologizes to an enemy before he kills him,” Danal said, laughing.
“I do not, Brigadier Danal,” Keselo protested. “I just try to be polite, that’s all.”
“What’s the polite way to kill somebody?”
“You’re supposed to tip your hat first, Brigadier,” Keselo replied with no hint of a smile.
“I think he just got you, Danal,” Andar noted. Then he looked at Keselo again. “I want a straight answer here, Keselo,” he said. “Things might start getting a bit complicated from here on. Do you think Omago’s men are ready to respond—even if they don’t know exactly what’s going on?”
“Omago himself will know exactly what to do,” Keselo replied, “and his men have learned to respond to his commands without so much as blinking an eye.”
“That takes them even beyond professional soldiers,” Danal declared. “How did he manage that?”
“The farmers all believe—with a certain amount of accuracy—that Omago speaks for Veltan.”
“And they’re afraid of Veltan?”
“Not one bit,” Keselo replied firmly. “The only ones who fear Veltan are our enemies.” He paused. “Oh, before I forget, Subcommander,” he said to Andar, “I’m told that there will be fog again, just like there was the last several times your men have pulled back. That’s Lady Zelana’s contribution during this current unpleasantness.”
“Maybe you should ask her not to waste it,” Danal said with a slight frown. “I’m not exactly sure how she manages to fog things over every time we pull back, but if her supply of fog happens to run dry when we decide to run away, the bug-people or the Church soldiers might realize what we’re doing, and that could cause some serious problems.”
“She won’t run out, Brigadier,” Keselo assured Andar’s friend. “If she wants something to happen, it will happen—even if it’s impossible.”
“As long as we’re discussing impossibilities, just who—or what—is going to open a large hole in Gunda’s wall?” Andar asked.
“As far as I know, Veltan’s going to attend to it, sir.”
“All by himself?” Andar exclaimed.
“I’d imagine that his tame thunderbolt will probably take care of it, sir.”
“How does anybody tame a thunderbolt?”
“I really wouldn’t know, sir, but I have it on the very best authority that it was Veltan’s thunderbolt that blasted out that channel through the ice zone that gave us access to the Land of Dhrall in about one single day. Gunda’s wall’s very strong, but I’m quite sure it’s not strong enough to stand up in the face of that kind of power.”
“I’m never going to get used to some of the things that happen in this part of the world,” Andar complained.
“You worry too much, Andar,” Danal noted. “Miracles are just fine—as long as they’re helping us. It’s when they start helping our enemies that you might want to consider a petition of protest.”
Just after sunset, when the servants of the Vlagh fell back to the two outermost breastworks, Lady Zelana’s fog-bank came rolling in to conceal the retreat of the Trogites and their local associates. As the fog came rolling in, Commander Narasan came down to the breastworks to confer with Andar. “Using those catapults to set fire to the bug-people turned out to be very effective, Andar,” he said, “but it’s seriously reduced the amount of venom we’ve been able to gather. We really have no way to know just exactly when those Church armies will break through Sorgan’s defenses, so there’s a distinct possibility that we’ll need that venom to help us hold the bug-people back until those five armies arrive.”
“It’s not really that much of a problem, Narasan,” Andar replied. “Like you said, the native archers are more than capable of stopping the enemies right in their tracks.”
“You’ve adjusted to the situation here in the Land of Dhrall much more quickly than I did when I first arrived, Andar. When the native people told us what we’d probably encounter up in that ravine, I started having nightmares.”
“I have a certain advantage, Narasan,” Andar replied. “I don’t have to make those major decision like you do. All I have to do is assume that you know what we should do to defeat the enemy. Any mistakes will be your fault, not mine.”
“Thanks a lot, Andar.”
“Don’t mention it,” Andar replied blandly. Then he squinted on down the slope. “I’d say that the fog-bank’s got us pretty well concealed now, Narasan. Why don’t you go on back to Gunda’s wall while I pull my men back? I know what I’m supposed to do, and you’re just getting in my way.”
“Well pardon me,” Narasan said, sounding slightly offended.
“I’ll think about it,” Andar replied. “Drop back sometime when I’m not so busy.”
Danal supervised the emplacement of the catapults early the next morning, and then he reported in. “We’re as ready as we’ll ever be, Andar,” he reported. “I’ll keep an eye on things here. Why don’t you get some sleep?”
“I’m wound just a little tight for that, Danal,” Andar admitted, “but maybe you’d better tell the men to bed down. I don’t think anything new and different’s going to show up tomorrow, but around here, you never know, so let’s make sure that the men are all sharp.”
“Right,” Danal agreed, moving off into the foggy darkness.
The night plodded on with the dense fog dimly illuminated by Lord Dahlaine’s little false sun, and along toward morning Lady Zelana’s little fog-bank dissipated. Andar briefly considered the distinct possibility that the fog was nothing more than an illusion, but he firmly pushed that notion aside. Things were already complicated enough.
Then a faint line of light appeared along the eastern horizon, and Danal came back along the breastworks. “Time to go to work,” he said quietly. “I don’t think the bug-people are awake yet, but around here, you never know.”
“Were there ever any night attacks back during the war in the ravine?” Andar asked his friend.
“None that I heard about. I wouldn’t swear to it, but I don’t think this particular breed of bugs can see very well in the dark. That’s probably why the Vlagh decided to experiment with those bat-bugs. If Lord Dahlaine hadn’t had that little toy of his available, things could have gotten a little wormy along about now.”
It seemed to Andar that it took hours for the sun to finally rise above the eastern horizon, but eventually she came sliding up into sight, and exactly when the bottom edge of the sun cleared the ridge off to the east, the now-familiar roar from out in the glittering Wasteland unleashed the oversized bug-people.
“Enemy to the front,” a veteran sergeant bellowed in a loud voice, and the men all moved into position.
“I told the archers to hold off,” Danal said. “I’m fairly sure that those bug-people won’t quite realize that we’ve abandoned our previous position. Let’s add as much confusion as we possibly can.”
“Can you actually confuse a bug?” Andar asked curiously.
“I’m not really sure,” Danal replied, shrugging. “This might be a good time to find out, though.”
The clumsy creatures reached the now-abandoned breastworks and began to mill about, evidently looking for someone to bite.
“They look confused to me, Andar,” Danal said with a tight grin. “Now, if they were people-people, one of them at least would wake up enough to realize that we aren’t there anymore. Since they’re only bug-people, though, they might just start biting the rocks in the breastworks.”
“That’s absurd, Danal,” Andar scoffed.
“I wouldn’t be too sure, my friend. That voice out there in the Wasteland ordered them to go bite something, and since we pulled all of our people back last night, there’s nothing left there except rocks.” He stopped abruptly. “You know, Andar, that might just be a distinct possibility, and if they start biting rocks, they’ll break off their teeth. That could win this whole silly war for us.”
“I wouldn’t m
ake any large bets, Danal,” Andar replied. “As soon as the Vlagh gets word that we aren’t there anymore, it’ll start bellowing orders again—and from what I’ve heard, information reaches the Vlagh almost immediately.”
Then, almost as if it was confirming Andar’s speculation, the voice of the Vlagh roared again, and the clumsy bug-men turned to advance across the open space between the abandoned breastwork and the now-occupied one.
“Archers to the front!” Danal commanded.
The more or less inept Trogite trainees and the highly skilled native bowmen took their positions, set arrows in place, and drew back their bows.
“Shoot!” Danal shouted.
The arrows flew forward in a nearly solid wave, and the enemy charge collapsed in the lethal shower.
The few remaining bug-people plodded forward, climbing over the heaps of their now-dead companions as the highly skilled native archers sent new arrow-storms out to meet them.
Then there was yet another roar with more than a slight touch of fury in it, and the hard-shelled spider creatures came over the now-unmanned breastworks to scamper across the open field littered with the dead.
“Catapults ready!” Danal bellowed.
“May I?” Andar asked.
“Be my guest,” Danal replied with a broad grin.
“Catapults launch!” Andar barked.
The wave of fire rose up from behind the breastworks, arched up and out, and then fell upon the charging enemies, engulfing them in fire.
2
In a certain sense, Rabbit found the war here in Veltan’s Domain much more interesting than the war in the ravine had been. He was more or less obliged to privately admit that the unexpected appearance of those five Church armies had added a great deal of excitement, and Longbow’s dreams had added even more. Rabbit had sensed a great reluctance on the part of Zelana’s family to accept Longbow’s firm belief that the Church armies had been deceived to the point that they had unknowingly become allies in the war with the creatures of the Wasteland. That reluctance, it seemed to Rabbit, had grown out of a certain resentment. Zelana and her family were apparently very put out by the suggestion that Longbow’s dream visitor could do things that were beyond their capabilities. That seemed almost stupid to Rabbit. Quite obviously, they were going to need help in this war, and refusing to accept help because Longbow’s dream visitor was more gifted was ridiculous.
The bridge the Trogite armies were building was approaching completion, and Padan had pulled his people back into the forest on the west side of the basin to keep them out of sight. “They don’t need to know that we’re still here,” Padan declared. “They’re busy doing exactly what we want them to do, so let’s stay out of their way.”
Longbow’s friend Red-Beard, however, thought that it might be wise to keep an eye on the “friendly enemies.” Sometimes Red-Beard’s clever remarks irritated Rabbit a bit, but if Longbow had been anywhere at all close to being correct, “friendly enemies” might just be quite accurate.
It was late in the afternoon on a day a week or so after the Church Trogites had started building their bridge when Rabbit joined Red-Beard and Sorgan’s cousin Torl in a fairly dense clump of bushes on the west rim of the gorge the waterfall had gouged out of the mountains off to the south. “Are they making any progress?” he asked quietly.
Torl covered his mouth to muffle a laugh. “They seem to be having some trouble with the question of balance,” he said.
“Balance?” Rabbit asked, a bit puzzled.
“When you’ve got a log that’s about a hundred feet long and you want to slide it across an open space that’s eighty feet wide, the log starts to get a bit wobbly after fifty feet. But when it gets out to about seventy feet, it doesn’t wobble anymore. It just plunges on down into that gorge. Those nitwits over there have already sent four logs tumbling on down, and they’ve just started on log number five.”
“You’re not serious!”
“Serious, no,” Red-Beard said with a broad grin. “Accurate, yes. Eventually—sometime next week, maybe—somebody over there will realize that they’ll have to put something heavy on their end of a log to keep it up here instead of down there.” He pointed down at the gorge.
“We do sort of want them to finish, you know,” Rabbit reminded them in a slightly worried tone.
“They’ll manage,” Torl replied with a shrug.
“I think somebody over there just woke up,” Red-Beard said. “It might take several more logs and a few hundred more men to sit on the short end of the log, but they’re getting closer, I’d say.”
The three of them peered out at the busy Trogites.
“Using people for counterweights isn’t the best idea they might have come up with,” Rabbit said dubiously.
“They’ve got lots of people, Rabbit,” Torl said. “Sooner or later they’ll get it right.”
The red-uniformed soldiers pushed the now-teetering log out a bit farther, and more and more of them lay across it to hold it in place. Then, when it had perhaps a foot more to go, the Trogites rammed it onto the rim.
“Just how long did it take them to get that one log in place?” Rabbit asked curiously.
“They started about noon, didn’t they, Red-Beard?” Torl asked.
“A little earlier, maybe,” Red-Beard replied.
“If two logs a day is the best they can manage, they’ll be at it for quite a while,” Rabbit said.
“They’ve got the first log across,” Torl said. “Things should go faster now.” Then he suddenly grinned. “If it wasn’t that we really need them, the three of us could wait until about midnight and push their log clear of the rim and let it fall. Can you imagine the screaming we’d hear when the sun comes up tomorrow?”
Dusk was settling rapidly by now, and the Trogites had fallen back to their ramp and built several cooking fires. “That pretty much does it for today,” Torl said. “Let’s go see what’s for supper this evening.”
“Not quite yet,” Red-Beard replied. “There are a few people coming up along the rim.”
“How did they get up here?” Torl demanded.
“Ladders, probably,” Rabbit suggested. “I suppose when you get right down to it, ladders might have been even a better idea than the bridge.”
“Let’s sit tight,” Red-Beard said. “Those people are being very careful to stay out of sight of their friends down on the ramp.”
“I thought those Church soldiers were supposed to wear red uniforms,” Rabbit said. “The ones sneaking along the rim are dressed in black.”
“Regulators,” Torl explained. “I heard about them down on the south coast. They’re sort of like police, and everybody in those Church armies—and even the priests—are afraid of them.”
“Maybe they just decided to go into business for themselves,” Rabbit suggested. “If they run fast, they’ll reach that ocean of imitation gold long before the red-shirts do.”
“It’s possible, I guess,” Torl said a bit dubiously.
“I think the answer’s creeping across that log they put in place just before sunset,” Red-Beard said.
Rabbit peered down through the gathering darkness and finally caught sight of several shadowy figures creeping slowly along the log that was now in place. When they finally reached the rim, Rabbit could hear them whispering urgently to each other. “If we hurry, we’ll be able to reach the area where all the gold sand’s lying. Then we can scoop up several bags of gold and get back to the camp before anybody misses us,” one of them said.
“We’ll have to hide the gold someplace,” another urgent voice came out of the darkness. “If those greedy priests catch even a hint that we’ve got it, they’ll turn the Regulators loose on us to torture answers out of us.”
“This might be a good time for us to get rid of those greedy priests, and the Regulators as well,” the first voice added.
“We can’t kill priests!” Another voice gasped.
“We won’t have to kill them,” the othe
r voice replied. “Priests are so holy that they can probably fly, so all that we’ll be doing will be testing all of them. If we just throw them into that gorge, the holy ones will fly, right? The only ones who’ll fall into the gorge and go splat when they reach the bottom will be the unholy ones, wouldn’t you say? All we’ll be doing is testing the priests for holiness, but if every single one of them goes splat—ah, well.”
The others all laughed raucously.
Then the black-uniformed Regulators came out of the darkness—with clubs—and they beat the deserters into submission in only a few minutes.
“What should we do with them now, Konag?”
The bleak-faced man who’d led the Regulators along the rim smiled faintly. “Why don’t you just give them the ‘holiness test’?” he replied.
The Treasured One: Book Two of The Dreamers Page 40