“Teenie-weenie?” Narasan sounded a bit amused.
“I think I might have spent too much time in the vicinity of Eleria up in the ravine,” Sorgan said, shaking his head.
“All right, then,” Skell said. “We don’t really have to wait for Gunda to get here. Torl and I’ll go on ahead and scout things out. Give us a couple of days and we’ll have a fair idea of where we should set up the forts. Then the rest of the men can come on up and start laying down the bases for those forts. By the time Gunda gets here, the bases will be in place and Gunda’s men can take it from there.”
“What do you think, Narasan?” Sorgan asked.
“It sounds good to me,” Narasan agreed.
“You’ll probably need about five ship crews when you go on up there, wouldn’t you say?” Sorgan asked Skell.
“Get serious, cousin,” Skell growled. “Torl’s crew and mine are already too many men. I’m not leading an invasion, you know. I’m just going up there to have a look around, and the fewer men I’ve got trailing behind me, the faster I’ll be able to move. I know what needs to be done, Sorgan, so just stay out of my way and let me do it.”
Skell and Torl set sail at first light the following morning, primarily to get clear of the bay before cousin Sorgan woke up and started adding more and more ships to the advance party. For some reason, Sorgan always seemed to believe that “more is better.” They’d argued about that quite often when they were younger men.
Skell and his brother thought that it would take about two days to reach the mouth of the River Vash, and Skell spent most of his time getting better acquainted with the archer called Longbow. A number of things had happened in the ravine leading down to the village of Lattash that had demonstrated that Longbow knew more about their enemies than anybody else, and that made him extremely valuable.
It was late in the afternoon on their first day out when Skell joined Longbow at the bow of the Shark. “I spent most of my time building that fort when we were trying to block off that ravine,” Skell said, “so I don’t really know all that much about the people we’re fighting. I’ve heard that you know more about them than anybody else, so I think you might be the one I should talk with. Is there anything I should know?”
“The most important thing you should know about the creatures of the Wasteland is that they have no sense of fear,” Longbow replied.
“They’re brave, you mean?”
“I wouldn’t think of it as ‘brave,’ Skell. ‘Stupid’ might come closer, but that’s not quite correct either. As individuals, they don’t have anything at all that we’d call intelligence. They just do exactly what the Vlagh wants them to do—even if it’s impossible.”
“I’d say that ‘stupid’ comes pretty close, then.”
Longbow shrugged. “Their minds don’t work the way ours do—probably because they don’t have separate minds. What one of them knows, they all know, and their decisions are made by that group awareness. The center of that awareness is ‘That-Called-the-Vlagh.’ The Vlagh makes the decisions, and a servant of the Vlagh will keep trying to carry out those decisions, even when it’s the only one left alive.”
“That gets right back to ‘stupid,’ doesn’t it?”
“We might look at it that way, but they don’t. Of course, they don’t know that they can die. As far as they know, they’ll live forever, and nothing can possibly kill them.”
“How did you manage to figure all this out, Longbow?”
“I’m a hunter, Skell, and the first thing a hunter learns is to think the way whatever he’s hunting thinks. If he can’t, he doesn’t eat very often.” Longbow looked out over the choppy water ahead of the Shark’s bow. “You spend most of your time out here on the face of Mother Sea, don’t you?”
“That’s what sailors do, Longbow.”
“Have you spent very much of your time fishing?”
“Some, yes. Why?”
“When you’re fishing, you bait your fishhook with something you think the fish will want to eat, don’t you?”
“If I want to catch any, yes.”
“Then a good fisherman has learned to think like a fish, wouldn’t you say?”
“I’d never thought of it exactly like that, but you’re probably right,” Skell conceded. “What sort of bait works best when you’re fishing for snake-men?”
“I’ve had fairly good luck with people,” Longbow replied with a faint smile.
“People?” Skell said sharply.
“Don’t get excited, Skell. If you put people out in front of the creatures of the Wasteland, they’ll rush out into the open to try to kill them, and that makes it easy to hit them with arrows. The servants of the Vlagh don’t have any idea of what an arrow is, so they don’t understand why all of their friends are falling down. There are other ways to do it, but using people for bait seems to work best. Floods and volcanos work fairly well, but waking them up can get a little complicated. It’s better to keep things simple.”
They reached the mouth of the River Vash late in the afternoon of the following day, and Omago’s bearded friend, Nanton, was waiting on the beach just to the north of the river mouth. Skell and Omago went ashore in one of the Shark’s skiffs, and Omago introduced Skell to their guide.
“Are all the men on both boats going to come with us?” Nanton asked Skell.
“Ships,” Skell corrected absently.
“What?”
“We call them ships, not boats.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I’m not really sure,” Skell admitted. “I was sort of thinking about this when we were sailing up here from Veltan’s place, and it seems to me that a dozen or so men might be enough for our first run on up to the top. All we’re really going up there for is to take a quick look around. The thing that’s really important will be marking the trail so that the armies that’ll be coming along later will know how to get up there. Have you come across any enemies yet?”
“None so far this summer,” the shepherd said. “There were some of them nosing around early last spring asking questions, but I haven’t encountered any up on top yet.”
“Can they actually talk?” That surprised Skell a bit.
“The ones I came across could. They claimed that they were traders, but I didn’t believe them. I think they were just snooping around.”
Skell squinted at the river. “How far upstream is that water-fall?” he asked.
“About twice as far as it is from here to the house of Veltan. We won’t be going that far upriver from the streambed that leads up to the top, but the river calms down after she gets out of the mountains.”
“Good. We’ll be able to row my ship and my brother’s on up to that streambed, and I’ll take ten or fifteen men on up to the top. We’ll look around a bit, and then I’ll send somebody back down to lead the rest of the men on up there to join us.”
“It’ll probably work out better that way,” Nanton agreed.
“Is your flock up there, Nanton?” Omago asked.
“For the time being, yes. If there’s going to be a war up there, though, I’ll move them to a safer meadow.”
“It sounds to me like you’re very familiar with those mountains,” Skell said.
“I’ve spent most of my life up there—at least in the summer. I bring my flock back down in the autumn.”
“Wouldn’t it be easier if you just kept them down here in the lowland?” Skell asked him.
“Maybe, but the grass up in the mountains is better, and I don’t have to spend all my time chasing the sheep away from farmland. Farmers always seem to get very worried when they see a few hundred hungry sheep coming over the hill.”
“I wonder why,” Skell said with no hint of a smile.
3
It took them a couple days to row the two ships up the gently flowing River Vash to the place where Nanton’s little stream came down out of the mountains. Skell anchored the Shark on the upriver side of the stream and then rowed his skiff o
ver to the Lark to confer with his brother. “I’m catching a strong feeling that Omago’s friend doesn’t really want a crowd trailing along behind when he leads us on up to the area we need to scout, so I think I’d better keep things fairly tight. Nanton knows the lay of the land up there, so he can save me a lot of time if I stay on the good side of him.”
“We’re going back to ‘don’t offend the natives,’ I take it,” Torl noted.
“Let’s keep things quiet as long as we can. Why don’t you stay here? Put the men to work building docks along the bank of the river here. There’ll be a lot of ships coming upriver before long, and they’ll be unloading sizeable numbers of men. Let’s make it easy enough so that we don’t have Trog ships backed up all the way down to the river mouth.”
“Who all are you going to take with you?”
“Nanton, of course, and Omago,” Skell replied, squinting at the narrow little stream, “and I definitely want Longbow and Red-Beard. Narasan wants Padan to mark the trail, so he’ll go along too.”
“That’s all? Aren’t you cutting it just a little fine, Skell?”
Skell shrugged. “We’re just going up there to look, little brother,” he said. “I’ll take Grock as well—just in case I need to get word back down here to you if things start getting wormy up there, and we’ll round it out with Rabbit and Keselo. Those two work with Longbow very well, so they might be useful. I want to move fast and quiet, and I think that’ll be as many men as I’ll need.”
“That’s pretty skimpy, Skell.”
“It’s enough to get the job done, little brother. Let’s not clutter things up if we don’t have to.”
Skell and his small party started up the narrow gorge at first light the following morning and it soon became quite obvious that this would not be just a casual stroll. The brush along the sides of the little brook was dense, and the tall evergreen trees blocked out the sunshine to the point that Skell’s party moved in what was almost a perpetual twilight. Grock, the Shark’s first mate, had been clever enough to bring along a coil of rope, and they’d gone no more than a quarter of a mile before it became quite obvious that they’d be using it frequently, since the brook tumbled rather than flowed. It seemed to Skell that there was a frothy little waterfall every fifty feet or so. Fortunately, Rabbit was a very agile little fellow, and he could scramble up those rocky spots with Grock’s rope coil slung over his shoulder, tie the end to a large tree, and then drop the rope to the men behind him. It seemed to Skell that by midday he’d spent more time going up the rope hand over hand than he’d spent walking. “How in the world can you drive a herd of sheep up through all of this?” he asked the shepherd.
The bearded Nanton smiled faintly. “When a sheep really wants something—fresh grass, or a female sheep who’s lonesome for company—he can come very close to climbing up a sheer rock face. Of course, he’s got four feet and very sharp hooves.”
“You like your sheep, don’t you?”
“Tending sheep is much easier than digging and planting, and I’ve always felt that ‘easy’ is nicer than ‘hard.’ Wouldn’t you agree?”
“I’d go along with you on that,” Skell agreed, “but it seems to me that all this clambering over rocks and climbing up a rope goes off in the direction of ‘hard,’ don’t you think?”
“It’s better than doing honest work, wouldn’t you say?” Nanton replied mildly.
The sun started to move on down toward the western horizon a few hours later, and Skell called a halt at that point. “Let’s call it a day,” he said. “I don’t think crashing around in the bushes would be a very good idea after dark. There might not be any bug-people in the vicinity, but let’s not take any chances.”
“Good thinking,” Rabbit agreed.
The small group of scouts rose early the following morning, and after they’d eaten, they continued the tiresome business of going hand over hand up Grock’s coil of rope. Padan occasionally looped bits of yellow twine around the limbs of various trees and bushes to mark the path for Nanton’s army that’d soon be coming this way.
“This is just a suggestion, Captain Skell,” the young Trog called Keselo said about midmorning, “but I think Commander Narasan’s army could move up through this gorge more quickly if we were to string ropes up along the steeper places. That coil of rope Grock brought along has been very useful.”
“Grock knows what he’s doing, that’s for sure,” Skell agreed. He looked around. “Where is he, by the way?”
“He told Omago that he was going to see if he could find a more open way for us to follow on up to the top. I take it that he doesn’t particularly like bushes.”
“I’m not all that fond of them myself.”
“They provide a good place to hide if you want to ambush an enemy,” Keselo said, “but that’s about all they’re good for.”
“Which side is Grock looking at?”
“He jumped across the creek and went up toward the wall of the gorge on the other side. I don’t really think he’ll have much luck, though. There seem to be a lot of loose stones at the foot of that wall over there.”
“He might get lucky,” Skell said. “We can hope, I guess. My hands are starting to get just a little tender from all this going hand over hand up that rope of his.”
“I think he’s coming back right now, Captain Skell,” Keselo said, shading his eyes. “He’s running!” the young Trog exclaimed. “If he happens to trip and fall, he’ll bounce most of the way down to the river!”
Skell glared up the steep slope. “That idiot!” he exclaimed. “Grock!” he shouted. “Slow down! You’ll break your neck!”
“I just found gold, Cap’n!” Grock shouted back. “Gold! There’s tons of it up there in that rock wall!”
“Stay right where you are!” Skell commanded. “I’m coming up!” He motioned to Keselo. “Let’s go up and have a look,” he said.
“Aye, Cap’n,” Keselo replied in a fair imitation of an ordinary Maag seaman’s customary response.
They both pushed their way through the dense brush, waded across the brook, and went up the other side.
Grock was trembling violently, and he was licking a dark stone with his tongue.
“Let me have a look,” Skell told him.
“Aye,” Grock replied, handing Skell the dark-colored rock fragment. “It’s right here, Cap’n,” he said, pointing at a gleaming yellow fleck in the surface of the rock. “I’d a-walked right on past it, but a little gust of wind set one of them fir trees t’ wavin’ back and forth, and the sunlight came a-flashin’ off this speck like you wouldn’t believe. Then I backed off just a bit and took a good look. That rock wall up there’s got bright yellow specks flashin’ all over it. It might take a bit of work t’ chop all of them outta that wall, but it’d shore be worth the trouble.”
Skell hadn’t realized that he’d been holding his breath, and he let it out almost explosively.
“Ah—Captain Skell,” the young Trog said. “I think that maybe we should have Rabbit take a look at this. He knows more about metal than anybody I’ve ever met, so I’m sure he’ll be able to tell us if this is really gold.”
“What else could it be?” Grock demanded. “It’s yellow, and that means gold, doesn’t it?”
“Rabbit!” Skell bellowed. “I need you! Come here!”
The small, wiry smith from the Seagull came running up the steep slope. “Have we got trouble of some kind?” he asked.
“Maybe,” Skell replied, “or maybe not.” He held out the stone Grock had given him. “Take a look at this and tell us what you think. Is that yellow speck gold, maybe? Or is it something else?”
“It’s easy enough to verify,” Rabbit said. He took his knife out of its sheath and lightly flicked the point across the yellow spot, sending out a bright spark. “I’m sorry, Cap’n Skell, but it’s not gold. It’s pretty enough, I guess, but gold doesn’t spark like that when you scrape it with a knife. I’ve heard about this, but it’s the first time I’
ve ever seen any of it.”
“Are you absolutely certain sure?” Grock asked with a note of bitter disappointment in his voice.
“There’s a quick way to find out,” Rabbit said. “Has anybody got a gold coin in his purse?”
Keselo handed the little smith a fair-sized coin.
Rabbit flicked the point of his knife across the edge of the coin. “No sparks, Cap’n Skell,” Rabbit pointed out. “From what I’ve heard, that yellow fleck Grock found is a kind of iron ore that’s been contaminated with something that’s got a yellow cast to it. There’s a story that’s been going around Weros for years about a fellow who found a large deposit of this particular ore. He spent about ten years hacking it out of a stone face, and he was absolutely positive that he was getting richer every day. When he finally found out that it wasn’t really gold, he went down to the bay and drowned himself.”
Skell gave the young Trog Keselo a hard look. “You knew right off that this wasn’t gold, didn’t you?”
“I was fairly sure that it wasn’t, Captain Skell,” Keselo admitted. “But I thought that Rabbit here was the man best qualified to decide one way or the other. I think this is what’s called ‘iron pyrite.’ It’s basically iron, but it’s been contaminated with sulphur. I’ve heard that people in some places use it instead of flint when they want to start a fire.”
“It’s worthless, then?” Skell asked, growing even more disappointed.
“Maybe not completely worthless. It is basically iron, and iron’s worth something, and you can start fires with it.”
“Oh, well,” Skell sighed. “I guess we’ll have to go back to doing honest work, then. I’m sorry, Grock, but it looks to me like we didn’t get rich today.”
As they started back down the hill to the brook, Skell seemed to feel a slight prickly sensation on the back of his neck, and he looked around sharply. He was almost positive that somebody was watching them, but there was nobody out in plain sight, so he shrugged it off.
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