“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, cousin 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 t
here, 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.”
“Maybe we might want to swing in just a little closer when we first come across the Trog scows. We’ll come up with egg all over our faces if our first wave of burning arrows hits the water instead of those ships.”
“And we’ll lose our shirts as well,” Buck-Teeth added.
“You just had to go and say that, didn’t you?” Torl said. “I don’t think I’ll sleep very well until we find out if our scheme’s going to turn out the way we want it to.”
“Don’t worry, Cap’n,” Iron-Fist said. “We’ll make it work. When y’ git right down to ’er, it has to work. We’ve got just about every penny on the Lark a-ridin’ on this scheme of ourn, an’ iffen it don’t turn out like we want it to, the crew might just decide t’ th’ow us all overboard.”
“Thanks, Iron-Fist,” Torl replied in a flat voice.
Sorgan’s fleet was nearing the southern tip of the easternmost peninsula jutting out from the south coast when a huge fleet of wallowing Trogite ships came sailing up toward them.
Things were more than a little tense until a small sloop came across to the Seagull. As it turned out, the Trog fleet was not the fleet of Church invaders, but the remainder of Narasan’s army.
Gunda spoke for a short while with cousin Sorgan, and then he returned to his own fleet to continue up the coast. Sorgan sent out several skiffs to advise everybody to stay out of Gunda’s way, and after the Trogite ships had passed, cousin Sorgan ordered his men to raise the sail on the Seagull and proceed along the coast.
When the fleet reached the southernmost end of the first peninsula, cousin Sorgan signaled for a stop. Back during the war in the ravine above Lattash, they’d all learned how valuable the flag-waving means of communication was, and cousin Sorgan had come up with a rudimentary imitation of the much more complex Trogite version. Sorgan’s code had only four commands—“Stop,” “Hurry up,” “Run away,” and “Let’s talk”—but it was enough for right now.
Torl rowed his skiff over to the Seagull to find out if the general plan had been changed.
“Are we all ready?” Sorgan asked when Torl and brother Skell joined him in the cabin at the stern of the Seagull.
“We know what we’re supposed to be doing, cousin,” Skell said. “Let’s get on with it.”
“I don’t think so. Let’s sit here out of sight until first light tomorrow morning. Give the oarsmen some time to rest up. We’ve got to move just as fast as we can once we start.”
“I don’t think ‘fast’ is likely to be involved all that much, Sorgan,” Skell said doubtfully. “We’ll have to slow down each time we come to a Trog ship. Since we’ll be throwing torches, we’ll have to wait a while to make sure that each Trog ship’s on fire and that the fire’s out of control. If some Trog on one of those ships is more than half-awake, all he’ll have to do is grab up our torches and throw them over the side, and that particular Trog ship won’t be on fire no more.”
“He’s got a point there, cousin Sorgan,” Torl grudgingly admitted. “If this is going to work the way we want it to, we should probably do our very best to set fire to every Trog ship along this coast in one single day.”
“I don’t see how that’s possible, Torl,” Skell protested. “It takes a while to get a good fire going on a ship. It’s not like we could just sail by and shout ‘fire,’ you know.”
Torl started muttering curses under his breath as his dream of winning a fortune in bets flew out the window. “All right, cousin,” he said to Sorgan, “if you’ll pass the word to the other ships in the fleet that all bets are off, I’ll tell you just exactly how we can burn every Trog ship along this coast in a single day.”
“I was sort of wondering just what you had up your sleeve,” cousin Sorgan said. “Let’s have it, Torl.”
“Not until you give me your word that the bets have been canceled, cousin. If my crew gets skinned alive when we lose, they’ll throw me overboard as soon as we’re out of sight of land.”
“All right, I promise that I’ll let everybody in the fleet know that your bets are canceled. Now, what do we use to set fire to all the Trog ships in a single day?”
“Bows, arrows, and tar,” Torl replied glumly.
“Tar?” Skell demanded. “How do you set fire to tar?”
“We’ve had a fair amount of success putting a torch to it, big brother. If you stick twenty or thirty burning arrows into the side of a Trog ship, it will burn—even on a rainy day.”
“I don’t know if I’ve got that many men on board the Shark who know very much about bows and arrows,” Skell admitted.
“Go back to using torches, then. That’s up to you. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I’ll go burn Trog ships—just for fun, unfortunately. I think ‘profit’ just got away from me.”
3
“Iron-Fist,” he called out to his first mate.
“Aye, Cap’n?”
“I think we can pick up the speed just a bit. I don’t see very many of our arrows going into the water, so we seem to be doing this right. Our bets have been pushed aside, but I’d still like to rub cousin Sorgan’s nose in the fact that we’re the best ship-burners in the whole wide world.”
“We’ll shorely do ’er, Cap’n,” Iron-First chortled.
The Lark leaped ahead and raced out in front of the other longships in Sorgan’s fleet. The men on the other ships weren’t very skilled with bows, and many of their burning arrows went into the water, and that made it necessary for the ships to slow down and fall farther and farther behind the Lark. It seemed to Torl that he could almost hear Sorgan’s teeth grinding together as he watched the Lark racing on ahead to set fire to every single Trog ship in the entire bay.
When they reached the mouth of that first bay, Torl ordered his crew to pull in their oars and drop anchor.
The Seagull pulled in closer a while later. “What are you doing, Torl?” Sorgan shouted. “There’s more bays and more Trogite ships ahead. Why are you stopping?”
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