Had the women who’d made this discovery been docile, Queen Trenicia was fairly certain that the history of the Isle of Akalla would have been much different. The women, however, had been anything but docile. After many centuries of being treated as property only, the resentment of the women had been enormous, and a goodly number of the discoverers of those metal weapons returned home with the weapons in their hands and firmly demonstrated their discontent.
The males of the isle were horrified. Quite suddenly, the women of Akalla were total savages who refused any and all commands and responded to the faintest hints of disapproval with brutal efficiency.
The men fled at that point, but the women weren’t satisfied by mere flight. They wanted blood.
Trenicia was almost certain that the stories from the past had been exaggerated, but there might have been some justification for the behavior of those ancient women. At any rate, the wanton slaughter of the men of the isle finally alarmed the older and wiser women, and they reminded their savage younger sisters that if there were no men, there would be no children, and in a little while there would be no people on the isle.
The random killings had slowed at that point, and the women began to herd the surviving males into log pens. Then they brought the men out—one by one—and offered them to the other women. If a man was old or ugly or happened to have a bad reputation among the women, all the women rejected him, and he was killed right on the spot.
The practice of killing unwanted males had slowly disappeared in the society now dominated by women, but the males still believed that their very lives might depend upon looking desirable.
And so it was that the men of Akalla now spent every waking minute searching for ways to make themselves pretty. That, of course, made it totally impossible for the men to take on any chores whatsoever, so it fell to the women to plant, cook, harvest, govern, and fight any war that came along.
All in all, Queen Trenicia saw nothing really wrong with the current arrangement, and she was completely baffled by the peculiar arrangements in other societies.
Trenicia still could not understand why all the local gods—and their pet children—were so interested in Aracia’s pet, so she turned to the beautiful child Eleria, who was sitting some distance apart from the others with a peculiar expression on her lovely face. “Why is everybody so curious about Lillabeth?” she asked.
“She’s dreaming,” Eleria replied. “That’s what we’re supposed to do. We make things happen with our dreams—things that those who care for us aren’t permitted to do.”
“But aren’t your elders gods?”
“In a sense, yes they are.”
“But gods can do anything, can’t they?”
“Not really,” Eleria replied in a somewhat obscure manner. “They can’t destroy life—of any kind.”
“Not even enemies who want to kill them?” Trenicia was aghast at this limitation.
“That’s why those of us who look like children are here. We destroy the enemies with our dreams. Back in the Beloved’s Domain, I had a dream about a huge flood, and my flood drowned thousands of our enemies. Then, a bit later, Vash had his volcano dream, and he killed even more than I did.”
Trenicia looked at Lillabeth with a certain awe, and as she looked more closely she saw something in the air directly above the sleeping child, and the object had shifting colors that looked almost like fire. “What’s that pretty thing just above her?” she asked.
Eleria glanced at the sleeping child. “It’s a seashell,” she replied. “Abalone, I think. It’s kind of pretty, but I think my pearl’s even prettier. Our jewels are the things that give us our dreams. They’re the voice of the One Who Guides Us. She uses the jewels to tell us what we’re supposed to dream.”
“Who is she?” Trenicia asked.
“I’m not really sure,” Eleria replied. “I’ve known her since time began.” Then the little girl laughed a bit ruefully. “The only problem there is that I can’t quite remember when that was. I was there, of course, but it was so long ago that I can’t put any kind of number to it. As I remember, we were all very busy back then.”
“Busy?”
“We were making things. Our elders had been doing that for a long, long time, and they were growing very, very tired, so we told them to rest, and we took up the burden for them. We’ve just about reached the point where we’ll have to do it again, I think. The Beloved’s starting to get just a bit strange. She’s very, very tired, and she needs to go to sleep. I’ve been slipping around behind her back taking care of things for her, but that’s all right. I’ve done that many times in the past.” Eleria glanced at the sleeping child. “I think Enalla’s just about to wake up now. She’s probably already put her dream in motion, and her dream will probably win this war.” She pursed her lips. “Dakas might have to help her—sort of like Vash helped me last time,” she added in a speculative tone.
“Do you children all have different names?” Trenicia asked. “I thought Aracia’s little girl was named Lillabeth.”
“That’s what Aracia calls her, but her real name is Enalla.”
“What’s your real name, then?”
“Balacenia, of course. When Dahlaine came up with this idea, he decided not to use our real names. That was part of his deception. The other part involved pushing us all the way back to infancy so that our elders wouldn’t realize just exactly who we really are.”
“When Aracia came to the Isle of Akalla, she didn’t say a thing about this,” Trenicia said, feeling a bit offended.
“Aracia’s like that sometimes.” The child laughed. “She really irritates Dahlaine. He knows that she really wants to be the dominant one during their next cycle, and he doesn’t like the idea.”
“Why are you telling me about all of this?” Trenicia demanded. “If it’s anything even close to being the truth, shouldn’t you be trying to conceal it from me?”
“We’re not all like Aracia, dear,” the child replied. “I’ve always felt that being honest works a lot better than deception. I’m sure that the time will come when it’ll be very important for you to know the truth, so I just took you for a little stroll down the path of truth. After a while, when you’ve had time to think it over, we might want to go a little farther down that path.” She paused, and then she gave Trenicia a childish little grin. “Won’t that be fun?” she asked with exaggerated enthusiasm, clapping her hands together.
4
Sorgan Hook-Beak, his cousin Skell, and First Mate Ox were standing on the south side of the first trench peering into the darkness.
“I think you worry too much, cousin,” Skell said. “From what I saw during that last war, Trogite armies don’t fight wars very good after the sun goes down.”
“That might be true when you’re talking about a real army, Skell,” Sorgan replied, “but if Torl was anywhere close to being right about what happened down there on the south coast, we’re talking about a mob, not an army. If they’ve seen all that false gold out there, their brains have shut down, and they won’t think—or behave—like soldiers anymore.”
“I’d say that might depend on whether they’ve finished their bridge or not, Cap’n,” Ox added. “If they haven’t managed to get up here yet, all we’re doing is wasting sleep-time.”
“Not entirely, Ox,” Sorgan disagreed. “Padan said that he’d send somebody up here to let us know when that bridge is finished, and if his messenger doesn’t know where the trail through the poisoned stakes is, he’ll probably die before he reaches us.”
“Somebody’s coming, cousin,” Skell hissed, pointing off to the south.
“I make it to be Rabbit, Cap’n,” Ox added, “or somebody who’s almost as small as he is, and Rabbit knows the way through the stakes.”
“It’s about time,” Sorgan said with a sense of relief.
“Is that you, Cap’n?” Rabbit’s voice came out of the darkness
“Who were you expecting?” Sorgan replied. “What’s happening
down there?”
“Those soldiers in red clothes finally finished their bridge, Cap’n,” Rabbit said as he joined them, “but things aren’t going exactly like we thought they would.”
“Problems of some kind?” Skell demanded.
“Maybe so, or maybe not,” Rabbit replied. “Everything was going pretty much like we expected. The soldiers in red clothes finally managed to get one log across that last gap, and when they saw the peaks with imitation gold on them out there, they got all excited. After the sun went down, eight or ten of them came sneaking across that log—probably trying to get a head start on all their friends.”
“We were fairly sure things were going to work out that way, Rabbit,” Ox said.
“They hit a snag , though,” Rabbit announced. “Some other men dressed in black clothes had used ladders to get up to the rim, and they were waiting when the red-suits came across the log. The ones in black suits grabbed the red-suits and threw ’em off that rim. From what Torl and Padan told us, I guess the black-suits are the ones who make sure that the red-suits do what they’re supposed to do, and they make sure that the red-suits get the point by killing anybody who tries to break the rules.”
Sorgan winced. “How far down would you say it is from the rim to the rocks down below?” he asked.
“Two hundred feet at least, Cap’n,” Rabbit replied. “I wouldn’t say that very many red-suits walked away after a fall like that.” He shuddered. “Anyway, Padan sent me up here to let you know that the bridge is finished and that the red-suits won’t just come dribbling in up here. They’ll come here by the hundreds at least.” He paused. “Oh, one other thing, Cap’n. Padan and his people are about an hour behind me, and he said he’d really appreciate it if there was somebody here to show him how to get to your barricade without having to tiptoe through those poison stakes.”
“We’ll see to it, Rabbit,” Sorgan said. “Now why don’t you hustle on up to Gunda’s wall and let Narasan know what’s afoot?”
“I’ll do ’er, Cap’n—just as soon as somebody shows me how to get through the poison stakes in the other trenches without coming down with a bad case of dead.”
Padan and Torl reached Sorgan’s first trench before first light and they were some distance ahead of their men.
“Rabbit stopped by and told us that things have changed just a bit,” Skell advised them. “He wasn’t just making things up, was he? Are those men dressed in black really that brutal?”
“Worse, probably, big brother,” Torl replied. “Padan here sort of filled me in on the organization of those Church armies, and if I understood it right, the Trogite Church tends to take brutality out to the far end. The ones they call ‘Regulators’ keep the soldiers—and the priests themselves—in line by using pure terror. I guess their standard approach goes something along the lines of ‘if you don’t do what we tell you to do, we’ll kill you.’ Then they prove that they mean just what they say by killing a few right there on the spot.”
“Is he making this up, Padan?” Sorgan asked skeptically.
“No, Captain Hook-Beak. That’s pretty much how the Regulators operate,” Padan said. “The Church is out to get the money, and any kind of decency went out the window a long time ago.” He peered out into the darkness on either side of Sorgan’s trench. “I gather that the east sides of these trenches lie along the riverbank,” he noted. “How have you managed to block off the west side?”
“We got lucky,” Sorgan replied. “There’s a rock face that runs for about a mile along the west ridge. I suppose that a man could climb up that face if he really wanted to, but it’d probably take quite a while. If those Church soldiers are all excited about the imitation gold out there in the desert, they wouldn’t want to waste that much time. Our poisoned stakes at the bottom of these trenches aren’t very long and we scattered tree leaves over the top of them to keep them pretty much out of sight.”
“Are you sure that they’ll penetrate the soles of those soldier- boots?”
“I wouldn’t want to try to run across the trench to find out. How much longer would you say it’s likely to take all of those Church soldiers to get up here?”
“As near as I’ve been able to determine, they’ll be at it for about two and a half days, Captain. Now, whether they’ll wait until all of their men are up here before they start, or march this way a battalion or so at a time, I couldn’t say.”
Sorgan and Padan were standing atop the barricade farthest to the south at first light the following morning, and so far as Sorgan was able to determine, the Church armies had not as yet begun their march. “No visitors yet,” he said to Padan. “Are you positive that those Church soldiers won’t recognize our yellow ribbons as markers?”
“Not very likely, Captain,” Padan replied. “Gunda and I came up with that notion when we were still children, and we kept it pretty much to ourselves. We know what they mean, but nobody else does.”
“What about that one called Jalkan? If I understood what Narasan told me, that scrawny rascal was a member of your army for quite a long time, but now he’s a part of the enemy army.”
Padan shook his head. “Gunda, Narasan, and I kept the idea strictly to ourselves,” he said. Then he smiled faintly. “If you wanted to get right down to the bottom of it, we were being just a bit childish about it. The yellow ribbons were our idea, so we kept them entirely to ourselves. We don’t use large strips of yellow fabric, and most of the time they’re nothing but yellow string. How did you manage to sneak in and steal our secret?”
“Narasan was more or less obliged to tell me about it after he sent you along with Skell’s scouting party. Skell would probably have thought you’d just gone crazy when you started tying yellow ribbons to bushes and trees along the way.”
“Here comes Longbow,” Padan said, pointing off toward the north, “and it looks to me like Rabbit’s showing him the way.”
“Good. We definitely don’t want to lose Longbow. Lady Zelana would skin me alive if I let anything happen to him.”
“Any sign yet of those ‘friendly enemies’?” Longbow asked.
“Not yet,” Sorgan replied. “Of course, it’s still early. The sun isn’t even up yet. How did Narasan take our news, Rabbit?”
“He claimed that it was awful unnatural for him to approve of anything those Church armies came up with, but that deep down, he really approved of what those Regulators did to persuade the soldiers not to run on ahead so that they could get more gold. I think he’s looking forward to what’s going to happen when the Church armies come face-to-face with the bug-people.”
Sorgan grinned. “That’s our Narasan for you,” he said, “but to tell the truth, I’m sort of looking forward to it myself.”
“Enemy to the front,” Padan announced in an almost bored tone of voice.
Sorgan turned quickly to look off toward the south. “Now that’s what I’d call an army,” he said. “I was still just a bit nervous about the ‘sneak ahead and get more’ crowd, but I’d say that the Regulators got their point across.”
The massive army of men in red uniforms were marching in what Narasan called “quick step,” and it seemed to Sorgan that they were making good time—until they reached the edge of Sorgan’s first trench. The front rank looked dubiously at the ten-foot drop to the bottom of the trench, and then they began to melt back in among the following ranks.
“I seem to be catching a certain lack of enthusiasm,” Padan said with a grin.
“If a man’s not careful, he can break both of his legs in a jump like that,” Sorgan said. “I’d imagine that I’d be a bit edgy about it myself.”
A lean man with an ugly face and wearing a black uniform conferred briefly with other men in similar uniforms, and his underlings—if that’s what they were—moved rapidly along behind the now-hesitant red-uniformed men, pushing them off the edge of the trench.
“Efficient, maybe,” Padan observed, “but just a bit extreme, perhaps.” Then he peered into the trench. “
Just how close to the other side of the trench did your people plant those stakes, Sorgan?”
“Real close.”
“The venom seems to be as strong as it was before,” Padan noted. “It looks to me like everybody who went down over there is dead.”
Sorgan grinned at him. “That was the whole idea, Padan. Now that those men in red have seen what’s waiting for them, they’ll have to slow down and very carefully start digging up the stakes. I’d say that it’s likely to take them about two days to clear the bottom of the trench. By then, there’ll be twice as many soldiers standing on the far side waiting to come this way.”
“Shrewd,” Padan said. “After two or three more trenches, I’d say that all five Church armies will be up here jumping up and down and waiting for the time when they can run out into the desert to gather up as much imitation gold as they can carry.”
But it didn’t turn out that way, Sorgan was forced to admit. There was another get-together of the Regulators, and the one who was apparently their leader snapped out some fairly blunt instructions. Then the Regulators moved out again grabbing hold of more soldiers. This time, however, the Regulators didn’t just push the soldiers over the edge of the trench.
They threw them instead—just as far as they could—and the pile of dead soldiers began to stretch farther and farther out into the trench as the Regulators carpeted Sorgan’s trench with people.
“That does it!” Rabbit exclaimed in a voice that didn’t have the slightest trace of his usual timidity. He raised the short bow that Sorgan had assumed was a little more than a decoration and drew an arrow from the quiver belted to his back. “Which way did that one called Konag go?” the little man asked Torl.
“Ah . . .” Torl’s eyes swept across the far side of the trench. “I think he’s that one standing off to the right side, Rabbit,” he said. “Do you think you can take him from here?”
“I’m definitely going to try,” Rabbit announced, drawing his bow and sighting along the arrow-shaft.
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