There was a slight cloudiness that day, and the thin clouds made the sun look sort of pale and sickly. Winter was a very depressing time of year.
Ekial was about to call a halt for the day when Two-Hands and Longbow’s Tonthakan friend, Athlan, came up through the rounded foothills to join him. “There’s company coming, Ekial,” Chief Two-Hands reported.
“Oh? Who might that be?”
“It might be almost anybody,” Athlan said. “They’re still a good ways off, but we’re almost positive that they aren’t people-people. They look like bug-people to me.”
“Where?” Ekial asked sharply.
“They’re a few miles out in sand-country,” Two-Hands said. “We might have missed them, but they’re kicking up a lot of dust. We can’t give you any kind of details, since they’re still several miles away, and the dust pretty much conceals them.”
“If Long-Pass is going to be their invasion route, what are they doing a hundred and sixty miles north of that pass?” Ekial demanded.
“I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Two-Hands admitted. “I suppose that it might be possible that they’re planning to cross over the mountains and then go south through the foothills on the other side to someplace about halfway down Long-Pass. That would put them behind the Trogites if the fort-builders are going to concentrate on blocking the pass on the west end.”
“How many of them would you say there are?” Ekial asked.
“It’s a little hard to tell,” Athlan said. “They’re quite a ways out in that desert, and the dust pretty much conceals them. I’d say several hundred thousand at least. The dust cloud’s at least ten miles wide, so we aren’t talking about a couple dozen or so.”
Ekial started to swear.
2
They kept a close eye on the creatures out there in the desert for the next several hours, but it didn’t seem to Ekial that their enemies were in any great hurry. He mentioned that to Longbow’s friend Athlan when the archer returned to report that he’d just located a sizeable meadow with lots of grass just ahead.
Athlan scratched his cheek. “From what Longbow told me a while back, this will probably be our last war with the children of the Vlagh,” he said. “I asked him once a few weeks ago if we’d be fighting the bug-people for the rest of our lives. That’s when he told me about the twin volcanos in Zelana’s Domain, and the sudden flood in Veltan’s part of the Land of Dhrall. Neither the bug-people nor anybody else will be able to attack those two regions.”
“And that wall of blue fire in Crystal Gorge closes the only route up to Dahlaine’s territory as well,” Ekial added.
“It did that, all right,” Athlan agreed. “I go cold all over when I think about that disaster. I’ve seen blue fire before—usually in swamps, where it’s just a faint flicker dancing on top of the water. The blue fire in Crystal Gorge went way past a flicker, though.” Athlan paused. “He did tell you about that ‘unknown friend,’ didn’t he?”
“Oh, yes. I wasn’t sure just how much of what he said I should believe—but that was before the blue fire went roaring down Crystal Gorge. If Longbow’s got a friend who can do things like that, why does he need to hire outlander armies?”
“It wasn’t Longbow who hired you, Prince Ekial. I’ve heard that it was Dahlaine. Longbow himself doesn’t need any outside help. I’m not trying to offend you, Prince Ekial, but once Longbow told me that bringing outlander armies here to the Land of Dhrall really only had one purpose. You’re here to see just how terrible the people who live here can be if somebody from another part of the world decides that he wants all the gold in the Land of Dhrall. After what happened to those idiots from the Trogite Church in Veltan’s Domain, I’m sure that every outlander who’s here realizes what a terrible mistake it’d be to come here with some notion of getting rich. People who offend us don’t get rich. They get dead—soon—instead.”
The weather turned bitterly cold that night, and Ekial didn’t like that at all. “Why can’t it warm up just a bit?” he complained to Chief Two-Hands.
“You don’t really want that to happen, Prince Ekial,” Two-Hands replied. “A brief warm spell usually means that there’s a blizzard on the way, and you don’t want to come up against one of those. The warm spell goes away rather quickly, and it’s suddenly ten times colder than it was before—at least it seems that way. The wind cuts into you like a knife, and the snow whirling around you blots out everything more than two or three feet away.”
“Longbow told me that you had to burrow down under the snow during a blizzard once,” Ekial said.
“Oh, yes!” Two-Hands said. “I was wearing one of our bison-hide robes, and it still felt like I was getting frozen into a solid block of ice. I couldn’t see anything beyond two feet away because the snow was so thick. I could barely see my hand in front of my face. I didn’t know which way was which, and it was getting colder and colder by the minute. I knew that if I didn’t get in out of that wind, I’d freeze to death. My only option at that point was to burrow down into a snow-bank. I knew that my burrow wouldn’t be toasty warm, but at least it would protect me from that screaming wind. That’s when I discovered that snow will pack up if you lean your back against it and push. I was finally able to open up a chamber about the same size as a small room in a very small house. There was air to breathe, and if I got thirsty, I could eat a few handfuls of snow. I happened to have a couple of slabs of smoked meat in my belt-pouch, so I had shelter, water, and food. I stayed there for a few days, and then I took a look outside. It’d stopped snowing, so I made my way back to Asmie—just in time to witness my own funeral. You wouldn’t believe how upset people become when the guest of honor at a funeral shows up and he’s still breathing.” He smiled then. “Word of what I’d done got spread around all over the village, and the young boys of Asmie thought it might be a lot of fun to make snow tunnels around the village in the dead of winter.” He shrugged. “It gives them something to do, and it keeps them in out of the weather. Last winter eight or nine boys built what amounted to a palace under the snow on the south side of Asmie. They made miles of tunnels and they had large chambers here and there. It kept them out of mischief, so I didn’t scold them or anything. I did order them to mark the locations of their tunnels and meeting halls, though. It’s not really safe to walk over the top of a snow-tunnel. The women of the tribe mentioned that to me fifteen or twenty times a day, as I recall.”
“Are we at all likely to get hit with a blizzard like that one?” Ekial asked.
Two-Hands shook his head. “Dahlaine’s got a very tight grip on the weather just now. I’m not really sure exactly why, though. From what I’ve heard, I could go a whole lifetime without seeing that older sister of his. I guess she’s gone completely crazy.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” Ekial said. “Why should we bother to save her? Let the bug-people eat her and have done with it.”
Two-Hands shook his head. “If the Vlagh gets her feet into people-country—where there is food—she’ll lay millions and millions of eggs. That’s what these wars have been all about, really. The Vlagh wants the whole world, and if she wins just one war here, she’ll spread out and take it. It won’t just be Dahlaine’s sister who’ll be eaten, it’ll be the entire world, and all the people of the world will be nothing but something to eat.”
Ekial felt a sense of horror welling up from his stomach at that point.
“There are thousands and thousands of those bug-things coming this way from that desert out there, Ekial,” Ariga reported a few days later when Ekial’s horse-soldiers, the Tonthakan archers, and the Matan spear-throwers reached the narrow opening at the upper end of Long-Pass.
“Why don’t you just go on out there and kill them?” Ekial asked.
“You’re joking, of course,” Ariga said.
“Well, maybe,” Ekial conceded, “but not entirely. We’ve got to hold those things out there back until the Trogites get here and build a fort. We have a sizeable number of Tonthakan archers her
e now, and Matan spear-throwers as well. We’ve worked with them before, and things turned out quite well.”
“I think I get your point, Ekial. See if I’ve got it right. The archers and spear-throwers sort of stay out of sight while we gallop on out there and nudge the bug-people into trying to chase us down.”
“Nudge?” Ekial asked.
“We have lances, remember? We gallop on out to where the bug-people are busy sneaking, and we skewer a few dozen with our lances. Then we gallop on back. The bug-people should be very angry because we just killed quite a few of their friends and relatives, so they try to chase after us. That’s when we lead them into the range of the arrows and spears. In short, we lead them, and the archers and spear-men kill them. Isn’t that sort of what you had in mind?”
“I’d say that it’s worth a try, Ariga, but let’s hold off until morning. The Tonthakans and Matans are probably worn down just a bit, so let’s give them some time to rest before we put them to work.”
“You’re getting better at this, Ekial.”
“Practice,” Ekial replied modestly.
3
“I think we were right about why those bug-people were coming across that desert miles and miles to the north of this pass,” Kathlak the Tonthakan said the next day. “I sent out some scouts, and they told me that there are enemies in the hills and along the ridges on both sides of this pass. I’d say that what happened in Crystal Gorge taught them a lesson. They learned that having enemies up above you doesn’t make for very pleasant days. It looks like they learned very fast. If there are bug-people up above this pass when the Trogites are coming up here to build forts, life could get very exciting for them. I’d say that cleaning off those hills and ridges might be even more important than killing the ones coming toward the upper end of the pass.”
“Those bug-things seem to be more clever than everybody was telling us they are,” Two-Hands added. “They seem to learn much faster than we’d been told they could.”
Ekial swore. “I’m afraid that you two might be right,” he said. “Clearing off the ridges along the sides of the pass is probably much more important than thinning out the herd coming across that Wasteland. If the Trogites are blocked off, we’ll be in deep trouble.”
“A suggestion—if it’s all right,” Kathlak said.
“I’ll listen to almost anything right now,” Ekial admitted.
“There are trees up along those rims,” Kathlak said, “and Tonthakans are skilled at hunting in a forest. The Matans are more accustomed to open country. If I led my people up into these tired, worn-out old mountains, we could probably deal with the bug-people up there, and that would leave Two-Hands and his spear-throwers free to deal with the enemies coming in off the desert, wouldn’t you say?”
“It does make sense, Ekial,” Two-Hands agreed. “Throwing spears in a forest is mostly a waste of time—and spear-points. If we let the Tonthakans deal with the enemies hiding in the forest, your horse-soldiers and my spear-throwers should be able to thin out the bugs coming across the desert, don’t you think?”
“I suppose we can give it a try,” Ekial agreed.
“How long would you say that it’s likely to take for the Trogites to get up here?” Kathlak asked.
“I wouldn’t start looking for them tomorrow,” Ekial replied. “I think there might be some law down in Trog-land that forbids a soldier to walk more than ten miles a day.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Kathlak exclaimed.
Ekial smiled faintly. “Laws are supposed to be ridiculous, aren’t they? Gunda explained it to me once. A Trogite army moves as a group, as I understood what he was saying. That means that the army can only move as fast as the slowest man can walk, and they spend a lot of their time resting.”
“If that’s as fast as they can go, they don’t really need to rest, do they?”
“I guess that it’s a custom, and customs don’t really have to make sense. It’s about a hundred and twenty miles from the beach at the bottom of the pass up to here, so we’re not likely to see any Trogites for twelve days or so. That gives us twelve days to clear away the bugs along the rims of the pass and thin out the ones crawling through the sand out here. We’ve got plenty to do, so I suppose we should get started.”
There was a mindless quality about the Creatures of the Wasteland that chilled Ekial. It appeared that they were not intelligent enough to be afraid, so they kept on trying to do what they’d been told to do despite the fact that they were running directly into the face of certain death. To some degree they looked like people, but they definitely didn’t think like people. On one occasion during the war in Crystal Gorge, Longbow had told Ekial that the servants of the Vlagh were totally unaware of their mortality. “They seem to think that they’ll live forever. Of course they don’t have any idea of what ‘forever’ means. A bug lives in a world of now, and that’s all that they can understand. Yesterday was too long ago for them to have any memory of it, and tomorrow will probably never arrive.”
“Idiocy!” Ekial had exclaimed.
“That’s a fair description, yes,” Longbow had blandly agreed. “Many things that work quite well when your enemies are people won’t work when they’re bugs.”
“What would you say is the best way to deal with an enemy that’s too stupid to be afraid?”
“I’ve had a fair amount of success with killing every one I see, friend Ekial.”
“All right, then,” Ekial said to a number of his friends the next morning, “try to remember that the enemies we’ll encounter might look like people, but they aren’t. Don’t waste time trying to frighten them, because you can’t frighten them. They have no idea of what ‘afraid’ means.”
“They might start to understand after a lot of their friends get killed,” Skarn said.
“That’s the whole point, Skarn. The bug-people don’t have friends—at least not in the way that we understand the word. They don’t have enough time to grow friendly with other bugs. They live for six weeks, and then they die of the bug version of ‘old age.’ They take orders from the Vlagh, and that’s the only relationship they have. They’ll try to follow the Vlagh’s orders, and they won’t understand what ‘danger’ means. If we just happened to kill every bug out there but just left one of them alive, that last one would keep on trying to attack us.”
“That’s stupid!” Orgal declared.
“It goes a long way past ‘stupid,’ Orgal. Nobody I know of has yet invented a word that describes how brainless the bug-people really are. They don’t know how to think. They are poisonous, though, so don’t get too close to them. Use your lances, but try not to break them. Concentrate on killing the ones that are close to the bottom of this slope. Don’t go galloping out into that silly desert. All we’re supposed to do is hold the bugs back until the Trogites get up here and build the fort. As soon as the fort’s in place, we’re probably going to be out of work.”
THE
VIOLATION
OF THE
TEMPLE
1
It seemed to Ox that Captain Hook-Beak was more than a little disturbed by Lady Aracia’s sudden change of position. As long as she’d been willing to sit on her throne listening to the overdone orations of praise, she hadn’t caused the slightest bit of inconvenience. Now that she realized just how totally useless her priests were, Sorgan and the other Maags would have to come up with ways to step around their new—and unwanted—helpers.
“I think you’d better pass the word to the other captains, Ox,” Sorgan said when they’d returned to the Ascension. “We need to talk this over and come up with some way to keep all those silly priests from finding out what we’re really doing here.”
“I’ll take care of it, Cap’n,” Ox replied. Then he went out onto the deck of the Ascension, lowered the skiff, and rowed back to the beach.
It took him a couple of hours to gather up most of the Maag ship-captains, and it was well past midnight before Sorgan could advise the other captai
ns that things had radically changed.
“Everything was going just the way we wanted it to go,” he said, “but then the lady who’s paying us came to her senses and woke up. She ordered all those fat priests to go out to the west wall of that silly temple to lend us a hand.”
“Why didn’t you just tell her that we don’t need those people, Sorgan?” a captain called Squint-Eye demanded.
“She took me by surprise,” Sorgan admitted. “That was the last thing I expected from her. She’s not nearly as stupid as we all thought. She came down on those lazy priests of hers very hard. She threatened to kick any one of them who refused to help us out of the priesthood and banish him from her temple.”
“I wish I’d been there to see that,” a captain called Gimpy said. “I’ll bet that most of the faces of those priests fell right off.”
“They didn’t seem too happy, that’s for sure. Now, how are we going to get those fools out from underfoot?”
“Ah, Cap’n,” Ox said then, “would you like to hear a suggestion?”
“Sure.”
“We’ve pretty much blocked off that west side of the temple, wouldn’t you say?”
“All except for adding another ten feet or so to our fake fort. Where are you going with this, Ox?”
“The west side’s just about finished, Cap’n,” Ox replied, “but the south side hasn’t been touched yet, and the imitation bug-people will attack from any direction we want them to, wouldn’t you say?”
Sorgan blinked.
The Younger Gods Page 11