“I’d say that solves your problem, Hook-Beak,” Squint-Eye said. “You could have saved us all a lot of time if you’d learned to listen to your first mate. It sounds to me like he’s about three jumps ahead of you.”
“Or maybe even four,” Gimpy added.
“I’m not really sure, Cap’n,” Ox replied when Sorgan started asking questions as soon as the other Maag ship-captains had left the Ascension. “The whole idea seemed to come to me while you were telling the other captains about the problem Lady Zelana’s sister dropped on us.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like Longbow,” Sorgan said. “Did you hear some lady’s voice coming from no place at all?”
“It wasn’t a lady’s voice, Cap’n. I’m sure that I’ve heard it before, though. If the idea’s as good as I think it is, it most likely came from somebody who knows Lady Aracia very well.”
“Veltan, maybe?”
Ox shook his head. “No, I’m sure it wasn’t Veltan. Whoever it was didn’t have to say very much to me to get the point across. About all our other friend said to me was ‘Why not send those worthless priests down to the south wall of the temple and put them to work there instead of where the work’s almost finished? Keep them busy, but out from underfoot.’ Then it all seemed to come together, and it made a lot of sense. I didn’t mean to embarrass you or anything like that, but as soon as I thought my way through the whole notion, I just started to tell you about it without waiting until we were alone.”
“Well, whoever it was solved our problem for us, and I don’t embarrass all that easy.” Then Sorgan scratched his cheek. “I think we might want to take Rabbit and Torl along with us. We’ll need to have them tell Lady Aracia that they saw a different group of bug-people sneaking down toward the south wall while we were holding off the west wall from the attack of their friends.”
“You might want to talk with Veltan, Cap’n,” Ox suggested. “If we can persuade Lady Aracia to send the fat people to the south wall, a few sightings of bug-people creeping through the bushes would confirm what we tell Lady Aracia, and I’m sure that reports of those sightings will get back to her real soon.”
“Give our new friend my thanks, Ox,” Sorgan said with a broad grin. “Whoever he is, he’s doing most of the work for us in this imitation war.”
“I’ll pass that on the next time he stops by, Cap’n,” Ox replied.
Then Sorgan smiled. “Now that I’ve had enough time to think my way through this, I’d say that maybe Squint-Eye and Gimpy should be the ones who should oversee those modifications of the south wall. It’ll give them something to do instead of dropping clever remarks on me every time I turn around.”
“I’m sure that they’ll feel honored that you suggested them to Lady Aracia, Cap’n,” Ox replied with no hint of a smile.
The following morning Ox went out from the west wall of the temple to the berm where Torl and Rabbit had staged their imitation invasion. “The Cap’n wants you two to go with him to talk with Lady Aracia,” he told them. “He wants you to say that you saw quite a few bug-people sneaking around toward the south wall of her temple.”
“That would make a certain amount of sense,” Torl agreed. “If this was really a war, that’s the sort of thing the bug-people would do.”
“You might be right there,” Ox said, “but that’s not why he’s doing it. He doesn’t want all those fat priests underfoot while he’s setting up his deception. There’ll be things going on that ain’t none of their business, and he wants to make certain sure that none of them are around when him and Veltan start playing games.”
“That’s my cousin.” Torl chuckled.
2
Fat Bersla was nowhere in sight when they entered the throne room, and the snippy little priestess Alcevan seemed to have taken his place. She glared at Captain Hook-Beak when he led the Maags into the room.
“I’ll get right to the point here, Lady Aracia,” Sorgan said. “There’s something we might have overlooked. It seems that the bug-people might just be getting a bit more clever. This little fellow here is known as Rabbit, the smith on the Seagull—my own ship—and Rabbit’s much more clever than he lets on. When my scouts were holding back the new varieties of bug-people, Rabbit noticed that there were quite a few of the older ones who weren’t trying to attack that berm. Why don’t you tell her what you saw, Rabbit?”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Rabbit replied. “What I saw didn’t seem to make any sense, Lady,” Rabbit told Zelana’s sister. “Most of them were charging toward that berm we’d raised up to hold them off, but then I caught a kind of flicker back in the bushes behind where the new bugs were charging. I looked a bit closer and saw quite a few of the little ones we’ve seen before sneaking down through the thick bushes. They were staying low, but I was able to see that there were hundreds of them back there, and it seemed to me that they weren’t the least bit interested in the war their big brothers were fighting around our berm. They were going almost due south, and that wasn’t where the war was being fought. Now, the Cap’n and his men have built a fairly good fort along that west wall of your temple, but we don’t have even one single soldier on that south wall, and the construction isn’t really very good. Now, if those other bug-people are planning an attack on that side of your temple, they’ll probably be able to walk right in without no trouble at all.”
“I’m sure you can see where this is going, Lady Aracia,” Sorgan said. “My people can hold the west wall of your temple without much trouble now that we’ve modified it. That south wall isn’t very good, and I’d say that it’s not really strong enough to hold back a mosquito. I thank you for your concern and your offer of help, but I’d say that beefing up that south wall’s a lot more important right now. I strongly suggest that you send your priests south instead of west.”
“I will do as you command, mighty Sorgan,” Aracia declared, “but as soon as you and your people have beaten back the invaders, we must go forth from the temple and gather up all of my people who live beyond the temple walls and bring them here so that they’ll be safe. We must not permit the servants of the Vlagh to destroy them.”
The priestess Alcevan looked sharply at Aracia. “You cannot bring all those commoners here into the holy temple. They are not sanctified, and their presence here will defile your holy temple!”
“The people—my people—are far more significant than the indigents who call themselves priests,” Aracia declared. “If you should find their presence here offensive, feel free to go forth from the temple to seek out a different god to worship. If you would continue to worship me, you will do as I tell you to do, and this I say: The commons will join us here, and you and the other priests will see to their needs. You will eat only after they have eaten, and you will surrender your beds and your warm clothes to them without question or complaint. The people come first in my eyes, and you will serve them even as you would serve me—or I will send you away. You will no longer contaminate my temple.”
Alcevan’s face went pale, and her expression was one of chagrin.
“Well now, Cap’n,” Ox said quietly. “It sort of looks like maybe Zelana’s sister’s starting to grow up.”
“Let’s not make a big issue of that just yet, Ox,” Sorgan replied. “She might just change her mind again after she’s gone a week or so without any adoration.”
THE
GIFTED
STUDENT
1
Keselo had also had some problems with Lord Dahlaine’s “toy sun.” His education at the University of Kaldacin had taught him that a sun needed a certain volume before it qualified as a true sun. Dahlaine’s little toy violated almost everything Keselo had learned or worked out for himself. He knew that most of the rules didn’t apply to the members of Dahlaine’s family, but still—
The toy sun stayed with them all the way to the coast.
They reached the large bay where the Trogite ships Commander Narasan had hired in Castano were anchored, and Sorgan’s Maags had ta
ken about half of that fleet and sailed on south to bamboozle Lady Zelana’s sister.
“I’m glad that Sorgan’s the one who’ll have to deal with that crazy woman,” Gunda said. “I got more than enough of her the last time we were down here.”
“She set my teeth on edge just a bit, too,” Andar agreed.
“All right, gentlemen,” Commander Narasan, who’d just come up from the beach, said. “We’re not going to board our ships for several days. Let’s give Sorgan and his men a good head start. Go tell the men to set up camp and have the cooks fix something for supper.”
“Beans?” Gunda asked with a definite note of distaste in his voice.
“What a marvelous idea, Gunda,” Commander Narasan said with mock enthusiasm. “Beans will be just fine. I wonder why I didn’t think of that.”
After they’d loaded about half of Commander Narasan’s army on board the remaining ships, they sailed on south under a gloomy sky, and they reached the narrow bay at the mouth of the river that had carved out Long-Pass at some time in the long-distant past. Just the notion of the eon after eon it must have taken that river to reach the sea made Keselo shudder. Time, it appeared, had no meaning for rivers and mountains.
They’d dropped anchor, and there on the beach—as they all probably should have expected—the archer Longbow was waiting for them.
“I will never understand how he can cover so much ground in so little time,” Keselo muttered to himself.
Keselo was just a bit surprised when Commander Narasan included him in the group of men who knew how to build forts that Longbow would lead ahead of the rest up to the top of the pass.
“How are your legs holding out, Keselo?” Narasan had asked.
“They seem all right to me, sir,” Keselo replied.
“Good. I think that maybe you should go along with the fort-builders. Gunda’s just about the best fort-builder in the entire Trogite Empire. You could learn a lot by watching him.”
Keselo resented that just a bit. He had taken courses in architecture at the University of Kaldacin, so he already knew all about building walls.
“I’m not trying to offend you,” Narasan added. “Gunda and Andar are sort of stuck in stone when it comes to fort-building. Their minds are locked in ‘the good old-fashioned way’ when it comes to forts. You’re intelligent enough to come up with things that won’t even occur to them—and you can be diplomatic enough not to offend them with your shiny new ideas.”
“I can try, I suppose, sir,” Keselo agreed a bit dubiously. “I’m not sure they’ll listen, though.”
“Talk louder, then.”
When Longbow had objected to leading so many men to the head of the pass, Keselo took him aside.
“It’s a precaution, Longbow,” Keselo tried to explain. “Commander Narasan doesn’t like to take chances. We’ve had quite a few surprises here since last spring, so the commander wants to be sure that there’ll be enough men up at the head of the pass to deal with anything the Vlagh throws at us.”
“That’s why we have the Malavi, Tonthakans, and Matans, Keselo,” Longbow objected.
“I mentioned that to him,” Keselo replied. Then he smiled faintly. “The commander has opinions, Longbow. He’s not positive that our friends will do what they’re supposed to do. That’s why he overloaded us just a bit.”
“Ten thousand men is his idea of ‘just a bit’?” Longbow asked.
The protests that had arisen when Longbow abolished the traditional “rest period” were long and loud. Keselo had long believed that those quarter-hour lounges were totally unnecessary, but the common soldiers viewed them as something on the order of a divine right. But Keselo estimated that they’d covered three times more distance than they normally would have.
“He’s going too fast,” Gunda grumbled.
“This is sort of an emergency, sir,” Keselo suggested. “If we don’t reach the head of the pass before the bug-people do, things will probably start to get ugly. Once the fort’s in place, our men should be able to rest. Up until then, we don’t really have much time for rest, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re probably right,” Gunda conceded, “but that doesn’t abolish my right to complain, does it?”
“Not at all, sir, but I wouldn’t complain too much when Longbow’s around. He might decide to run tomorrow instead of just walk fast. I’ve come to know him very well during the past three seasons, and the first rule when you’re dealing with Longbow is ‘don’t irritate him if you can possibly avoid it.’”
“I think he’s right, Gunda,” Andar agreed. “We want that fort in place as soon as possible.” He paused. “Are you open to a suggestion?”
“I’ll listen,” Gunda replied.
“We’ve got four or five times as many men as we’ll really need, right?”
“I’ll know better after I’ve seen the ground I’ll be working on,” Gunda replied, “but I am just a bit overloaded with workers. Where are you going with this, Andar?”
“Why build only one fort at a time? We’ve got all those extra men, so why keep them all at the head of the pass? I could take maybe half of them and build a second fort a mile or so on down the pass. That should give you someplace to run to when the bug-people make your fort too hot to hold on to.”
“Thanks a lot, Andar,” Gunda said in a voice reeking with sarcasm. Then he squinted. “You know, if we put the men to work on other forts every mile or so on down the pass, we could probably hold back the invaders until sometime next summer.”
“Brilliant,” Andar said rather dryly.
“You’ve been thinking along the same lines, haven’t you, Andar?”
“It did sort of occur to me, yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“I just wanted to see how long it was going to take you to get the point, Gunda,” Andar replied with mock sincerity.
Keselo smiled. Things seemed to be going quite well.
They were three days up from the beach when the horse-soldier Ekial came riding down the pass. He reined in his horse when he reached Longbow. “You seem to be making fairly good time, friend Longbow,” he said.
“Not too bad,” Longbow replied. “Have you seen any sign that the Creatures of the Wasteland are coming east yet?”
“Oh, they’re coming, all right,” Ekial said. “Ariga’s got scouts out in that desert, and they’ve told us that there are thousands and thousands of the bug-people coming east.”
“Have your people got any kind of idea about how much longer it’s going to take them to reach the head of this pass?”
“I’d say that they’re still a week or ten days away. There’s a bit of a diversion that’s already here, though.”
“Oh? What’s that?”
“When we were coming south, we saw a sizeable number of bug-people coming across the sand. Kathlak, the chief of the Tonthakans, suggested that the bugs might have realized that things can get very unpleasant for people as well as for bugs if they’ve got enemies above them. When we reached the head of the pass, I sent horsemen down along the rims on both sides of this pass, and sure enough, there were bug-people on those rims. If we’d left them there, they’d have been dropping boulders on Narasan’s army every time they got a chance. Kathlak’s archers took care of that for us. The bug-men up on those rims suddenly started sprouting arrows. There may still be a few of them up there hiding in the bushes, but they aren’t likely to cause any problems.”
“Have the archers of Old-Bear’s tribe joined you yet?” Longbow asked.
“They’re still a day or so away. Your friend Red-Beard came on ahead to let us know that they were on the way. They’ll probably reach the head of the pass at about the same time your fort-builders do.”
Gunda joined them.
“You brought a lot of men with you,” Ekial noted.
“That was Narasan’s idea,” Gunda told him. “He’s always believed that more is better. He might be right this time, though. I’m sure that I wo
n’t need all those men, so I’ll hand the surplus off to Andar, and he’ll be able to build another fort about a mile on down the pass. If the Vlagh gives us enough time, we’ll have a fort standing every mile or so down the pass, and our enemy will run out of bugs before she gets halfway down.”
Then he looked at the lean, scar-faced horse-soldier. “Have you had your supper yet?” he asked.
“I’ve been a little busy,” Ekial replied.
“I can’t offer anything very exciting,” Gunda said, “but you’re welcome to join me if you want.”
“I could probably eat,” Ekial said.
“Let’s go do it then.”
2
The river that came down through Long-Pass was somewhat wider than the one in Crystal Gorge, but not nearly as wide as the one that had been the source of the Falls of Vash. Keselo realized that the Falls of Vash weren’t there anymore, and the river now rushed down to that inland sea that had drowned a generation of the children of the Vlagh and quite nearly all of the clergy of the Church of Amar. To Keselo’s way of thinking, that particular disaster had purified the Trogite Empire to no small degree.
Despite Longbow’s best efforts, it was about mid-morning on the fifth day when they reached the upper end of Long-Pass and Gunda caught his first glimpse of the projected fort site. “It’s only fifty feet across!” he exclaimed.
“About that, yes,” Longbow agreed.
“Didn’t you tell Narasan how tight this is?”
“As I remember, I described it to him four or five times,” Longbow replied.
“Why in the world did he send so many men up here?”
“I think it’s called ‘more is better,’ or something like that, friend Gunda.”
“You were right, Andar,” Gunda said to his friend. “If I tried to jam ten thousand men into that skinny little opening, they’d be falling all over each other.”
The Younger Gods Page 12