The Elder Gods (30 page)

Longbow shrugged. “It’s not that big a problem, Sorgan. The venom in their fangs and stings will kill anything—even others of their own kind. I’ve had quite a bit of success by simply sticking my arrowheads into the venom sacks of those I’ve already killed. The enemy has to be close enough to bite or sting you. A long spear with its point dipped in venom should keep you fairly safe.”

“That’s very interesting, Longbow,” Sorgan said, “but just where are we going to be able to get our hands on that much poison?”

“In just a few days a flood should be coming down the ravine, Sorgan,” Longbow reminded Rabbit’s captain. “It’ll carry all sorts of things down the river: trees, branches, old logs, dead enemies, bushes, and twigs. If we fish the dead enemies out of the river and drain their venom sacks, we should have more than enough poison to treat every spear, sword, and arrowhead we’ll be using to kill the servants of the Vlagh.”

“Well, maybe,” Sorgan said dubiously.

Rabbit suddenly remembered something. “That strange-looking little fellow you killed with one of your old stone arrows back in Kweta was one of the things we’re going to have to fight, wasn’t it?”

“Of course,” Longbow replied. “That’s why I used one of my old arrows. They’d already been dipped in poison.”

“I think we’ll have to fort up, Commander,” Gunda suggested. “We don’t want to get too close to those things, do we? If they have to climb a wall to get to us, we should be able to poke them off that wall with poisoned spears, and after a while they’ll get the point and go play someplace else.”

“They will not do that,” One-Who-Heals disagreed. “Once they have been told to attack, they will keep coming at you until they swarm over you or until the last one has been killed—and they will come at you in numbers beyond counting. They are not intelligent enough to be afraid.”

Narasan was frowning. “I think this changes quite a few things, Sorgan. We’d better take a long, hard look at our plans.
If
this spring flood clears the ravine of all the enemies, we should probably hurry right along and get to the head of the ravine just as quickly as we can and build a strong fort up there to hold the rest back.”

“What if they don’t all get drowned?” Sorgan asked.

“We might have to just go up as far as your cousin’s fort and stop there. If we start getting involved in little hand-to-hand skirmishes, we could lose half of our men, and neither of us would like that very much, would we?”

“Not even a little bit,” Sorgan agreed. He scratched at his cheek. “Now that I’ve had a bit of time to digest this business of the snake-men, I don’t know that it really changes all that much. All we really have to do is stay a little ways away from them. If we do most of our fighting with long spears, the snake-people won’t get close enough to bite us, and since they don’t have any weapons except their teeth and those stingers along the sides of their arms, they should be fairly easy to defeat, wouldn’t you say?”

“You’ve got a point there, Sorgan,” Narasan conceded. “And if we can gather up enough of the venom to poison all of our spear tips, all that our people really need to do is scratch a charging enemy or give him a little poke with the spear to kill him right there in his tracks. He’ll be too busy dying to come any closer. This might just turn out to be an easy war after all.”

“And the nice part of it is that the enemy supplies us with the poison we’ll use to defeat him,” Sorgan added.

“I know,” Narasan said with a broad grin. “I think that’s terribly generous of him, don’t you?”

“Wake up, Bunny. It’s time to toot.”

Rabbit struggled up out of sleep to stare at the strange chubby little girl who’d just roused him. “You’re Lillabeth, aren’t you?” he asked. “The little girl who came here with Zelana’s sister, Aracia?”

“That’s me,” the dark-haired little girl replied. “Zelana asked me to wake you. You’re supposed to go outside and blow your horn.”

“I don’t understand.” Rabbit was still only about half awake, and his mind seemed a little foggy.

“It’s very simple, Bunny. Take up your horn, go outside, pucker up, and blow.” She pointed at the cave mouth. “Go! Now!”

Rabbit didn’t care much for her attitude, but he struggled to his feet, took up his horn, and went out into the night. He was getting a little tired of having everybody tell him what to do.

The wind blowing in from the bay was quite warm, and it seemed that every Maag with a horn in the fleet out there in the bay was responding to a signal from farther out. This was obviously the day they’d all been waiting for. Rabbit climbed up to the shoulder of the hill above the cave’s mouth to make sure that the sound of his horn would carry up to the rim of the ravine. Then he raised his horn and blew a long, mellow-sounding note. He stood listening intently for a response. After a few moments, a mournful-sounding reply came down from out of the mountains above Lattash. The reply was coming from some distance off, and the echoes resounded from the nearby hills and crags. A few moments later, Rabbit heard yet another reply, which was much fainter but nonetheless stirred its own echoes. Fainter and fainter responses, each trailing echoes, faded back up into the mountains. “That should do it,” Rabbit muttered to himself. “I hope somebody’s awake in Skell’s fort.” He turned and went on back down the hill.

When he reentered the cave, he found that Zelana’s relatives and the children were all there. The young Trogite, Keselo, was standing somewhat behind Veltan with a look of absolute bafflement on his face.

Everybody in the cave was watching Eleria intently as she lay sleeping on a fur robe near the fire with what appeared to be a pink ball in her hand.

“Did the warning reach Sorgan’s cousin?” Zelana’s elder brother, Dahlaine, asked.

“They were passing it along,” Rabbit replied. “I listened for a while, and the sounds of the horns were getting fainter and fainter as they moved up the ravine. I’d say that the word’s reached Skell by now.”

“How warm is the wind?” Zelana’s sister asked him.

“Warm enough, I’d say. If it’s still that warm when it reaches the head of the ravine, the snow up there—and in the surrounding mountains—won’t last very long. Why are we all watching Eleria like this? Is she sick or something?”

“She’s dreaming, Bunny,” the stout little girl who’d awakened him replied.

“Everybody has dreams. What’s so unusual about hers?”

“How much does this one know, Zelana?” Dahlaine asked in a quiet voice.

“Probably quite a bit more than he’s supposed to,” Zelana replied. “He’s a member of the crew of Sorgan’s ship, and Longbow found him to be very useful. He’s caught me tampering with things on several occasions already. I don’t think we’ll be able to hide very much from him. Eleria’s very fond of him, and Longbow’s his friend.”

“Does he know enough not to tell everybody he encounters just who and what we are?”

“I think so, yes.”

“What about this other one?” Dahlaine asked, pointing at the young Trogite Keselo.

“He’s young and inexperienced,” Veltan replied, “but Commander Narasan believes that he has a great deal of potential—assuming that we don’t get him killed.”

A sharp sense of apprehension came over Rabbit. He was almost positive that Dahlaine was about to tell him and the young Trogite some things that they didn’t really want to know.

“All right, then,” Dahlaine said, turning a stern eye on the pair of them. “We’d take it as a kindness if the two of you keep what I’m about to tell you strictly to yourselves. Of course, nobody from the outlands would believe you anyway, but let’s not start circulating rumors and exaggerations if we can avoid it. As you heard last night, there’s trouble in the wind here in my sister Zelana’s Domain, and Eleria’s currently dealing with it.”

“Baby sister?” Rabbit exclaimed. “Why don’t you or Lady Zelana take care of it?”

“That’s not permitted,” Dahlaine told him.

“Lady Zelana tampers with things all the time,” Rabbit protested. “She can do
anything.
”

“Not anything that kills people,” Dahlaine disagreed. “That’s
one
of the things that we aren’t permitted to do.”

“But Eleria
is?
That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

“
She
isn’t doing it. It’s her dream that kills. The dream brings natural forces into play. In this case, it’s going to be a very warm wind, I think—probably quite a bit warmer than is usually the case. Mother Sea controls the weather, but Eleria’s dream can override Mother Sea’s preferences. It gets just a bit complicated. To put it in the simplest of terms, Mother Sea wants to preserve all life—even the lives of the monstrous slaves of That-Called-the-Vlagh. Eleria’s dream will unleash a very hot wind that will cause a flood that’s going to be much more savage than the usual spring flood, and that flood will do most of your job here. It will kill most of the enemy creatures who are currently in the ravine above Lattash, so That-Called-the-Vlagh will be obliged to gather up more of its servants and command them to invade Zelana’s Domain again. That will take time, and we hope that extra time will give you outlanders the chance to occupy the ravine and hold back that second incursion.”

“I really think you should take this up with Commander Narasan, sir,” Keselo protested. “I’m not really experienced enough to put this information to good use.”

“I’m sorry, young man,” Dahlaine said firmly. “Somebody in each of our hired armies needs to know what’s really happening. That person should be close enough to the army commander to persuade him to do what needs to be done. Narasan listens to you, and Hook-Beak listens to Rabbit.”

“Why do I always get saddled with these chores?” Rabbit complained.

“Because you’re quick, clever, and very inventive,” Zelana told him, “and because Longbow and Eleria both like you. That might become important later on. Quit sniveling, Bunny. Just smile and do as you’re told.”

“I wish all you people would get off the ‘Bunny’ business.”

“Eleria calls you Bunny all the time,” Lillabeth said. “It’s a sign of her affection.”

“If you people are going to keep on babbling like this, take it on outside,” Zelana’s older sister Aracia told them pointedly. “If you happen to interrupt Eleria’s dream, all our plans are going to fly out the window.”

“We’re almost done, Aracia,” Dahlaine told her. He turned back to Rabbit and Keselo. “This is only the first war,” he told them. “There’ll be three more, and your people will be involved in all of them. I’ve observed Sorgan and Narasan, and I’m quite certain that they’ll stay here and fight if we offer them more gold. We’ll also be bringing in the Malavi horsemen and the woman-warriors from the Isle of Akalla to join us in our struggle. Eventually, we’ll probably have to march our armies into the Wasteland and deal with That-Called-the-Vlagh permanently. Now the two of you know what’s really happening here. You’re both clever enough to lead your chieftains, or whatever you want to call them, down the proper path. We’ll be close enough to keep you advised if the Dreamers are about to unleash any other natural disasters, so you’ll be able to warn your leaders.”

“Sorgan and Narasan are coming along the beach,” Zelana warned them. “Rabbit, you and Keselo had better stay here. The rest of you go on back in the cave. Let’s not alert them to what’s really happening.”

Her brothers and sister took the children back toward the passageway where Zelana kept her gold, and a moment or two later, Sorgan and Narasan entered, along with Ox, Ham-Hand, Gunda, Jalkan, and Padan. Longbow, the two chiefs, and Red-Beard weren’t far behind them, and they all had serious, businesslike looks on their faces.

“That wind out there is really gusting,” Sorgan reported, “and it’s as warm as midsummer. Chief White-Braid here tells us that the river’s going to start to rise before morning, and it’ll run out of its banks by noon. He’s fairly sure that dike his people built will protect the village. We’ve talked it over, and we all agree that it might be best if all of us outlanders went back on board our ships out in the bay and sat out the flood there. That way we won’t get scattered, and we’ll be able to see when the flood begins to subside. Then we’ll come back ashore and move on up the ravine.”

“The plan seems sound, Hook-Beak,” Zelana approved. “I’ll keep Rabbit and Keselo here, just in case I need to send messages out to you. The Dhralls will be up on the rim, so they’ll be able to keep an eye on the river. When it returns to its banks, they’ll sound their horns again, and Rabbit and Keselo can pass the word on to you gentlemen out there in the bay.”

“This is turning out even better than I’d hoped,” Narasan said. “This annual spring flood’s likely to do about half of our job for us.”

“We’ll see,” Sorgan replied cautiously. “It’s all going to hinge on whether or not the invaders stay down at the bottom of the ravine. If they recognize the danger and make a run for higher ground, we’ll have to face their whole poison-fanged army, and we might be just a bit shorthanded for that.”

6

T
he warm wind was still coming in from the sea when the sun rose the next morning, and Rabbit and Keselo climbed the hill above the cave mouth to keep an eye on the river.

“I don’t really see all that much difference, do you?” the young Trogite said.

“It’ll need to do a lot better than that if it’s going to do our job for us,” Rabbit agreed. Then he looked curiously at Keselo. “It’s probably none of my business, but what made you decide to take up soldiering? Is the pay really all that good?”

Keselo shrugged. “Not really, but we eat regularly, and we don’t have to sleep in the street. I wasn’t really interested in politics or buying and selling, so my father bought me a commission in Commander Narasan’s army.”

“What’s a commission?” Rabbit asked.

“I’m an officer instead of an ordinary soldier. I’m supposed to tell the ordinary soldiers what to do—‘dig a ditch’; ‘build a wall’; ‘kill those people over there’—things like that.”

“Ah,” Rabbit said. “You’d be sort of like Ox and Ham-Hand, then. They’re the first and second mates on board the
Seagull.
The cap’n tells them what he wants done, and then they tell us ordinary seamen to do it and hurry. It sounds to me like being a soldier isn’t all that much different from being a sailor. We all take orders, don’t we?”