The Elder Gods (46 page)

“Your uncle’s very wise, Red-Beard,” Zelana assured him. “You were the proper choice. Sometimes old ones become confused when things start moving too fast for them.” She smiled faintly at Eleria. “That’s when younger ones have to step over them.”

“Would
I
do something like that, Beloved?” Eleria asked with wide-eyed innocence.

“Why don’t we talk about that some other time, little one?” Zelana replied. “Right now, I’ve got more important things to consider.”

Red-Beard’s heart sank when Veltan’s sloop reached the inlet that led back into the bay of Lattash. The fire mountains were spouting red-hot liquid miles up into the air again. He’d been hoping against hope that somehow his boyhood home might still be there to look at, but now that was obviously out of the question.

“I’m sorry, friend Red-Beard,” Longbow said.

“It wasn’t your fault, friend Longbow,” Red-Beard replied. “Nothing we hope for comes to us without a cost, I guess. We won this war, but the winning cost us our home. It used to be a nice place, but nothing lasts forever, I suppose.”

Sorgan Hook-Beak appeared to be in a state of near-panic when Veltan pulled his sloop up alongside the
Seagull
a bit later. “Where have you
been?
” he demanded of Zelana in a shrill voice. “That molten rock’s coming down the ravine faster than any man could run. It’ll probably swallow up the village before the sun goes down, and we’ll never be able to save all the gold in that blasted cave.”

“Calm yourself, Hook-Beak,” she told him. “Rabbit, why don’t you hop into that skiff of yours and go fetch Sorgan’s cousins—Skell, Torl, and the rest of them? If we try to load all the gold in the cave on the
Seagull,
we’ll sink her.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Rabbit agreed, hurrying forward toward the bow of the
Seagull.

“We’ll go on ahead, Sorgan,” Zelana continued. “I’ll need to remove the barriers I set up earlier before your men can start carrying the gold out.”

“Do you think maybe you could widen that tunnel where the gold is just a bit, Lady Zelana?” Hook-Beak asked her. “It’s awfully narrow, and things would go a lot faster if I could put more than two lines of men to work in there.”

“That wouldn’t be a good idea, Sorgan,” she told him. “The walls of that tunnel support the roof, and if I push them out much farther, the ceiling could collapse. Just tell your men not to spend so much time fondling the gold bricks and move faster. Let’s clear out the cave before the lava hits the bay.”

“It can slop down into the bay all it wants to,” Sorgan said. “I want to keep it out of the cave, is all.”

“Once it hits the water, you and your men won’t be able to see what you’re doing, Sorgan. The clouds of steam will be thicker than any fog you’ve ever encountered.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of that, Lady Zelana,” he conceded.

The Maags followed the procedure that had been so successful when they’d dismantled the top of the stairway at the head of the ravine during the recent war, passing the gold bricks from man to man along twin lines of sailors. The rocky passageway that led back to the gold from the large chamber near the mouth of the cave was narrow, so there wasn’t really enough room for more than two lines, but the sailors moved rapidly, so things seemed to be going quite well.

Red-Beard drifted on back into the side chamber to take one last look at the imitation ravine he’d constructed before the war in the real ravine had started, and for some reason Eleria followed along behind him. “Oops,” she said. “We forgot something, didn’t we?”

“I didn’t quite follow that,” Red-Beard admitted.

“There are quite a few of those yellow blocks buried under the clay, remember?”

Red-Beard suddenly burst out laughing. “I’d forgotten about that,” he admitted. “Maybe we should remind Sorgan that there’s gold here as well as in the back of the cave.” He squinted at the model of the ravine. “It might take a while to dig it out, though. The clay we piled on top of those blocks has had enough time to dry by now, so the Maags are going to have to dig if they want this gold, too.”

“It’ll be good for them. I’ve noticed that sailors are sort of lazy when there’s nothing exciting going on.”

Red-Beard left the cave to the sweating Maags and began to climb up the steep slope behind the village, but he met Longbow coming down. “How much time do we have left?” he asked his friend.

“A few hours at least,” Longbow replied. “The flow isn’t moving quite as fast as it was before. That narrow place in the ravine where Skell built his fort seems to have slowed it somewhat. I think we’d still better get Sorgan’s people off the beach as quickly as possible, though. In a peculiar sort of way the lava flow’s behaving very much like Eleria’s flood did.”

“Do you think the berm might hold it back?”

“I doubt it. It kept the water from flooding the village, but water isn’t as heavy as molten rock, and it follows the course of least resistance. The berm was built to hold back water, not liquid rock.”

Red-Beard sighed. “Maybe it’s for the best,” he said. “If even a little bit of the village was still here, just the sight of it would keep bringing back memories—particularly in the minds of the old men of the tribe. I think it’ll be better if there’s no trace of Lattash left here. The tribe needs to move on, and memories of the past would only be a burden.”

“You’re getting better, Chief Red-Beard,” Longbow noted. “You seem to be able to think past tomorrow now.”

“I didn’t ask for this, Longbow,” Red-Beard complained.

“I know, my friend,” Longbow said, “and that’s what’s going to make you a very good chief. Your tribe’s lucky, you know. You just happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“I’d still much prefer to spend my time fishing or hunting.”

“Wouldn’t we all?”

“If it hadn’t been for those cursed fire mountains, I’d have left that gold right where it was,” Sorgan told Commander Narasan the following morning in the cabin at the stern of the
Seagull.
“If I pay the other ship captains now, they’ll sail for home on the afternoon tide. I think we’re going to need them when we fight your war off to the south, but I don’t think they’ll be very interested after they’ve got their hands on all that gold.”

“You’re probably right, Sorgan,” the Trogite commander agreed. He smiled faintly. “Sometimes gold can be an enormous inconvenience, can’t it?”

“Bite your tongue,” Sorgan suggested. “The real problem’s going to be that there’s no possible way for me to keep the fact that the
Seagull
and the ships of several of my relatives are loaded with gold a secret. Ordinary sailors talk too much—particularly after they’ve had a gallon or so of beer to loosen their tongues. Sooner or later I’ll be looking another one of those ‘Kajak affairs’ right in the face.” He looked at Longbow. “How are your arrows holding out?” he asked wryly.

“There aren’t quite that many, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied.

“What it all boils down to is that I need a safe place to hide all this gold, but no matter where I try to hide it, sooner or later somebody on one of these ships will get drunk and start bragging.”

“Why don’t you let me take care of it, Sorgan?” Zelana suggested.

“Shouldn’t you give the various sea captains in your fleet a part of the gold you promised them, Captain Hook-Beak?” the young Trogite, Keselo, suggested. “If you don’t pay them anything at all, they’re likely to be very unhappy. If you give each one a quarter of what you promised him and tell him that the war isn’t over yet, he may not be wildly happy, but at least he won’t try to set fire to the
Seagull.
”

“That’s something you might want to consider, Sorgan,” Narasan agreed with the young Trogite. “The war you hired the Maags to fight isn’t really over yet. Our campaign up in the ravine was really only the first battle in a war that’s still going on, wasn’t it? We won that battle, but I’m fairly certain that there’ll be three more. So far, they’ve only earned a quarter of what you promised to pay them. Give them quarter payment, and tell them that they still have to earn the rest.”

“That might just work, Cap’n,” the small Maag, Rabbit, agreed. “Part pay’s better than no pay, and they’ll probably decide to stay here so they can earn the other three parts.”

“It might work,” Sorgan conceded a bit dubiously. “Some of them might think that I tricked them, though, and they’ll just take their quarter pay and set sail for home.”

“Let them,” Zelana suggested. “The ones who turn and run won’t be of much use anyway, will they? The good ones will probably stay, and those are the ones we want anyway.”

“Where are you going to hide the rest of my gold, Lady Zelana?” Sorgan asked.

“You don’t really need to know that right now, dear Sorgan,” Zelana replied sweetly. “I
might
consider telling you, but only if you give me a firm promise that you won’t touch a single drop of beer until this is all over.”

“That’s not fair at all!” Sorgan objected.

“You didn’t really expect life to be fair, did you, dear Sorgan?” she replied with a sly smile.

Red-Beard carefully covered his mouth until he managed to get his broad grin under control. Zelana was still as sharp as any knife when she put her mind to it. He’d been very worried when she’d fled back to her hiding place on the Isle of Thurn, but now that she’d regained her senses, things were looking better and better.

“How in the world did you come up with this idea?” Zelana asked Red-Beard when he showed her the sod lodges in the new village.

“Longbow’s Chief, Old-Bear, told us that the tribes of the far north in your brother’s Domain build their lodges out of sod because there aren’t that many trees up there. It’s windy here, so sod lodges give the people more protection. That’s not really why we decided to do it this way, though.” Red-Beard quickly described the scheme he and Longbow had used to trick the men of the tribe into clearing the ground for planting.

“You’re a very devious man, Red-Beard,” she observed with a faint smile.

“I’m glad you approve,” he replied with a sly smirk. “It all worked out quite well. Everybody got what they needed, and nobody was offended. Old customs and ideas can get in the way sometimes, but if you’re quick on your feet, you can usually come up with a way to step around them.” He looked around at the blocky sod lodges. “It’s not as pretty as Lattash was,” he observed rather sadly, “but Lattash is gone now, so this village will have to do, I suppose.”

“Nothing lasts forever, Red-Beard,” Zelana said rather sadly. “After a while you learn to accept your losses and move on.”

“I don’t particularly like that very much, Zelana,” Red-Beard admitted.

“You don’t have to
like
it, Red-Beard,” she said sweetly. “You just have to
do
it.”

“Let’s talk about gold, gentlemen,” Zelana suggested to the gathering of Maags and Trogites later that day in the large cabin at the stern of the Trogite ship that served as Commander Narasan’s headquarters.

“I could talk about gold all day long,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said with a broad smile.

“We’ve noticed,” Longbow observed.

“As you may have realized,” Zelana continued, “our war here in the Land of Dhrall isn’t over yet. Actually, it’s only just begun. As you gentlemen have probably noticed, Veltan and I didn’t provide too many specific details when we offered to give you gold for your help. Now that we’ve all come to know each other a little better, I think we might want to reconsider some of the terms of our original agreement.”

“You’re going to cut our pay in half?” Sorgan asked, his eyes narrowing.

“No. I thought we might double it instead. You people turned out to be about twice as useful as we’d originally thought you’d be, so twice as much gold would only be fair, wouldn’t it?”

“I like the way Lady Zelana thinks,” Ox said with a broad grin.

“I’ll go along with you there, Ox,” Gunda agreed.

“Are you going to follow your sister’s example, Veltan?” the Trogite Narasan asked with a certain enthusiasm.

“I never argue with my sister,” Veltan replied blandly. “Now that you’ve gotten to know her, I’m sure you can see why.”

“Why, yes,” Narasan said. “Now that you mention it, that does seem to be the wisest course.”

“Is there really all that much gold here in the Land of Dhrall?” the bone-thin Trogite, Jalkan, asked in a tense voice.

“Mountains of it,” Veltan said with an indifferent shrug. “Our older sister Aracia will quite probably have her next temple made out of the silly stuff. It’s sort of pretty, I guess, but it’s too soft to be of much use. Iron’s not as pretty, but it’s much more useful.”

A strange, almost hungry expression came over Jalkan’s face. Red-Beard didn’t particularly like the Trogite Jalkan. He seemed to spend most of his time trying to impress Narasan, and he didn’t treat the men under him very well.

Narasan looked at Sorgan. “I take it that you’ll be coming south with us then?” he asked.

“I might even get there before you do, Narasan,” Sorgan boasted. “We could make a wager on that, if you’d like.”

“I’m not really a betting man, Sorgan.” Narasan looked at Veltan. “How much time do you think Sorgan and I have before trouble breaks out in your part of this land?”

Veltan squinted. “I couldn’t really say for certain, Commander. The servants of the Vlagh are probably a bit confused right now. It’ll take them a while to change direction. The ravine was the only possible route for an invasion, and now it’s totally blocked off. From what the people of my Domain have told me, it’s obvious that the servants of the Vlagh will be paying me a call before too long.”

“I don’t think you should delay,” Longbow told him. “Those Trogite ships will have to come back here after they’ve delivered your armies down there.”

“Why’s that, Longbow?” Sorgan asked.

“You didn’t really expect the tribes of Zelana’s Domain to walk, did you?”

“Are you saying that you and the other archers plan to join us, Longbow?” Narasan asked with a certain amount of surprise.

“Of course. Zelana owes her brother for bringing you and your men here, and
we’re
the ones who take care of those responsibilities. You helped Sorgan, so Sorgan’s going to help you. Veltan helped Zelana, so it’s only right for her to help him. There’s more, though.”