The Elder Gods (The Dreamers 1)

Longbow continued to watch and listen, but he said nothing.

It was in the harbor of a coastal village called Kweta that Sorgan’s lean and sour cousin Skell joined them, and after some discussion, Sorgan and Skell agreed that it was time to send a portion of what they called “the fleet” eastward to the land of Dhrall, with Red-Beard to guide them.

“My cousin Skell’s a dependable man, Lady Zelana,” Sorgan declared as the advance fleet prepared to depart. “He’ll have about a hundred and twenty ships and almost ten thousand men to deal with any surprise attacks by your enemy, and if there’s a major invasion of the coastal region of your Domain, he’ll be able to hold the enemy off until we get there.”

“How much longer do you think it’s going to be until the rest of us sail to Dhrall?” Zelana asked him.

“Not too much longer, really. The word’s out now, and just about every ship captain in Maag’s eager to join us. The only real problem is that they all want to see the gold in the Seagull’s hold for themselves before they make any final decisions.” Sorgan made a rueful face. “I hate to admit it, but maybe we brought too much gold back to Maag. When you get right down to it, a dozen blocks would probably have been enough. Most people here in Maag would take my word if I’d said ‘a dozen.’ When I tell them that I’ve got a hundred in the hold, they want to see them to make sure I’m not lying to them. I think I might have overbaited my fishhook.”

“Nobody’s perfect, Hook-Big,” Eleria said.

“Hook-Beak,” Sorgan absently corrected her.

“Whatever,” she said with mock indifference.

6

I’ve already shown you the gold, Kajak,” Sorgan said to a bone-thin Maag the next morning when a group of visitors came on board the Seagull. “Didn’t you believe what you saw?”

“I’m helping you, Sorgan,” the lean Kajak replied. “I sent out word to a whole lot of my kinfolks and promised to introduce them to you when you hauled into the harbors of their home ports. If things work out the way I think they will, I should be able to bring a couple dozen more ships to join your fleet.”

“Splendid, Kajak,” Sorgan said. “It looks like you can see past the end of your own nose. I keep coming across men who can’t quite see why we need more ships and men once they’ve joined us. They seem to be afraid that more ships means smaller shares for everybody who’s already joined the fleet. They can’t quite understand how much gold we’re talking about.”

“There’s some out there that have trouble with big numbers, Sorgan. Would it be all right if I take my cousins here down into the Seagull’s hold and show them your gold?”

“Be my guest, Kajak,” Sorgan replied.

Longbow had been sitting off to one side in Sorgan’s cabin while Sorgan and Kajak had been talking, and he noticed that Kajak’s four cousins had seemed just a bit edgy as they stood behind Kajak in the aft cabin. Eleria, as always, was sitting in Longbow’s lap. “Those might be the ones I saw in my dream,” she whispered in his ear.

“The number’s right,” Longbow agreed, “but number alone isn’t quite enough to be certain that these are the ones we have to watch out for. Climb down, child. I think I’ll drift along behind when they go down to look at Sorgan’s gold.”

Longbow followed Kajak and his four kinsmen at some distance. They seemed to be a bit nervous, but there were several of Sorgan’s heavily armed crewmen close by, and that would explain their apparent apprehension.

When they came back up out of the hold, they all had that look of awe that had become quite common. They hadn’t done anything out of the ordinary yet, but Longbow wasn’t ready to dismiss the possibility that these were the five ship captains in Eleria’s dream.

“It’s a family that hasn’t got the best reputation here in Maag, Longbow,” Rabbit said later that day when Longbow privately asked him about Kajak and his cousins. “There’ve been times when other Maag ships sailed along with a few of them to go hunting Trogite treasure ships, and those other Maags never came back. If they’ve got any ideas along those lines this time, though, they aren’t likely to try anything just yet. Skell and the other captains in the advance fleet are still provisioning their ships for the voyage to Dhrall, so there are a lot of Maag ships nearby.”

“But Skell’s fleet won’t be here for much longer, Rabbit,” Longbow reminded him. “They’ll be sailing off to Dhrall within the next few days, and then there won’t be very many ships here to guard the Seagull.”

“That’s when we might need to start worrying just a bit,” Rabbit conceded. “Sorgan’s going to be sending ships away, and Kajak’s going to be calling ships in. I think maybe I’ll go visit a few taverns this evening. Maag sailors do a lot of drinking when they’re in port, and drunk sailors talk an awful lot. Sometimes they say things they wouldn’t say if they were stone-cold sober. If I set my mind to it, I can look a whole lot drunker than I really am, so people don’t pay too much attention to me. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“That might be useful, Rabbit,” Longbow agreed. “I’ll tell Zelana about our suspicions, but I don’t think we need to tell Sorgan about them just yet. We’ll need to know more before we get him all worked up.” He turned and went aft to Zelana’s cabin.

“What have you been doing, Longbow?” Zelana asked him when he came in.

“Looking for sign,” he replied.

“What a peculiar term.”

“It has to do with hunting. The animals of the forest leave marks on the forest floor and on the trees and bushes that a hunter can follow if he knows how to recognize them. Rabbit’s helping me.”

“You really like him, don’t you?” Eleria asked.

“He’s very clever, but he hides his cleverness well. He’s going to the beach this evening to look for sign in the taverns where the Maag seamen drink the juice that makes them foolish. It’s possible that some seamen of Kajak’s tribe will become foolish enough to say things that Kajak would rather they didn’t. If Kajak is really the one you saw in your dream, the ordinary seamen of his ship and those of his cousins will know about it. Rabbit’s going to be off in some corner pretending that he’s far gone in drink. Kajak’s people will think that he’s asleep, and they’ll talk to each other as if he wasn’t there.”