The Elder Gods (The Dreamers 1)

“I’m a soldier, Captain Hook-Beak,” the Trogite replied, “but I fight wars for gold, not for patriotism. I’ve fought wars against men I’ve called friends beside people I didn’t like in the past. Then too, I don’t really have much use for the greedy Trogites who swindle the natives of Shaan. Those poor savages don’t even realize what gold’s worth, so they’re willing to trade it for worthless trinkets. Rob as many of those swindlers as you want to, Hook-Beak. It doesn’t hurt my feelings in the slightest. There’s plenty of gold here in the Land of Dhrall, and we’ll earn every ounce we get by fighting this war. We won’t cheat each other, and we won’t cheat the people who pay us.”

“We’ll get along fine, then,” Sorgan said with a faint smile. “I haven’t seen the enemy myself, but the Dhralls tell me that I’m probably going to be seriously outnumbered when the snow melts and the enemy comes down through that river valley. How many men can you bring here, and how long do you think it’ll take them to get here?”

“I have twenty thousand or so men on the way, Sorgan. They should be here in a week or so.”

“I can probably hold out at least that long,” Sorgan assured him. “I sent my cousin here with an advance fleet, and he had his people building fortifications a ways on up the ravine that’ll probably be the enemy’s invasion route. Everything stopped a few weeks ago, though. My cousin tells me that a snowstorm buried everything up there in the ravine, so nobody’s moving at all.” Sorgan scratched his cheek. “I really wanted to gather more ships and men back in Dhrall, but Lady Zelana was a little worried about what was happening here, so she ordered me to get here as soon as I could. I’ve got another cousin back home who’s gathering up more ships and men, but I can’t be certain sure when he’ll get here. If things start to get tight, you and your army might just save the day for us. The way things stand right now, though, the enemy’s buried up to his ears in snow up at the head of the ravine, and it looks like there’s more snow on the way. We may not have to do any serious fighting until midsummer.”

“This promises to be a very interesting war, doesn’t it?” the Trogite Narasan observed mildly. “That’s assuming that we don’t kill each other before the real war starts.”

“We’d really rather that you didn’t, Narasan,” Veltan said with a faint smile.

The Trogite’s expression grew thoughtful. “It occurs to me, Captain, that even though we’ve both fought wars in the past, we probably don’t fight in exactly the same way. As long as we’re both here anyway, and since there’s nothing of any urgency in the wind, wouldn’t it be useful to pool our experience and get to know each other better? Is there anything in particular that you need right now?”

Sorgan squinted and scratched his cheek. “Not that I can think of right offhand.”

“Uh . . . Cap’n,” Rabbit said a bit hesitantly, “I really need more iron.”

“Have you used up all we gave you when we first got here, Rabbit?” Sorgan asked, sounding a bit surprised.

“We’re getting down to the bottom of the barrel, Cap’n. I’ve got a lot of smiths working on this, and if the rain ever lets up, we’ll go through what little iron is left in a hurry.”

“What are you building that needs so much iron, Sorgan?” Narasan asked.

“Arrowheads for the Dhralls. This tall one here is Longbow, and he’s the only man I know of who can thread needles with his arrows from a half mile away. When we were gathering the fleet back in Maag, I was using gold for bait, and there was a greedy ship captain named Kajak who really wanted my gold. Five ships came at me one night in the harbor of a town called Kweta. Longbow stopped them with only Rabbit here to help him. People start to get real jumpy when everybody nearby suddenly starts sprouting arrows out of their foreheads. The Dhralls aren’t really as helpless as they look, but they chip their arrowheads out of stone. Iron’s better, so we started making iron arrowheads for them when we got here. Every Maag ship has a smith on board, and they’ve used up just about every scrap of iron in the whole fleet hammering out arrowheads. I’ve talked it over with Longbow, and we pretty much agree that when the time comes, I’ll lead my men up along the bottom of the ravine while the Dhralls move along the rim on both sides. If there’s a steady downpour of arrows out in front of my men, it’ll cut down on the number of enemies we’ll have to fight.”

“Shrewd,” Narasan said. “Who’s your smith?”

“Rabbit here,” Sorgan replied. “He’s not very big, but he really knows how to work with iron.”

“Are you familiar with other metals as well, Rabbit?” Narasan asked.

“I can work with copper if I have to,” Rabbit told him, “but it’s really too soft to make anything very useful.”

Narasan reached into a leather pouch at his belt and took out a handful of large round coins. “Could you make arrowheads out of this?” He handed one of the coins to Rabbit.

Rabbit bounced the coin on the palm of his hand. It wasn’t as heavy as iron, but it seemed harder and denser than copper. “It’s possible, I suppose. What kind of metal is this?”

“It’s called bronze. Trogites use bronze coins to buy things that aren’t very expensive. I’ve got a fair-sized fleet coming along the coast, and there’ll be thousands of those coins on those ships, as well as assorted tools and ornaments. The fleet should be here before long, and once it arrives, you’ll probably have all the bronze you’ll need.”

Rabbit thoughtfully snapped his fingernail against the bronze coin. “How hot a fire does it take to melt this?” he asked.

Narasan smiled. “I haven’t the faintest idea. Why?”

“We’ve got forges as well as hammers and anvils,” Rabbit explained. “If we can stoke up the fires in the forges and get them hot enough to melt this bronze, we could make molds out of clay while we’re waiting for your fleet to get here. We’ll bake the molds to make them hard, and pour melted bronze into those molds. That’d be a lot faster than hammering them into shape on our anvils. We’ll turn out arrowheads by the thousands instead of hundreds.”

“Ah . . . Commander?” Zelana’s brother Veltan said then. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t the anchors on your ships made of bronze?”