“Not to me, it doesn’t,” Red-Beard objected. “Do you have any idea of how stuffy and tedious the life of a chief must be? I don’t think I could stand that.”
“Be brave, Chief Red-Beard,” Longbow said with mock sententiousness. “If something is for the good of your tribe, you can’t just turn your back on it, can you?”
“You had to go and say that, didn’t you?” Red-Beard grumbled sourly.
Longbow shrugged. “It’s time for you to face reality, my friend. Sooner or later you will have to assume the authority in your tribe if your uncle can no longer function. This might give you some practice in the fine art of being stuffy. Right now, though, we’ve got a more pressing problem to deal with.”
“The sky is falling, maybe?”
“Well, not today, probably, but we’ve got a goodly number of unhappy people in those ships out in the bay. In her infinite wisdom, Zelana of the West saw fit to leave the village without bothering to pay Sorgan Hook-Beak and the other Maags for their services during the recent unpleasantness.”
“The gold’s stacked up in that cave of hers just outside the village,” Red-Beard reminded his friend. “Why don’t they just walk into the cave and pay themselves?”
“They’ve already tried that, but they can’t get into the tunnel where the gold’s piled up.”
“What did Zelana do?—make the ceiling fall down or something?”
“No, it’s completely intact, but there’s a solid wall blocking off the tunnel that’s filled with all those pretty yellow blocks. It’s a very unusual sort of wall. The Maags can see through it, but it’s harder than any stone. That means that they can look at the gold as much as they want, but they can’t reach it. Ox took his axe into the cave and chopped at the wall for the better part of a day, but he didn’t so much as knock a chip out of it. He did manage to destroy his axe, though. Now Sorgan’s absolutely positive that our Zelana’s trying to cheat him.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“You and I know that, but Hook-Beak doesn’t know her as well as we do. Lying, cheating, and stealing are part of the Maag culture, so honesty’s an alien concept for them. If Zelana doesn’t come back here fairly soon, we might just have another war on our hands before long.”
“Now I’ve got something else to worry about.” Then Red-Beard remembered something. “Rabbit told me that you and Zelana can speak with each other without making a sound. He said you two did that back in the Land of Maag when trouble broke out in the harbor at Kweta. Could you possibly reach out to her from here?”
“I’ve already tried it a few times. Either she’s too far away, or she refuses to listen to me.”
“Do you think that maybe Eleria could hear you? If anybody could bring Zelana to her senses, it’d be Eleria. If nothing else, the little girl could probably kiss Zelana into submission. She had you and Rabbit and that young Trogite, Keselo, wrapped around her little finger in no time at all.”
“Tell me about it,” Longbow said. Then he squinted at his friend. “She never tried that on you, did she?”
Red-Beard shrugged. “I probably don’t have anything she wants,” he replied.
“Why don’t we go out to the Seagull and have a talk with Sorgan?” Longbow suggested. “If he realizes that we’re trying to get word to Zelana that it’s time to come back and give him the gold she promised him, maybe he won’t come ashore and burn the village of Lattash right down to the ground.”
“Let’s not rush into anything here, Longbow,” Red-Beard said in mock seriousness. “If the Maags come ashore and burn Lattash to the ground, it might just persuade my uncle that it’s time to pack up and move on. Then I won’t have to do anything except obey his orders—or sneak off to someplace where he can’t find me. He’ll go back to being the chief, and I won’t have to grow up.”
“Don’t hold your breath, Red-Beard. Let’s go see Sorgan Hook-Beak.”
The sun seemed very bright as Red-Beard deftly drove his canoe toward the Seagull with long, smooth strokes of his paddle. It was early summer now, and Red-Beard was sure that the fishing would be very good. He pushed that thought aside. Despite the bright sun and sparkling water, there wouldn’t be any fishing today. He was almost positive that he and Longbow would have to waste a perfect day listening to Hook-Beak’s complaints.
“Your canoe moves smoothly,” Longbow noted.
“I got lucky when I put this one together,” Red-Beard replied modestly. “I finally managed to get the right curve on the ribs. The one I built before was sort of skittish. Every time I sneezed, she’d roll over and dump me into the bay.”
“I’ve had the same thing happen to me a few times,” Longbow admitted. “Sometimes I think canoes have a warped sense of humor.”
Red-Beard tried to avoid looking at the towering cloud of smoke and ash spouting up out of the twin volcanos that blotted out most of the eastern sky, but he ruefully realized that he wasn’t going to make it go away by not looking at it. “Have you managed to come up with a way to pacify Sorgan yet?” he asked.
“Let’s try ‘emergency.’”
“You missed me there, I’m afraid.”
Longbow shrugged. “Zelana left in a hurry. Doesn’t that sort of hint that there might be a crisis somewhere that needed her immediate attention?”
“We can try it, I suppose,” Red-Beard said a bit dubiously. “Trying to persuade Hook-Beak that there’s something in the world more important than he is might be a bit difficult, though.”
“We’ll see,” Longbow replied as Red-Beard eased his canoe in against the Seagull.
“Did she finally decide to come home?” Rabbit called down to them from the Seagull’s deck. “If the cap’n doesn’t get the gold she promised him pretty soon, he might just start a whole new war.”
“We’d really rather that he didn’t, Rabbit,” Longbow called back. “Red-Beard and I’ve come to see if we can calm him down a bit.”
Rabbit pushed the rolled-up ladder off the rail, and it unwound its way down to the canoe.
Longbow took hold of the ladder. “It’s time to go to work, Chief Red-Beard,” he said with a faint smile.
“I wish you’d stop that, Longbow.”