The Treasured One

‘We were fairly sure things were going to work out that way, Rabbit,’ Ox said.

‘They hit a snag, though,’ Rabbit announced. ‘Some other men dressed in black clothes had used ladders to get up to the rim, and they were waiting when the red-suits came across the log. The ones in black suits grabbed the red-suits and threw ‘em off that rim. From what Torl and Padan told us, I guess the black-suits are the ones who make sure that the red-suits do what they’re supposed to do, and they make sure that the red-suits get the point by killing anybody who tries to break the rules.’

Sorgan winced. ‘How far down would you say it is from the rim to the rocks down below?’ he asked.

‘Two hundred feet at least, Cap’n,’ Rabbit replied. ‘I wouldn’t say that very many red-suits walked away after a fall like that.’ He shuddered. ‘Anyway, Padan sent me up here to let you know that the bridge is finished and that the red-suits won’t just come dribbling in up here. They’ll come here by the hundreds at least.’ He paused. ‘Oh, one other thing, Cap’n. Padan and his people are about an hour behind me, and he said he’d really appreciate it if there was somebody here to show him how to get to your barricade without having to tiptoe through those poison stakes.’

‘We’ll see to it, Rabbit,’ Sorgan said. ‘Now why don’t you hustle on up to Gunda’s wall and let Narasan know what’s afoot?’

‘I’ll do ‘er, Cap’n’ - just as soon as somebody shows me how to get through the poison stakes in the other trenches without coming down with a bad case of dead.’

Padan and Torl reached Sorgan’s first trench before first light and they were some distance ahead of their men.

‘Rabbit stopped by and told us that things have changed just a bit,’ Skell advised them. ‘He wasn’t just making things up, was he? Are those men dressed in black really that brutal?’

‘Worse, probably, big brother,’ Torl replied. ‘Padan here sort of filled me in on the organization of those church armies, and if I understood it right, the Trogite church tends to take brutality out to the far end. The ones they call “Regulators” keep the soldiers -and the priests themselves - in line by using pure terror. I guess their standard approach goes something along the lines of “if you don’t do what we tell you to do, we’ll kill you”. Then they prove that they mean just what they say by killing a few right there on the spot.’

‘Is he making this up, Padan?’ Sorgan asked skeptically.

‘No, Captain Hook-Beak. That’s pretty much how the Regulators operate,’ Padan said. ‘The church is out to get the money, and any kind of decency went out the window a long time ago.’ He peered out into the darkness on either side of Sorgan’s trench. ‘I gather that the east sides of these trenches lie along the riverbank,’ he noted. ‘How have you managed to block off the west side?’

‘We got lucky,’ Sorgan replied. ‘There’s a rock face that runs for about a mile along the west ridge. I suppose that a man could climb up that face if he really wanted to, but it’d probably take quite a while. If those church soldiers are all excited about the imitation gold out there in the desert, they wouldn’t want to waste that much time. Our poisoned stakes at the bottom of these trenches aren’t very long and we scattered tree leaves over the top of them to keep them pretty much out of sight.’

‘Are you sure that they’ll penetrate the soles of those soldier-boots?’

‘I wouldn’t want to try to run across the trench to find out. How much longer would you say it’s likely to take all of those church soldiers to get up here?’

‘As near as I’ve been able to determine, they’ll be at it for about two and a half days, captain. Now, whether they’ll wait until all of their men are up here before they start, or march this way a battalion or so at a time, I couldn’t say.’

Sorgan and Padan were standing atop the barricade farthest to the south at first light the following morning, and so far as Sorgan was able to determine, the church armies had not as yet begun their march. ‘No visitors yet,’ he said to Padan. ‘Are you positive that those church soldiers won’t recognize our yellow ribbons as markers?’

‘Not very likely, Captain,’ Padan replied. ‘Gunda and I came up with that notion when we were still children, and we kept it pretty much to ourselves. We know what they mean, but nobody else does.’

‘What about that one called Jalkan? If I understood what Narasan told me, that scrawny rascal was a member of your army for quite a long time, but now he’s a part of the enemy army.’

Padan shook his head. ‘Gunda, Narasan and I kept the idea strictly to ourselves,’ he said. Then he smiled faintly. ‘If you wanted to get right down to the bottom of it, we were being just a bit childish about it. The yellow ribbons were our idea, so we kept them entirely to ourselves. We don’t use large strips of yellow fabric, and most of the time they’re nothing but yellow string. How did you manage to sneak in and steal our secret?’

‘Narasan was more or less obliged to tell me about it after he sent you along with Skell’s scouting party. Skell would probably have thought you’d just gone crazy when you started tying yellow ribbons to bushes and trees along the way.’

‘Here comes Longbow,’ Padan said, pointing off toward the north, ‘and it looks to me like Rabbit’s showing him the way.’

‘Good. We definitely don’t want to lose Longbow. Lady Zelana would skin me alive if I let anything happen to him.’

‘Any sign yet of those “friendly enemies”?’ Longbow asked.

‘Not yet,’ Sorgan replied. ‘Of course, it’s still early. The sun isn’t even up yet. How did Narasan take our news, Rabbit?’

‘He claimed that it was awful unnatural for him to approve of anything those church armies came up with, but that deep down, he really approved of what those Regulators did to persuade the soldiers not to run on ahead so that they could get more gold. I think he’s looking forward to what’s going to happen when the church armies come face to face with the bug-people.’

Sorgan grinned. ‘That’s our Narasan for you,’ he said, ‘but to tell the truth, I’m sort of looking forward to it myself.’

‘Enemy to the front,’ Padan announced in an almost bored tone of voice.