The Treasured One

‘Not really, but I’ve sent word to Nanton. He’s a shepherd, and he grazes his flock up there, so he probably knows every tree and bush in the area by its first name. I’ve asked him to meet your ships at the mouth of the river and then guide you up to the pasture-land above the falls.’

‘You’re way ahead of us, Omago,’ Narasan noted. ‘We’d more or less agreed that we should send a sizeable number of our men up there to build some fortifications to hold our enemy back until we could get our main force up there, but Veltan’s map doesn’t show any route those men could follow.’

‘The map’s fairly accurate,’ Omago agreed, ‘but when sheep are looking for grass, they’ll find a way to reach it, and anywhere Nanton’s sheep go, he’ll go too. The paths you’ll follow will be steep and narrow, but if sheep can make it to the top, so can your men.’

Sorgan squinted. ‘Skell, I think,’ he said.

‘Run that past me again, Sorgan,’ Narasan said. ‘It went by a little fast.’

‘I think maybe we should send Skell on up there with Omago’s shepherd friend to look things over. Skell knows exactly what to look for, and he’ll be able to pinpoint the best spots for our forts, and that could save us a lot of time. Then, too, if the snake-men are already up there, Skell’s slippery enough to sneak past them and get on back down here to warn us.’

‘I’m sure Veltan would have warned us if the enemy force is already up there, Sorgan,’ Narasan told his friend. ‘You worry too much. I think I’ll send Padan along with Skell. Padan can put down markers that’ll show my troops the way to get up there. Sorgan, my friend, this might just turn out to be an easier war than we’d anticipated.’

‘I’ve always been sort of fond of easy wars, Narasan. As far as I’ve been able to determine, they’re the best kind there ever is.’

6

Two Maag ships sailed north at sunrise the following morning carrying at most a couple hundred Maags. Narasan thought that might be just a little light, but Skell seemed to think it was all he really wanted.

‘When you get right down to it, Narasan, all that Skell’s really doing is marking the trail for us so that we’ll know how to get up there,’ Sorgan told him. ‘He’ll send out scouting parties to find suitable locations for forts but that’s about as far as we need him to go. We’ll only be a few days behind him, so it’s not like he’ll be alone up there for six months or so.’

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Narasan conceded.

‘You’re a worrier, Narasan, did you know that?’

Narasan smiled slightly. ‘Occupational hazard, I suppose,’ he conceded. ‘Over the years I’ve come to realize that if anything at all can possibly go wrong, it probably will.’

‘Skell’s got a couple of things working for him that’ll give him an edge if something does go wrong.’

‘Oh?’

‘They’re called Longbow and Red-Beard. I don’t think either one of us would like to come against those two. Sometimes Longbow sends chills up my back. Every time I turn around, he’s at least three jumps ahead of me.’

‘Did anybody remember to tell Lady Zelana that those two are going along with Skell?’

‘Why don’t we let Veltan take care of that?’ Sorgan suggested with a sly smirk.

‘What a wonderful idea, Sorgan,’ Narasan replied with no hint of a smile.

‘What do you think, Narasan? Do we want to take those farmers with us? They’re not really very good, you know.’

‘Maybe we should,’ Narasan replied. ‘I’m fairly sure that Veltan wants us to get them involved, and he’s the one who’s paying us. Keselo’s been training them, and he tells me that they’re getting better. They were a bit awkward right at first, but they seem to be improving. This is their homeland, after all, and they won’t really inconvenience us too much.’

‘I hate fighting alongside amateurs,’ Sorgan complained. ‘You never know when they’re going to just jump up and run away.’

Narasan shrugged. ‘We can keep them sort of off to one side until we’re certain that they’ll do what they’re supposed to do. Then we can gradually move them into the main action. Nobody’s really all that great during his first war, but we all got better at it as time went by, didn’t we?’

‘You’re probably right, Narasan. I guess there’s really no such thing as a natural-born warrior - except for maybe Longbow. I think that one may have cut his teeth on arrowheads when he was just a baby.’

‘How’s our supply of venom holding out? That definitely gave us an advantage in the last war.’

‘We’ve got enough to get us by until we kill more snake-men.’

‘That took a bit of getting used to, didn’t it? You almost never come up against an enemy that supplies what you’ll need to defeat him.’

‘Not an intelligent enemy, that’s for sure,’ Sorgan agreed, ‘but the snake-men wouldn’t recognize intelligence if it walked up and bit them on the nose.’

All in all, Narasan was satisfied with their rather rudimentary plan. The war in Lady Zelana’s Domain had taught him that setting anything in stone in a war with the creatures of the Wasteland could have disastrous results. As individuals, their enemies were stupid beyond belief, but Narasan had come to realize that their real enemy here in the Land of Dhrall was not a single individual. The concept of a group awareness was alien - even absurd - but Narasan had come to realize also that dismissing things on the basis of absurdity could have disastrous consequences.

Fortunately, they had help, but once again, Narasan was somewhat uncertain about just exactly who was helping them. The spring flood that had purged the ravine above Lattash of enemy invaders had seemed to be a natural event that occurred every year, but would the natives of Chief White-Braid’s tribe have built the village of Lattash right in the path of a natural disaster of those proportions if they’d been aware that its occurrence was inevitable? Narasan was very dubious about that.

Veltan and his family definitely had abilities that no human could possibly possess, but when the twin volcanos at the head of the ravine had suddenly exploded, Veltan quite obviously hadn’t known that it was going to happen. His shrill warning that had sent them all scrambling up the sides of the ravine had been filled with a kind of panic-stricken astonishment. Something was helping them in this war, but for the life of him, Narasan couldn’t identify it. He was grateful for the help of this unknown friend, but he’d feel much more at ease if he knew just exactly who - or what - the friend was.