The Treasured One

‘They’ll have to build a sedan chair for me to ride in if you’re sure we’ll have to try to catch up with the deserters.’

Brulda laughed at that point.

‘What’s so funny?’ Estarg demanded.

‘You didn’t really think that my men would pick you up and carry you, did you, Estarg?’

‘I’m an Adnari in the Church of Amar, Brulda,’ Estarg proclaimed in a haughty tone of voice. ‘Your men have a religious obligation to serve me in any way I think is proper. It’s beneath me to walk as a commoner would.’

‘Stay here, then. It doesn’t matter to me. I’m going north, though - just as fast as I possibly can.’

‘I forbid it!’ Estarg shouted.

‘Forbid all you want, fat man,’ Brulda replied, ‘but I stopped taking orders from you when my ships were all burned. The way things stand right now, it’s every man for himself. If you want to go north with the rest of us, you’re going to have to walk - with your very own feet.’

‘That’s outrageous!’

‘You do remember how to walk, don’t you, Estarg?’ Brulda asked with an evil grin.

‘But—’ Estarg put both hands under his belly.

‘It’s walk or die, Estarg, and it’s entirely up to you.’

Ara despised the slaver Brulda, but she was forced to admit that he did have a way with words.

All in all, Ara was quite pleased with the way this had turned out. There were now two enemy armies in Veltan’s Domain, but they were not really armies in the conventional sense of that word. The servants of the Vlagh were driven by the need for more land and more food, and so they would mindlessly rush south, no matter what - or who - stood in their path. The servants of Jalkan - or Estarg, actually - were driven by their hunger for gold, and they would just as mindlessly rush north, no matter what stood in their path.

At some time in the far-distant past, Ara had heard someone speak of ‘a war of mutual extinction’. It was a rather stuffy sort of term, but in this situation it seemed to come very close to what was really going to happen.

The Great Wall
1

Sub-Commander Gunda had sailed south to the seaport of Castano on board the Ascendant, the ship of a distant cousin, and when they reached their destination, Gunda realized that his ancestral home was not nearly as attractive as he remembered. The harbor itself was littered with floating garbage, and the stone columns that supported the piers extending out into the harbor were covered with slimy green algae. The ‘magnificent’ buildings had all been turned a dirty grey by the perpetual cloud of smoke that came belching out of every chimney in town.

Gunda set aside the more comfortable clothes he’d worn on the voyage south and pulled on his black leather uniform, his polished breastplate and helmet, and belted on his sword. This was something in the nature of an official call, so it was appropriate for him to wear his uniform.

The waterfront of Castano was laced with stone piers, and it had that distinctive odor of rotting fish that quite probably hung over every seaport in the entire world. The streets of the town were narrow and dirty, and most of the people Gunda encountered had that lofty expression that virtually every Trogite in the empire seemed to be born with. The Land of Dhrall was very primitive, but it was clean - cleaner by far than the birthplace of civilization. Gunda sighed and went on through the port city to the south gate.

It was early summer now, and Gunda was quite sure that the gently rolling hills to the south of Castano would push his disappointment aside, but the hills were not nearly as impressive as he’d remembered them to be. His memories of the western part of the Land of Dhrall, where towering mountains ran down to the sea and gigantic trees reached up toward the sky kept intruding, and Gunda found the hill-country to the south of Castano rather skimpy by comparison.

The temporary encampment of the bulk of Commander Narasan’s army lay just to the south of Castano, and it was more or less a canvas-tent duplicate of the army compound back in Kaldacin. That similarity made entering the camp almost like coming home for Gunda.

He walked through the open gateway in the log palisade surrounding the camp, sharply returning the salutes of the pair of guards, and went directly to the only building in the compound. Tents were adequate for sleeping, but army headquarters required something just a bit more substantial.

The clerks and various administrators in the large central room of the headquarters building all rose and came to attention as Gunda entered.

‘Relax, gentlemen,’ Gunda told them. Strict military courtesy had always irritated Gunda for some reason. ‘Where’s Andar’s office?’

‘Back through that hallway, Sub-Commander,’ a very young officer replied, pointing toward the rear of the central room.

Gunda nodded and went on through the office.

Sub-Commander Andar was a bit taller than the average Trogite, and, like most of the higher-ranking officers of Narasan’s army, his hair was touched at the temples with silver. He was a solid, dependable man, and Narasan had left him in charge of the bulk of the army that was still here in the Empire.

Andar was dressing down a very junior officer for some blunder when Gunda entered the office. Andar had a deep, rolling voice, and he could turn oratorical at the drop of a hat. When he saw Gunda enter the office, though, he abruptly dismissed the young soldier.

‘Did that boy make a serious mistake?’ Gunda asked.

‘Not really,’ Andar replied. ‘He’s been getting just a bit full of himself here lately, is all, so I thought it was just about time to take him down a peg or two. How did things go up north, Gunda? We haven’t heard a thing since the advance force left Castano.’

‘Well, I guess we won the war in the western part of Dhrall -sort of,’ Gunda replied a bit dubiously. He took off his helmet and absently brushed his hair forward to cover his receding hairline. ‘There were a lot of things going on there that I didn’t entirely understand.’ He looked around at Andar’s office. ‘Are the walls here fairly solid?’ he asked his friend. ‘Some things happened up there in Dhrall that we probably wouldn’t want to get spread around.’

‘It’s secure, Gunda,’ Andar assured him, ‘—as long as you don’t shout.’

‘Good.’ Gunda sat down in the chair beside Andar’s desk.

‘You encountered a few problems, I take it,’ Andar rumbled.

‘More than just a few, old friend,’ Gunda replied. ‘You probably won’t believe this, but our revered Commander has come down with a bad case of friendship for a Maag pirate who goes by the name of Sorgan Hook-Beak.’