The Treasured One

‘Iff’n y’ want ‘er that way, that’s the way we’ll do ‘er,’ Padan declared in a clever imitation of the Maag dialect.

‘Clown,’ Narasan murmured with a faint smile.

It all sounded quite practical, but Longbow had a few doubts. Something very peculiar was happening, and Longbow was quite sure that he wouldn’t rest easy until he managed to put his finger on just exactly what it was.

The discussion among the black leather-clad Trogites continued even after the sun had gone down, but Longbow didn’t see that it was really getting anywhere. Zelana, clad in filmy gauze, was sitting beside a small fire some distance away from Veltan’s hired soldiers with the sleeping child Eleria in her arms when Longbow quietly joined them. ‘What does firelight taste like?’ he asked curiously.

‘Smoke,’ she replied. ‘It’s not nearly as pleasant as the light in my grotto, but it’s better than darkness. What are Veltan’s soldiers doing?’

‘Arguing,’ Longbow said. ‘There seems to be quite a few disagreements about just exactly how to proceed. If you’d like, I’ll escort you two back to your little camp near the geyser, and we can put Eleria in a more comfortable bed.’

‘I don’t really mind holding her, Longbow,’ Zelana said, looking fondly at the little girl’s face, ‘but you might be right. She’ll probably sleep better in a regular bed.’

Longbow smiled and helped her to her feet. Then he took the sleeping child Eleria in his arms. ‘This isn’t going at all the way we’d expected, Zelana,’ he said quietly as they walked on down toward the geyser. ‘Gunda’s fort and the barricades Padan and his men built on down the slope below the wall would have probably held the creatures of the Wasteland back - if the archers from your Domain hadn’t been diverted to hold back that second invasion. To make things even worse, Narasan just had to send a goodly number of the men we’ll need here to go on down to the falls to destroy the roof over that ramp. We need more men, but we don’t have any.’

‘Why don’t you go on down to the southern part of your baby brother’s Domain and tell Hook-Big to come back up here where he belongs, Beloved?’ Eleria suggested in a sleepy sort of voice. ‘The trouble’s here, not down there.’

‘Aren’t you supposed to be asleep?’ Zelana asked her.

‘How can I sleep when you two keep talking?’ Eleria replied in a peevish sort of tone. ‘Since you’re the one who’s paying Hook-Big, he’s supposed to do what you tell him to do, isn’t he? Let his people drop rocks on the bad people from the south, and then bring the good people back here to do what your baby brother tells them to do.’

‘I think she’s right,’ Longbow said a bit ruefully.

‘Of course I’m right,’ Eleria said. ‘I’m always right. Now you owe me a kiss-kiss.’

‘Just go back to sleep, little one,’ Zelana told her. ‘She is right, Longbow. I’ll go on down to the south coast and tell Hook-Beak to stop playing and get back up here as fast as he can.’ She paused then and gave Longbow a sly look. ‘Then you’ll owe me a kiss-kiss too, wouldn’t you say?’

Longbow chose not to answer that.

At first light the following morning, Longbow joined Veltan and Narasan on the top of the central tower of Gunda’s wall. ‘Are they moving yet?’ he quietly asked.

‘Nothing so far,’ Veltan replied. ‘They’ll probably wait until the sun comes up.’ He peered down the slope. ‘Exactly where did you put Omago’s men, Commander?’

‘Keselo’s stationed them at the outer edges of the breast-works,’ Narasan replied. ‘If things here go pretty much the way they did back in the ravine, the main enemy attacks will hit the center of that outermost breast-works. Omago’s men haven’t been involved in any real conflict as yet, and over the years we’ve found that it’s usually best to sort of ease new warriors into serious battles. I don’t want to offend you, Veltan, but I’m fairly sure that a goodly number of your farmers won’t really have the stomach for killing.’

‘I think they might surprise you, Narasan. Omago can be very clever when the need arises, and he made quite an issue of the fact that the creatures of the Wasteland are primarily bugs - no matter what they appear to be - and farmers absolutely hate bugs.’

‘We’ll see,’ Narasan replied a bit dubiously.

Longbow was peering down the slope in the dim light of early morning. ‘They’re starting to move,’ he said quietly, pointing out at the rocky Wasteland.

‘I don’t quite—’ Veltan began. ‘Oh, now I see them,’ he said. ‘They’re quite some distance from the first barricade, aren’t they?’

‘We surprised them several times during the war in the ravine,’ Longbow explained. ‘Apparently, the Vlagh doesn’t like surprises very much.’

‘I’ll have to admit that I don’t really know all that much about them,’ Veltan said a bit ruefully. ‘The real expert in my family is Dahlaine. Before the emergence of people, Dahlaine spent eons studying insects. From what he told me once, the Vlagh is something on the order of a thief. When it sees a characteristic that might be useful, it attempts to duplicate it. I’m just guessing here, but I’d say that almost all of its experiments fail, and the altered creatures are dead before they even come out of the eggs. Every so often, though, one of them survives, and the Vlagh duplicates it by the thousand. Then it begins to experiment with the survivors.’

‘That sort of explains all these new varieties of enemies, doesn’t it?’ Narasan mused. ‘The tiny ones we encountered in your sister’s Domain didn’t turn out too well - particularly in the face of those natural disasters. This time we have enemies that fly, as well as enemies that wear armor.’

‘Not to mention some other enemies who appear to be real people,’ Longbow added. ‘This might just turn out to be a very interesting war.’

‘I’d really prefer one that was boring,’ Narasan added. ‘Interesting wars tend to set my teeth on edge.’

As had almost always been the case during the war in Zelana’s Domain, the attack on the outer breast-works began with a hollow-sounding roar coming from somewhere off to the rear of the advancing force. Longbow noted that the larger servants of the Vlagh were not nearly as agile nor as quick as the smaller ones had been, and they proved to be easier targets for the Trogite archers Red-Beard had been training.