The Treasured One

‘Is it really a good idea to let them get so close, sir?’ One earnest young archer asked.

‘It’s better to wait than it is to waste arrows,’ Longbow replied. ‘If they’re close enough, you can’t miss. Then too, if there’s a big pile of dead ones out in front of this barricade, it’ll hinder the ones coming along behind. Look at it this way, young friend. What you’re really doing with your bow is constructing another barricade, and you’re using dead enemies as building blocks.’

The young Trogite laughed a bit nervously. ‘I guess I hadn’t really thought of it that way, sir,’ he admitted. ‘The nice part is that I won’t even have to pick up any heavy blocks to build that wall, will I?’

‘Always let your enemy do the hard work,’ Longbow agreed.

‘I’ll remember that, sir, and I’ll tell all my friends as well.’

‘Good idea.’

‘Sergeant Red-Beard should have told us to do it this way when we first started.’

‘Sergeant Red-Beard?’ Longbow demanded incredulously.

‘That’s what we all called him when he started training us. Do you think it might have offended him?’

‘Oh,’ Longbow replied, trying very hard to keep from laughing, ‘probably not. Red-Beard’s fairly relaxed.’ Then he had a thought. ‘If you want to be correct, though, his real title is “Chief’.’

‘I’ll tell all my comrades about that. It’s always best to use correct titles, don’t you think?’

‘I couldn’t agree more, young friend,’ Longbow replied with a perfectly straight face. Red-Beard was always waving his sense of humor in everyone’s face, but Longbow was almost positive that his friend wouldn’t laugh very much when the Trogite archers all began to address him by the title he’d desperately tried to avoid back in Lattash.

The recent experiment of the Vlagh had produced woefully inept warriors, Longbow concluded as he watched the attackers come lumbering up out of the Wasteland. His past experience made him quite certain that they would improve as newer hatches succeeded these early generations, however. The smaller version had almost certainly been lurking in the forests of Zelana’s Domain for centuries, so they’d had plenty of time to correct most of the earlier defects. It had taken One-Who-Heals quite some time to explain this to his pupil, Longbow ruefully recalled. The individual servant of the Vlagh was incapable of learning anything. Modification of any kind came only with the passage of generations.

As time went on, this new modification would quite possibly improve and become more dangerous, but for right now it didn’t pose much of a threat.

The mindless charge of the overgrown servants of the Vlagh continued until late afternoon, and by then the pile of dead ones some twenty feet to the front of the Trogite barricade was even higher than the barricade itself.

Then that hollow roar from out in the Wasteland halted the attack, and not long afterward, Zelana’s fog bank came rolling in.

‘Not a bad day, really,’ Sub-Commander Andar growled. ‘We’re still here, and they’re still out there, so I’d say that we won this one.’

‘Let’s take advantage of this fog while it’s still here,’ Brigadier Danal suggested. ‘It’s probably going to take most of the night to plant the poisoned stakes in the open ground between this breastworks and the one behind us.’

Andar shuddered. ‘This business of using poison to fight a war makes me go cold all over,’ he declared. ‘Who came up with the idea anyway?’

‘It was my teacher, One-Who-Heals,’ Longbow explained. ‘Our enemies are venomous, and the ones we killed today will provide the poison we’ll use to kill the ones who’ll attack us tomorrow.’ Then he suddenly laughed.

‘What’s so funny?’ Andar demanded.

‘You’ve met Red-Beard, haven’t you?’

‘He’s the one who trained our archers, isn’t he?’

Longbow nodded. ‘Red-Beard’s got a very peculiar sense of humor. I’m quite sure he’d try to take what I just told you about one step further and suggest that since today’s enemies will kill tomorrow’s enemies, we could probably just go fishing and let our enemies fight this war all by themselves.’

‘We should at least go through the motions here, Longbow,’ Danal objected. ‘If we don’t look busy, our employer might decide that he doesn’t need us, and we won’t get paid.’

‘Bite your tongue, Danal,’ Andar said.

Zelana’s fog bank, illuminated by her brother’s bright little sun, not only concealed the activities of Narasan’s men from the enemies out in the Wasteland, but also provided them with all the light they needed to plant the poisoned stakes between their outermost barricade and the one behind it. And so it was that they’d completed the task in about half the time it would have taken during an ordinary night.

‘Now we get to wait,’ Andar grumbled.

‘You could always catch up on your sleep,’ Danal suggested. ‘I’m sure that big-mouth out here in the red desert will wake you up in time to watch the bug-people start trying to tiptoe through our stakes.’

‘I’m an awfully sound sleeper, Danal.’

‘I’ve noticed. The sound of your sleeping reaches for miles sometimes.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘You snore, Andar. Sometimes you snore so loud that the sound alone could shake down a stone fortress.’

Just then the familiar roar came from out of the Wasteland, and the new breed of snake-men shambled forward in the early morning light.

‘So much for your nap, Andar,’ Danal observed.

The awkward enemies clambered over their dead companions to reach the outermost barricade, and they seemed to be more than a little confused when they didn’t encounter any resistance there.

‘Let them know where we are, Danal,’ Andar suggested.

‘Right,’ Danal agreed. ‘Let’s hear a battle-cry, gentlemen!’ he commanded, and a great shout arose from behind the second barricade.

The enemies at the first barricade milled around in confusion for a while, and then another roar came from the Wasteland.

‘That was quick,’ Longbow said as the creatures of the Wasteland began to move up the slope toward the second barricade.

‘I didn’t quite catch that,’ Andar said.