The Treasured One

‘They’re creatures of habit, Commander Narasan,’ Zelana replied. ‘If they do something one way today, they’ll almost certainly repeat it tomorrow.’

‘We saw that fairly often back in the ravine, Narasan,’ Hook-Beak reminded his friend.

‘They’re perhaps a bit brighter this time,’ Veltan added, ‘but they still respond to the commands of the Vlagh, so if the Vlagh tells them to come home every evening, they’ll keep on doing that until the Vlagh tells them otherwise. Blind obedience is part of their nature.’

‘All right, then,’ Narasan continued. ‘We’ve come up with several ways to delay them to the point that they’re not just dashing up here to start kicking at Gunda’s wall. The bright light from Dahlaine’s little toy has more or less eliminated the bug-bats. The breast-works and poisoned stakes pretty much stop the oversized snake-men, and our catapulted fire generally eliminates the imitation turtles. We’ve got thirteen lines of breast-works down the slope from Gunda’s wall here. We don’t really have to totally eliminate these enemies. All we have to do is slow them down. Since they all go home after work, we’ll be able to rush on down and reoccupy the outermost breast-works tonight. Then, tomorrow night, we’ll pull back to the next breast-works. Then, on the third night, we’ll pull back one more again. That should give the church soldiers almost two weeks to finish their ramp and see all that imitation gold out there. At that point, we’ll just politely tip our hats and walk away.’

‘You can walk if you want to, Narasan,’ Sorgan said, ‘but I think I’m going to run, and you’d better not get in my way.’

Longbow found a certain hard practicality in Narasan’s plan. If the servants of the Vlagh seemed to be making a certain amount of progress each day, the Vlagh quite probably would see no reason to dream up some new and unanticipated strategy. The servants of the Vlagh would continue to overrun one barricade each day, and if Omago’s suggestion worked as well as it should, the church armies should finish their ramp at about the same time.

At least he’d finally managed to persuade Narasan and Sorgan that the voice which had haunted his sleep for the past several nights had been telling the truth. Of course, the sudden appearance of miles and miles of imitation gold had helped quite a bit.

‘Maybe if I’m lucky, she’ll go pester somebody else tonight,’ he muttered as he walked on back to the forest a mile or so to the south of Gunda’s wall. Although he now had several friends among the outlanders, Longbow still preferred solitude when the time came for him to sleep.

The trees in this forest were of an unfamiliar variety, quite probably because Veltan’s Domain was much farther to the south than Longbow’s original home, but they provided him shelter -although shelter wasn’t that important in the summer.

He laid down on his bed of leaves and drifted off to sleep.

‘Thou hast done well, brave hunter,’ the now-familiar voice intruded into his mind. ‘I shall trouble thee no more. Fare thee well, Longbow of Zelana’s Domain. In times yet to come, we may meet again.’

The Bridge
1

Tadan was more than a little dubious about Longbow’s notion that some ‘unknown friend’ was sending help in the form of five church armies. The Amarite church was based upon raw greed, of course, but so far as Padan knew, none of the church soldiers, nor priests, nor even the brutal Regulators had seen the colorful alteration of the red sand stretching out over the Wasteland.

‘It just doesn’t float,’ Padan muttered to himself as he went back down along the wide, turbulent river toward the waterfall where his men were still dropping boulders on the roof that had been cleverly designed to protect the church soldiers from the arrows of Longbow’s archers.

Narasan had accepted the idea, however, so now Padan was obliged to go along despite his doubts. Padan had always felt that to be one of the drawbacks of army life. Once the commander made up his mind, the officers who served under him were required to obey. Back in the days when Padan, Gunda, and Narasan had been cadets in the army compound, the sergeants who had trained them had made a habit of beating them over the head with that every time they turned around. ‘Just do as you’re told’ had seemed to pop up thirty or forty times a day. It made a certain amount of sense, of course, but if the commander happened to be wrong, half the army could wind up dead.

When he reached the brink of the gorge the river Vash had carved on down through the mountains to the south, Padan called his officers together. ‘The plans have changed, gentlemen,’ he told them. ‘Something new has come up, so stop dropping rocks on that makeshift roof down there. Our glorious leader wants us to help those halfwit church soldiers down there instead of hindering them. From now on, roll the boulders off the edge so that they’ll come down in front of that ramp instead of on top of it.’

‘That doesn’t make any sense, Padan,’ one of the older officers protested.

‘Narasan seems to like it,’ Padan replied. He hesitated slightly, but then decided to let his officers know why they were changing the overall plan. ‘It would seem that we’ve got a friend out here who’s been playing some very interesting games,’ he said. ‘We all know how the Amarite church feels about gold, and this friend of ours is using imitation gold as bait. When those church armies finish their ramp and see miles and miles of what they think is the real thing, they’ll go crazy, don’t you think?’

‘I know that it loosened my head up just a little when I first saw it,’ another officer admitted.

‘Let’s just hope that the church-boys feel the same way,’ Padan said. ‘Our new “grand plan” is to help the dear old churchies get up here where they can see all that glittery dirt out there. Then we’re supposed to just get out of the way and let them run on down the slope beyond Gunda’s wall and tramp all over the bug-men.’

‘While the bug-men are poisoning everybody who comes their way?’ another officer added dubiously.

‘That’s sort of at the core of this new “grand plan”,’ Padan agreed.

‘You don’t really sound very convinced, Padan,’ the first officer said.

‘I don’t really have to be convinced,’ Padan declared. ‘Narasan bought the idea, and that’s all we need to know. Get started, gentlemen. Move your men upriver a hundred yards or so and start dropping boulders ahead of that ramp instead of on top of it. Let’s find out how long it’s going to take those holy nit-wits down there to realize that our boulders are as useful as the ones out in the middle of the river.’ He paused. ‘If some of our boulders accidentally come down on top of a few dozen church soldiers, I won’t be too upset,’ he added.