The Treasured One
Page 99‘Did you by any chance recognize the voice of this lady who spoke to you while you were dreaming, Longbow?’ Dahlaine asked.
‘I’m positive that I’ve heard the voice before, Dahlaine,’ Longbow replied, ‘but I can’t quite put my finger on just who she is.’
‘She was undoubtedly concealing her identity from you,’ Dahlaine said thoughtfully, ‘and that sort of suggests that she’s somebody we all know. Did she just talk to you, or did she show you anything?’
‘She was never visible in the dreams,’ Longbow said. Then he frowned slightly. ‘Her language seemed to be quite archaic - almost as if she were speaking to me from the past.’
‘That might have had something to do with her attempt to conceal her identity from you,’ Dahlaine mused. ‘It’s not really important right now, though. She’s managed to manipulate the thinking of about a half-million Trogites, and even though they don’t know it, they’re coming north to help us. We’ll worry about who she is some other time. Right now we’d better do anything we can to help her. If this turns out the way I think it will, she’s probably already won this war for us.’
Early the following morning Padan was standing near the river-bank above the thundering waterfall watching as his men, grunting and sweating, were rolling boulders down toward the brink of the gorge from about a quarter of a mile up the slope. ‘It looks like we’re about to run out of boulders up here,’ he muttered. Then he peered down at the river below the falls. ‘They must be sleeping on the job down there,’ he added. ‘They’re definitely slowing down.’ He looked around. ‘Sergeant Marpek!’ he shouted. ‘Could you come here for a minute?’
Marpek was a solidly built fellow, which was only natural, perhaps, because he’d made a career out of solid building as one of the best engineers in Narasan’s army.
‘Is there some kind of problem, sir?’ he asked as he joined Padan at the edge of the gorge.
‘Is it my imagination or have those idiots down there slowed down quite a bit?’
Marpek squinted down into the gorge. ‘They’re still doing the best they can, sir,’ he replied. ‘They seem to be working as hard as they have for the last several days.’
‘I’d be very surprised if it had, sir.’
‘Could you explain that to me - in nice, simple, one-syllable words?’ Padan asked. ‘Try to keep it in mind that I’m not too fluent in the language of engineers.’
Marpek smiled. ‘They need more rubble now, sir. The farther up the wall of that gorge they come, the more dirt, gravel, boulders and such they’re going to need. If it was flat, they’d move at the same speed, but it comes up at about a thirty-degree angle, so it takes a lot more rubble to come one foot ahead than it did a few days ago.’ He held out his hand and squinted at the space between his thumb and forefinger. ‘I’d say that they’ve got about three hundred feet - or a hundred yards - to go.’ He looked off into the distance, tapping one finger against his iron breastplate. Then he looked just a bit startled. ‘I hadn’t really given this much thought, sir, but now that I’ve put a few numbers together, I’d say that we’ve got quite a long time to wait before they finish.’
‘Throw some kind of number at me, sergeant,’ Padan said.
‘At thirty degrees, ten feet wide, and two hundred feet high, I’d say that they’ll need about sixty thousand cubic yards of rubble, sir,’ Marpek said.
‘Sixty thousand.’
‘If they’d made it steeper, they wouldn’t have needed so much,’ Marpek mused, ‘but it’s too late to do anything about that now, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s going to take them most of the rest of the summer, Marpek!’ Padan exclaimed.
‘That’s fairly close, I’d say.’
‘Numbers, my friend,’ Padan replied. ‘I just received a fairly abrupt lesson in multiplication. Does the term “cubic yard” mean anything to you?’
Sorgan shrugged. ‘Three feet by three feet by three feet, isn’t it?’
‘Unfortunately, there’s still another number involved,’ Padan added sourly. ‘How does sixty thousand sound to you?’
‘Just exactly what are we talking about here, Padan?’ Torl asked.
‘The amount of rocks and whatnot those people down there will need to finish that ramp.’
‘Where did you come up with a number like that, Padan?’ Sorgan demanded.
‘Sergeant Marpek dropped it on me,’ Padan replied glumly, ‘and he’s probably the best engineer in Narasan’s army.’
‘I think you’d better look somebody else up, Padan. That’s not possible.’
‘I’m afraid that it’s very possible, cousin,’ Torl disagreed. ‘The higher up they build that ramp, the more rubble they’ll have to pile up under it.’
‘Rocks, logs, what’s the difference?’ Torl scoffed.
‘If they’ve got logs, they won’t have to pile garbage under them,’ Rabbit replied. ‘If they happen to get our point, they won’t keep on saying “ramp”. They’ll say “bridge” instead, won’t they?’
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The only problem I can see with the idea is that we don’t really have very many axes or saws, sir,’ Sergeant Marpek said. ‘There are plenty of trees on the slope that comes down to the riverbank, and we’ve got plenty of men, but we just don’t have enough tools to get the job done.’
Padan looked at Rabbit. ‘Any ideas?’ he asked.
‘I don’t have my forge or anvil here,’ Rabbit reminded him, ‘so I don’t think I’ll be of much use.’ He hesitated. ‘Your men could chop trees down with their swords, you know.’
Padan feigned a look of unspeakable shock. ‘Blasphemy!’ he gasped.
‘I’ve got a fairly reliable whetstone, Padan,’ Rabbit added, ‘so your men should be able to polish the nicks and dents out of their swords if it bothers you so much. Then, too, if using their swords is going to offend them so much, they could always use their teeth, I suppose.’