The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

‘They wouldn’t dare!’

‘Would you really like to bet your life on that, Adnari?’

The fat man looked back over his shoulder at the impatient men in red uniforms who were glaring at him. ‘The Regulators will protect me, Jalkan,’ he declared.

‘Did you want to bet your life on that as well?’ Jalkan demanded. ‘Now that Konag’s not with us any more, we can’t really trust anybody. Konag was the one with the iron fist, and the other Regulators obeyed him out of terror, and then they terrorized the soldiers in our five armies. Konag was our key, but he’s gone now, so we can’t lock doors anymore.’

Veltan scratched his cheek thoughtfully as a distinct possibility came to him unbidden. Something - or more probably, somebody - had moved the clever little Rabbit to do something very uncharacteristic. First he’d carved out a bow, and the Maags had never been very interested in archery. Then the little man had been stirred to violence by Konag’s brutal slaughter of any and all church soldiers who broke ranks and tried to run on ahead of the armies to reach the imitation gold before their comrades did. And then Rabbit, who should at best have been a rank amateur as an archer, dropped Konag dead in his tracks with a single arrow.

‘I’d say that we’ve definitely got some serious tampering going on here lately,’ Veltan mused.

There was a bit of shouting coming up to Veltan from the red-uniformed soldiers who’d just crossed the bridge and reached the rim of the gorge, and the word that rang out the loudest was ‘gold!’

Veltan glanced to the north across the grassy basin. There were a few yellow-speckled crags jutting up out of the Wasteland, but the real ‘sea of gold’ lay some distance below the north ridge and Gunda’s wall. It should not be visible from here, but there it was, bright and gleaming, and out in plain view.

There were a couple of very unlikely possibilities that might explain just how something that should be completely out of sight was right there to be seen. On a few occasions, Veltan had encountered mirages, those inverted reflections of far distant things, but always in the past, they’d been limited to water.

‘It would seem that Longbow’s friend is very creative,’ Veltan mused. ‘Good, though,’ he added with a grin.

‘I really wish you wouldn’t do that, Veltan,’ Sorgan Hook-Beak complained when Veltan’s pet deposited him no more than a few feet away from the pirate. ‘It almost scares me out of my skin.’

‘I’ll mention that to my pet, Sorgan,’ Veltan promised, ‘but I don’t think she’ll listen. She loves to startle people.’ He looked down into Sorgan’s third trench. ‘I see that you’re still planting stakes,’ he noted.

‘It works out pretty well, Veltan,’ Sorgan said. ‘The whole idea here is to slow down the church Trogs, and it takes them quite a while to dig the stakes up.’ Then he chuckled. ‘We’ve been cheating just a bit, though.’

‘Cheating?’

‘We don’t waste venom any more. The church Trogs creep across the trenches on their hands and knees, very carefully digging up stakes that aren’t really anything but bare wood-sticks. As long as they believe that the stakes will kill them, their advance is dead slow.’

‘I think we might want to change the rules, Sorgan,’ Veltan suggested. ‘The last church army has finally made it up to the rim. Now that they’re all up here where they’re supposed to be, it’s time for us to get out of their way so that they can go say hello to the bug-people.’

‘I hope Longbow knows what he’s talking about,’ Sorgan said a bit dubiously. ‘Are you certain sure that those church Trogs will do what they’re supposed to do?’

Veltan nodded. ‘Longbow’s friend pulled off another of her deceptions. There were a few crags sticking up out of the Wasteland, but when the bulk of that last church army reached the rim, she gave them something much prettier to look at. They saw the entire Wasteland - and all the pretty sand she’d put out there for their entertainment. Now they’re just dying to get out there and claim it.’

‘How did she do that?’

‘How would I know? She’s so far ahead of me that I can’t really understand anything she does. Pull back, Sorgan. It’s time for us to get out of the way.’

‘It’s going to take a while, Veltan,’ Sorgan said. ‘My men are going to have to pull those stakes if we want the Trogs to move any faster than a slow crawl.’

‘Why don’t you let me take care of that, Sorgan?’ Veltan asked with a broad grin. ‘My pet needs a little entertainment anyway. I’m fairly sure she’ll enjoy blasting all your stakes into splinters, so why don’t we let her have all the fun?’

‘What’s happening on down there, Veltan?’ Commander Narasan asked when Veltan’s pet deposited him on the central tower of Gunda’s wall.

‘Everything’s going like it’s supposed to, my friend. Lillabeth’s sandstorm made things much easier for us. That fifth church army has finally reached the rim, so they’re all up here now. I just advised Sorgan that it’s time for him to get out of the way and let those greedy churchies come on up here.’

‘Padan passed through Sorgan’s barricades and trenches when he pulled his men back after the churchies started building that bridge,’ Narasan said then. ‘From what he told me, the River Vash will have Sorgan and his men blocked off if they decide to go east. He’ll have to go on up that west ridge, won’t he?’

Veltan shook his head. ‘He told me that he’d leave a small force behind his last barricade to delay the church armies, and then his main force will come north to the geyser and then go on off to the east.’

‘What’s going to happen to those men he’ll leave behind?’

Veltan smiled. ‘Sorgan told me that those men are the fastest runners in his entire army. He’s quite positive that they’ll be able to outrun the churchies without even working up a sweat.’ He paused. ‘I almost forgot something that might brighten your day.’

‘Oh?’

‘Scrawny Jalkan - along with a very fat Estarg - are coming to call. It’s a shame that we won’t be here to greet them, but we’ll be terribly busy getting out of their way.’

‘I don’t suppose you’d consider a brief delay, would you, Veltan?’ Narasan asked.