The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

As the sun rose up over the ridge-line to the east, Rabbit came up the steps to the top of the wall. ‘Can you see Keselo down there?’ he asked. ‘I don’t really have very many Trogite friends, so I don’t want to lose him.’

‘He’s over on the left side of what Narasan calls the “breastworks”. Narasan says that it’s fairly standard practice to sort of ease beginning soldiers into the main battle.’

‘I don’t think those farmers are going to work out all that well, Longbow,’ the little Maag said dubiously. ‘If you want to make a warrior out of somebody you need to start out when he’s a lot younger than most of the people Omago gathered up are, and the pay needs to be better.’

‘We’ll see.’

There were more than a dozen of those chest-high barricades laid out across the slope that ran down to the Wasteland, and Narasan’s soldiers - along with Veltan’s farmers - were manning the farthest one away from Gunda’s wall. Longbow and his little friend weren’t able to see very many details, but it appeared that the Trogites weren’t really having too much trouble holding the overgrown snake-men back.

Then, along about noon, another of those commanding roars came from quite some distance back out in the Wasteland, and the surviving enemies turned and fled back out into the red-tinged desert.

‘Now that’s something we never saw back in the ravine,’ Rabbit said. ‘I thought that the bug-people were too stupid to even know how to turn and run.’

‘Maybe they learned a few things in the ravine,’ Longbow suggested.

‘I thought you had to have brains to learn,’ Rabbit scoffed, ‘and bugs don’t have brains, do they?’

‘They do have a brain, little friend,’ Longbow disagreed, ‘but they don’t carry it around with them. It’s the Vlagh - or more probably the “overmind” - that does all the thinking. Maybe the “overmind” finally realized that throwing servants away isn’t really a good way to win a war.’

The golden summer afternoon wore on, and there were no further attacks by the servants of the Vlagh. The somewhat tentative nature of this first attack seemed to make everyone atop Gunda’s wall a bit edgy. It was increasingly obvious that most of Narasan’s men shared Longbow’s suspicion that their enemy had in some sense come to realize that sheer brute force had little chance of success.

‘I don’t like this at all, Narasan,’ Gunda admitted. ‘If that thing out there is starting to think - even a little bit - we could be in a lot of trouble here. The midget snake-men we came up against back in the ravine weren’t really clever enough to be able to tell night from day, but these bigger ones? I don’t know. If one of them just happens to pick up a rock and throw it at us, we’re looking at an entirely different war.’

‘You’re being obvious, Gunda,’ Narasan observed. ‘For right now, about all we can do is remain flexible. If the enemy comes up with anything at all new and different, we’ll have to come up with ways to deal with it - in a hurry, most likely.’

The sun was low over the western ridge when Keselo came on up to the wall. He quickly climbed up the rope ladder and joined Longbow and the others on top of the central tower.

‘The enemies seem to be quite a bit bigger this time, Commander,’ he reported to Narasan.

‘We thought that was the case,’ Narasan replied. ‘Did you notice any other peculiarities?’

‘They’re just a little awkward, sir, and they can’t move quite as fast as the smaller ones back in the ravine.’

‘Do they still have the fangs and stingers?’ Gunda asked.

Keselo nodded. ‘That part hasn’t changed. Their mouth-fangs are larger, and the stingers on their forearms are longer.’

‘That would suggest that their venom sacks are larger, wouldn’t it?’ Rabbit asked.

‘We didn’t take one apart to verify that, friend Rabbit.’

‘Just offhand, how many of them did the soldiers kill?’ Gunda asked.

‘Several hundred, anyway,’ Keselo replied. ‘I didn’t walk along the breast-works and take a count. From what I saw, though, it appears that the venom on our spear-points is still strong enough to kill them. That had me just a bit worried, to be honest about it. If that venom we gathered at Lattash had lost its potency, we could have been in a lot of trouble. The reason I really came up here was to get permission to move Omago’s farmers closer to the center of the breast-works. They seemed to feel just a bit left out because their positions were off to the sides where they were fairly safe. Now that they’ve seen how real soldiers operate, they’d like to see a bit more action.’

‘You’re in charge of them, Keselo,’ Narasan said. ‘The decision is yours.’

‘And so are any mistakes you happen to make,’ Gunda added with a slight smirk.

‘Thanks, Gunda,’ Keselo replied sourly. Then he looked directly at Narasan. ‘I had a notion just after the enemy pulled back, sir,’ he said. ‘If we were to wait until it gets dark and then pull back to the next line of breast-works and plant a good number of poisoned stakes in the open ground between the two, the enemy will probably be more than a little confused if they attack again tomorrow.’

‘That’s not a bad idea at all, Keselo,’ Gunda said approvingly. ‘And then you could move your men back to the outermost breastworks tomorrow night. If the enemy thinks you’ve deserted that first breast-works, he’ll probably just try to romp on over it, and your people could destroy half an army without much trouble at all.’

‘And then fall back to the third line during the second night?’ Keselo suggested.

Gunda blinked. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’ he said. ‘You’re a very nasty young man, Keselo. After a week or so of bouncing back and forth like that, the enemy’s going to be so confused that he won’t know which way to turn.’

As night fell, the Trogite soldiers atop Gunda’s wall unrolled the fish-netting to hold back the bug-bats. Longbow was almost positive that the Vlagh’s imitation bats were primarily scouts, but Narasan preferred not to take any chances.

Dahlaine, the grey-bearded eldest of Zelana’s family joined them on the central tower. ‘They don’t seem to move after dark, do they?’ he observed.

‘There are plenty of bug-bats out tonight, big brother,’ Veltan replied. ‘They may not bite, but they are flying around out there in the dark.’