The Treasured One (The Dreamers 2)

‘Veltan advised us that the bug-people have what he called an “overmind”,’ Longbow explained. ‘What one of them knows, they all know, and it appears that what one of them sees, the others also see.’

‘Are you saying that they can pass their eyeballs around?’ Andar demanded.

‘Not quite,’ Longbow said. ‘I think that touch might be involved. When they’re spread out like they are here, they’re always close enough to each other to pass information on back to the Vlagh in a very short time.’

‘That would be a lot like that notion Rabbit came up with back in Lattash, wouldn’t it?’ Danal suggested.

‘Very close,’ Longbow agreed.

‘I didn’t exactly follow that,’ Andar said.

‘There was a lot of snow up in the mountains,’ Danal explained, ‘and the natives warned us about a seasonal peculiarity. As I understood it, every year a very warm wind blew in from the sea and melted the snow overnight. That caused a flood. There were Maags part way up the ravine above Lattash, and we had to warn them that the warm wind was coming their way. The clever little Maag called Rabbit suggested using horns to pass a warning to the Maags up in the ravine that it was time to head for higher ground. That warning moved from out in the bay to the Maags up in the ravine in just a few minutes. The Maags climbed up to safety, but the snake-men who were invading didn’t get the point. You wouldn’t believe how many enemies were drowned in that flood.’

‘Good comparison, Danal,’ Longbow said. ‘The creatures of the Wasteland don’t blow horns to pass things along, though. They use touch instead. The Vlagh almost certainly knows what’s happening here within a few minutes. That shout we just heard was probably a command to continue the charge.’

‘That suggests that they’re more efficient than I’d been led to believe,’ Sub-Commander Andar said. ‘If they can pass information to each other instantly, they’ll have quite an advantage, wouldn’t you say?’

‘They didn’t do that during the war in the ravine,’ Danal recalled.

‘Not that I noticed, no,’ Longbow agreed. ‘I’d say that the Vlagh learned quite a bit more from that first war than we’d realized.’

‘It looks to me like there’s one thing they didn’t learn,’ Danal observed. ‘They don’t seem to realize that our stakes have been dipped in venom. They’re dropping like flies out there.’

Longbow peered over the barricade and saw that the enemy charge was faltering as the front ranks began to topple over when they reached the poisoned stakes.

Then a somewhat sharper roar came from the Wasteland, and the more awkward enemies abruptly stopped their charge and stood in place.

Longbow muttered an oath.

‘What’s the problem?’ Andar asked.

‘Your poisoned stakes aren’t going to help this time, I’m afraid,’ Longbow replied. ‘It appears that the Vlagh has finally realized how lethal they are, so it just ordered its army to stop the advance.’

‘That’s not really a bad thing, Longbow,’ Danal noted. ‘If the enemy army can’t advance any farther than this, the war’s over, and we just won. Our stakes stopped them dead in their tracks.’

‘Not quite dead, Danal,’ Andar disagreed. ‘Most of them are still standing.’

‘Maybe they’ll get hungry after a while and go someplace else to find something to eat,’ Danal suggested.

It was about mid-morning when the eight-legged turtles came scampering over the outermost barricade. The terms ‘scamper’ and ‘turtle’ seemed almost contradictory, but Longbow couldn’t come up with any alternatives. With only a few exceptions, turtles were slow-moving reptiles whose body armor made anything faster than a slow creep almost impossible. The long, hard-coated spider-legs, however, lifted the shell-encased body above the ground, so the creature was able to move at a surprising rate.

The armored enemies moved out in front of the now-stationary bug-men and began to advance through the field of stakes, snapping them off as they came.

Danal swore. ‘Isn’t that cheating?’ he demanded.

‘I’d say that it’s imitation,’ Andar disagreed. ‘The turtle-shells serve about the same purpose as our breastplates. Apparently the thing Longbow calls the “overmind” saw how useful armor could be, so it came up with a duplicate - except that this turtle-bug’s got eight legs instead of four, so it can move faster than an ordinary turtle.’

‘It’s also immune to arrows, I’d imagine,’ Longbow added, ‘and if it can spin webs like ordinary spiders do, things might just start to get interesting before long.’

‘They cleared away almost all of our stakes in less than half a day, Commander,’ Andar reported that evening when they met again atop the center tower in Gunda’s wall. ‘Fortunately, they don’t appear to be night creatures, so they all pulled back as the sun went down.’

‘Did anybody at all manage to kill one of them?’ Gunda demanded.

Andar shook his head. ‘Arrows just bounce off of them, and they didn’t quite reach the second breast-works, so none of us had the opportunity to try spears. I don’t think spears would have punched through those shells, anyway.’

‘I think we might be in trouble, Narasan,’ Gunda declared. ‘Our main enemy is still that Vlagh thing, and it’s beginning to look like it learned a lot more than we thought during the war in the ravine.

Now it’s got bigger soldiers - and armored ones as well. We’d better start coming up with some answers here, or the enemy’s going to walk all over us.’

‘I’ll see if I can find my big brother,’ Veltan said. ‘He’s the expert on insects, so he’ll be able to give us much more specific information.’

Longbow briefly squinted up at Dahlaine’s bright-shining imitation sun which appeared to still be joyously aflame. That raised a couple of questions. If Dahlaine’s toy sun was bright enough to cause pain to the bug-bats, why did the other servants of the Vlagh stop advancing when the real sun went down? This war was turning out to be much more complicated than the previous one had been - quite probably because the Vlagh had learned many things during the conflict in Zelana’s Domain, and ‘learning’ and ‘bug’ didn’t really fit together at all.

Veltan, Dahlaine, and Zelana joined them on the tower after a short time had passed, and Narasan rather quickly described the larger enemy soldiers and the eight-legged turtles.