Several days later at about noon, the somewhat boisterous Padan came into the cabin at the stern. “I think we might have reached the place where we’re supposed to go ashore,” he announced. “There’s a good-sized bonfire on the beach, and if I’m not mistaken, the man standing by that fire is Longbow’s old friend, Red-Beard. I’m just guessing here, but I think that maybe Veltan’s big brother sent him here to guide us to the place where Dahlaine wants us to go.”
“Good,” Narasan said. “Let’s go talk with him. He’ll probably be able to tell us how things are coming along.”
They all went out onto the deck of the Victory, and Trenicia immediately saw the large fire on the beach.
The sandy beach was snowy white and the woods to the west of the beach were glorious in shades of red and gold. There appeared to be a mountain range beyond that wooded region, and the mountains were rounded and gentle, and much more pleasant than the rugged range in Veltan’s Domain far to the south.
“Would you like to come along with us, Trenicia?” Narasan asked politely.
“Of course,” she replied with a smile. “I’m just as curious as you are, Narasan.”
The sailors on board the Victory lowered several of the small skiffs down into the water of the bay and then rowed Narasan and his friends ashore.
The native on the beach was, in fact, Longbow’s friend Red-Beard. “What kept you?” he asked them with a faint smile.
“We stopped every so often to find out if the fish were biting,” Padan replied with a perfectly straight face. “Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be hungry.”
“What a shame,” Red-Beard said in mock sympathy.
“If you two have finished, do you suppose we could get down to business here?” Narasan suggested firmly. “How do things stand right now, Red-Beard?”
“We had a little trouble over in Tonthakan,” Red-Beard replied. “The bug-people were trying to start a war between some of the tribes over there, but Sorgan’s friend, Ox, bashed the troublemakers in the head with his axe, and a real bad case of peace broke out. We discovered that the bug-men have started to use fragrance to win people over to their side.”
“Fragrance?” Narasan asked.
Red-Beard shrugged. “It’s a nicer word than ‘stink,’ wouldn’t you say? Anyway, this peculiar smell made people—the real ones—believe anything the bug-people told them. The ‘grand plan’ the bug-people had come up with had a small hole in it, though, and the hole’s name was Ox. It seems that poor old Ox is one of those unfortunate people who start sneezing every time they see a flower, and during the sneezing season, Ox can’t smell anything—flowers, dead bodies, or anything else—because his nose is so stopped up that he has to breathe through his mouth. The two bug-people who were trying their best to make everybody believe them were spewing out that smell of theirs for all they were worth, but their ‘fragrance’ didn’t have any effect on Ox, because his nose doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to. That’s when he solved the problem for us—with his axe. After he’d brained the two bug-people, everybody seemed to wake up, and that ended that particular problem right there on the spot.”
“They’ve never done that before,” Narasan observed. “It seems like every time we turn around, they’ve come up with something new—and even more dangerous.”
“Red-Beard,” Padan said curiously, “what sort of an animal is the one you’ve got tied to a tree on the upper side of the beach?”
“That’s one of the creatures that gave the ‘horse-people’ their name,” Red-Beard replied with a smile. “That one’s called ‘Seven,’ and he’s mine.”
“The horse-people don’t even give their pets names?” Padan asked. “Do they just give them numbers instead?”
Red-Beard shook his head, and then he told Padan the story of Seven’s previous owner, the gambler who cheated. “After that, poor old Seven didn’t have an owner anymore, so Ekial and Ariga gave him to me.”
“What’s it like—riding a horse, I mean?” Andar asked.
“A lot easier than doing your own walking. Seven and I don’t cover as much ground as a Malavi on horseback can in one day, but we can still cover about three times as much as I could on foot.”
“What kind of terrain are we going to encounter on the way to Mount Shrak?” Narasan asked.
“There’s a mountain range off to the west,” Red-Beard said. “I don’t know if I’d call those hills ‘mountains,’ though. The slopes are fairly gentle, and I didn’t come up against anything that I’d call rugged. The passes we’ll follow are wide enough to give your army plenty of room to march through. Then we’ll go on down to the grassland of the Matakan Nation. It’s pretty much like one vast meadowland with almost no trees. We might encounter a herd of bison out there, and that could delay us just a bit. The herds here to the south aren’t as big as the ones off to the north are, though, so we won’t have to set up camp and wait for three or four days the way we might have to farther north. Tlantar Two-Hands told me that he had to sit on a hilltop for a week once when a bison herd up there had him blocked off.”
“Who’s Tlantar Two-Hands,” Padan asked, “and how did he come up with a name like that?”
“He’s the chief—or headman—of a village called Asmie in the vicinity of Mount Shrak, and I guess the people of Asmie call him ‘Two-Hands’ because he doesn’t know one hand from the other.”
“We can discuss this as we go along,” Narasan said. “For right now, let’s get our men ashore and prepare to march. We’ve got about twenty days of hiking ahead of us, so we’d better get started.”
There were quite a few strange things about this part of the Land of Dhrall that troubled Trenicia a bit, but she was sure that she’d be able to adjust to them. Her main purpose right now was to more firmly establish her relationship with Narasan, and that seemed to be coming along very well.
2
It took the better part of two days for Narasan’s army to come ashore and make the necessary preparations for the march to Mount Shrak. There were so many details! Sometimes Trenicia almost wanted to scream. Why didn’t they just get on with it?
“Does he really have to go through all of this again and again and again?” she asked Padan, about midday on their second day on the beach.
Padan shrugged. “He made a few serious mistakes once during a war in the southern part of the empire, Your Majesty, and he learned quite a few things the hard way.”
“Oh?” Trenicia was quite interested in such things. “What happened?”
Padan sighed. “After his father was killed in a senseless little war, Narasan’s mother went all to pieces with her grief, and Narasan decided that he should never marry.”
That got Trenicia’s immediate attention.
“Anyway,” Padan continued, “after he became the commander of our army, Narasan grew very attached to his nephew, Astal—a young man with an enormous potential. In many ways, Astal was the equivalent of the son Narasan would never have. Then a duke named Bergalta hired us to fight a small, meaningless war with one of his neighbors. The money was good, and it appeared that this would be one of those easy wars. As it turned out, though, it wasn’t the least bit easy. Our army’s the best in the entire empire, and we’ve made a lot of enemies over the years. Evidently, a number of those enemies got together and came up with a fairly elaborate scheme, probably in the hope of killing us down to the last man.”
“You Trogites have a very complicated sort of society, don’t you?”
Padan grinned at her. “Money seems to do that, Your Majesty. Rich people make enemies, and sooner or later they feel that they need an army—and they pay very well. Anyway, we marched south, and Narasan decided that his nephew should lead several cohorts in our advance force—ostensibly to give Astal a bit of experience, but actually to boost Narasan’s pride. There was an ambush, and Astal and twelve cohorts were killed.”
“What’s a cohort?”
“A thousand men, Your Majesty. Narasan went
all to pieces after that happened—even after Gunda and I hired several assassins and had every single one of the plotters killed. Revenge was sort of appropriate in that situation, but Narasan was still overcome with his grief and his guilt, so he broke his sword over his knee and set up shop as a beggar in one of the seamier parts of Kaldacin. Then Veltan came along, and somehow he persuaded Narasan to put his grief aside and go back to work.” Padan sighed. “Narasan’s grief is still there, though, and that’s why he spends so much time going over and over all the picky little details. He most definitely doesn’t want to make those same mistakes ever again.”
Trenicia’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s the saddest story I’ve ever heard,” she declared.
“I can tell you some even sadder ones, Your Majesty,” Padan said. “If a good cry will make you feel better, I can fill your eyes with buckets full of tears any time you want.”
“You’re outrageous, Padan,” Trenicia said, laughing in spite of herself.
“I know,” Padan replied in mock modesty. “I think outrageousness is a gift from some god or other. One of these days maybe I’ll look him up and thank him.”
They started out early the next morning, and it seemed to Trenicia that if Narasan’s army moved as rapidly as they were marching now, they’d be able to cover much more than just ten miles. After about an hour, though, things began to slow down quite noticeably. The problem Narasan had referred to as “bunching up” began to appear very frequently, and the pace slowed to a crawl.
Trenicia was not emotionally suited for plodding, so she began to range out farther and farther in front of Narasan’s army. The forest to the west of the beach where they’d come ashore was quite extensive, and, since it was autumn now, the leaves of those trees were red and gold rather than the bright green of summer. She encountered several deer in that forest, and, more to entertain herself than out of any real interest, she began to move very quietly to see just how close to one of those animals she could get before the creature caught her scent or saw her move. Her experiences on the Isle of Akalla had given her a lot of opportunities to practice sneaking, so she was frequently able to get close enough to one of the grazing deer to be almost within touching distance. She found the panicky reaction of a deer when she said “Hello, Sweetie” to be quite amusing. She soon realized that a startled deer could jump much higher and farther than she’d have thought possible.
There were quite a few other animals in the forest as well. There were many hares and foxes as well as flocks of partridges scurrying through patches of bushes. Once, she even encountered a huge grazing animal that she assumed was one of the bison Red-Beard had mentioned. She was more than a little startled by the size of that creature. It was truly massive, with a shaggy coat and huge horns flaring out from the front of its head. Trenicia prudently backed away from that particular animal.
As evening settled down over the forest late each afternoon, Trenicia went back to rejoin the plodding Trogites who were following Red-Beard and Seven.
“Did you happen to encounter any people out there?” Narasan asked her on the third day of their march.
“Quite a few deer, and many, many hares,” she replied, “and I think I saw a fox, but no people.”
“Any more bison?” Padan asked.
“Not today, no,” she replied.
“Are we getting anywhere at all close to the western edge of this forest?” Andar asked her then.
“I don’t really think so, Andar,” she replied doubtfully. “I climbed up a fairly tall tree, and as nearly as I could determine, we’ve still got four or five days of woods in front of us.”
“She makes a pretty good scout, Commander,” Brigadier Danal said. “She knows how to move quietly, and she sees just about everything we need to know about.”
“You could get your name in a lot of history books, Narasan,” Padan said then, “and you’d probably send the Church of Amar up in flames if it became known that you’d enlisted a woman to serve in your army.”
“That would depend on how much Narasan would be willing to pay me, Padan,” Trenicia said slyly. “I’m sure you remember that I don’t work for gold.” Then she looked at Narasan. “How are you fixed for diamonds right now, old friend?” she asked.
“I haven’t checked lately,” Narasan replied blandly. “There might be a few diamonds and pearls bouncing around in the treasury, but I couldn’t say for sure.”
“There goes your chance at fame, Dear Heart,” Trenicia said in mock sorrow.
“Ah, well,” Narasan replied with a feigned sigh of regret.
The forest began to thin out a day or so later, and Red-Beard and his horse, Seven, led Narasan’s army up through a wide pass that led on into the gently rolling mountains quite some distance to the west of the seacoast. Trenicia found the area rather pleasant, but so far as she was able to determine, there were no people living in the region. Trenicia found that more than a little strange. The Isle of Akalla wasn’t densely populated, by any stretch of the imagination, but there were people living all over the isle. A completely uninhabited region seemed most peculiar.
“Is there some reason that nobody lives here?” she asked Red-Beard late in the afternoon of their first day up in the mountains.
Red-Beard shrugged. “There might be, I suppose,” he replied, “but there’s nobody here to explain it to us. The hunting might not be very good, or the ground might not be fertile enough to grow good crops, or maybe the word’s been going around that this part of the Land of Dhrall is haunted by ghosts or something. Then, too, it might just be that nobody’s ever gotten around to settling here. There are vast regions in Zelana’s Domain that don’t have any people. I’ve always sort of liked open country without people cluttering it up. People can be awfully messy sometimes. Does empty country bother you, Trenicia?”
“Not all that much,” she replied. “I was just a little curious, that’s all. How long would you say it’s likely to take us to get through these mountains?”
“A couple more days is about all. There’s nothing in the way, and the peaks—if you want to call them that—aren’t really very steep. If you think this country’s empty, wait until we go on down into Matakan. There’s almost nothing there but miles and miles of miles and miles, waist deep in grass and neck deep in bison. When Seven and I were crossing the meadowland while we were leading the Malavi to Mount Shrak, I saw herds of bison that were spread out almost to the horizon. I wouldn’t mind hunting bison—except that my arrows would probably just bounce off them.”
“Why do you always have to make a joke out of everything you say, Red-Beard?”
“Laughter’s good for people, Trenicia,” Red-Beard said with a grin, “but I wasn’t really making a joke when I said that arrows wouldn’t be very useful if I decided to hunt bison. The Matans use spears instead of arrows, because an arrow won’t go deep enough into a bison to kill him—unless you happen to get very lucky. Matan spear-points are much bigger—and heavier—than my arrowheads are, so they go in deeper and leave much bigger wounds. My arrows will kill deer—or people—well enough, but they wouldn’t do the job on bison.”
Late the following day Trenicia was ranging out ahead of Narasan’s plodding army and she reached the top of the pass they’d been following. Then she immediately saw what Red-Beard had described as “miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles.” She’d never in her life seen any country so totally empty. The meadowland to the west was almost like an ocean of grass pushed into waves by a continual wind coming in from the west. In her entire life, Trenicia had never seen so much emptiness, and she stood there for a long time gazing out across that enormous vacancy.
Narasan joined her there after a while, and he also seemed almost stunned by that vast emptiness. “It might take a while to get used to that,” he murmured.
“Six or eight years, at least,” Trenicia agreed. “That’s a lot of empty out there. Just looking at it makes me feel terribly lonely.”
“I
’ll hold your hand, if you’d like,” Narasan offered.
“We might want to talk about that,” Trenicia agreed with a fond smile. Oddly enough, the uncluttered meadow lying off to the west no longer disturbed her. Things suddenly seemed to be going along very well.
Late the following day Narasan’s army marched down out of the mountain range and moved on into the meadow.
“I think I’m going to need three or four cohorts, Narasan,” Padan said as the army continued its westward march.
“Were you planning to declare war on the grass?” Narasan asked his friend.
“Not really, O Mighty Commander,” Padan replied. “But unless you’d like to live on a steady diet of cold, uncooked beans for the next week or so, somebody’s going to have to gather up some firewood before we get too far away from these mountains, wouldn’t you say?”
“Good thinking there, Padan,” Narasan replied. “I must have had my mind on something else.” He glanced briefly at Trenicia, and then looked quickly away.
That definitely brightened Trenicia’s whole day.
It somehow seemed to Trenicia that they weren’t even moving as they pushed on out across the endless meadow for the next week or more, but then Red-Beard turned and galloped Seven back to join Narasan and the others. “If you look carefully off to the west, you’ll be able to see Mount Shrak sticking up out of the grass,” he told them. “We’ve still got quite a way to go, but at least we can see our destination now.”
Trenicia shaded her eyes with her hand and peered off to the west at what appeared to be a small, steep clump of rocks out near the western horizon.