Tladak turned to Dahlaine. “Isn’t there some way you could put a stop to that?” he demanded.
“We’re working on it, Tladak. For right now, though, tell your friends to avoid the Atazaks and their little friends. We haven’t yet found a way to deal with this ‘venom riding the wind’ problem.”
Then Longbow’s little friend Rabbit snapped his fingers. “I knew that we were overlooking something!” he exclaimed.
“We’ve been over it a dozen times, Rabbit,” Longbow said. “I’m sure that we’ve covered everything.”
“Not quite everything, Longbow,” Rabbit disagreed with a broad grin. “Reversing the wind and blowing the venom back into the faces of the Atazaks and their little friends might have worked out very well, except that Dahlaine and Veltan and Zelana aren’t permitted to kill anything—not even enemies who are trying to kill them. If it’s the wind that’s our problem, why not just shut it down? The venom won’t go anyplace if the wind isn’t blowing, so all Dahlaine has to do is to stop the wind.” He looked at Dahlaine. “You can do that, can’t you? If you just tell the wind to stop blowing, you won’t be using it to kill your enemies—even the ones trying to kill you. All you’ll really be doing will be calming everything down.”
Dahlaine blinked, and then an embarrassed expression came over his face.
“Were there any other problems you can’t solve, big brother?” Zelana asked with a sly little grin. “If there are, just let us know, and we’ll be more than happy to take care of them for you.”
“I should have thought of this myself,” Dahlaine ruefully said to his brother Veltan. “I’d say that Aracia’s not the only one of us whose mind’s shutting down.”
“That’s why we all went out and hired outlanders to help us, big brother,” Veltan replied. “They do our thinking for us. Life’s much more pleasing when you don’t have to spend all of your time thinking.”
They all followed Dahlaine out through the long, twisting passageway to the outside. There was a fairly stiff wind coming in from the east, but when Dahlaine raised his hand, the wind died immediately.
Veltan frowned. “I don’t want to offend you, big brother,” he said, “but won’t shutting down the wind interfere with the seasons?”
“I doubt it,” Dahlaine replied. “I didn’t actually shut the wind off. All I did was reach back ten miles or so and divert it. The wind’s still blowing, but it’s not coming this way anymore. We only need a dead calm where the creatures of the Wasteland are standing when they start spitting venom up into the air. The wind can blow all it wants to every place else.”
Sorgan Hook-Beak scratched his chin. “It’s likely to take those silly snake-men a while to realize that the wind isn’t there to help them anymore, wouldn’t you say?”
Dahlaine shrugged. “It’s possible, I suppose. Where are you going with this, Sorgan?”
“If they spit their venom straight up into the air and the wind’s not blowing, it’ll settle back down on top of them, won’t it? Would that break any of the rules that you’re not supposed to violate?”
Dahlaine smiled broadly. “None that I can think of. If they’re foolish enough to poison themselves, that’s not my responsibility.” Then he looked at Rabbit. “Don’t let this little man get away, Sorgan. He’s one of the most valuable people we’ve got working for us.”
Commander Narasan was frowning slightly as he looked at Chief Tlantar. “I’m not trying to be inquisitive or anything,” he said, “but how did you get ‘Two-Hands’ attached to your name?”
Tlantar shrugged. “Back when I was a beginner learning how to use the spear-thrower, our instructor got all worked up because I could use either hand when I wanted to throw a spear. After I showed him that I couldn’t miss with either hand, he started calling me ‘Two-Hands,’ and before very long, just about everybody in the tribe started to call me ‘Tlantar Two-Hands,’ as if it was a miracle of some kind. Actually, it’s always seemed peculiar to me that other people favor one hand or the other.”
Narasan looked at Keselo. “Have you ever heard of anything like this?” he asked.
Keselo nodded. “I had a teacher at the university who could write with either hand—or with both hands at the same time when he wanted to show off. He told us that it was quite rare. Most people favor one hand over the other—right or left—but people who don’t know the difference don’t come along very often.” Then he looked curiously at Tlantar. “Have you ever noticed any difference, Chief Tlantar?” he asked. “I mean, will your spear go farther if you throw it with your right hand instead of the left?”
Tlantar shook his head. “They’re pretty much the same,” he replied. “Sometimes the spear I throw with my right hand will go a few feet farther than the one I throw with my left, but on other days, the left one goes farther. It might depend on which side I slept on the previous night.”
“You’re a very rare man, Chief Tlantar,” Narasan said. “How much do you know about the people of Atazakan? Are they very good warriors?”
Tlantar laughed. “I wouldn’t really call them ‘warriors,’ Commander Narasan,” he said rather scornfully. “The only people allowed to carry weapons of any kind are ‘The Guardians of Divinity.’ Those are the lazy ones who go around threatening the ordinary people if they don’t bow down quite far enough when ‘Holy Azakan’ walks by. They have spears, but they don’t really know how to use them. They haven’t moved much past poke-poke-jab. As far as I know, they’ve never been involved in a war of any kind, so I’d say they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Is there some reason that they have only spears?” Narasan asked.
“I’ve heard that ‘Holy Azakan’ has put a lot of limits on his people. He’s a madman who believes that he controls the entire universe, and he spends most of his time inventing rules that don’t make any sense.” Tlantar laughed then. “If I understood what actually happened, he sprained his ankle once, and all the people of Atazakan had to walk with a limp for about six months, since the ‘Guardians of Divinity’ threatened to kill anybody who wasn’t limping.”
“Why do his people put up with that?” the Trogite called Padan demanded. “Why don’t they just lock him away someplace, or just go ahead and kill him?”
“Probably because the first thing he did when he was crowned emperor, king, god—or whatever—was to hire hundreds of men to protect him. That was a golden opportunity for men who wanted to be important, but didn’t want to do anything the least bit strenuous.”
“That sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it, Narasan?” the warrior queen Trenicia said. “That fat priest Bersla down in Aracia’s temple made a career out of talking, but not doing anything else—except eating, of course.”
“There are a few ugly similarities here, aren’t there?” Veltan suggested with a wry smile.
“We could probably send a fair number of Matans up to the north to deal with this,” Keselo observed, “but wouldn’t it be better to send small contingents from every army we have on up there to stamp out this idiocy? Our main battle will be in Crystal Gorge. We don’t want to get so involved in the Atazak invasion that we lose sight of that, and we don’t want to come up short of archers, spearmen, or horse-warriors when the real war starts.”
“He’s got a point, Narasan,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said. “Then, too, if we send members of every group up there, they’ll learn how to work together, in ways that might not occur to us when the snake-men come charging up that gorge. Then, after they’ve whomped the Atazaks, they can come back down here and tell us what works and what doesn’t.”
“That makes very good sense, Sorgan,” Narasan told his friend. “You’re getting better at fighting land wars every time we move to some other part of the Land of Dhrall. You’re starting to think like a real professional.”
2
Longbow spoke quietly with those who’d be joining him in the trek to the north. “We’d just be in the way here in Dahlaine’s map-room,” he told them, “and I thi
nk more clearly out in the open anyway.”
“I’ll float my stick with yours there,” the scar-faced horse-soldier Ekial agreed. “There’s something about having walls all around me that seems to make it impossible for me to think.”
“Let’s all go outside, then,” Longbow said.
They trooped through the winding passageway to the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave.
“That’s better,” Longbow said, looking out over the vast, empty meadowland. Then he turned to his longtime friend, Athlan. “Are there very many archers still in Tonthakan?” he asked.
Athlan frowned. “Most of the tribes are already here at Mount Shrak, and I don’t think Dahlaine would be very happy if we filched some of them to go fight this second war. There are a fair number of tribes that live farther away, though. If I could get a messenger to those tribes, I might be able to divert them and bring them north to help us.”
“I just happen to have a messenger handy who can move very fast,” Longbow said, giving Red-Beard a sly sort of look.
“Somehow I knew that something like this would crop up,” Red-Beard said with a gloomy sort of expression.
“You led the horse-soldiers here from the coast, Red-Beard,” Longbow reminded his friend, “so you know the way. Athlan can tell you who to speak with and where you’ll find them. Your horse, Seven, should get you there in a hurry. If you get word to the remaining tribes in Tonthakan and they come over the mountains, they’ll probably reach northern Matakan at about the same time we will.”
“All right, Longbow,” Red-Beard replied. “You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.”
“About how many archers would you say are still in Tonthakan?” Longbow asked Athlan.
“Six or eight thousand,” Athlan replied. “That’s just a guess, but it should come fairly close.”
“If it’s all right with you, Longbow, I think that after we get out a ways from Mount Shrak here, I’ll take a hundred or so horsemen and go north,” Ekial said. “We’ll need the lay of the land, and we really need to know just how deep the Atazaks have penetrated into Matan territory. There’s no real hurry, of course. We can move much faster than your people can. If Dahlaine can keep the wind away, I don’t think there’ll be much danger for us.”
“Are you sure that Dahlaine will hold still for that?” Padan asked. “If I understood it correctly, he hired you to fight off the bug-people.”
“All that’s going on down there for right now is building a fort. There’ll be scouts on horseback riding out to watch for the enemy, and Ariga can take care of that. Right now, this invasion by the Atazaks is more important. We need to stop them before they come south. We don’t want them coming at us from the rear when we’re busy holding off the creatures of the Wasteland, now do we?”
“It does make sense, I guess,” Padan admitted. Then he gave Ekial an inquiring sort of look. “I’m not at all familiar with your people,” he said. “What sort of weapons are most effective when you’re riding a horse?”
“We’ve found that lances work fairly well,” Ekial replied. “That’s a weapon that’s very much like what you Trogites and your friends, the Maags, called a ‘spear’ during that war down to the south. A lance is about twenty feet long. We started using those a long time ago—except that they weren’t actually weapons back then. They were just long poles with padding wrapped around the end. We used them to push cows around so that they’d go in the direction we wanted to go. It was about fifty years or so ago when somebody came up with the idea of using an iron point instead of padding. It works fairly well at a distance, but when we get in closer, we use our sabres instead.”
“A sword, you mean?”
“A sabre’s not exactly what you Trogites would call a ‘sword,’ Padan. Your swords are thick and strong and straight. The Malavi sabre is longer, and it’s curved. It’s made to slash, not to stab—mostly because we’re moving when we use it. ‘Stab’ might work quite well if you’re standing still, but if you’re moving fast—like on horseback—‘stab’s’ not a very good idea. There’s a fair chance that your sabre might get tangled up in your enemy’s innards or caught between a couple of his ribs. If something like that happened when you’re riding fast, it could jerk your sabre right out of your hand.”
“That does make sense, I suppose,” Padan conceded.
Then Ekial turned to look at Longbow. “Just how far to the north of here is this invasion from Atazakan coming across the line?”
“Dahlaine’s map indicates about ninety miles,” Longbow replied. He looked at Tlantar Two-Hands. “Is that at all close to being right?” he asked.
“Pretty close, yes,” Tlantar replied.
“My party of horsemen should cover that in about two days,” Ekial said, “so we won’t have to go north for a day or so. When we get up there, we’ll have a look around, and then I’ll send a man down to meet you and pass on what we’ve seen.”
“I’ll let Dahlaine know that you’ll be going on ahead, Ekial,” Longbow said. “We want to be sure that he’s shut the wind down before you and your men reach northern Matakan.”
“Not a bad idea, Longbow.” Then Ekial grinned. “If there’s no wind blowing up there, my men and I might make a few charges in the direction of the Atazaks. If we can excite the venom-spitters, they might just eliminate about half of our enemies up there, and we won’t even have to draw our sabres.”
“How many men do you think Narasan will let us have?” Longbow asked Padan then.
“I’ll suggest ten cohorts,” Padan replied. “If Rabbit’s idea of stopping the wind works like it should, we won’t have any venom raining down on us, so ten cohorts should be enough. Are we going to take some Maags along as well?”
“Probably so. Sorgan’s idea of mixing people together during this little unpleasant mess to the north makes good sense. We’ve come up with quite a few useful ideas working that way during the past two wars, and there’s no reason to believe that it won’t work this time as well. Oh, tell Sorgan and Narasan that we’ll be taking Rabbit and Keselo with us. Between them, those two come up with very useful ideas every now and then.”
Keselo was walking along beside Ekial, and Longbow, who was just ahead of them, could hear them speaking quite clearly.
“I’ve been wondering about something, Prince Ekial,” Keselo said. “Have the Malavi ever used horses to carry things, or are they only for riding?”
“They started out as animals that carried things for us,” Ekial replied. “Riding them came a bit later. Why do you ask?”
“As you probably noticed during the war in Veltan’s Domain, we had a number of war-engines that turned out to be very useful. Unfortunately, they’re very heavy, so it takes a lot of men to move them. I was thinking about that here recently. This grassland is fairly level, so if we were to cobble some sleds together and mount the war-engines on them, your horses could probably pull those sleds along quite smoothly—and quite a bit faster than men could ever move them.”
“You’re talking about those catapult things that threw big gobs of liquid fire at the bug-people, aren’t you?” Ekial asked. Then he grinned. “Dropping those gobs of fire on the Atazaks would make life a bit unpleasant for them, wouldn’t it?” Then he squinted at Keselo. “I don’t think I’ve seen any of your catapults up here, though.”
“There wasn’t enough room on our ships to bring them along when we came up here from the south, so we’ll have to build new ones.” Keselo looked out over the grassland. “There might be a bit of a problem, though. I don’t think I’ve seen very many trees out here, so there’s nothing we can use to build them.” He sighed. “Oh, well,” he said. “It was an interesting idea, but I don’t see any way we’d be able to make new catapults.”
Longbow turned. “Don’t throw good ideas away until you’ve considered all of your options, Keselo,” he said. “There are plenty of trees off to the west in Tonthakan, and Padan will have ten cohorts joining us in a day or so. You can take a couple o
f those cohorts off to the west to cut down trees and make catapults. Then you’ll be able to mount them on sleds.” He turned to Ekial. “Do you think you’ll be able to train your horses to pull those sleds and get the catapults here where we’ll need them?”
“I was going to talk with him about that. There’s no real reason why the horses would have to do that all by themselves, is there? We pull things around fairly often in the Land of Malavi, but the horse has to have a rider to tell him what to do. If we tied one end of the ropes to the catapult sleds and the other end to the saddles of our horses, we’d be able to skid them along without too much trouble.”
“It looks like Sorgan Hook-Beak knew what he was talking about,” Keselo said then. “If you get people together from several different cultures, sooner or later they’ll come up with a solution to almost any problem, won’t they?” Then he straightened. “I’d better go speak with Sub-Commander Padan,” he said. “We’re going to need quite a few barrels of naphtha, pitch, and tar if we’re going to be throwing fire missiles at the Atazak invaders.”
“Do you have to wait until the last minute to mix them together?” Ekial asked.
“It’s much too dangerous to mix them before the last minute,” Keselo explained. “One spark will set fire to the mix, so we always wait until the last possible minute.”
“You’re the expert, Keselo,” Ekial said. “To be honest with you, I don’t want to get anywhere near that concoction.”
The weather turned foul the following morning. A steady drizzle of rain mixed with snow fell out of a gloomy sky as they set out.
Rabbit came back from farther on ahead of the rest of them. “It looks to me like Dahlaine’s got the wind pretty much under control,” he told Longbow and the others. “This storm might hang over us for a day or so, because it’s not going anywhere. The rain and snow are coming straight down, and there’s not a hint of a breeze in the air.”