The Elder Gods (12 page)

“I’m not sure you should take that there bow with you,” Ham-Hand said dubiously. “It might just make the cap’n a little nervous.”

“It goes any place where I go,” Longbow said curtly. “If that bothers the people here on the
Seagull,
I’ll go back to the forest where I belong.”

“Don’t get excited,” Ham-Hand told him. “We’re all on the same side here.”

Longbow grunted and walked on back toward the stern of the ship.

There was a burly Dhrall with a flaming red beard leaning against the low structure at the rear of the boat. “I am Red-Beard of the tribe of White-Braid,” he introduced himself rather formally.

“And I am Longbow of the tribe of Old-Bear. I was told that Sorgan Hook-Beak wished to speak with me and that Zelana of the West is with him.”

“They are in there, Longbow of Old-Bear’s tribe,” Red-Beard said, pointing at a rectangular opening in the front of the low-roofed structure.

“We will speak again, Red-Beard of White-Braid’s tribe,” Longbow said. The formalities might fade as he and Red-Beard became better acquainted, but for right now formality was probably the more proper way to go.

The child Eleria leaned through the opening Red-Beard had indicated. “He’s here, Beloved,” she called back over her shoulder. “It’s that one who spends all his time killing those he doesn’t like.”

“It’s not right for you to say that, child,” Longbow chided her.

“It’s the truth, isn’t it?”

“Perhaps, but it isn’t polite to come right out and say so.”

“Oh, poo,” she said. Then she held her arms out to him. “Carry me,” she said.

“Did you forget how to walk?”

“No, but I like to be carried, that’s all.”

Longbow smiled faintly, picked her up, and carried her into the place that smelled of tar and had a low roof.

“Welcome, Longbow,” Zelana said. “Why are you carrying Eleria?”

“She wanted me to,” Longbow replied, “and it didn’t particularly bother me.”

“He’s very nice, Beloved,” Eleria said. “He didn’t object in the least little bit to carrying me.” Then she kissed Longbow’s cheek. “You can put me down now,” she said.

“He’s not a dolphin, Eleria,” Zelana chided.

“I know,” Eleria agreed, “but he’ll do until we go back home. I need to kiss things every now and then. You know that.”

Zelana sighed, rolling her eyes upward. “Oh, yes,” she said. “This is Sorgan Hook-Beak of the Land of Maag, Longbow. I believe you’ve met him before.”

“Yes,” Longbow replied. He looked at Sorgan. “The man called Ham-Hand told me that you wanted to speak with me,” he said.

“It’s not really all that important, Longbow,” Sorgan said. “I just wanted to let you know that we’ll make you as comfortable as we can during our voyage. Is there anything you’ll need?”

Longbow shrugged. “A little time every day to fish, is about all. I get hungry now and then.”

“You can eat with the crew, Longbow. We can talk more later. Right now I’d better go get us under way.” Sorgan rose to his feet and went out.

“He isn’t speaking in our language, is he, Zelana?” Longbow asked.

She blinked. “How could you possibly know that?”

“His lips are not shaping the words which are coming from his mouth. Something seems to be changing the language he speaks into ours even while he talks.”

Zelana laughed with obvious delight. “This will embarrass my brother to no end,” she chuckled. “I probably should have noticed that myself. You’re very observant, Longbow.”

“Isn’t that why we have eyes?”

“You’re going to take a bit of getting used to. Do you always jump right to the point like this when you speak?”

He shrugged. “It saves time. Now, will you tell me exactly why you sought me out to come with you? What is it that I’m supposed to do to help you persuade the Maags to come to the Land of Dhrall to kill the servants of the Vlagh for us?”

“I want you to shoot arrows, Longbow.”

“Who or what do you want me to kill?”

“I don’t really need to have you kill anything just yet, Longbow,” she replied. “We’re going to the Land of Maag to fetch warriors to help us fight the creatures of the Wasteland. I want you to shoot arrows at things which are a long way away from where you’re standing, and to hit as many of them as you can. The Maags need to know that the warriors of Dhrall can be as dangerous as the warriors of Maag are. We need their help, but we also need their respect.”

Longbow considered it. “Geese, I think,” he suggested.

“I beg your pardon?”

“People always seem to be startled when they see geese falling down out of the sky with arrows sticking out of them,” Longbow explained. “They don’t seem to realize that arrows can hit things up in the air as well as down on the ground.”

“Can you actually do that, Longbow?” Eleria exclaimed. “I mean, can you really bring geese down from way up in the sky with your bow?”

“It’s not really very difficult, little one,” Longbow said. “Geese fly in straight lines, so it’s easy to know where they’ll be when your arrow reaches them. They’re good to eat, too, so I won’t be killing them for no reason. It’s not right to do that.”

“I think we should keep this one, Beloved,” Eleria said. “And if you don’t want him, can I have him?”

That startled Longbow just a bit.

3

R
ed-Beard sleeps with the Maags Sorgan calls ‘the crew,’” Zelana told Longbow later that afternoon. “He’s a jovial sort of fellow, but he’s very observant. We need to know more about the Maags, so Red-Beard’s taking care of that for us. I think you should sleep in here with Eleria and me, though. We’ll tell the Maags that you’re here to guard me so that nobody gets any improper ideas. The
real
reason is that I’d like to keep you just a bit separate from the Maags, if possible. In a little while, you’ll be doing some fairly spectacular things with your bow, and it might be useful if the Maags of the
Seagull
have a certain amount of awe in their voices when they tell other Maags about you.”

Longbow shrugged. “Whatever seems best to you,” he replied. “How long is this task likely to take?”

“Not too long,” she replied. “Sorgan’s bringing quite a bit of gold back to Maag with him. When he starts showing it to the other Maags, they’ll probably flock to him like vultures.” She frowned. “That didn’t come out exactly right, did it?” she said.

“It’s a possibility we should keep in mind, though,” Longbow suggested. “I’ll watch them. If they seem to be getting
too
hungry, there are ways to persuade them to go eat somebody else.”

Longbow arose at first light the following morning, and he was a bit surprised to find that Zelana was awake. “You don’t sleep very much, do you?” he asked her.

“It isn’t really necessary for me, Longbow,” she replied. “Why are you up so early?”

“I thought it might be useful for me to get to know these Maags a bit better. The more a hunter knows about the creatures he hunts, the more successful he is.”

“You aren’t here to kill them, Longbow,” she chided.

“No,” he agreed, “but
capture
is sometimes more difficult than
kill,
isn’t it?” He took up his bow and went out into the grey light of morning.

There was only the faintest hint of a breeze, but there was enough to tell Longbow that it was coming from the east, and that was very unusual for this time of year. Evidently, Zelana was tampering with things.

There was a faint ringing sound coming from the front of the
Seagull,
and Longbow went forward to see if he could determine the source of that sound.

A small Maag was standing near the front of the
Seagull,
and he was pounding on something that glowed almost as if it had fire deep inside of it.

“What is that,” Longbow asked curiously, “and why are you pounding on it?”

“It’s called iron,” the little Maag replied, “and I’m shaping it with my hammer. Ham-Hand broke his knife the other day, and he wants me to make him a new one. He’s sort of clumsy, so he breaks things all the time.”

“Where is it that you find this iron?”

“I haven’t got no idea at all where it comes from, but all I have to do is work with it. I don’t have to go out and find it. You’re the one called Longbow, aren’t you?”

“That’s what they tell me. Does this iron glow like that all the time?”

“No. I have to heat it up in my fire first. That makes it soft and easier to work with. They call me Rabbit, by the way—probably because I forgot to grow up some time way back when. Anyway, we make all our tools and weapons out of iron. One of my chores here on the
Seagull
is hammering fishhooks out of iron. I’m glad you came along, though. The cap’n told me that maybe I ought to hammer out some arrowheads for you.”

“Stone arrowheads are customary in the Land of Dhrall,” Longbow told him. “They’ve worked well for us in the past. I don’t see any reason to change.”

“Could I see one of your arrows?”

“Of course.” Longbow took an arrow from his quiver and handed it to the small man.

Rabbit carefully examined the arrow. “Do you make these your very own self?” he asked.

“Naturally. If I’m going to be the one who shoots them, I want to be sure that they’ve been made correctly.”

“It must take quite a while to chip one out,” Rabbit observed, “and they wouldn’t all have the same weight, would they?”

“They’re close enough.”

“Why don’t I hammer a few out of iron, and you can look them over. I think they might surprise you. That lady who orders everybody around told me that someday soon you’re likely to need a whole lot of arrows, but she didn’t come right out and tell me how come.”

“I’m going to shoot some geese for the entertainment of your people,” Longbow told him.

“That sort of explains why you’ll need so many,” Rabbit said. “You must lose a lot of arrows when you start whanging them up in the air.”

“They’re easy to find again, Rabbit. The dead geese float.”

“What about the ones that don’t hit no geese?”

“That doesn’t happen.”

“Are you trying to tell me that you don’t never miss?”

“It wouldn’t be useful to miss. How do you go about making arrowheads from this iron?”

“Like I said, I heat it up in a fire until it starts to glow. That means that it’s soft enough to pound into the shape I want.”

“A soft arrowhead wouldn’t be very useful, Rabbit.”

“It don’t stay soft. After I hammer it into the right shape, I dunk it in cold water, and it gets hard again.”

Longbow looked at the beach sliding slowly past as the
Seagull
moved west. “If we’re going to make arrows, we’ll need arrow shafts. I don’t think it’ll be much longer before the
Seagull
leaves the Land of Dhrall behind, so you and I should probably go to the beach and cut saplings before we begin making arrowheads. I’ll speak with Sorgan and tell him what we need to do.”

“That makes sense,” Rabbit agreed. “We’ll have plenty of time to hammer out arrowheads once we get out on the open sea. It’s a long ways between Dhrall and Maag—a whole lot farther than the cap’n seems to realize.”

“But
you
realize how far it is, don’t you?” Longbow said shrewdly.

Rabbit looked around quickly to make sure there wasn’t anybody close. “I think I’d rather you didn’t say anything about that to the cap’n, Longbow,” he said quietly. “He doesn’t pay too much attention to the sky after the sun goes down, and if you know what you’re looking for, you can tell by the location of certain stars just where you are. When that sea current took hold of the
Seagull,
it took her a whole lot farther east than the cap’n— or anybody else—seems to have realized.”

“You’re a very clever man, Rabbit,” Longbow observed. “Why do you go to so much trouble to conceal it?”

Rabbit shrugged. “It makes my life easier,” he said with a sly little grin. “If the cap’n and Ox and Ham-Hand don’t realize that I’ve got something besides air in my head, they won’t expect too much from me. If they happen to find out that I can tell my right hand from my left, they might start ordering me to do things that aren’t quite as easy as the things I have to do now. I’ve always believed that ‘easy’ is a lot nicer than ‘hard,’ don’t you?”

“Your secret’s safe with me, Rabbit. Someday, though—and I don’t think it’s very far off—you and I might have to explore the land of ‘hard,’ and our lives may depend on how well we do it.”

“You just had to go and say that, didn’t you, Longbow?” Rabbit said sourly.

“I just thought I’d warn you, that’s all.”

The
Seagull
turned westward a few days later, and the Land of Dhrall receded behind her, soon dropping below the eastern horizon. The open sea made Longbow a bit edgy. He had always been a creature of the forest, and the vast emptiness of Mother Sea disturbed him.

He also felt twinges of guilt, since he had abandoned his lifelong purpose. He was supposed to be in the forest killing the servants of the Vlagh, or at the burial ground tending to Misty-Water’s grave.

His memory reached back to his meeting with Zelana of the West and child Eleria. Zelana held dominion over the West, and her command to him should have been the law, but it hadn’t been the word of Zelana which had made him agree to go with her to the Land of Maag; it had been the clever word of child Eleria. Her suggestion that the Maags could provide a way to kill more servants of the Vlagh in a short time than he’d be able to kill by himself during a lifetime of hunting had moved him to come on board the
Seagull.

The more he thought about that, the more peculiar it seemed. Zelana had absolute authority in her Domain, but he’d refused her peremptory command quite easily. Eleria, however, had lured him into acceptance with numbers. In a peculiar sort of way Eleria had just imitated Zelana’s approach to Sorgan. Zelana had bought Sorgan with a large number of gold blocks, and then Eleria had bought Longbow with a large number of dead enemies. Their tactics had been almost identical, and that raised a very interesting possibility. Just exactly who
was
Eleria? Her evidently simpleminded need for affection could conceal a hard but devious drive to get what she wanted, which made Zelana look soft by comparison.