The Elder Gods (16 page)

“But Skell’s fleet won’t be here for much longer, Rabbit,” Longbow reminded him. “They’ll be sailing off to Dhrall within the next few days, and then there won’t be very many ships here to guard the
Seagull.
”

“
That’s
when we might need to start worrying just a bit,” Rabbit conceded. “Sorgan’s going to be sending ships away, and Kajak’s going to be calling ships in. I think maybe I’ll go visit a few taverns this evening. Maag sailors do a lot of drinking when they’re in port, and drunk sailors talk an awful lot. Sometimes they say things they wouldn’t say if they were stone-cold sober. If I set my mind to it, I can look a whole lot drunker than I really am, so people don’t pay too much attention to me. I’ll let you know what I find out.”

“That might be useful, Rabbit,” Longbow agreed. “I’ll tell Zelana about our suspicions, but I don’t think we need to tell Sorgan about them just yet. We’ll need to know more before we get him all worked up.” He turned and went aft to Zelana’s cabin.

“What have you been doing, Longbow?” Zelana asked him when he came in.

“Looking for sign,” he replied.

“What a peculiar term.”

“It has to do with hunting. The animals of the forest leave marks on the forest floor and on the trees and bushes that a hunter can follow if he knows how to recognize them. Rabbit’s helping me.”

“You really like him, don’t you?” Eleria asked.

“He’s very clever, but he hides his cleverness well. He’s going to the beach this evening to look for sign in the taverns where the Maag seamen drink the juice that makes them foolish. It’s possible that some seamen of Kajak’s tribe will become foolish enough to say things that Kajak would rather they didn’t. If Kajak is really the one you saw in your dream, the ordinary seamen of his ship and those of his cousins will know about it. Rabbit’s going to be off in some corner pretending that he’s far gone in drink. Kajak’s people will think that he’s asleep, and they’ll talk to each other as if he wasn’t there.”

“You’ve changed, Longbow,” Zelana observed. “You wouldn’t have done this sort of thing back in Dhrall.”

“It’s not all that much different from what I did back in the forest, Zelana,” he disagreed. “I still hunt, but the hunting ground has changed, that’s all. My eventual target is still a creature of the Wasteland, but I may have to kill several shiploads of the kinsmen of the one called Kajak before I can get a clear bowshot at the servant of the Vlagh. In good time, however, I
will
find it, and then I’ll kill it. That’s what hunting is all about, isn’t it?”

“It turns out that you were right, Longbow,” Rabbit said very quietly when the two of them met in the bow of the
Seagull
at dawn the following morning. “A fair number of Kajak’s crewmen were falling-down drunk last evening, and their mouths were running a mile a minute. I was lucky enough to catch a few bits here and some pieces there, and it’s starting to come together.”

“You’re a good hunter, Rabbit,” Longbow congratulated his little friend. “Where does the trail you found go?”

“That’s a woodsy way to put it,” Rabbit noted, “but down at the bottom it comes fairly close. Kajak’s sailors were all agreed that the idea of letting
any
gold get away from him makes Kajak want to break down and cry. Cap’n Sorgan told him about all that gold over in Dhrall, but that was only words. Kajak saw
real
gold here on board the
Seagull,
and he wants it. He’ll worry about the gold in Dhrall
after
he steals the gold here in Maag. You were also right when you said that Kajak and his cousins won’t do a thing until after Skell leads most of the fleet off toward the east. They said that so many times that I got a little sick of hearing about it. They don’t know exactly when Skell’s planning to sail away, but they’re hoping that he won’t do it for several more days. They’ve got five ships here in the harbor of Kweta, but there’s more on the way. They aren’t
too
thrilled about taking on the ships that guard the
Seagull
when there’s an even match. They’d be a lot happier if they could make their move when they outnumber us by about three to one. The way they seem to see it is that they’ll have to make their move during the night after Skell moves out. The word’s out all over Maag about what the cap’n’s doing and how much he’ll pay, so more ships are coming here every day. If they hold off too long, they’ll be outnumbered again. If Skell sails before their friends get here, they’ll have to move whether they like it or not. They
have
come up with an idea that might give them an edge, though.”

“And it involves fire, doesn’t it?” Longbow suggested.

“You knew that all along, didn’t you?”

“It was just a guess. It needed some confirmation before I could base any plan on it.”

“We’d better warn the cap’n,” Rabbit said gravely.

“That won’t be necessary. The captain and the rest of the crew would only get in our way.”

“Are you trying to tell me that just the two of us are going to fight off five Maag longships all by ourselves?” Rabbit demanded incredulously.

“Of course not, Rabbit,” Longbow replied with a faint smile. “Zelana and Eleria will help us. That’s all the help we’re going to need.”

“Have you been drinking?” Rabbit asked suspiciously.

“Rabbit’s visit to the local taverns confirmed our suspicions, Zelana,” Longbow reported a little later. “It
will
be Kajak who’ll come bearing fire. That’s going to be our first enemy. Can you make it rain?”

“I’ll speak with Mother Sea about it. I’m sure she’ll be happy to oblige. What did you have in mind?”

“When Kajak’s men row their skiffs up to the ships of Sorgan’s kinsmen and throw their torches, rain would put out the fires before they could spread. Then Kajak’s going to have to fight five ships when he only wants to fight one. He might just give up at that point and try to sail away from here.” Longbow paused and thought for a moment. “I don’t think we should let him get away. There are a lot of Maag ships nearby, and Kajak’s not the only greedy one. Other Maag ship captains might find his plan very interesting. If he’s dead, he won’t be able to tell his plan to others here in the world of the living. I don’t think we’ll need to be very worried about what he says in the world of the dead, but I don’t know very much about the world of the dead. If you think it might cause us some problems, you might want to look into it.”

“You’re teasing me, aren’t you, Longbow?”

“I wouldn’t even consider doing something like that, holy Zelana,” he replied with an absolutely straight face. “I’ve given this a great deal of thought, and I don’t think we’ll want to bring this to Sorgan’s attention. Rabbit and I can deal with it by ourselves, and Sorgan would just be in the way.”

“You’ve been in the Land of Maag too long. You seem to have picked up their habit of boasting. You don’t
really
believe that you and Rabbit can attend to Kajak all by yourselves, do you?”

“Kajak’s
only
got five ships, Zelana. That shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

“He said that as if he really believes it, Beloved,” Eleria noted.

“I know. And that’s starting to worry me.”

Sorgan’s cousin Skell was finishing his preparations to set sail for the Land of Dhrall with the Maag ships that had been gathered so far, and Longbow spoke privately with Red-Beard. “It’s not a matter of any great concern,” he told his friend. “I’ll see to it that Kajak doesn’t live to see the sun come up on the morning after he comes to visit the
Seagull.
One or two of his kinsmen may see that things aren’t going very well, and they might decide to leave here in a hurry. If they should happen to try to join Skell’s fleet, you might want to let Skell know what they tried to do here in the harbor of Kweta. I don’t think Skell’s going to want people like that in his fleet.”

“I’ll do that,” Red-Beard promised. “Should I warn Skell that the servants of the Vlagh are venomous?”

Longbow considered it. “Probably not until his fleet reaches Lattash,” he decided. “Let’s get him there before we tell him the whole truth. The Maags are much bigger than the creatures of the Wasteland, so they have a much longer reach. Their swords and spears should give them an advantage when the fighting starts.”

“We’ll do it that way, then,” Red-Beard agreed. “Do you want me to carry some message to your chief, Old-Bear?”

“If you happen to be near him at any time after you return to Dhrall, you might tell him that I’m well, that I’ll rejoin the tribe before the snow grows too deep, and that we’re now almost ready to fight a war.”

“I’ll do that, friend Longbow.”

“You’re a very dependable man, friend Red-Beard, and much, much wiser than your humorous behavior makes you appear.”

“It’s paid off many times, friend Longbow,” Red-Beard replied with a broad smile. “When people are laughing, they’ll usually do what you want them to do.”

“You’re even more clever than I’d thought, friend Red-Beard.” Longbow smiled faintly. “These are very unusual times, aren’t they? I’ve never called a man of another tribe my friend before.”

“It’s a very rare thing,” Red-Beard agreed. Then he flashed a quick grin at Longbow. “Fun, though,” he added in an imitation of one of Eleria’s favorite expressions.

Longbow burst out laughing, and the two of them clasped hands in an age-old gesture of friendship.

7

H
ow can you be so certain that it’s going to rain, Longbow?” Rabbit asked as the two of them crouched well out of sight near the bow of the
Seagull
watching as the five skiffs approached the ships of Sorgan’s kinsmen.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Rabbit,” Longbow replied. “It’ll rain when it’s necessary, and the ships guarding the
Seagull
won’t burn. Now, then, this is the way we’re going to do this. I want you to stay low and hand me arrows just as fast as you can. My right hand’s going to stay in one place—very close to the bowstring—and you’re going to put the arrows right between my fingers. If we do it like that, we’ll be able to put out twice as many arrows as I could shoot without your help.”

“There’s going to be five shiploads of unfriendly people out there, Longbow. No matter how fast you can shoot, that’s still an awful lot of people to kill off.”

“We don’t
have
to kill them all, Rabbit,” Longbow patiently explained. “A ship won’t go where its captain wants it to go unless there’s somebody at the tiller to point it in the right direction. You and I’ll only have five targets to shoot at, and between us, we can have five arrows in the air all at the same time.”

“So
that’s
why you’re so convinced that you and I can do this all by ourselves, isn’t it? A ship without a steersman at the tiller’s likely to wander around all over the harbor for the rest of the night.” Rabbit squinted across the dark water. “That’s going to take some pretty fancy shooting, Longbow,” he observed.

“No more difficult than shooting geese out of the sky, my little friend,” Longbow said. It occurred to him that he’d been calling a goodly number of people “friend” here lately. It seemed appropriate, but it was very odd. Longbow hadn’t called anyone “friend” for at least a half-dozen years.

Can you hear me, Longbow?
he heard what seemed to be a whisper in his left ear.

Very clearly,
he soundlessly replied.

I’ll need to know exactly when those people throw the torches at the ships around us. I don’t want to worry you, so you should know that this rainstorm won’t be very big. It’ll rain on those ships, but it won’t rain anyplace else,
and
it’s only going to rain long enough to put out the fire coming from the torches. We don’t want the crews of those five ships hiding from the rain in the cabin or down in the hold. They need to be where they can protect their own ships.

Right,
Longbow silently agreed.

“If you’re going to do a rain dance or something, you’d better start now,” Rabbit said urgently. “The men in those skiffs just fired up their torches.”

“The rain’s going to start
after
they throw the torches, Rabbit,” Longbow told him. “We’ll want to be sure that they’ve thrown every torch they have before we bring down the rain.”

“You’re cutting it a little fine, Longbow,” Rabbit said in a worried tone.

“Trust me.”

“I
hate
it when somebody says that to me,” Rabbit complained. “Do you want me to blow out that lantern at the bow?”

“Why?”

“So that your arrows will be coming out of the dark. I’ve seen how fast you can shoot arrows, and if between the two of us we can put out twice as many arrows as that, those people out there won’t have any idea of how many people are shooting at them. That’ll probably scare them silly, and maybe they’ll just give up and run away.”

“Not a bad idea, Rabbit,” Longbow conceded. “If they run, we won’t have to waste arrows killing so many. Go blow out that lantern.”

Rabbit scampered forward and extinguished the lantern at the
Seagull
’s bow. “There go the torches, Longbow!” he called in a hoarse whisper, running back to his place.

Rain, Zelana! Rain!
Longbow’s thought crackled.

I thought you’d never ask,
she replied mildly.

There was a sudden flash of lightning and a sharp crack of thunder, immediately followed by a roaring downpour of rain.

The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun, but Longbow was certain that
nothing
would be able to set fire to the five ships now, since water was pouring down their sides in rushing sheets.

“Now, Rabbit!” Longbow said sharply, and he began loosing arrows as fast as he could, dropping the Maags in the skiffs first and then concentrating on the steersmen of each of Kajak’s vessels.

There was much dimly heard shouting coming from the five floundering ships. The oarsmen were in place, of course, but with no one at the tillers, the five ships wandered about the harbor like lost puppies, and every time someone was brave enough—or foolish enough—to rush to the tiller, an arrow came out of the darkness to welcome him. Longbow felt a certain grim amusement when the seamen aboard those ships chose to leap over the sides rather than rush to take the tillers when the captains commanded them to.