The Elder Gods (17 page)
It was most probably the terror inspired by silent arrows coming out of the darkness with deadly accuracy that ultimately sent the seamen aboard five ships over the sides to swim through the chill, choppy waters of the harbor to the safety of the beach, and Longbow added to that terror by placing his arrows where they would be very visible. An arrow in the heart will kill a man, certainly, but in most cases few men will see the fatal arrow protruding from the dead man’s body. Longbow, therefore, carefully took aim at foreheads rather than chests, and of course he never missed. Three or four dead men with arrows protruding from their foreheads convey a message too clear to be misunderstood.
Rabbit, crouched low in the darkness, fed arrow after arrow into his friend’s right hand, and Longbow fed arrow after arrow to the men of Kajak’s ships.
Finally, all hope aboard the five ships fluttered and died when Kajak, screaming orders and curses, broke off quite suddenly when
his
forehead sprouted a single quivering arrow.
Everybody
went over the sides of the ships at that point.
“We won!” Rabbit exclaimed. “We actually won!”
“Not quite yet,” Longbow said, carefully taking up one of his old stone-tipped arrows. He rose to his feet, his eyes searching the beach. “There,” he said, drawing his bow and loosing his arrow all in a single move.
The arrow arched high over the dark water of the bay, and it unerringly found the grey-hooded figure which had been howling in frustration since the rain had extinguished the fires on the five ships surrounding the
Seagull.
The hooded figure shrieked in agony as the venom-tainted arrow buried itself in its chest. Then it fell writhing on the sand, stiffened, and went limp.
“What was that all about?” Rabbit demanded.
“That one was the true enemy, my little friend,” Longbow replied. “It’s gone now, though, so we don’t need to worry about it anymore.”
“There were enough enemies out here to suit
me,
Longbow,” Rabbit said. “I can’t believe that we actually came out on top. There were only two of us, so I wasn’t about to place any large bets on this. Why did you shoot everybody in the forehead like that?”
“I wanted the ones who were still alive to realize just exactly what to expect. An arrow in the chest might not be visible if the dead man falls forward. An arrow in the head’s almost always right out in plain sight.”
“I still can’t hardly believe that only two people could win a fight with the crews of five ships.”
“The fight wasn’t really all that serious, Rabbit. Our arrows were coming out of the dark, so no one on Kajak’s ships could be certain just exactly where we were, and as long as nobody was steering the ships of the man who used to be called Kajak, the
Seagull
was in no real danger.”
“You’ve got a very peculiar way of looking at the world, Longbow. If they used to call him Kajak, what do they call him now?”
Longbow shrugged. “‘Dead,’ probably,” he replied.
“The one on the beach isn’t laughing anymore,” Longbow briefly advised Zelana and Eleria a short while later.
“Good,” Zelana replied. “I told you that those iron arrowheads would be better than the stone ones.”
“Perhaps,” Longbow admitted, “but I saved a few of the old ones for special occasions.”
“Whatever for?” Eleria asked.
“My stone arrows had all been dipped in venom,” Longbow explained. “It seemed proper to me that the creature of the Wasteland who was behind what happened here tonight receive something special.”
“I’m sure it appreciated that,” Zelana said dryly.
“The shouts it was making after my arrow reached it were not exactly shouts of joy, Zelana,” Longbow said with a faint smile.
Then Sorgan, Ox, and Ham-Hand came bursting into Zelana’s cabin. They all seemed to be agitated. “Why didn’t you tell us what Kajak was up to, Longbow?” Sorgan demanded. His voice was just a bit shrill.
“It wasn’t necessary,” Longbow replied. “Rabbit and I were able to deal with it. It’s always best in such situations to use as few warriors as possible. The more that we involve, the more confusion’s likely to turn up.”
“But
Rabbit?
” Ox exclaimed. “Rabbit’s never been any good in a fight. He’s too small.”
“He did what was necessary,” Longbow pointed out. “He’s as quick with his hands as he is with his feet. He passed arrows to me faster than any other man on the
Seagull
could have, and that’s what I needed. I didn’t need to kill
all
the men on those ships, only the ones manning the tillers. Rabbit and I were able to do that without any help. Everything came out the way we wanted it to, so why are you all so excited now that it’s over?”
“You’re a cold one, Longbow,” Sorgan observed. “Nothing rattles you at all, does it?”
“I’m a hunter, Sorgan. A hunter who gets excited at the wrong time doesn’t eat regularly.”
“About all that saved us was that freak rainstorm,” Ham-Hand declared accusingly. “If that hadn’t come along, we’d have been in a lot of trouble. How did you know it was coming?”
Longbow touched his nose. “I smelled it,” he lied glibly. “Have you been at sea for all these years without learning how to recognize the smell of approaching rain?”
Sorgan looked directly at Zelana. “If you’ve got an army of men like Longbow working for you, why do you need us?” he demanded.
“Because I
don’t
have that many Longbows, Sorgan,” she replied. “He’s unique. There’s nobody else like him in the whole world. He shoots arrows very fast, but he thinks even faster. The time will come—before very long, I believe—when he’ll make certain suggestions. If you want to go on living, pay very close attention to what he says, and do exactly what he tells you to do.”
Eleria came to where Longbow was sitting and held out her arms to him. He picked her up and seated her on his lap. “I’d do as the Beloved tells you to do, Hook-Big,” she said.
“That’s Hook-Beak,” he absently corrected her again.
She shrugged. “Whatever. Longbow’s the best in the world, and the Beloved says that he’s
mine
, so you’d better be awfully nice to me, don’t you think?”
“Every time I turn around, somebody
else
is trying to give me orders,” Sorgan complained.
“It does seem to be working out that way, doesn’t it?” Eleria said, yawning. “If we’ve said everything that needs to be said, I think I’ll take a little nap. I didn’t get much sleep last night because of all the shouting and running back and forth. Do me a favor and try to fight quieter battles, Hook-Big. I really need my rest.” Then she kissed Longbow, snuggled down in his arms, and immediately went to sleep.
C
harity?” the ragged beggar said in a tentative sort of voice as Veltan of the South passed him on a quiet street near the forum of the Trogite city of Kaldacin on a blustery winter morning.
“Of course,” Veltan replied, fumbling around for his purse. Veltan was still having some problems with the concept of money. He had to admit that it was much more convenient than barter, but he kept losing track of the relative value of coins made from different metals. He gave the beggar a few brass coins and continued down the street toward the forum.
It was winter now, and Veltan didn’t care much for winter, since his Domain in the Land of Dhrall was largely given over to farming, and farmers much prefer spring and summer. The winter sky was perpetually overcast, the bare trees all seemed dead, and there were no flowers. The Trogites of Kaldacin, however, appeared to be immune to the innate melancholy of the season. Trogites in general had very high opinions of themselves, no matter what part of the Empire they called home, but the Trogites of Kaldacin seemed to believe that their city was the very center of the universe, and that simply living inside its walls automatically elevated them far above not only the people of other lands, but also above those Trogites unfortunate enough to live in some other city or village.
The city itself was magnificent, of course. Quite obviously, an unimaginable amount of labor had gone into its construction, but Veltan could not quite grasp the “why” of the entire thing. Nobody really
needed
houses that big. The towering walls around the city might possibly have been necessary— assuming that there were enemies in the vicinity—but Veltan had a strong suspicion that the walls were merely for show.
The Trogites favored stone for their houses and other buildings, and that certainly made sense to Veltan. Wood burns, but stone usually doesn’t. The marble sheathing was decorative, certainly, but hadn’t the Trogites of Kaldacin had anything better to do with their time?
The “public buildings” made no sense whatsoever at first, but as Veltan had come to know the Trogites a bit better, he had begun to realize that they all seemed to desperately need grand displays to prove to others (and probably to themselves even more) that they were very important. Any hint of a lack of importance seemed to gnaw at the very soul of the average Trogite.
Thus it was that there were enormous marble-sheathed palaces, meeting halls, temples, and mercantile establishments, usually perched atop the hills within the city walls.
Grandest of all, of course, was the imperial palace, the home of the glorious Emperor Gacian. The palace teemed with assorted servants, counselors, and other miscellaneous hangers-on, all vying for the exalted emperor’s attention. After a few hints, Veltan managed to buy his way into an audience with His Imperial Majesty, but the exalted Gacian turned out to be a brainless incompetent with little or no understanding of the meaning of the word
army.
“You’re wasting your time here, you know,” an elderly, mantle-clad counselor in the palace of Gacian had advised Veltan after the two of them had become acquainted. “The real authority here in Kaldacin lies in the hands of the Palvanum. They make the laws and decide what course the Empire will take.”
“And where will I find them?” Veltan asked.
“In the forum at the center of the city. If you tell the Palvani what you want and what you’re willing to pay, I’m sure you’ll be able to strike an accord with them.”
It hadn’t turned out that way, however. The individual Palvani were all quite willing to accept Veltan’s money in return for vague promises to “bring the matter to the attention of my colleagues,” but the matter never seemed to come up in the august chamber where most of the Palvani slept through the endless orations of their fellow members.
Veltan of the South wasted yet another afternoon in the forum trying to find somebody—
anybody
—with enough authority to have control over the Trogite army.
As the cloudy sky to the west flamed with the incipient sunset, Veltan gave up and went back toward the south gate of Kaldacin. There were lodgings available within the city, of course, but Veltan was immune to the weather and he didn’t need sleep. He much preferred to spend his nights out in the fields. The air was sweeter, and he could see the moon more clearly. Veltan was very fond of the moon, and he missed her.
He hadn’t felt that way when Mother Sea had first banished him. He still felt a certain resentment about Mother Sea’s peremptory response to his joking suggestion that she might be prettier if she wore stripes. Mother Sea seemed to have no sense of humor at all. She took everything so seriously. Veltan obviously hadn’t been serious when he’d gone on at great length about the beauty of contrasting shades of blue and how lovely Mother Sea would look if she adorned her surface with carefully blended stripes ranging from pale, pale blue all the way across the spectrum to royal purple. He’d intended simply to amuse her, but she hadn’t laughed. Instead, she had pointed at the moon and said, “Go there, Veltan! Go now!”
“But . . .” Veltan had protested.
“Go!”
And so it had been that Veltan had spent the next ten eons camped out on the pocked face of the world’s baby sister, staring longingly down—or up—at the round blue ball he’d once called home. He’d ventured out among the stars a few times, but that was even worse. There was a dreadful emptiness between the stars that filled Veltan with an overwhelming loneliness. At least he could look at the earth from the surface of the moon. It had made him homesick, of course, but it was better than the vast blackness of the universe.
In time he’d grown fonder of the moon, and she’d evidently sensed his growing affection for her, and she had finally spoken to him. “That was a silly thing to say, you know,” had been her first words to him. “Stripes, Veltan? You’re lucky that she didn’t feed you to her fish.”
“I was only joking,” he’d protested.
“I know that,” the moon had replied, “but the Sea doesn’t know how to laugh. Everybody knows that. I’ll speak with her and see if I can persuade her to relent.”
“She never listens,” he’d replied in a gloomy voice.
“You’re wrong, Veltan. She
always
listens to me. I can disrupt her tides any time I choose, and she absolutely
hates
that.” Then, to Veltan’s astonishment, the moon had giggled. They’d gotten along very well after that. Unlike Mother Sea or Father Earth, the moon definitely had a sense of humor, and Veltan had passed the endless centuries telling her outrageous jokes.
Even after Mother Sea had relented and allowed him to come home again, Veltan had continued to maintain contact with the moon, and he frequently visited her.
“Charity?” It was that same ragged beggar Veltan had seen the previous morning.
“Is this your customary place of business?” Veltan asked him.
The beggar shrugged. “It’s fairly well protected from the wind, and if it starts to rain, I can take shelter under that archway. You seem troubled, stranger. What’s bothering you?”
Veltan sat down on the curbstone beside the beggar. “I thought this city was the center of power here in the Trogite Empire, but I can’t seem to find anybody here who has any kind of authority. I’ve been trying to find somebody here who’ll rent me an army, but I can’t find anybody who’s willing to even discuss it.”