The Elder Gods (23 page)

Her first pass at Aracia’s arbitrary zone of ice left a path of slush a half mile wide. Her next pass doubled the width of the path, and the steam she generated was very much like a fog bank.

“Enough, Veltan!” Mother Sea said sharply.

“She’s not really hurting anything, Mother.”

“Oh, yes she is. The water’s starting to boil, and it’s killing all the fish. Make her stop.”

“Yes, Mother,” he replied obediently. “Could you perhaps push the slush aside, though? Ice seems to bother the Trogites, for some reason. Their ships are slow enough to begin with, and if they start being overly cautious, it could be midsummer before they reach the coast of Dhrall.”

“I’ll take care of it, Veltan, and I’ll add a little current behind them to hurry them along.”

“That would be very nice, Mother,” Veltan thanked her. He hesitated. “Would it be all right if I let my pet smash a few more of these ice mountains? I won’t let her boil the water, but she’s having so much fun that I hate to make her stop just now. She’ll get tired in a little while, and then I’ll put her to bed. I’ve been running her a little hard here lately, so she needs a bit of playtime.”

“Oh, all right, I suppose, but be sure you don’t let her boil the water anymore.”

“I promise,” he replied.

Castano was a large seaport on the north coast of the Trogite Empire, and the harbor was filled with broad-beamed vessels that were obviously designed to carry a great deal of cargo. The city itself was surrounded by thick, high walls, and what Veltan could see of it raised some memories of the town of Weros, over in the Land of Dhrall. For some reason, the more civilized people of the world seemed to be afraid of open space, since their houses were all tightly crowded together. Unlike the houses in Weros, however, most of the houses of Castano were made of stone. That made them sturdy, of course, but they were probably cold and damp in the winter. Like the Maags, the Trogites appeared to believe that the streets of their towns were the most convenient place to dispose of their trash.

Veltan saw a large encampment just to the south of the city. He assumed that Narasan’s army was there, but he didn’t stop. He was fairly sure that Narasan wouldn’t move until he received at least a token payment, so he passed on over Castano and went on to a small fishing village of perhaps a dozen houses a few leagues off to the west and rather carefully examined several fishing sloops to get a general idea of how they were constructed. Then he moved on to a deserted beach and built one of his own with a single thought. It was faster to do it that way than it would have been to duplicate Trogite coins and then spend the rest of the afternoon haggling with some smelly old fisherman.

The sloop he’d just built appeared to be a fair duplicate of the ones he’d seen in the harbor of the village, so he pushed her off the beach. It took him a little while to determine which of the ropes raised, lowered, or turned the single sail, but it wasn’t really all that complicated, so his sloop was soon running before a good following breeze back along the coast in the general direction of Castano. He found it to be quite exhilarating, and he wondered why he’d never tried sailing before. Of course, the weather wasn’t bad, and the breeze was going in the right direction, so things weren’t too difficult.

When he reached Castano he sent out a searching thought and located the soldier named Gunda, whom he’d met in Narasan’s compound back in Kaldacin. He eased his little sloop up to the pier where Gunda was conferring with several other Trogites. “Ho, Gunda!” he called.

“Is that you, Veltan?” Gunda sounded startled.

“It was the last time I looked. Is Commander Narasan anywhere nearby?”

“He’s over in the encampment just south of town. What in the world are you doing in that rickety little sloop?”

“I thought it might be easier to come here from Dhrall by boat than it’d be to walk.”

“Very funny, Veltan. Did you actually sail all the way from Dhrall in that rickety thing?”

“It wasn’t too bad. We’ve had a stroke of luck, and I think we should take advantage of it while we can. Some freakish ocean current just opened a channel through the ice floes, and if we hurry, we should be able to get through before it closes up again. Could you send for Narasan, please? You might mention the word
pay
in your message. That should bring him running.”

“You’ve got
that
much gold in that broken-down sloop?” Gunda demanded incredulously.

“Do I really look that stupid, Gunda? Let’s just say that I’ve got enough with me to get Narasan’s attention. I’ll give him the rest when we reach Dhrall. You’d better start things moving. I think we’ll want to leave here first thing tomorrow morning. That channel through the ice won’t last forever, so we’d better get cracking.”

Veltan made some show of tidying up his little sloop after Gunda had left, squaring away the sail, coiling ropes, and generally making her presentable. He stayed at it long enough to bore any curious onlookers, and then he went up to the bow and ducked down out of sight. He reached back over his shoulder and took a gold brick out of nowhere. He set it at the very bow. Then he took another brick and put it behind the first one. When there were ten of them, he stood up and covered them with a bit of canvas. If his calculations were correct, he had roughly the equivalent of five thousand Trogite gold crowns to get Narasan’s attention, and if Narasan wanted to see more, the channel through the ice was open now, so taking him to the Land of Dhrall should be fairly easy.

Narasan had discarded his beggar’s rags, and he looked quite imposing in his tight-fitting black leather uniform and heavy metal helmet and breastplate. He was also wearing a sheathed sword belted at his waist, and the heavy-looking handle suggested that the sword was for business, not for show. “Where in the world did you get that tub, Veltan?” he demanded from the pier, looking at Veltan’s sloop with a certain disdain.

Veltan shrugged. “I bought her from a fisherman. I needed a boat. She doesn’t look like much, but she sails well.”

“Is that a Dhrallish boat?”

Veltan shook his head. “It’s a Trogite fishing sloop. Dhralls don’t build sloops, and I didn’t feel up to paddling a Dhrall canoe all the way here. I have something I’d like to show you, and then we’ll need to talk.”

“All right,” Narasan agreed. “See if you can hold your sloop steady. I don’t swim very well—particularly not in full uniform.” He gingerly climbed down the ladder that was attached to the pier, while Veltan snugged his sloop up against the ladder with a long-handled hook. Narasan awkwardly dropped the last few feet into the sloop. “What was it you wanted me to see?” he asked Veltan.

“It’s up in the bow. Drag that canvas out of the way.”

Narasan went forward and turned the canvas back. “Well, well, well,” he said, staring at the gold bricks, “aren’t they pretty.”

“I thought you might like them.”

“That’s hardly two hundred, though.”

“I know. I didn’t really want to sink my sloop with all that weight. Let’s just call it a demonstration of good faith. The rest of the gold’s back in Dhrall. These should give you some idea of the size and weight of the standard block.”

Narasan hefted one of the bricks. “Heavy,” he noted. “How can you buy anything with something this bulky?”

“We don’t use them for money, Commander.” Veltan reminded him. “They’re mostly just for decoration—ceilings, bracelets, door handles, and the like. . . . Now, then, we’ll need to move at least part of your army to Dhrall immediately. We’ve discovered that the enemy forces will attack very soon. We have other soldiers that are already in place, but you’ll probably have to reinforce them. My sister’s been hiring an army off to the west, and she’s sent a part of that army to her Domain. She has more on the way, but they might not reach Dhrall in time.”

Narasan’s eyes narrowed. “The only people I’ve ever heard of that live beyond the western sea are the Maags.”

“So?”

“We don’t get along very well with the Maags.”

“I’ve heard about that. This war doesn’t really have anything to do with friendship. You don’t have to like the Maags, Commander Narasan; you just have to fight alongside them. The only thing you and the Maags need to concern yourselves about is the gold we’re paying you—and whether you’ll live long enough to spend it.”

“That’s blunt enough, but it gets your point across.”

“I don’t really have time for diplomacy, Commander. I
must
help my sister ward off an invasion. You’ll be meeting a Maag sea captain who goes by the name of Sorgan Hook-Beak before long. My sister believes that he’s competent, but I’ll let you make your own judgement about that when the fighting begins.”

Narasan grunted. “You’re the one who’s paying the bills,” he conceded. “Did you happen to remember that map you promised to draw for us?”

“Of course,” Veltan lied. “I’ll go get it for you.” He went off toward the stern of his sloop, conjuring up a picture of Dhrall in his mind as he went. It occurred to him, however, that the map didn’t need to be
too
accurate. There might very well be times in the not too distant future when he’d need to move soldiers from one place to another in the Land of Dhrall in a hurry, and if the real distances between here and there were represented accurately on the map, the Trogites might begin to realize that more was happening than he’d told them.
Some
people in this world have no difficulty with the notion of miracles, but Veltan was fairly certain that Trogite soldiers weren’t very likely to fit into that category. The map he created sort of resembled the Land of Dhrall, but it was a much smaller version.

He rolled the vellum map up and took it to the bow of the sloop, where Narasan was fondling the gold bricks. “This is about as close as I can come, Commander,” he apologized, handing the map to the soldier. “Some of the distances aren’t really very accurate.”

“That’s all right, Veltan,” Narasan said. “All I really need is a general layout of the territory.” He studied the map for a few moments. “Do your people have any kind of army that might be of any use at all?” he asked.

Veltan smiled faintly. “My people don’t even know what the word ‘army’ means, Commander,” he confessed. “Zelana’s people have occasional squabbles with each other, but they have a tribal society, and that means that all the men pick up their weapons and go out in a disorganized mass to meet the enemy tribe. After a dozen or so men are killed, they usually suspend hostilities and enter into extended negotiations. Most of their weapons are fairly crude and ineffective. The only exception to that is the archers. There’s a Dhrall in my sister Zelana’s Domain named Longbow who doesn’t seem to know how to miss, and he can have four arrows in the air all at the same time.”

“Now,
that
I’d like to see.”

“I’m sure you’ll meet him before too long. The people of the Northern Domain of my brother Dahlaine are pretty much the same as the people of the West. The Domains of my sister Aracia and mine are mostly farmland, and our people are primarily farmers. They don’t fight people; they fight the soil and the weather instead.” He paused. “How many men can you put to sea right now?”

Narasan squinted at the sky. “Probably about twenty thousand. The bulk of my army’s still marching here from Kaldacin. You arrived here about a week early, so we aren’t quite ready.”

“Twenty thousand might be a little light, but I guess it’ll have to do.” Veltan looked at the Trogite ships. “I don’t think your ships will move very fast, so you and I should go on ahead.”

“In
this
thing?” Narasan demanded.

“She may not look like much, Commander, but she’s very fast. Your second in command’s Gunda, right?”

Narasan nodded.

“I think we’d better go have a talk with him. There’s an open channel through the ice zone right now. It’s one of those seasonal things. Gunda shouldn’t have any trouble reaching the coast of Dhrall, but he needs to know exactly where to put your advance force ashore. We’ll be several days ahead of him, and that should give you and Sorgan Hook-Beak time to work out some details. There’s snow up in the mountains now, but the weather could break at any time, and as soon as it does, the enemy army will invade my sister’s Domain, and we’ll have to be ready to meet them.”

Narasan shrugged. “You’re the one who’s financing all this, Veltan,” he said, “so we’ll do it your way.”

LATTASH

1

R
abbit had no memories of his mother. He’d been raised from early childhood by Ashar Beer-Belly, a relative of some sort, Rabbit assumed, though Beer-Belly could never quite remember exactly what that relationship was. In general, Beer-Belly was a kindly blacksmith in the port city of Weros on the west coast of the Land of Maag, and when he was sober—which didn’t happen too often—he gave his small nephew instructions in the fine art of working with iron. Despite his bad habits, Rabbit’s uncle Beer-Belly was a truly masterful smithy, and his teachings took Rabbit far beyond the capabilities of ordinary apprentices.

And so it was that by the time that Rabbit was about twelve years old, his skills went far beyond those of most adult blacksmiths. He concealed that out of necessity. More and more frequently, Uncle Beer-Belly’s fondness for strong drink incapacitated him, and Rabbit was obliged to deceive prospective customers with assorted excuses, which had almost no element of truth in them. Of course, “He’s not here right now,” was very true, given Beer-Belly’s condition at the time.

The smithy’s regular customers noticed a distinct improvement in the products of Beer-Belly’s smithy at about that time.

There were a few drawbacks, however. Rabbit could do most of the work during the daylight hours, but the finer details required a certain amount of caution on his part, so he was obliged to close all the doors and windows and work at night, as quietly as possible.

Several neighbors complained about “all that whangin’ and bangin’ in the middle of the night,” but Rabbit had come up with a long line of excuses, so he was able to fend them off—most of the time.