The Elder Gods (28 page)

Narasan was staying in Zelana’s cave, awaiting the arrival of his fleet, and Sorgan Hook-Beak came by every day so that they could confer. They spent many hours poring over Veltan’s roughly sketched map of the ravine above the village of Lattash while Rabbit was dressing off the bronze arrowheads.

“I wish this had more details,” Narasan complained one morning, pushing the map aside.

Sorgan shrugged. “It’s all we’ve got, so it’ll have to do, won’t it?”

Red-Beard and Longbow escorted their chiefs into the cave about then.

“Ah, Red-Beard,” Narasan said. “You’re just the man we wanted to see.” He reached for the map. “This is a sort of picture of that ravine where we’ll probably meet the enemy. Take a look at it and tell us what you think. Is it anywhere at all close to the real ravine?”

Red-Beard briefly examined the map. “This won’t really help you very much,” he said, handing the map back. “I’ve been involved in a few tribal wars in the past, and war’s very much like hunting—except that the one I’m hunting is also hunting me. You can’t hunt well if you base your decisions on a flat drawing. You need to look at the real ground.”

“It’s buried in snow right now,” Sorgan reminded him.

“Your picture doesn’t show you where the hills and gullies are, how much is covered with trees, or where the steep places are. If you’re going to fight this war up in that ravine, your life could depend on those details.”

“I would listen closely, Sorgan Hook-Beak,” old Chief White-Braid advised in the stiffly formal manner that Longbow had told Rabbit was common among tribal chieftains. “Red-Beard has hunted that ravine since he was but a child, and he knows every tree and rock personally. We
must
win this war, since the creatures of the Wasteland will show us no mercy if we should lose.”

“That’s blunt enough,” Sorgan replied. “But how can anybody draw a picture that isn’t flat?”

Rabbit set his whetstone aside and carefully ran his thumb across the edge of the arrowhead he’d been sharpening. It was probably sharp enough to shave with, he concluded. The molds he’d made to cast the bronze arrowheads seemed to be working out very well.

Two things seemed to come together in his mind just then. “I think there might be a way to make a picture that isn’t flat, Cap’n,” he said.

“Lumpy ink, maybe?” Sorgan replied in a sarcastic tone of voice.

“Not exactly, Cap’n. Why not use wet clay instead? Red-Beard knows that ravine like the back of his hand, and the potters who helped me make the arrowhead molds told me that there’s a huge clay-bank down by the river that they’ve been using for generations. If they bring basket-loads of that clay here to Lady Zelana’s cave, maybe Red-Beard could make a lumpy picture out of clay somewhere in here out of the rain.”

“What do you think, Red-Beard?” Sorgan asked.

“I don’t know very much about making pots,” Red-Beard said dubiously, “and my fingers are a little thick for fine details, I think.”

“The potters have tools for that,” Rabbit told him. All you’d have to do would be to tell them what shape you want. They can add clay or shave it off until they get it right.”

“Almost like sculpture,” Narasan mused. “It’s got possibilities, Sorgan. Even if it’s not absolutely accurate, it’ll be much better than the rough sketch we’ve been using.”

“It’s worth a try, I guess.” Sorgan agreed. Then he looked at Chief White-Braid. “How much longer is it likely to be until all that snow up in the mountains melts off?” he asked. “My people need to finish the forts they’re building up in the ravine, but they can’t get much work done when they’re hip-deep in snow.”

The silvery-haired old chief looked a bit startled. “How much snow falls in the Land of Maag?” he asked.

“Oh, we get snow, right enough, but nothing like these three-week storms you get here, and our snow usually melts off before the next snowstorm arrives.”

“Ah,” White-Braid said. “That might explain your lack of understanding of certain dangers here in the Land of Dhrall. Winter is old, and he patiently builds his snowbanks in the mountains over many long nights; but spring is young, and she’s sometimes enthusiastic. Her breath is very warm, and the snow which patient old winter laid upon the mountains inch by inch will disappear overnight when she breathes upon it. Melted snow is water, and water yearns to rejoin Mother Sea. It is most unwise to be in one of the ravines when this happens. The river will overflow its banks, and like some huge wave, it will rush on down to the sea, tearing all that stands in its path from the place where it was.”

“I would listen very closely here, Sorgan Hook-Beak,” Longbow’s Chief, Old-Bear, said firmly. “There is much snow in the mountains this year, and when winter’s grip loosens, the water rushing home to the sea will rip rocks away from where they now rest, and it will uproot trees as if they were no more than twigs. No one with any sense lingers in a ravine at this time of year.”

“So
that’s
the purpose of that berm along this side of the river,” Narasan observed. “It didn’t seem to make any sense when I first saw it, but it does now. Does it keep the water back?”

White-Braid nodded. “We put it there to make it easier for the water to go on down to the sea rather than to wander around in our village. Do not, as Chief Old-Bear warned, remain in the ravine when the warm wind begins to blow, for if you do, you’ll be washed away.”

“That gets right to the point, doesn’t it?” Sorgan said. “I think my cousin had better get word to his men up there. It’s time for them to leave their forts and find some place where their feet won’t get wet.”

“Does this same sort of thing happen all along the coast, Chief White-Braid?” Narasan asked. “I’ve got about twenty thousand soldiers on board ships that are coming up from the south, and we need those soldiers
here,
not fifty leagues out to sea.”

Longbow had been standing off to one side, listening but not saying anything. “I think we might be overlooking something,” he said finally. “Our enemies live in the barren Wasteland, where there are few streams, so they probably know little or nothing about these spring floods. I’ve spent many years hunting the creatures of the Wasteland, and I’ve seen very few of them in the winter. It’s very difficult to move through the mountains when they’re covered with snow, and even if That-Called-the-Vlagh
does
send its servants here during the winter, it’s my guess that most of them will freeze to death up in the mountains or drown during the spring flood. That suggests that the Vlagh has no knowledge of these yearly floods, doesn’t it?”

“Well, maybe,” Sorgan agreed. “Where are you going with this, Longbow?”

“Red-Beard’s scouts tell us that the invaders are camped among the snowdrifts right on the banks of the river that runs down through the ravine, and that’s not really a safe place in the springtime. But if the Vlagh doesn’t know about these spring floods, those who serve it wouldn’t know either, would they? Isn’t it quite possible that the spring flood will come as a complete surprise to them? Their march down the ravine might go quite a bit faster than they’d planned, but I don’t think they’ll stop when they reach Lattash. They’ll invade Mother Sea instead, and very few people who live in deserts know how to swim. It might just turn out that we’ll win this war without even raising a hand. The seasons and Mother Sea might just win it for us.”

“We’ll still get paid, though, won’t we?” Hook-Beak demanded in a slightly worried tone of voice.

“I think you’d better take a look at this sculpted model of the ravine Red-Beard and the village potters are putting together, Skell,” Sorgan was telling his cousin as the two of them trudged up the beach to Rabbit’s arrow shop in the drizzling rain. “The time’s going to come before much longer when you’ll have to get your men up out of the ravine in a hurry. If old Chief White-Braid’s anywhere close to being right about these spring floods, you’re going to have something a lot like a tidal wave coming down the ravine without much warning.”

“I think I should have held out for more gold, Sorgan,” Skell said sourly. “This isn’t turning out to be anything at all like I expected. This yearly flood could wipe out half my men.”

Rabbit trailed along behind them as they entered the cave.

“The Beloved’s busy right now,” Eleria told them.

“We won’t need to bother her,” Sorgan replied. “I just want to show my cousin here Red-Beard’s model of the ravine. How’s he doing, by the way?”

“He was talking with Longbow this morning,” Eleria replied. “He said that things are going a lot faster now, and that the potters should finish up by tomorrow. They don’t need so much clay now.”

“Oh?” Sorgan said. “Why not? I thought they’d need even more the farther uphill they go.”

“Red-Beard was complaining about that, too,” she said. “I made a little suggestion, and now they don’t need nearly so much clay.”

“What suggestion was that, baby sister?” Rabbit asked.

“They didn’t really have to pile clay up in those great big heaps. We’ve got all those yellow blocks in that long passage, so I told them to stack the blocks up on the cave floor where they’re building that model of the ravine and then slather clay on top of the blocks to make only the surface. It seems to be working quite well.”

“You’re slopping wet clay all over those gold bricks?” Sorgan almost screamed.

“It’ll wash off after the war’s over, Hook-Big,” Eleria assured him. “It was just sitting there not doing anything, so I thought we might as well put it to work.”

Sorgan spluttered a bit, but then he threw his hands in the air. “I give up,” he said.

“Isn’t he nice, Bunny?” Eleria said with a fond little smile.

Red-Beard was standing near the foot of his sculpted map, carefully inserting spruce twigs into the damp clay that represented the south side of the ravine.

“Is the forest there really
that
dense, Red-Beard?” Commander Narasan, who was standing nearby, asked.

“Denser,” Red-Beard replied. “It thins out farther on up, but the forest near the bottom of the ravine is so thick that the only way to get through is to follow the game trails.”

“That might give my soldiers a bit of trouble,” Narasan mused. “We aren’t used to fighting wars in thick brush. We like open fields where we can see the enemy.”

Red-Beard shrugged. “If we can’t see them, they can’t see us. If Longbow’s right about how stupid the servants of the Vlagh really are, we probably won’t encounter very many of them near the bottom of the ravine. The spring flood should thin them out for us. We might start seeing a few of them farther on up the ravine, but the trees up there are much farther apart.”

“How are things going, Narasan?” Sorgan asked.

“Better than any of us had anticipated, Sorgan. I think mapmaking just grew up. Red-Beard’s sculpture here makes every map I’ve ever seen look like the scribblings of a child.”

“Can you point out the place where your men were building their fort before the snow came, Skell?” Sorgan asked his cousin.

Skell peered down into the imitation ravine. “It’s right about here, I think,” he replied, pointing at a spot some distance upstream. “The riverbanks are narrow, and that makes things a lot easier. That wasn’t the main reason I picked that spot, though. The walls of the ravine are straight up and down there, and if I butt walls right up against those flat faces, I’ll be able to block off the whole ravine. Nobody’s going to get past me, Sorgan.”

“How far along had your men gone before the snow came?”

“We had the north bank fairly well blocked off by then. The south bank should be simpler. Four or five big boulders are about all it’s going to take. Then we’ll start on the walls that’ll block off the benches.”

“Do you think your fort down by the river’s going to stay put when that spring flood comes down the ravine?”

“It should, cousin. We didn’t build it out of pebbles. We levered large boulders off that shelf that runs along both sides of the river. Things went faster that way, and if a boulder’s so big that it takes a hundred men to budge it, it’ll probably stay put no matter how much water comes down the ravine. I wasn’t really thinking about floods when we picked the spot, though. I was just looking for a place that’d be easier to defend.”

“How did you learn so much about land warfare, Skell?” Narasan asked curiously. “I thought you Maags did your fighting at sea.”

Skell smiled. “When Sorgan and I were only boys, we joined the crew of a Maag ship captain called Dalto Big-Nose, and Big-Nose was famous for going after gold, no matter where it was—at sea or on land. His crew learned about fighting on land the hard way. We know which kinds of barricades are the most difficult to get across because we used to have to climb over all kinds of them to get at the gold Big-Nose wanted. A man can learn a lot about barricades when he’s standing behind one, but he learns a lot more when he’s trying to get over them.”

“Ah,” Narasan said. “That
would
be educational, I suppose.”

Zelana quietly came into the torch-lit chamber and glanced at Red-Beard’s handiwork. “Very nice,” she observed.

“Good morning, Lady Zelana,” Sorgan greeted her. “I was sort of hoping that you’d stop by. Is it possible that the river used to be a lot wider than it is now? Those rocky benches about halfway up the sides of the ravine look to me like they might have been gouged out a long time ago.”

“They were,” she replied. “There was once a vast inland sea where the Wasteland is now, but Father Earth shuddered and shifted, and that sea broke loose and ate its way down out of those mountains.”

“I’d say that we might want to use those benches when we go upriver, Narasan,” Sorgan suggested. “It looks to me like it’d be faster that way than it’d be down along the riverbanks. The benches seem to be wider and not so cluttered up with boulders and thick brush, but that’ll come later—
after
that spring flood’s over. Right now, I think our main problem’s going to be getting Skell’s men up out of the ravine without alerting the enemy. I’m sure they’ve got scouts watching everything we do. If Skell’s men pack up and move out, won’t that let the enemy know that it’s dangerous down at the bottom of the ravine? We’re sort of hoping that the spring flood’s going to take them by surprise, but if Skell’s men run away, won’t they get a little suspicious?”