“You’re a very rare man, Chief Tlantar,” Narasan said. “How much do you know about the people of Atazakan? Are they very good warriors?”
Tlantar laughed. “I wouldn’t really call them ‘warriors,’ Commander Narasan,” he said rather scornfully. “The only people allowed to carry weapons of any kind are ‘The Guardians of Divinity.’ Those are the lazy ones who go around threatening the ordinary people if they don’t bow down quite far enough when ‘Holy Azakan’ walks by. They have spears, but they don’t really know how to use them. They haven’t moved much past poke-poke-jab. As far as I know, they’ve never been involved in a war of any kind, so I’d say they don’t know what they’re doing.”
“Is there some reason that they have only spears?” Narasan asked.
“I’ve heard that ‘Holy Azakan’ has put a lot of limits on his people. He’s a madman who believes that he controls the entire universe, and he spends most of his time inventing rules that don’t make any sense.” Tlantar laughed then. “If I understood what actually happened, he sprained his ankle once, and all the people of Atazakan had to walk with a limp for about six months, since the ‘Guardians of Divinity’ threatened to kill anybody who wasn’t limping.”
“Why do his people put up with that?” the Trogite called Padan demanded. “Why don’t they just lock him away someplace, or just go ahead and kill him?”
“Probably because the first thing he did when he was crowned emperor, king, god—or whatever—was to hire hundreds of men to protect him. That was a golden opportunity for men who wanted to be important, but didn’t want to do anything the least bit strenuous.”
“That sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it, Narasan?” the warrior queen Trenicia said. “That fat priest Bersla down in Aracia’s temple made a career out of talking, but not doing anything else—except eating, of course.”
“There are a few ugly similarities here, aren’t there?” Veltan suggested with a wry smile.
“We could probably send a fair number of Matans up to the north to deal with this,” Keselo observed, “but wouldn’t it be better to send small contingents from every army we have on up there to stamp out this idiocy? Our main battle will be in Crystal Gorge. We don’t want to get so involved in the Atazak invasion that we lose sight of that, and we don’t want to come up short of archers, spearmen, or horse-warriors when the real war starts.”
“He’s got a point, Narasan,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said. “Then, too, if we send members of every group up there, they’ll learn how to work together, in ways that might not occur to us when the snake-men come charging up that gorge. Then, after they’ve whomped the Atazaks, they can come back down here and tell us what works and what doesn’t.”
“That makes very good sense, Sorgan,” Narasan told his friend. “You’re getting better at fighting land wars every time we move to some other part of the Land of Dhrall. You’re starting to think like a real professional.”
2
Longbow spoke quietly with those who’d be joining him in the trek to the north. “We’d just be in the way here in Dahlaine’s map-room,” he told them, “and I think more clearly out in the open anyway.”
“I’ll float my stick with yours there,” the scar-faced horse-soldier Ekial agreed. “There’s something about having walls all around me that seems to make it impossible for me to think.”
“Let’s all go outside, then,” Longbow said.
They trooped through the winding passageway to the mouth of Dahlaine’s cave.
“That’s better,” Longbow said, looking out over the vast, empty meadowland. Then he turned to his longtime friend, Athlan. “Are there very many archers still in Tonthakan?” he asked.
Athlan frowned. “Most of the tribes are already here at Mount Shrak, and I don’t think Dahlaine would be very happy if we filched some of them to go fight this second war. There are a fair number of tribes that live farther away, though. If I could get a messenger to those tribes, I might be able to divert them and bring them north to help us.”
“I just happen to have a messenger handy who can move very fast,” Longbow said, giving Red-Beard a sly sort of look.
“Somehow I knew that something like this would crop up,” Red-Beard said with a gloomy sort of expression.
“You led the horse-soldiers here from the coast, Red-Beard,” Longbow reminded his friend, “so you know the way. Athlan can tell you who to speak with and where you’ll find them. Your horse, Seven, should get you there in a hurry. If you get word to the remaining tribes in Tonthakan and they come over the mountains, they’ll probably reach northern Matakan at about the same time we will.”
“All right, Longbow,” Red-Beard replied. “You don’t have to beat me over the head with it.”
“About how many archers would you say are still in Tonthakan?” Longbow asked Athlan.
“Six or eight thousand,” Athlan replied. “That’s just a guess, but it should come fairly close.”
“If it’s all right with you, Longbow, I think that after we get out a ways from Mount Shrak here, I’ll take a hundred or so horsemen and go north,” Ekial said. “We’ll need the lay of the land, and we really need to know just how deep the Atazaks have penetrated into Matan territory. There’s no real hurry, of course. We can move much faster than your people can. If Dahlaine can keep the wind away, I don’t think there’ll be much danger for us.”
“Are you sure that Dahlaine will hold still for that?” Padan asked. “If I understood it correctly, he hired you to fight off the bug-people.”
“All that’s going on down there for right now is building a fort. There’ll be scouts on horseback riding out to watch for the enemy, and Ariga can take care of that. Right now, this invasion by the Atazaks is more important. We need to stop them before they come south. We don’t want them coming at us from the rear when we’re busy holding off the creatures of the Wasteland, now do we?”
“It does make sense, I guess,” Padan admitted. Then he gave Ekial an inquiring sort of look. “I’m not at all familiar with your people,” he said. “What sort of weapons are most effective when you’re riding a horse?”