‘I think I’ll need to reconsider my original plan, though,’ Narasan said glumly. ‘I thought that falling back to the next breastworks every night would give the church armies enough time to get up there - in small groups, anyway. Sorgan’s stakes will delay them, I’m afraid. We will get more men up there, but it’s going to take them longer. I think I’ll revise the plan and tell the men to hold each breast-works for two days instead of only one.’
‘Whatever works the best, old friend,’ Padan agreed.
Narasan looked off to the north. ‘It’s just a bit skimpy, I’m afraid,’ he said with a slight frown.
‘You missed me there, Narasan.’
‘There are a couple of crags and such sticking up out of the Wasteland out there, and that’s about all that those church soldiers will be able to see when they get up here. Those crags have a sprinkling of the imitation gold on them, but they aren’t nearly as impressive as the flatter, sandy areas are.’
‘If Sorgan’s cousin Torl was anywhere close to being correct about what brought the churchies running up here, a few sprinkles should be all it’s going to take,’ Padan disagreed. ‘It’s what they’ll see when they reach Gunda’s wall that’s important. That’s when we’ll want their minds to shut down to the point that it won’t matter what sort of monsters are running up the slope toward them. We want greed to overcome terror at that point.’
‘We can hope, I guess,’ Narasan said.
Many Voices
1
Andar of Kaldacin was standing behind the eighth breastworks on the slope that ran down from the north of Gunda’s wall, and he was seriously discontented. He kept encountering things here in the Land of Dhrall that seemed to be absurdities. Andar had fought in many wars during his career in Commander Narasan’s army, but the enemies in those past wars had always been human.
Gunda and Padan had been given some time to adjust to the enemy’s peculiarities during the previous war, but Andar had been left behind in the army encampment near the port city of Castano. He’d felt a bit flattered by Narasan’s decision to place him in command of the bulk of the army that had remained behind, but that had also left him behind, and he resented that.
In a certain sense, Narasan’s habit of always pushing Andar aside had probably been the result of the fact that Andar’s father had been housed in a different building from Narasan’s when the current officers were all children. Narasan’s almost automatic reliance on Gunda and Padan had obviously derived from early childhood. Narasan trusted Gunda and Padan more than he trusted other officers of equal ability because he knew them better.
Andar ruefully admitted to himself that he would most certainly have relied on his boyhood friend Danal in much the same way he had he become the Army Commander.
The early light along the eastern horizon began to climb higher and higher, tinting the few clouds in that area a glorious pink.
‘Any activity out there?’ Danal asked as he joined Andar behind the crudely built breast-works.
‘Nothing yet,’ Andar replied in a hushed voice.
‘At least we won’t have to worry about those cursed burrows that kept cropping up back in the ravine during that last war,’ Danal said.
‘I never did get the straight of that,’ Andar admitted.
‘It’s one of those things that people don’t like to talk about,’ Danal said with a shudder. ‘The bug-things had most probably been planning that attack for a long, long time. First they bored holes through the mountains, and the holes came out high up on the sides of the ravine. We didn’t know about them, so we just marched on up to the head of the ravine, built a nice sturdy fort, and waited for the bug-things to attack us. They wasted quite a few of their fellow bugs to keep us occupied while their friends crept through those burrows and came out behind us. That pretty much trapped us, because there was no place for us to go.’
‘I never really understood that very clearly. How could bugs chop holes through solid rock?’
‘Chew, not chop, Andar,’ Danal corrected. ‘From what the natives up there told us, the thing they always called “the Vlagh” had been preparing for that invasion for centuries.’
‘Bugs don’t live that long, Danal,’ Andar scoffed.
‘We’re not in the land of reality any more, Andar. Things happen here that couldn’t possibly happen anywhere else in the whole wide world. We had floods and volcanos working for us during that last war, and you don’t see things like that out in the real world.’
Andar peered down the slope in the growing light of dawn. ‘It looks to me like a few things have changed, Danal,’ he said.
‘Oh?’
‘It would appear that the bug-people don’t go back out into the desert when the sun goes down like they used to. It looks like they’ve set up camp in those two outermost breast-works. I think that the Vlagh thing’s still back out in the desert, though. I’ve heard it bellow a few times since its soldiers - or whatever you want to call them - occupied those last two breast-works, and the bellow was still coming from a long way off.’
‘The bug-people protect the Vlagh with everything they’ve got, Andar,’ Danal said, ‘which does make some sense, I suppose. It is the mother of every single bug out there, and children really should protect dear old mommy, wouldn’t you say?’
‘That’s going to take a bit of getting used to,’ Andar said, shaking his head. ‘I’ve never had occasion to fight a woman’s army before.’
‘We were on the receiving end of several lectures that dealt with the creatures of the Wasteland when we were back in Lattash waiting for the snow to melt,’ Danal told his friend. ‘There was a very skinny old man - who I was told educated that archer named Longbow. He told us that almost all of the bug-people are females, but only the Vlagh lays the eggs that produce new variations of the original bug-people. The old man told us that the Vlagh steals characteristics from other insects - and even animals. The tiny ones we met in the ravine had snake-fangs - complete with venom - but after we’d whomped all over them, I guess the Vlagh decided that it was going to need big ones.’
‘Whomped?’ Andar asked curiously.
Danal shrugged. ‘The Maags use that word all the time,’ he said. ‘It’s sort of colorful, so most of the younger soldiers in Narasan’s advance army started to talk about “whomping” other creatures -or each other, for that matter. If you listen carefully, you’ll probably hear those young men threatening to “whomp” just about anybody who walks past. It’s the newest “stylish” word, so they’ll all keep repeating it until they’ve worn it out. Then they’ll find another word to play with.’