‘Priests,’ Narasan said in a bleak tone of voice, ‘and the soldiers in red uniforms are members of church armies.’
‘That explains a few things I didn’t quite understand,’ Veltan said. ‘Anyway, the soldiers have built a number of fenced-in compounds and herded all of their captives into them. The ones in black robes have been going into those compounds to make speeches to my people.’
‘That has a familiar sort of ring to it,’ Padan said. ‘Let me guess. The priests want to tell your people fairy tales about Amar - how wonderful he is and how everybody who doesn’t fall down on his face every time he hears somebody mention Amar’s name won’t go to paradise after he dies. Is that pretty much the way it goes?’
‘It’s happened before, I gather,’ Veltan said.
‘It’s been going around, yes,’ Padan replied.
‘As I recall, I mentioned the corruption of the Amarite church to you when you persuaded me to stop begging and go back to work, Veltan,’ Narasan said. ‘The church has turned corruption into an art form based entirely on raw greed. The thought that so much as a single penny might somehow get away from him sends a member of the clergy into deep mourning.’
‘Excuse me, Commander,’ the young Keselo said, ‘but isn’t it peculiar that the church fleet managed to find the passageway through the zone of floating ice not long after Jalkan - a former priest - escaped and stole Veltan’s sloop?’
‘Not really all that peculiar, Keselo,’ Narasan replied bleakly.
‘You should have killed that one when you had the chance, Narasan,’ Skell said. ‘My brother Torl had an interesting idea not long after you’d put Jalkan in chains. We’d been sort of joking around about taking turns kicking Jalkan up and down the beach. But after we decided that it might get tiresome after a while, Torl suggested that we could just go ahead and give him a decent burial - whether he was dead or not.’
‘Interesting notion,’ Narasan agreed. ‘I really blundered that time. He looked at Veltan. ‘Have the slave-ships arrived down there yet?’
‘My brother told me about that,’ Veltan replied. ‘Right at first I thought he was joking.’
‘I’m afraid not, Veltan,’ Narasan replied. ‘It’s fairly traditional in these situations. The soldiers round up the native people, the priests tell the natives that the Trogite god will punish them if they resist, and then the slave-ships come by to pick up the people, take them back to the Empire and sell them to assorted Trogites who are too lazy to do their own work. That’s been going on for centuries.’
‘It’s not going to happen that way this time,’ Skell’s cousin Sorgan said firmly. ‘I just happen to have a large fleet of longships down on the coast, and as soon as I get back down there, I think I’ll gather up that fleet and run on down to that big bay. The Trogites might have come here by ship, but I think I know of a way to arrange things so that they’ll have to walk home.’
‘Oh?’ Narasan asked.
‘It’s called fire, Narasan,’ Sorgan said with a wicked grin. ‘I’ll burn every Trogite ship in that bay right down to the waterline, and then I’ll go on out and sink all those slave-ships.’ He gave Veltan a slightly suspicious look. ‘You knew this was going to happen all along, didn’t you, Veltan?’ he suggested. ‘The fact that you’ve got the right man in the right place at the right time goes a long way past coincidence, it seems.’
‘Well—’ Veltan said, sounding a bit defensive.
‘I thought so,’ Sorgan said. ‘I’m awfully sorry, Narasan,’ he continued, ‘but it sort of looks like I won’t be able to help you very much in the war up here, because I’ve got a different war to fight on down along the south coast. I’ll see to it that our second enemy won’t come sneaking up behind you while you’re busy up here, though.’
‘Ah, well,’ Narasan replied with mock regret. ‘I think I’ll be able to manage, Sorgan, but it just won’t be the same without you.’
Then they both laughed.
All in all, Skell wasn’t too disappointed that he wouldn’t be allowed to fight the creatures of the Wasteland this time. He’d be going back down the gorge with cousin Sorgan and then sailing the Shark on down to the southern reaches of Veltan’s Domain to fight a war at sea. Skell knew how to fight a land war if it was absolutely necessary, but he much preferred fighting at sea, and the prospect of burning an entire Trog fleet filled him with a warm little glow.
Then he felt another of those prickly twinges, and he was almost positive that somebody he couldn’t see was watching him very closely. That took a lot of the fun out of his day.
The South Coast
1
Torl Jodanson of Kormo was somewhat relieved when cousin Sorgan volunteered to fight this particular war at sea. The mountains were pretty to look at, but Torl didn’t really enjoy fighting wars in places where the enemies could hide behind trees or jump on him from behind. He much preferred open spaces where he could see just exactly what the enemy was doing. Then too, he was almost positive that the Lark would start feeling sulky if she wasn’t allowed to join in the fun.
Some ships are like that.
After they’d eaten supper and strung out the fish nets to keep the bug-bats away, Skell raised a point that cousin Sorgan had possibly overlooked. ‘I think we might have a problem, Sorgan,’ he said.
‘Oh? What’s that?’
‘That little creek-bed that comes up here from the river isn’t very wide, and right now it’s filled with Narasan’s soldiers. They’re coming up, and we want to go down. I suppose we could fight our way back down to the river, but that might irritate your friend Narasan just a bit.’
Sorgan frowned. ‘You could be right, Skell,’ he conceded.
‘I’ll go have a talk with that sheep-herder who showed us how to get up here,’ Torl volunteered. ‘He knows this country better than anybody else, so if there is some other way for us to get back down to the river, he’d be the one who’d know about it.’
‘It makes sense, Sorgan,’ Skell agreed with his brother.
Sorgan nodded. ‘Why don’t you go see what he has to say, Torl?’ he agreed. ‘We’ve got work to do down south, and we won’t get much done sitting around twiddling our thumbs.’