The Elder Gods Read online

  The enemy charge faltered as the front ranks went tumbling lifelessly back down over the top of the following ranks.

  Rabbit chuckled. “I think their day just turned sour,” he said, “and the sun’s barely over the eastern horizon.”

  Longbow, however, was frowning with a slightly puzzled expression. “Something isn’t right,” he said. “They rush toward the foot of the stairs by the thousands, but only hundreds come up. Where are the others going?”

  Rabbit peered down toward the foot of the stairway. “It does look a bit odd, doesn’t it?” he admitted. “It’s a little hard to see from way up here, but it almost looks like better than half of that army just vanishes when it reaches the stairway. Where are they going?”

  A cold certainty suddenly struck Keselo. “Could the stairway just be a diversion?” he suggested.

  “A what?” Rabbit demanded.

  “Something that’s supposed to attract our attention away from the real attack,” Keselo explained.

  “But where’s the real attack going to come from?” Rabbit asked. “They’re down there, and we’re up here. They have to come up that stairway to get to us. As far as I can tell, most of the enemies just vanish when they reach the foot of the stairs. They’re kicking up a lot of dust down there, but that shouldn’t change the numbers, should it?”

  “Burps?” Keselo mused, half to himself as he remembered Red-Beard’s humorous description.

  “I didn’t quite follow that,” Rabbit admitted with a puzzled expression.

  “It’s just something Red-Beard told me a few days ago,” Keselo explained. “I was asking him about those ancient ruins we saw up on the sides of the ravine, and he happened to mention the fact that there are quite a few caves running through these mountains. If he was right, isn’t it possible that the creatures of the Wasteland have been moving toward Lattash through those caves instead of down the ravine?”

  “What’s that got to do with what’s happening down there at the bottom of the stairway, Keselo?”

  “Let’s say that there’s a cave mouth somewhere on the face of this cliff,” Keselo continued, “or maybe even down at the foot of the cliff, for that matter. And just suppose that the cave went through the mountains here to someplace on down the ravine. If the enemies wanted to hide that cave from us, this stairway would be the perfect way to conceal it. First they’d build a kind of corridor that’d lead to the cave, and then they’d cover the corridor by building this stairway right over the top of it.”

  “Keselo, you’re talking about something that would have taken hundreds of years to build,” Rabbit scoffed.

  “Let him talk, Rabbit,” Longbow said. “Time doesn’t mean anything to the creatures of the Wasteland, and this notion of his explains what’s happening down there. Go ahead, Keselo.”

  “All right,” Keselo continued. “The stairway hides the corridor—or tunnel—that leads to the cave mouth. The next question is where does that cave go?” He snapped his fingers. “Obviously! It goes right straight through the mountain and comes out somewhere on down the ravine—where the enemies could come out between our fort here and Lattash.”

  “Like maybe right behind those old villages that nobody seems to be living in?” Rabbit suggested.

  “Of course!” Keselo exclaimed. “Red-Beard told me that every now and then somebody in his tribe gets curious and tries to explore one of those ruins, but those people almost never come back.”

  “I think that maybe we’d better go have a look,” Longbow said bleakly. “How close is the nearest one of those ruins?”

  “Red-Beard said that there’s one a few miles down on the north side of the ravine,” Keselo replied. “He told me that there’s a dead snag on the rim just above it and that the snag sticks out far enough that we’d be able to see it if we were on the north bench. Rabbit and I saw several on the south side while we were coming up the ravine, but they all seemed to have been built in places that wouldn’t be visible if you happen to be directly under them.”

  “We’ve had some very interesting notions here, but they’re just guesswork. Let’s see if we can find anything to back those guesses up.” Longbow’s face was bleak, and his tone of voice seemed tense.

  “Did Red-Beard give you any idea of how extensive these caves might be?” Longbow asked Keselo as they started down the north bench in the bright spring sunshine.

  “He didn’t really go into too much detail,” Keselo replied. “I got the feeling that he’s not really curious enough about caves to go exploring—or possibly the caves make him sort of nervous. I’ve heard that some people have problems with enclosed places. I sort of got the impression from what he said that the caves are quite extensive. From what we’ve seen so far, I’d say that there’s a strong possibility that the enemies are using the caves to slip behind us so that they can block us off.”

  “Well, all we know for certain is that a sizeable number of our enemies disappeared when they reached the foot of the stairway,” Longbow replied. “These ruins are a possibility. We may have to come up with others, but let’s look into this possibility first.”

  Keselo looked on down the ravine. “I think that might be the dead snag Red-Beard told me about,” he told the others, pointing up toward the rim.

  “Let’s stop here,” Longbow said. “If there are enemies in that ruin, we don’t want to come up right below them.”

  The wall of the ravine was steep, certainly, but it wasn’t a sheer rock face such as the cliff at the edge of the Wasteland. They climbed slowly to avoid making any noise that might alert anyone—or anything—in the ancient stone ruins.

  They angled up the side of the ravine until they were a short distance from the overhanging ledge above the village. Longbow stopped, his eyes searching. “There,” he whispered, pointing at a grassy protrusion that lay between them and the ancient ruin. “If we move carefully, we can take cover in the tall grass without alerting anyone that we’re there.”

  They climbed carefully up the back side of the knoll, and as they neared the top, Keselo motioned to the others and crawled through the grass until the ruins were in plain sight. Then he crawled back to rejoin Rabbit and Longbow. “We’ll be just a bit above and a little to one side,” he whispered. “If there’s anybody there, we should be able to see them if they come out into the open.”

  “Let’s go watch,” Longbow whispered back. “If our suspicions turn out to be right, it won’t be long before there’ll be too many enemies in the village to hide.”

  They crawled along through the rustling grass until they could see most of the village lying slightly below them.

  “It looks almost like a fort instead of a village, doesn’t it?” Rabbit suggested quietly. “That front wall’s fairly flat, except for the places where part of it crumbled away and rolled on down the hill. Maybe it really was a fort, and part of that front wall got knocked down during a war.” He frowned. “But if that flat front wall was solid, how did the people who lived there get down to the river for water?”

  “If my suspicion is anywhere close to what that fort really is, nobody ever actually lived there,” Keselo said. “The only purpose it serves is to conceal the mouth of the cave. Red-Beard said that the Dhralls avoid those ruins because they believe that they’re cursed—or maybe haunted. If it was never a real village, there wouldn’t have been any need for water or for any level ground for growing food.” Then Keselo saw a brief flicker of movement in the ruin below. “There!” he hissed. “Over near the west side of the ruin.”

  As the three of them watched, more and more furtively moving figures came out of the shadows at the rear of the ancient ruin. The figures were all cloaked and hooded and very small, but many of them moved awkwardly, half bent over, as if standing erect was strange for them. Then one of them barked a command in a raspy voice that sent a chill through Keselo. The hooded figures all stopped, and four of them gathered atop one of the ruined buildings.

  The one which had previously spok
en reached up and pushed back its hood with a gleaming black appendage that looked much like the claw of a crab. The face of the creature was rounded at the top; it had two waving things protruding from its forehead, and its large eyes bulged.

  “It’s a bug!”

  “So it would seem,” Longbow replied tensely.

  Another of the tiny enemies pushed back its hood to reveal a pale human face, and it spoke at some length with the insect. A third enemy joined them, and that one had a flickering, forked tongue and scaley skin. The last one had a furry face and long, sharp teeth, and it wasn’t much bigger than a dog.

  “What kind of army is that?” Keselo demanded in a hoarse whisper. “Bugs, snakes, animals, and people all mixed together and talking to each other?”

  “Evidently some of the old stories had more truth to them than I’d been ready to believe,” Longbow mused. “The only ones I’ve encountered here in Zelana’s Domain have been the ones Sorgan calls snake-men. It would appear that the Vlagh has more than one variety of servants. I always thought that the people who told me about different creatures of the Wasteland were just making things up for the fun of it. It seems that I might have been wrong. This promises to be a very interesting war.”

  More and more of the hooded creatures emerged from the shadows behind the ruins until the entire village was crawling with them.

  “I think you were right, Keselo,” Rabbit said sombrely. “Those things almost have to be coming out of a cave back at the rear of that place. There isn’t room enough for that many of them in those ruins. Hadn’t we better get back up to the head of the ravine to warn Sorgan and Narasan?”

  “In a minute,” Longbow replied, studying the ruin and the surrounding slope. “It has some possibilities,” he said thoughtfully.

  “What has?”

  “We know that the enemies are here in the ravine, and we know that they’re concealed in these imitation towns. We could attack them before they attack us and keep them penned up in the ruins long enough for our friends’ armies to get past these ruins—either down in the ravine or up along the rims. Sorgan and Narasan will have to abandon their fort and pull back. If they stay where they are, they’re doomed.”

  3

  They carefully climbed back down to the north bench, and then they ran back up to the gap. Keselo and Rabbit were gasping for breath when they reached the Trogite fort at sunset, but Longbow wasn’t even breathing hard. Ham-Hand was standing near the back of the fort. “Where have you three been?” he demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you. The cap’n wants to see you.”

  “Where is he?” Longbow asked.

  “Up topside,” Ham-Hand replied, gesturing toward the fort. “Lady Zelana’s brother stopped by, and he wants to talk to you.”

  “That might make things a bit easier,” Rabbit said. “We just saw some things that might be a little hard to explain. Which one of Zelana’s brothers is here?”

  “The younger one. You’d better get on up there, Rabbit. The cap’n ain’t none too happy with you right now.”

  “I think we just saw something that’ll make him even unhappier,” Rabbit said as he followed Longbow and Keselo up toward the fort.

  Hook-Beak was standing up at the front of the Trogite fort with Narasan and Zelana’s brother Veltan.

  “Where have you been, Rabbit?” Sorgan demanded.

  “Keselo and I saw something that looked a bit peculiar on our way up the ravine, Cap’n,” Rabbit explained. “We told Longbow about it, and he wanted to see for himself. We took him back to where we’d seen it, and we all went up the side of the ravine to have a closer look. I don’t think you’re going to like this one little bit, Cap’n.”

  “What did you see, Keselo?” Commander Narasan asked.

  “There’s an enemy army behind us, sir,” Keselo replied. “It appears that the ones who’ve been charging up the stairs are just a ruse to get our attention. The main enemy force is already behind us.”

  “What are you talking about, Keselo?” Sorgan demanded. “We didn’t see a single snake-man on our way up here.”

  “Ah—may I, Captain?” Zelana’s brother Veltan stepped in. “Just what led you to this conclusion, Keselo?”

  “When the enemy attacked this morning, Longbow noticed something peculiar,” Keselo explained. “It seemed that more than half of the enemy force just vanished when they reached the foot of the stairway. It didn’t make any sense at all, and then I remembered something Red-Beard told me a few days ago. He said that there are some fairly extensive caves in these mountains. Longbow, Rabbit, and I put a few things together, and we came up with an answer that none of us liked very much. It appears that the stairway’s nothing but a hoax. A fair number of our enemies were charging up the stairway, but most of them went someplace else when they reached the bottom of the stairs. They had to be going someplace, and the notion of caves seemed to answer the question.”

  “Where do those caves go?” Sorgan demanded.

  “I was just getting to that, Captain. When we were coming up the ravine, Rabbit and I had seen several very ancient ruins high up on the side of the gorge. Red-Beard told me that the men of Lattash avoid those ruins because of some very old superstitions—which might even have some basis in fact. Anyway, to cut this short, Longbow, Rabbit, and I went a couple miles back down the ravine to the nearest of those ruins. Normally we wouldn’t have known where it was, but Red-Beard had told me that there was an old dead snag sticking out from the rim, and that the village was right below the snag.”

  Veltan suddenly burst out laughing.

  “What’s so funny?” Narasan asked him.

  “Every time I turn around, that snag seems to come popping up,” Veltan replied. “When Dahlaine and I were trying to pinpoint the location of this ravine, he mentioned that snag. Evidently, his thunderbolt was what had killed it quite a long time ago, and that irritated Zelana to no end. Sorry, Keselo. Go on with your story.”

  “Well, anyway,” Keselo continued, “we hid in some tall grass near the ruin, and it wasn’t very long before our enemies began to come creeping out of the shadows. I’d say that the bulk of the enemy force is behind us already, and they’ve rather effectively cut us off. We’re trapped up here, and if we try to go back down the ravine to Lattash, I’m fairly certain that the enemy forces hidden in those ancient ruins will attack us just about every step of the way.”

  Hook-Beak started to swear. “We should have known about those caves, Narasan. We spent a lot of time in Lady Zelana’s cave down in Lattash while we were waiting for the spring flood. If there are caves under one hill, there are bound to be caves under others as well. I think we’ve been had. The enemy was there all the time, but he just laid low and let us charge up that ravine until we got all the way up here, and now he’s slammed the door behind us.”

  “Not quite all the doors,” Longbow disagreed. “The rims of the ravine on both sides are still open, and there aren’t any of those old villages up there. We can go around the enemies and leave them sitting in the ravine waiting for us.” He scratched his cheek, squinting thoughtfully. “On the other hand,” he added, “if this clever game they played irritates you as much as it irritates me, we could probably come up with something to make life unpleasant for them. Red-Beard knows exactly where all those cliff villages are located, so we could conceal bowmen on both sides of each one of them. If we were to send a small force down each bench, the enemy would almost certainly rush out to attack them. As soon as the enemies are out in the open, the bowmen could make life very exciting for them, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Now, that has some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it, Sorgan?” Commander Narasan said enthusiastically. “I hate it when an enemy outsmarts me, and Longbow’s idea gives us a way to get back at them.”

  “Anything’s better than sitting here starving to death,” Sorgan agreed.

  “Here, here, here, and here,” Red-Beard said, putting his finger on several spots on the representation
of the north side of the ravine on Narasan’s carefully drawn copy of the sculpture back in Zelana’s cave. “The ones on the south side are here, here, here, and here,” he added, pointing out the others. “I’m not sure about the one near the place where the river bends. The side of the ravine appears to have collapsed a long time ago, and it took most of the village with it.”

  “Seven, then—or possibly eight,” Commander Narasan said. “Are you absolutely certain that there aren’t any more, Red Beard?”

  “I’ve been hunting this ravine for more than twenty years now, Commander, so I’m very familiar with it.”

  “It’s not quite as bad as I thought, then,” Hook-Beak said with obvious relief. He looked at Longbow. “You said that you had an idea that might keep our enemies penned up in those ruins so that they won’t be able to interfere while we’re running away.”

  “Retreating, Sorgan,” Narasan corrected in a pained tone. “It’s called retreating.”

  “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? What’s this idea of yours, Longbow?”

  “Your armies came up here along those benches on both sides of the ravine, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied, “and it appears that those imitation villages Red-Beard just pointed out to us were built at about the same time that the stairway at the gap was built, and they were in places where our enemies could watch anyone moving in the ravine. It’s all starting to fit together now. The stairway was built to deceive us. The imitation villages were probably intended to be the places where the enemy’s main attacks would originate. It would seem that this plan has been in the works for centuries, but it would also seem that the idea of people moving along the rims hadn’t occurred to them. The benches are easier and more convenient, but people can move along up on the rims if it’s necessary.”

  “You and your people would know more about that than we would, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said. “We came up along the benches.”