grin. ‘That is good bait, U-lat,’ he said. ‘I will summon Ghworg
and Ghnomb and tell them that we will go to the hunt now.
How many of them may we kill and eat?’
‘All, Bhlokw. All.’
‘That is not a good thought, U-lat. If we kill and eat them all,
they will not breed, and there will not be new ones to hunt in
the next season. The good thought is to always let enough run
away so that they can breed to keep the numbers of their herd
the same. If we eat them all now, there will be none to eat
by-and-by. ‘
Ulath considered that as Bhlokw cast the brief Troll-spell that
summoned Ghworg and the others. He decided not to make
an issue of it. The Trolls were hunters, not warriors, and it
would take far too long to explain the concept of total war to
them.
Bhlokw conferred at some length with the enormous presences
of his Gods in the grey light of No-Time, and then he
raised his brutish face and bellowed his summons to the rest of
the herd.
The great shaggy mass flowed down the hill toward the village
and the forest of tents beyond the oasis in the steely light of
frozen time as Ulath and Tynian watched from the hilltop. The
Trolls divided, went around the village, and moved in among
the Cynesgan tents, fanning out as each of the great beasts selected
its prey. Then, evidently at a signal from Bhlokw, the chill
light flickered and the sunlight returned.
There were screams, of course, but that was to be expected.
Very few men in the entire world will not scream when a fullgrown
Troll suddenly steps out of nowhere immediately in front
of them.
The carnage in that vast slaughtering-ground beyond the oasis
was ghastly, since the Trolls were bent not on fighting the
Cynesgans but on tearing them to pieces in preparation for the
feast to follow.
‘Some of them are getting away,’ Tynian observed, pointing
at a sizeable number of panic-stricken Cynesgans desperately
flogging their horses southward.
ulath shrugged. ‘Breeding stock,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘It’s a Trollish concept, Tynian. It’s a way to guarantee a continuing
food-supply. If the Trolls eat them all today, there won’t
be any left when supper-time rolls around tomorrow.’
Tynian shuddered with revulsion. ‘That’s a horrible thought,
Ulath!’ he exclaimed.
‘Yes,’ Ulath agreed, ‘moderately horrible, but one should
always respect the customs and traditions of one’s allies,
wouldn’t you say?’
At the end of a half-hour, the tents were all flattened, the
breeding stock had been permitted to escape, and the Trolls
settled down to eat. The Cynesgan threat in the north had been
effectively eliminated, and now the Trolls were free to join the
march on Cyrga.
Khalad sat up suddenly, throwing off his blankets. ‘Berit,’ he
said sharply.
Berit came awake instantly, reaching for his sword.
‘No,’ Khalad told him. ‘It’s nothing like that. Do you know
what firedamp iS?’
‘i’ve never heard of it.’ Berit yawned and rubbed at his eyes.
‘i’m going to have to talk with Aphrael then – personally.
How long will it take you to teach me the spell?’
‘That depends, I guess. Can’t you pass what you have to tell
her through me?’
‘No. I need to ask her some questions, and you wouldn’t
understand what I’m talking about. I’ve got to talk with her
myself. It’s very important, Berit. I don’t have to understand
the language to just repeat the words, do I?’
Berit frowned. ‘i’m not sure. Sephrenia and the Styric who
replaced her at Demos wouldn’t let us do it that way, because
they said we had to think in StyriC.’
‘That could just be their peculiarity, not Aphrael’s. Let’s try it
and find out if I can reach her.’
It took them almost two hours, and Berit, sandy-eyed and
definitely in need of more sleep, began to grow grouchy toward
the end.
‘i’m going to be mispronouncing words,’ Khalad said finally.
‘There’s no way I’ll ever be able to twist my mouth around to
make some of those sounds. Let’s try it and see what happens.’
‘You’ll make her angry,’ Berit warned.
‘She’ll get over it. Here goes.’ Khalad began to haltingly pronounce
the spell, and his fingers faltered as he moved them in
the accompanying gestures.
‘What on earth are you doing, Khalad?’ Her voice almost
crackled in his ears.
‘i’m sorry, Flute,’ he apologized, ‘but this is urgent.’
‘Berit’s not hurt, is he?’ she demanded with a note of concern.
‘No. He’s fine. It’s just that I need to talk with you personally
Do you know what firedamp is?’
‘Yes. It sometimes kills coal-miners.’
‘You said that klael’s soldiers breathe something like
marsh-gas. ‘
‘Yes. Where are we going with this? I’m sort of busy just now.’
‘Please be patient, Divine One. i’m still groping my way
toward this. Berit told you that we saw some of those aliens run
into a cave, didn’t he?’
‘Yes, but I still don’t ‘I
thought that klael might have filled the cave with marsh-gas
so that his soldiers could go there to breathe, but now I’m not
so sure. Maybe the gas was already there.’
‘Would you please get to the point?’
‘is it possible that firedamp and marsh-gas are anything at all
alike?’
She sighed one of those infuriating long-suffering sighs. ‘Very
much alike, Khalad – which sort of stands to reason, since
they’re the same thing.’
‘I do love you, Aphrael,’ he said with a delighted laugh.
‘What brought that on?’
‘I knew there had to be a connection of some kind. This is a
desert, and there aren’t any swamps here. I couldn’t for the life
of me figure out where klael might be getting marsh-gas to fill
that cave. But he didn’t have to, did he? If marsh-gas is the same
thing as firedamp, all he had to do was find a cave with a seam
of coal in it.’
‘All right, now that I’ve answered your question and satisfied
your scientific curiosity, can I go?’
‘In a minute, Divine Aphrael,’ he said, rubbing his hands
together gleefully. ‘is there some way that you can blow some
of our air into that cave so that it’ll mix with the firedamp those
soldiers are breathing?’
There was another of those long pauses. ‘That’s dreadful,
Khalad!’ she exclaimed.
‘And what happened to Lord Abriel and Lord Vanion’s
knights wasn’t?’ he demanded. ‘This is war, Aphrael, and it’s a
war we absolutely have to win. If klael’s soldiers can run into
those caves to catch their breath, they’ll be coming out and
attacking our friends every time we turn around. We have to
come up with a way to neutralize them, and I think this is it.
Can you take us back to that cave where we saw those soldiers?’
‘All right.’ Her tone was a little sulky.
‘What were you talking with her about?’ Berit asked.
‘A way to win the war, Berit. Let’s gather up our things.
y
Aphrael’s going to take us back to that cave.’
‘Are they still coming?’ Vanion called back to Sir Endrik, who
was trailing behind the other knights.
‘Yes, my Lord,’ Endrik shouted. ‘Some of them are starting
to fall behind, though.’
‘Good. They’re beginning to weaken.’ Vanion looked out
across the rocky barrens lying ahead. ‘We’ve got plenty of room,
he told Sephrenia. ‘We’ll lead them out onto those flats and run
them around for a while.’
‘This is cruel, Vanion,’ she reproved him.
‘They don’t have to follow us, love.’ He rose up in his stirrups.
‘Let’s pick up the pace, gentlemen,’ he called to his knights. ‘I
want those monsters to really run.’
The knights pushed their horses into a gallop and moved out
onto the barren flats with a vast, steely jingling sound.
‘They’re breaking off.” Endrik called from behind after about
half an hour.
Vanion raised his steel-clad arm to call a halt. Then he reined
in and looked back.
The masked giants had given up their pursuit and were running
due west now, staggering toward an outcropping of rocky
hills several miles away.
‘That’s the part that has everybody baffled,’ he told Sephrenia.
‘From what Aphrael told me, the others have encountered the
same thing. Klael’s soldiers chase after us for a while, and then
they break off and run toward the nearest cluster of hills. What
can they possibly hope to find that’s going to do them any good?’
‘I have no idea, dear one,’ she replied.
‘This is all very fine, I suppose,’ Vanion said with a worried
frown, ‘but when we begin our final advance on Cyrga, we
won’t have time to run those brutes into exhaustion. Not only
that, klael will’ probably start massing them in units larger than
these regiments we’ve been coming across out here in the open.
If we don’t come up with some way to neutralize them permanently,