‘I’ll take care of it, then.’ Narasan looked at Padan. ‘Get this scummy lecher out of here,’ he ordered.
‘My pleasure, Commander,’ Padan said with a broad grin. ‘Did you want to go peacefully, scummy lecher? Or would you rather have me kick your behind every step of the way back to the beach?’
‘Nicely put, Padan,’ Red-Beard said admiringly.
‘I’ve always had this way with words,’ Padan replied modestly.
There were several strangers in the round map-room with Veltan the next morning when Omago arrived.
‘Ah, there you are, Omago,’ Veltan greeted him. ‘There are some people here I’d like you to meet.’ He gestured at an imposing, grey-bearded man wearing clothes made of furry animal skins. ‘This is my older brother, Dahlaine of the North.’
‘Omago,’ the bearded one said, briefly nodding.
‘I’m pleased to meet you,’ Omago replied a bit uncertainly. There was something about Veltan’s brother that made Omago just a bit nervous.
‘You’ve already met my sister Zelana,’ Veltan continued, ‘but this is my other sister Aracia.’
Aracia wore splendid clothes and a superior expression.
‘Ma’am,’ Omago said politely.
‘Dahlaine and Aracia thought it might be wise to bring the leaders of the armies they’ve hired here so that they can observe,’ Veltan said. ‘They’ll almost certainly be coming up against the creatures of the Wasteland before much longer, and it won’t hurt if they know what they’ll be facing.’
‘Let me take care of this, Veltan,’ the bearded Dahlaine said. He turned back to Omago. ‘Veltan tells us that you’re the leader of his army,’ he said.
‘I don’t know if I’d go quite so far as to call my people an army,’ Omago said. ‘We aren’t really all that familiar with weapons, but Commander Narasan’s promised to see to it that we’ll get the training we’re going to need.’
‘Have you ever heard of horses?’ Dahlaine asked.
Omago frowned. ‘I don’t believe I have,’ he admitted.
‘A horse is something like a cow – except that it doesn’t have horns, and it can run much faster than a cow,’ Dahlaine explained. He reached out and put his hand on the shoulder of a lean man with a scarred face. ‘This is Prince Ekial, the leader of the horse-people. Quite some time ago, Ekial’s people tamed the horses and taught them how to carry things. After a while, it occurred to some clever fellow that if a horse could carry heavy bags of grain or loads of firewood from one place to another, it could probably carry people just as well – and a horse can run much faster than a man can. The horse people did that for quite some time, and then a war came along. The horse people found that fighting from the back of a horse could be very effective. Since there aren’t any horses here in the Land of Dhrall, the servants of the Vlagh won’t have any idea of what they’re encountering. I’m fairly sure that they aren’t going to like horses and the men who’ll be riding them very much at all – that’s the ones who’ll survive, and I don’t think there’ll be very many survivors.’
‘Do you actually sit on an animal’s back when you want to go somewhere?’ Omago asked the scar-faced Prince Ekial.
Ekial shrugged. ‘It’s easier than doing the walking ourselves,’ he replied, ‘and horses love to run. If you’ve got a good horse, you can go from here to there about five times faster than you could if you did the walking yourself.’
‘Can we get on with this?’ Aracia said abruptly. ‘I have other things I need to attend to.’ She turned to look at Omago. ‘Please don’t get all excited, Omago,’ she said. She pointed at a tall woman who had a very long knife hanging from the leather belt encircling her waist. ‘This is Trenicia, the queen of the warrior women of the Isle of Akalla. Different places have different traditions and different customs. On the Isle of Akalla, the women rule, and the women do the fighting.’
‘What do the men do?’ the horseman Ekial asked curiously.
‘As little as they possibly can,’ the warrior woman said in a sardonic tone. ‘Over the years, they’ve foisted just about everything off on us. We have to grow the food, hunt the meat, and fight the wars. The men sit around getting fat and arguing with each other about something they call “philosophy” – most of which is pure nonsense.’
‘Isn’t your sword just a little slender?’ the horseman asked curiously. ‘I wouldn’t think it’s quite strong enough to cut through any kind of armor.’
‘Why would I want to waste my time banging on somebody’s armor?’ Trenicia asked scornfully. ‘The important part of my sword is the point. It’s very sharp, and it slides through an enemy quite smoothly. There are all sorts of important things in an enemy’s belly or head. My enemy always seems to lose interest in a war after I’ve slid my sword through her a few times.’
‘Are you saying that you fight wars with other women?’ Zelana asked with a certain surprise.
‘We almost have to,’ Trenicia replied. ‘The men of Akalla don’t really know which end of a sword is which. There was an argument on the Isle a few years back about who was really the queen. We don’t have to argue any more, though. Everybody who’s still alive wholeheartedly agrees that I am queen, and I give the orders.’ She smiled a sunny sort of smile. ‘Isn’t that just lovely?’ she asked them.
For some reason the warrior queen made Omago turn cold all over. There was a savagery just below her surface that was very frightening.
Dahlaine motioned Veltan off to one side, but Omago was close enough to hear their quiet talk.
‘Have you told any of these mercenaries about that second invasion that turned up in Ashad’s dream?’ Dahlaine asked quietly.
‘Not as yet,’ Veltan replied. ‘I can’t for the life of me think of a way to mention it to Narasan without offending him. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to deal with it on my own – or possibly get some help from Zelana. She’s very good at dealing with winds and tides, and she could probably freeze any approaching fleet in place for the next few centuries.’
‘I wouldn’t set that in stone, Veltan,’ Dahlaine cautioned. ‘Ashad’s dream definitely put that second invasion ashore in the southern part of your Domain.’
‘That doesn’t necessarily lock it in place, Dahlaine,’ Veltan disagreed. ‘Eleria’s dream over in the Land of the Maags supposedly killed Sorgan and all his men, but Longbow stepped in and prevented that dream from taking place right there on the spot. As I understand it, these dreams are sometimes warnings rather than absolute certainties.’
‘Well, maybe,’ Dahlaine conceded, ‘but keep your eyes and ears open.’
‘This rounded shank fits right over the tip of the spear-shaft, Omago,’ the small Maag called Rabbit explained the following day when the two of them were working in Omago’s door-yard. ‘Then I whack it a few times with my hammer to sort of lock the spear-point in place.’
‘That probably would work better than just lashing a knife to the tip of the pole,’ Omago conceded. ‘I was mulling things over last night,’ he said, ‘and something sort of came to me.’
‘Another one of those pops of yours?’ Rabbit asked with a sly grin.
‘Well, sort of. It seemed to me that if a spear had more than one point it might be more effective.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a spear with more than one point.’
Omago went into his tool shed and picked up his wooden hay-rake. ‘We use this tool to clear away the straw after we’ve harvested our wheat,’ he said, holding the rake out to Rabbit. ‘If the points were sticking straight out instead of angling down, wouldn’t that be more effective than just a single point?’
Rabbit squinted, absently tapping his hammer on his anvil. ‘You might have just come up with something, Omago,’ he agreed. ‘An ordinary spear only has one point, because you’re only trying to kill one enemy at a time, but if you’ve got that venom we used back in the ravine, you could kill three or four snake-men with one poke. Let’s try it and see what the Cap’n and Commander Narasan think about it. If your people are all lined up the way you told us they’d be, that’d put a whole lot of poisoned points out to the front.’
‘Who came up with the idea of dipping the points of your wartools in venom?’
‘Longbow – or maybe it was One-Who-Heals – I’m not really sure which one. Longbow’s been killing snake-men since he was just a boy. You wouldn’t believe how good he is with that bow of his.’
‘Did he ever tell you just why he hated the snake-men so much?’ Omago asked.
‘He didn’t, but I was talking with one of the men from his tribe back in Lattash, and he told me that a snake-man killed the girl Longbow was going to marry, and after that, killing snake-men was about the only thing Longbow thought about. Let’s hammer out one of those rake-point spears and see what the Cap’n and Narasan think about it. If it works even half as good as it seems to me that it will, I think they’ll really like the idea. Every time you turn around, you seem to come up with a new idea.’
Omago smiled faintly. ‘It’s probably because I’m just a bit lazy, Rabbit. Maybe someday I’ll come up with a tool that’ll do all my work for me. Then I’ll be able to stay in bed until noon.’
‘Now that’s the tool I’ve been looking for since the first day when I had to go to work,’ Rabbit said with a broad grin.
Keselo turned the large metal shield over and showed Omago the back of it. ‘You have to slide your left arm under this leather strap and take a firm grip on the bar. That makes the shield a sort of extension of your arm, and you can block the strokes of your enemy’s sword or the jabs he makes at you if he’s using a spear. The creatures we came up against in the ravine didn’t have any weapons except their fangs and stingers, but the shields held them back far enough so that they couldn’t reach us. I talked this over with Rabbit earlier this morning, and he agreed with me that wooden shields would work as well as metal ones, since the snake-men don’t have swords or axes. We wouldn’t be able to gather up enough metal to make shields for all of your men anyway, and wood’s lighter and easier to carry than iron or bronze.’
‘And if the shield was made of wood, Rabbit could probably attach a spear-point to the middle of it, couldn’t he?’ Omago suggested.
Keselo blinked. ‘I never thought of that!’ he exclaimed. ‘How in the world did you come up with that notion, Omago?’
‘The two things just sort of connected,’ Omago replied. ‘I wasn’t trying to make a joke of it or anything like that, but if there’s a spear-point that’s been dipped in that venom, you’d have something to protect yourself with if one of the snake-men happens to duck under the spear-points lined up out in front.’
