‘Zalasta thinks we’re going to need the Bhelliom.’ Sparhawk decided to get right to the point.
‘No.’ Aphrael said it very firmly. ‘I spent too much time and effort getting it into a safe place to turn around and drag it out every time there’s a change in the weather. Zalasta always wants to unleash more power than is really necessary in situations like this. If all we’re facing is the Troll-Gods, we can manage without Bhelliom.’ She held up one hand when he started to object. ‘My decision, Sparhawk,’ she told him.
‘I could always spank you and make you change your mind,’ he threatened.
‘Not unless I let you, you can’t.’ Then she sighed. ‘The Troll-Gods aren’t going to be a problem for much longer.’
‘Oh?’
‘The Trolls are doomed,’ she said rather sadly, ‘and once they’re gone their Gods will be powerless.’ ‘Why are the Trolls doomed?’
‘Because they can’t change, Sparhawk. We may not always like it, but that’s the way the world is. The creatures of this world must change – or die. That’s what happened to the Dawn-men. The Trolls supplanted them because they couldn’t change, and now it’s the turn of the Trolls. Their nature is such that they need a great deal of room. A lone Troll needs fifty or so square leagues of range, and he won’t share that range with any other Troll. There just isn’t enough room left for them any more. There are Elenes in the world now as well, and you’re cutting down trees to build your houses and to clear fields for your crops. The Trolls might have survived if they only had to live with Styrics. Styrics don’t chop trees down.’ She smiled. ‘It’s not that we’re really all that fond of trees. It’s just that we don’t have very good axes. When you Elenes discovered how to make steel, you doomed the Trolls – and their Gods.’
‘That lends some weight to the notion that the Troll-Gods may have allied themselves with someone else,’ Sephrenia noted. ‘If they can understand what’s happening, they’re probably getting desperate. Their survival depends on preserving the Trolls and their range.’
Sparhawk grunted. ‘That might help to explain something that’s been bothering me,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ Sephrenia asked him.
‘If there’s someone involved as well as the Troll-Gods, it might account for the differences I’ve been feeling. I’ve been getting this nagging sense that things aren’t quite the same as they were last time – jarring little discrepancies, if you take my meaning. The major discrepancy lies in the fact that these elaborate schemes with people like Drychtnath and Ayachin are just too subtle for the Troll-Gods to understand.’ He made a rueful face. ‘But that immediately raises another problem. How can this other one get the co-operation of the Troll-Gods if he can’t explain what he’s doing and why?’
‘Would it offend your pride if I offered you a simpler solution?’ Danae asked him.
‘I don’t think so.’
‘The Troll-Gods know that others are smarter than they are, and the one you call “our friend” has a certain hold over them. He can always cram them back into Bhelliom and let them spend several million years in that box on the sea-bottom if they don’t co-operate. Maybe he’s just telling them what he wants them to do without bothering to explain it to them. The rest of the time, he could just be letting them blunder around making noise. All that crashing through the bushes would certainly help conceal what he’s doing, wouldn’t it?’
He stared at her for a long time. Then he laughed. ‘I love you, Aphrael,’ he said, lifting her in his arms and kissing her.
‘He’s such a nice boy,’ the little Goddess beamed to her sister.
Two days later, the weather changed abruptly. Heavy clouds swept in off the Tamul sea several hundred odd leagues to the east, and the sky turned suddenly murky and threatening. To add to the gloom, one of those ‘breakdowns in communications’ so common in all government enterprises occurred. They reached a clan border marked by a several-hundred-yard-wide strip of open ground about noon only to find no escort awaiting them. The clan which had brought them this far could not cross that border, and, indeed, looked nervously back toward the safety of the forest.
‘There are bad feelings between these two clans, Sparhawk-Knight,’ Engessa advised gravely. ‘It is a serious breach of custom and propriety for either clan to come within five hundred paces of the line between them.’
‘Tell them to go on home, Atan Engessa,’ Sparhawk told him. ‘There are enough of us here to protect the queen, and we wouldn’t want to start a clan war just for the sake of maintaining appearances. The other clan should be along soon, so there’s no real danger.’
Engessa looked a bit dubious, but he spoke with the leader of their escort, and the Atans gratefully melted back into the forest.
‘What now?’ Kalten asked.
‘How about some lunch?’ Sparhawk replied.
‘I thought you’d never think of that.’
‘Have the knights and the Peloi draw up around the carriage and get some cooking fires going. I’ll go tell Ehlana.’ He rode back to the carriage.
‘Where’s the escort?’ Mirtai asked brusquely. Now that she was an adult, Mirtai was even more commanding then she had been before.
‘I’m afraid they’re late,’ Sparhawk told her. ‘I thought we might as well have some lunch while we’re waiting for them.’
‘Absolutely splendid idea, Sparhawk,’ Emban beamed.
‘We thought you might approve, your Grace. The escort should be here by the time we finish eating.’
They were not, however. Sparhawk paced back and forth, chafing at the delay, and his patience finally evaporated. ‘That’s it!’ he said loudly. ‘Let’s get ready to move out.’
‘We’re supposed to wait, Sparhawk,’ Ehlana told him.
‘Not out in the open like this, we’re not. And I’m not going to sit here for two days waiting for some Atan clan-chief to mull his way through a message.’
‘I think we’d better do as he says, friends,’ Ehlana told the others. ‘I know the signs, and my beloved’s beginning to grow short-tempered.’
‘-Er,’ Talen added.
‘You said what?’ Ehlana asked him.
‘Short-tempered-er. Sparhawk’s always short-tempered. It’s only a little worse now. You have to know him very well to be able to tell the difference.’
‘Are you short-tempered-er right now, love?’ she teased her husband.
‘I don’t think there is such a word, Ehlana. Let’s get ready and move on out. The road’s well-marked, so we can hardly get lost.’
The trees beyond the open space were dark cedars with swooping limbs that brushed the ground and concealed everything more than a few yards back into the forest. The clouds rolling in from the east grew thicker and the light back among the trees grew dim. The air hung motionless and sultry, and the whine of mosquitoes seemed to grow louder as they rode deeper into the woods.
‘I love wearing armour in mosquito country,’ Kalten said gaily. ‘I have this picture of hordes of the little blood-suckers sitting around with teeny little hammers trying to pound their beaks straight again.’
‘They won’t really try to bite you through the steel, Sir Kalten,’ Zalasta told him. ‘They’re attracted by your smell, and I don’t think any living creature finds the smell of Elene armour all that appetising.’
‘You’re taking all the fun out of it, Zalasta.’
‘Sorry, Sir Kalten.’
There was a rumble far off to the east.
‘The perfect end to a day gone sour,’ Stragen observed, ‘a nice rousing thunderstorm with lots of lightning, hail, driving rain and howling winds.’
Then, echoing down some unseen canyon back in the forest there came a hoarse, roaring bellow. Almost immediately there came an answer from the opposite direction.
Sir Ulath swore, biting off curses the way a dog tears at a piece of meat.
‘What’s wrong?’ Sparhawk demanded.
‘Didn’t you recognise it, Sparhawk?’ the Thalesian said. ‘You’ve heard it before – back at Lake Venne.’
‘What is it?’ Khalad asked apprehensively.
‘It’s a signal that it’s time for us to fort up! Those are Trolls out there!’
