The Younger Gods - David Eddings

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down into the top of his boot and pulled out a long, slender dagger. ‘I can almost guarantee that, cousin,’ he said, flourishing his dagger.

      ‘It has got some possibilities, Lord Dahlaine,’ Sorgan said. ‘If your sister’s sitting on her throne some morning and several of her priests drag the body of her favorite underling into her throne room to show her that somebody – or some thing – slipped into her temple and butchered her head priest, she’d go to pieces. Then, if I tell her that the stab-wounds in Bersla’s body were almost certainly caused by the teeth of one of the bug-people, she’d start paying very close attention to anything I said. I could feed her all kinds of wild stories about bug-people creeping around through the halls of her temple killing off her priests by the dozens.’

      ‘Wouldn’t she demand to see the bodies?’

      Sorgan shrugged. ‘If she wants to look at bodies, we’ll show her bodies. Torl might have to sharpen his dagger six or eight times a day, but that’s all right.’

      ‘Thanks, cousin,’ Torl said sourly.

      ‘Don’t mention it, Torl,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

      ‘I’d say that the separation of Long-Pass from Aracia’s temple will work out very well for you,’ Longbow suggested to Sorgan and Narasan a bit later. ‘You can sail on down to that river-mouth, and those of you who’ll be going on up Long-Pass can go ashore while Sorgan goes on down to pacify Aracia. She and her servants won’t even know that you’re anywhere in that pass, so she won’t be issuing commands for you to rush on down south to defend her’.

      ‘That’s a very good idea, Longbow,’ Narasan agreed. ‘I’m sure that the only thing that interests Bersla will be the defense of the temple. He doesn’t care at all about what happens to the ordinary people of Aracia’s Domain. He wouldn’t so much as turn a hair if all the rest of Aracia’s Domain was overrun by the bug-people.’

      ‘There’s a thought, Captain Hook-Beak,’ Keselo said. ‘If you send out some scouts and they report back that the bug-men are eating all of the peasants, the priests will be afraid to come out of the temple and take a look for themselves. They’ll hole up inside the temple itself – almost as if they were prisoners.’

      ‘It would keep them out from underfoot,’ Sorgan agreed. Then he looked at his friend Narasan. ‘You’ve been there, but I haven’t,’ he said. ‘Did you see anything at all like building material near the temple? Rocks or logs or anything like that? If we’re going to go through the motions of looking like we’re building a defensive wall of some kind, we’ll need to put up something that looks like a fort.’

      ‘You’re not going to find anything like rocks – or even logs – in marshy country, Sorgan,’ Narasan replied.

      ‘Ah, well,’ Sorgan said, ‘the temple’s there anyway. It shouldn’t be too hard to knock it down so that we can build a fort.’

      ‘Our sister will come apart at the seams if you do that, Sorgan,’ Zelana told him.

      ‘And you’ll be able to hear her priests screaming from ten miles away,’ Dahlaine added.

      ‘Not after my scouts come back and report that the bug-people are eating the farmers alive, I won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘When the fat ones hear that, they might even offer to help. Just how big would you say that temple is, Narasan?’

      ‘About a mile or so square,’ Narasan replied.

      ‘You’re not serious!’

      ‘The priesthood’s been building Aracia’s temple for centuries, Sorgan,’ Dahlaine said.

      ‘You should be able to build quite a wall with that much stone, Sorgan,’ the warrior queen Trenicia said.

      ‘The screaming’s likely to go on for a long time, though,’ Veltan added.

      ‘Not if the stories my scouts bring back from the countryside are awful enough, it won’t,’ Sorgan disagreed. ‘If the priests hear about a bug that’s twelve feet tall and rips out a man’s liver when it gets hungry, they’ll run for cover and tell us to do whatever’s necessary to hold back the monsters – and they’ll be hiding so far back in the temple that they won’t see daylight for at least a month.’

      ‘I like it!’ Narasan said enthusiastically.

      ‘That’s the way we’ll do ’er then, old friend,’ Sorgan replied with a broad grin.

      Zelana smiled. The unlikely-seeming friendship between Sorgan and Narasan seemed to be growing stronger and stronger, and now it appeared that they’d do almost anything to help each other.

      While their men were preparing for the long march to the east coast of Dahlaine’s part of the Land of Dhrall, Sorgan, Narasan and several others spent most of their time carefully studying the map.

      ‘I’m going to need those ships as soon as you unload your men down in Aracia’s temple-town, Sorgan,’ Narasan reminded his friend. ‘I’ll still have more than half of my army sitting on that beach on the east coast.’

      ‘No problem,’ Sorgan replied. ‘The ships would only clutter up the harbor of temple-town anyway. Then too, if Aracia’s priests look at your ships too long, they might decide that they want a navy so that they can go out to sea to preach to the fish.’ He frowned slightly. ‘Do the people down there actually call their city “temple-town”? Most places have fancier names.’

      ‘The priests – and Aracia herself – never refer to the place as a town, Sorgan,’ Narasan explained. ‘The people who live out beyond the walls might have a different name, I suppose, but the people you’ll be dealing with just speak of “the temple.” It’s entirely possible, I guess, that most of the priests aren’t even aware of the buildings and houses outside the temple walls. For them, the temple is the whole world.’

      ‘That’s stupid,’ Sorgan said.

      ‘I think that’s the word most people use when they’re talking about any priesthood, Sorgan,’ Narasan said with a faint smile.

      Longbow had been studying the map, and he gestured to Sorgan.

      The Maag captain joined him. ‘Do you see anything that might go wrong?’ he asked.

      ‘Not so far, friend Sorgan. It just came to me, though, that most of your fleet is still sitting in the bay over there.’

      ‘They’d better be,’ Sorgan replied. ‘I sent Skell over there to keep a tight grip on them.’

      ‘I’m sure that more archers will be very useful once we’re in Long-Pass, and it’s only a few days south of where your ships are anchored to the village of Old-Bear, where hundreds of archers are sitting around telling stories to each other. If Skell picked them up and carried them on up to that fishing village on the coast, they’d only be a few days behind us, and they’ll probably reach the upper mouth of Long-Pass before the bug-people come storming out of the Wasteland.’

      ‘That’s not a bad idea at all, Longbow,’ Sorgan approved. ‘It’ll keep the sailors busy, and it’ll give Narasan some help when he’s likely to need it.’

      ‘I definitely approve,’ Narasan said, ‘and I’ll take all the help I can get.’

      Longbow continued to stare at Dahlaine’s replication of Eastern Dhrall. ‘There’s this range of low, rounded hills running down along the east side of the Land of Dhrall. I think that when we reach that range, I’ll lead the archers of Tonthakan on down that way, and Old-Bear’s archers won’t be too far behind us. We’ll most likely be at the upper end of Long-Pass even before Narasan’s fort-builders get there. We can make sure that there won’t be any surprises for the Trogites when they go up there to build forts.’

      ‘I’ll get word to Skell,’ Sorgan said. Then he looked over at his

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