‘But your fort-builders wouldn’t really have to move that slowly, Narasan,’ Longbow declared. ‘Friend Gunda here is the expert, so he’ll know how many of your men we’ll need to get the job done. If I were to guide – or maybe lead – your fort-builders up the pass, I’m sure that I’d have them up there in four days, and they could have most of the work finished by the time you and the rest of your army reached the top.’
‘It’s just not done like that, Longbow,’ Gunda protested. ‘An army’s not an army if it gets all split up like that.’
‘Don’t be in such a rush, Gunda,’ Andar suggested. ‘It’s very likely that we’re going to need those forts and we’ll definitely need them before the bug-people come charging across the Wasteland. I suppose we could give some thought to blocking them off somewhere about half-way down the pass, but I’d say that blocking them right up at the top of the pass would work better.’
‘He’s got a point there, Gunda,’ Narasan agreed. ‘We’re not fighting an ordinary enemy, and we don’t want them to get into the pass if we can possibly come up with a way to keep them out.’ Then he looked at Longbow. ‘Can you really get the fort crew to the head of the pass in just four days?’ he asked.
‘Not all of them maybe,’ Longbow replied, ‘but enough of them to get started. The Tonthakans, Matans and the Malavi can hold our enemies back for a while, but I’m sure that forts are absolutely essential.’
‘I see your point,’ Narasan agreed. ‘All right, then, take the fort crews on up to the head of the pass as quickly as you possibly can. If we don’t block off Long-Pass, there’s a fair chance that poor old Sorgan will be facing real bug-people instead of assorted imaginary ones.’
Gunda shrugged. ‘If that’s the way you want it, glorious leader, that’s the way we’ll do it.’ Then he squinted at Andar. ‘Are you feeling up to a long hike in short time?’ he asked.
‘That’s up to the commander, Gunda,’ Andar replied. ‘If he wants me to go along, I’ll go, and we could turn it into a race, if you’d like. I can probably run at least as fast as you can.’
Gunda was seriously discontented by Longbow’s scheme to rush the building crews up to the head of the pass. Spreading the army out in potentially hostile territory wasn’t a good idea at all, and he was highly skeptical when Longbow announced that he could march the construction gangs to the top of the pass in a mere four days. Longbow himself probably wouldn’t have any trouble covering that much ground in four days, but Longbow wasn’t familiar with all the delays that can crop up when several thousand men are moving in the same direction. Gunda’s years in Narasan’s army had taught him a fairly simple rule – ‘Always expect the worst, and you’ll seldom be disappointed.’
The grumbling and complaining began before they even started up the pass the following morning. When Longbow said ‘at first light’ he meant it, and that didn’t sit too well with most of the men in the construction crews.
It didn’t take Gunda very long to put his finger on the source of much of their problem. Longbow was a tall man, and Trogites, for the most part, were significantly shorter. Gunda didn’t bother to keep count, but he was almost positive that he had to take two steps for every one of Longbow’s. Most Trogites, it appeared, almost had to run to keep up with the archer.
‘He moves very fast, doesn’t he?’ the farmer Omago suggested.
Gunda wasn’t sure just why Omago had joined them, but he decided not to ask any questions just now. ‘He steps right along,’ he agreed. ‘If somebody happened to take six or eight inches off each one of his legs, things might be a lot more pleasant for the rest of us.’
‘I think it might have something to do with the fact that he’s a hunter,’ Omago said. ‘From what I’ve heard, all hunters move fast, because they don’t eat if they just plod along.’
‘That probably has a lot to do with it,’ Gunda agreed.
‘Hunting might be exciting,’ Omago said, ‘but turnips don’t run away, so we don’t have to chase them.’
‘I’ve never been involved in farming or hunting,’ Gunda said. ‘Down in the Empire, we just buy our food. We don’t have to grow it or chase it down to shoot it full of arrows.’
‘Did I hear correctly?’ Omago asked then. ‘Somebody told me that Trogite soldiers are born and raised in those forts down there.’
‘Not quite all of us,’ Gunda replied. ‘It’s mostly just the officers. We start out playing soldier, but then we move on to being real ones.’
‘Isn’t it sort of dangerous to hand real weapons to little children?’
Gunda smiled. ‘We don’t get real weapons until we’re older,’ he replied. ‘We start out with wooden swords, and there are quite a few old veterans keeping an eye on us. Then, when the weather’s bad, they tell us war-stories. There was an old sergeant named Wilmer who could spend hours telling us stories about wars the army had fought in the past. I’d say he was probably one of the greatest story-tellers who’ve ever lived. He could keep us sitting on the edge of our chairs for hours.’
‘The stories the older farmers tell us when we’re little boys aren’t really very exciting,’ Omago said. ‘Stories about bugs eating our crops used to show up quite often.’
‘That’s what this war is all about, though, wouldn’t you say? Of course, this one’s just a little different. This time, the bugs are eating people, not just crops.’ Then he saw something quite interesting. ‘Excuse me a minute, Omago,’ he said. ‘I need to mark something.’ He went to a fair-sized oak tree and tied a length of red string around it. ‘A good spot for a fort,’ he explained. ‘Narasan told me to keep my eyes open while we’re going through the pass and mark any place that might be a good spot for a fort.’
‘Are you saying that you’re going to build forts this far down the pass.’
‘Only if the bug-people give us enough time, Omago. If things work out right, we’ll build a fort every mile or so. If the bug-people do decide to come down this way, we’ll be able to make it very expensive for them.’
‘You Trogites are most certainly the finest soldiers in the world,’ Omago declared. ‘We’re very lucky that Veltan was able to persuade Commander Narasan to come here and help us. I keep hearing stories that your commander had given up soldiering and had taken up begging instead.’
Gunda shrugged. ‘He made a blunder in a war, and his nephew was killed. Narasan couldn’t live with that – until Veltan came along and told him that it was time to go to work again.’
Omago smiled. ‘Veltan can be very persuasive when he needs to be.’
‘He is indeed,’ Gunda agreed. ‘He threw some things at Narasan that jerked our commander out of his gloom, that’s for sure. Narasan was sure that the world was coming to an end, and time would stop. Veltan told him that time didn’t, and never would, have an end – or a beginning either.’
‘He was wrong there,’ Omago said. ‘Time may never have an end, but it definitely had a beginning. There was a time when the universe wasn’t, but it suddenly appeared. That was when time began.’
‘Just when did that happen?’ Gunda asked curiously.
‘It’s very hard to say,’ Omago replied. ‘It was before the world – or the sun – came into existence, so Veltan wasn’t around.’
‘Where did you pick up this story, Omago?’
Omago frowned. ‘I’m not really sure,’ he admitted. ‘I just somehow know that it happened that way. Isn’t that odd?’
‘This Land of Dhrall is the native home of odd, Omago,’