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,’ Gunda said. ‘We’d better pick up our pace, my friend,’ he suggested. ‘Longbow’s getting a fair distance ahead of us, and if we don’t keep up, he’ll get very grouchy. If we keep strolling along like this, he might send us to bed without supper.’
Omago laughed, and they both began to walk faster.
The sun was setting off to the west when Longbow decided that they’d gone far enough. Gunda breathed a sigh of relief at that point. He was fairly sure that he didn’t have another mile left in him.
‘We’ll need to go a little farther tomorrow,’ Longbow said.
‘Farther?’ Gunda protested. ‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to stand up tomorrow morning, much less walk more than a mile.’
‘You spend too much time lying around when you’re riding on boats, Gunda,’ Longbow replied. ‘You’ll be in much better shape when we reach the head of the pass.’ Then he looked back down the pass where the last of the Trogites were stumbling up toward where they’d soon be setting up their night’s camp. ‘Did Narasan happen to tell you why he sent so many men?’ he asked.
‘Narasan doesn’t explain too many things to me anymore, Longbow. All it does is confuse me.’
‘But ten thousand men to build one fort?’
‘That might depend on just how big a fort we’re talking about.’
They had beans for supper, of course, but Gunda was sure that he could eat almost anything by then. He put out guards and then fell asleep almost immediately.
Longbow had been quite obviously not at all pleased when Commander Narasan designated some ten thousand of his men as ‘fort-builders.’ Andar had privately agreed with the archer, but he chose not to make an issue of it. The more he thought about it, though, the more he realized that the idea might have some merit.
He went looking for Longbow and found him still awake. ‘I take it that you aren’t too happy with the commander’s generosity, Longbow.’
‘I wouldn’t call foisting that many people off on me “generosity,” Andar,’ Longbow replied in a sour sort of voice.
‘There is something we might want to consider, though,’ Andar said.
‘Oh?’
‘About how wide would you say that the upper end of this pass is?’
‘I’d say fifty feet at the most.’
‘That would put almost two hundred men to work on every foot of our projected fort, wouldn’t it?’
‘I’m not sure that building a fort out of people would be a very good idea, Andar.’
‘It might be just a little difficult to feed them if they’re piled up on top of each other,’ Andar agreed. ‘But since we’ve got a surplus of people, we could put the extra ones to work building a second fort a mile or so on down the pass. That way, there’d only be five thousand standing
