Crystal Gorge

“What a shame,” Sorgan Hook-Beak said with mock regret.

4

It’s different,” Sorgan’s younger cousin Torl declared, gesturing at the glorious sunset late that afternoon. “It’s pretty enough, I suppose, but it’s not too much like the sunsets out at sea. Mountains seem to do peculiar things to the sky.”

“It’s the clouds, Captain Torl,” Keselo explained. “Most of the time, I’d imagine, the clouds out over the sea sort of plod along from here to there. When they come to mountains, though, they have to climb up one side and then slide down the other. That sort of scrambles them, so they’re thicker in some places and thinner in others. That’s why we see so many different shades of red in a mountain sunset.”

“Did you study everything when you were going to school?” Torl asked.

“Well, not quite everything, Captain,” Keselo replied. “My father had plans for me that didn’t thrill me very much, so I spent my years at the university stalling. I wasn’t interested in politics or commerce, so I dawdled a lot. Then I joined Commander Narasan’s army—probably more to irritate my father than out of any great enthusiasm.”

“Over in the Land of Maag, there’s really only one career for us to follow,” Torl said. Then he laughed. “When Skell and I were only boys, we used to slip into ships in the harbor of Kormo, hoping that we’d be a long way from shore before the sailors found us. You wouldn’t believe how many times Skell and I got thrown into the bay when we were young. We both got to be very good swimmers, though.” Torl squinted across the steep meadow that lay between the first breastwork and the second. “Nothing even resembling cover of any kind,” he noted. “I think life will get very unpleasant for the bug-people when the Malavi gallop over the top of them.”

The second breastwork was very much like the first—or like all the others Narasan’s army had been erecting for the past several generations, for that matter. Soldiers were creatures of habit, after all, and as long as something worked the way it was supposed to work, nobody ever tampered with the original design.

The first breastwork was about five hundred yards to the south. The distance between the two was a bit farther than was customary, largely at Prince Ekial’s request. “We’Il need quite a bit of room, Narasan,” the horseman had explained. “We’re going to hit the enemy several times, so don’t crowd us.” Then he’d grinned. “Just remember that every one of them we kill out there in the open will be one less that’ll attack your fort.”

It was about midmorning before Keselo saw any movement in the now-abandoned first breastwork. He shuddered back from trying to make any estimate of just how many of their enemies had been mindlessly sacrificed to provide a causeway for the main force to follow to safely cross Athlan’s mud-pit.

Since the first breastwork was some five hundred yards to the south, Keselo couldn’t see many details in the activity of the bug-people down there, but it seemed to him that the invaders were more than a little confused.

“I see that they finally made it across the mud-pit,” the youthful Veltan observed as he joined Keselo near the center of the breastwork. “Are they doing anything interesting at all?”

“It’s a bit difficult to see any details,” Keselo replied. “It’s quite a long way down the slope from here.”

Veltan peered down at the first breastwork. “From what I can see, they’re all very confused.”

“I didn’t think an insect was capable of confusion,” Keselo said.

“As an individual, it isn’t,” Veltan said. “It’s the overmind that’s confused. We just did something that no insect in all the world would ever do.”

“Oh? What’s that?”

“We abandoned our nest.”

“Nest?”

“Insects wouldn’t understand the meaning of the word ‘fort,’ Keselo. From their point of view, all these assorted fortifications are nests, places designed to protect our queen and all of her offspring. The ones that finally managed to get across the mud-pit are searching that breastwork, probably in the hope of finding our queen—and all of her puppies, of course—so that they can kill her, and eat all of her children, and the eggs that haven’t hatched yet. There are a few life-forms that are more primitive, but insects aren’t really that much ahead of them. Life’s extremely simple for an insect. Their first obligation is to protect mother at all cost. They’ll even starve themselves to make sure that mother has enough to eat. If she doesn’t eat, she won’t lay eggs. That translates into ‘extinction’ in the minds of insects.”

“They seem to be approaching ‘honorable,’ don’t they?”

Veltan smiled. “‘Honor’ is an alien concept for insects, Keselo. That’s a human term and a human concept. Insects wouldn’t recognize honor if it walked up and slapped them across the face—of course, they don’t even have what we’d call faces. The insect queen—the ‘Vlagh,’ in their terminology—instills the need to protect her at any cost, and that need is paramount in the bug world. Bugs don’t think for themselves, Keselo. ‘Mother’ does all the thinking, and what my big brother calls ‘the overmind’ is the instrument of her thoughts. What she thinks, they all think. It’s a very simple kind of thing, but it works. The Vlagh has been around for millions of years, and she’s still there. That means that they’re doing something right, wouldn’t you say?”

“I think she just changed her mind, though,” Keselo said. “Quite a few of the bug-people just left the first breastwork behind, and they’re coming up the slope toward us.”

“Well, now,” Veltan said, “that’s very interesting. I’d have sworn that she wouldn’t do that until sometime tomorrow. She seems to be growing up. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if she’d ordered her children to take that first breastwork apart, stone by stone.”

Keselo caught a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye, and when he looked more closely, he saw the Malavi horse-soldiers gathering among the trees off on the east side of the slope. Then he turned and looked toward a similar patch of trees on the west side. He wasn’t really surprised to see Malavi gathering there as well. “I think we might be in for a surprise, Lord Veltan,” he said.