"Such as what?" Tanda asked.
"Such as what to do about those signal towers," Aahz retorted, jerking his head at one of the distant structures.
"We probably won't have time to break their code, so the next best thing is to disrupt their signals somehow. Now, you said you picked up some special effects items back at the Bazaar. Have you got anything we could use on the signal towers?"
"I'm not sure," Tanda frowned thoughtfully. "I wish you had said something about that before I went shopping."
"What about Ajax?" I suggested.
"What about him?" Aahz countered.
"How close would he have to be to the towers to disrupt things with his archery?"
"I don't know," Aahz shrugged. "Why don't you ask him."
Eager to follow up on my own suggestion, I squatted down next to the dozing bowman.
"Urn ... Ajax," I called softly.
"Whatcha need, youngster?" the old man asked, coming instantly awake.
"Do you see those signal towers?" I asked, pointing at the distant structures.
Ajax rose to his feet and squinted in the indicated direction. "Sure can," he nodded.
"We ... um ... I was wondering," I explained, "can you use your bow to disrupt their signals?"
In response, Ajax drew an arrow from beneath his cloak, cocked it, and let fly before I could stop him.
The shaft disappeared in the direction of the nearest tower. With sinking heart, I strained my eyes trying to track its flight.
There was a man standing on the tower's platform, his standard leaning against the railing beside him. Suddenly, his standard toppled over, apparently breaking off a handspan from its crosspiece. The man bent and retrieved the bottom portion of the pole, staring with apparent confusion at the broken end.
"Any other targets?" Ajax asked.
He was leaning casually on his bow, his back to the tower. He hadn't even bothered watching to see if his missile struck its mark.
"Um ....ot just now, Ajax," I assured him. "Go back to sleep."
"Fine by me, sonny," Ajax smiled, resettling him self. "There'll be plenty of targets tomorrow."
"How do you figure that?" I asked.
"According to that signal I just cut down," he grinned, "the army's fixin' to move out tomorrow."
"You can read the signals?" I blinked.
"Sure," Ajax nodded. "There're only about eight different codes armies use, and I know ‘em all. It's part of my trade."
"And they're moving out tomorrow?" I pressed.
"That's what I said." The bowman scowled. "What's the matter, are you deaf?"
"No," I assured him hastily. "It just changes our plans is all. Go back to sleep."
Returning to our little conference, I found Aahz and Tanda engrossed in a conversation with Brockhurst.
"Bad news, kid," Aahz informed me. "Brockhurst here says the army's going to move out tomorrow."
"I know," I said. "I just found out from Ajax. Can you read the signal flags too, Brockhurst?"
"Naw," the Imp admitted. "But the Gremlin can."
"What Gremlin?" Aahz bared his teeth.
"He was here a minute ago," Brockhurst scowled, looking around.
"Well, handsome," Tanda sighed, eyeing me, "I think we just ran out of planning time. Better call your dragon. I think we're going to need all the help we can get tomorrow."
Gleep had wandered off shortly after our arrival, though we could still hear him occasionally as he poked about in the underbrush.
"You go get the dragon, Tanda," Aahz ordered.
"Though it escapes me how he's supposed to be any help. The ‘boss' here and I have to discuss his war council tomorrow."
Any confidence I might have built up listening to Aahz's grand plan earlier fled me. Tanda was right. We had run out of time.
Chapter Seventeen:
"Diplomacy is the delicate weapon of the civilized warrior."
-HUN, A.T.
WE waited patiently, for our war council. The two of us, Aahz and me. Against an army.
This was, of course, Aahz's idea. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't be caught dead in this position.
Trying to ignore that unfortunate choice of words, I cleared my throat and spoke to Aahz out of the corner of my mouth.
"Aahz?"
"Yeah, kid?"
"How long are we going to stand here?"
"Until they notice us and do something about it."
Terrific. Either we'd rot where we stood, or someone would shoot us full of arrows.
We were standing about twenty yards from one of the encampments, with nothing between us and them but meadow. We could see clearly the bustle of activity within the encampment and, in theory, there was nothing keeping them from seeing us. This is why we were standing where we were, to draw attention to ourselves. Unfortunately, so far no one had noticed.
It had been decided that Aahz and I would work alone on this first sortie to hide the true strength of our force. It occurred to me that it also hid the true weakness of our force, but I felt it would be tactless to point this out.
At first, Brockhurst had argued in favor of his coming along with me instead of Aahz, claiming that as an Imp he had much more experience at bargaining than a demon. It was pointed out to him rather forcefully by Aahz that in this instance we weren't bargaining for glass beads or whoopie cushions, but for a war ....nd if the Imp wanted to prove to Aahz that he knew more about fighting....
Needless to say, Brockhurst backed down at that point. This was good, as it saved me from having to openly reject his offer. I mean, I may not be the fastest learner around, but I could still distinctly remember Aahz getting the best of Brockhurst the last time the two of them had squared off for a bargaining session.
Besides, if this meeting went awry, I wanted my mentor close at hand to share the consequences with me.
So here we stood, blatantly exposed to the enemy without even a sword for our defense. That was another of Aahz's brainstorms. He argued that our being unarmed accomplished three things. First, it showed that we were here to talk, not to fight. Second, it demonstrated our faith in my magical abilities to defend us. Third, it encouraged our enemy to meet us similarly unarmed.
He also pointed out that Ajax would be hiding in the tree line behind us with strung bow and cocked arrow, and would probably be better at defending us if anything went wrong than a couple of swords would.
He was right, of course, but it did nothing to settle my nerves as we waited.
"Heads up, kid," Aahz murmured. "We've got company."
Sure enough, a rather stocky individual was striding briskly across the meadow in our direction.
"Kid!" Aahz hissed suddenly. "Your disguise!"
"What about it?" I whispered back.
"It isn't!" came the reply.
He was right! I had carefully restored his "dubious character" appearance, but had forgotten completely about changing my own. Having our motley crew accept my leadership in my normal form had caused me to overlook the fact that Klahds are harder to impress than demons.
"Should I-" I began.
"Too late!" Aahz growled. "Fake it."
The soldier was almost upon us now, close enough for me to notice when he abandoned his bored expression and forced a smile.
"I'm sorry, folks," he called with practiced authority. "You'll have to clear the area. We'll be moving soon and you're blocking the path."
"Call your duty officer!" Aahz boomed back at him.
"My who?" the soldier scowled.
"Duty officer, officer of the day, commander, whatever you call whoever's currently in charge of your formation," Aahz clarified. "Somebody's got to be running things, and if you're officer material, I'm the Queen of the May."