"I want all bowmen to join my father there," he said, pointing. "You will be our shock force. You will have first crack at the enemy. Work hard, my friends. Hone your skills so that not a single arrow is wasted. Swordsmen, there," he pointed to another area. "This will be a day of practice, for you will finish what the bowmen start. The coming battles are yours. Will you be prepared?"
A roar told him of their eagerness, but he was still doubtful. He kept that doubt until, wearing freshly washed rags and smelling only of fresh sweat, pong bowmen cut down all exposed enemy, after approaching the settlement in the cover of the stream's swath, and pong swordsmen, with few losses, cleared the settlement of surviving enemies.
Night. Flickering firelight. Duwan sat, a robe over his shoulders, gazing into the fire. Jai and his mother were preparing food. His father and Dagner, who seemed to grow younger, rather than older, sat on either side of him.
"They fought well, my warriors," Dagner said. "And we recovered all but five arrows."
"They are in high spirits," Duwan the Elder said.
"Yes," Duwan agreed. "We move with the light."
"I will fight with them next time," Dagner said.
"No," Duwan told him.
"There is a garrison of soldiers at the next place," Dagner said.
"Conscripts," Duwan said.
"But well armed." Dagner pointed out.
"The conscripts have not much more training than our most experienced troops," Duwan said. "No, this is their fight."
"It seems to me," Dagner said, "that you test them, Duwan." He remembered the voice, the distant, hollow voice. "Yes, it will be the first test," he said.
"But—" Dagner began, and was silenced by the glare of Duwan's orange eyes on his.
"I know you want to fight with them, Dagner. You are still our finest warrior. But what if, by accident, you are taken from behind? Who, then, will train our new recruits? We Drinkers have the knowledge, the skills. We must survive, at all costs, to pass this knowledge and our skill along to an army. We have no more than two hundred, male and female, and to reclaim this land for Drinkers, all Drinkers, we must have multiples of that, thousands, hundreds of thousands. The enemy will always be better armed, for we have not metals, nor metal workers, nor mines. We must overwhelm him by numbers, and to have numbers we, Drinkers of the valley, must lead." He put his hand on Dagner's arm. "There will come the time, my friend, when you can wet your blades with Enemy blood again. Meantime, patience."
"At times I forget that that young, still green head of yours contains so much wisdom," Dagner said.
On the way south a northbound caravan fell to an advance party of Duwan's army, and there were more dead enemies, more weapons, and more pongs to be added to the army. Many of the pongs in that caravan were woodsmen, and their cutting tools were turned into weapons and distributed to pongs who had received some training. The sharp blades and long handles of the cutting tools made them effective in hand-to-hand fighting, even though they would be no match for the blade of a trained swordsman.
Duwan, with Jai at his side, scouted the last and largest settlement north of Kooh. They climbed the limbs of a tall brother and looked down over a makeshift stockade intended more to keep pongs in than any enemy out. Soon, Duwan knew, the news would trickle back to the Enemy cities that for the first time in generations there was sudden death for Devourers roaming the forests of the north, but, judging from the activity within the settlement's stockade, the Devourers suspected nothing as yet. The stockade was roughly circular, and covered a large, grassy area bounded on two sides by forest, and to the west and south by sparsely treed plains. The garrison, conscripts dressed in dull, plain uniforms, had huts surrounding a central compound. Pongpens lined the walls of the stockade. Two gates stood open. He estimated that there were no more than fifty soldiers, armed with longswords, but there were probably two hundred Devourers, male and female and young, living in the settlement.
"After this they will know," Jai said.
He looked at her with a frown. There were times when it seemed that she could get inside his head. He had been thinking the same thing. There were so many of them that it would be a miracle if, in the confusion of the attack, at least one did not escape to carry the news of warfare in the north to Kooh, and thence to the capital at Arutan.
"We will lose many here," she said.
He nodded grimly. "The first test," he said.
He planned the attack after consulting his father and Dagner. It began at dawn. Female pongs—Jai had become a powerful role model for the females, and they begged, insisted, that they be made a part of the Drinker Army—had crawled to lie against the stockade walls while it was still dark. Just before dawn they kindled fires at points opposite each other on the circular stockade, fanning them and adding dry material until the flames reached high and began to eat at the logs of the stockade. Inside the stockade an alarm was shouted and Devourers began to pour toward the fires. While their attention was on the fires, agile young Drinkers scaled the stockade wall, dropped inside, and opened the gates, and from two sides Drinkers ran silently, gained the gates without alarm, and spread out inside the compound.
Duwan ached to be with them, but he knew that he and the less than two hundred oldsters were not going to be able to conquer the might of Arutan alone, that, in the final analysis, freedom for the Drinkers of the Land of Many Brothers depended upon the inhabitants of that land. He knew, as he watched from the same tall brother from whose limbs he had first scouted the stockaded settlement, that he was running a great risk. If his rabble—he could not yet call them an army—failed, if they were defeated, the word would spread and the pongs would hesitate to rebel at the risk of being peeled, would no longer seek to escape their masters and join him. But if they won—ah, then that word, too, would spread, and he would be in a position to send out a call to all pongs to rise, to escape, to join in the fight for freedom and the retaking of their lands. The first silent onslaught caught the Devourers inside the stockade totally by surprise. Many went down. Jai, clinging to a limb at his side, put her hand on his arm and felt him tense as he saw pong warriors slay females and young as willingly as they smote the Devourer males. An officer rallied the Devourer conscripts and about thirty of them formed a defensive square in the central compound. "Bowmen," Duwan muttered, although there was, of course, no chance of his being heard. But he had given his orders clearly, and the group leaders among the pongs began to shout their own orders so that a line of bowmen formed and the iron-tipped arrows began to take their toll of the Devourer soldiers. Then, with a screaming, wailing, nervous cry the swordsmen rushed forward and Duwan could hear the clash of iron on iron.
"They've done it," Jai said, blood-hunger making her voice hoarse.
"They've done it!"
Organized resistance was at an end. The pongs dispersed, each male seeking out hidden Devourers, and as females and young began to be dragged from huts, as fire was applied and the settlement began to burn, and the freed pongs from the pens were milling, shouting questions, some screaming in fear, Duwan turned his eyes away and began to climb down from the tall brother. He and Jai joined Dagner and Duwan the Elder, at the head of the reserve force, and marched into the burning settlement. Duwan was growing accustomed to speaking to newly freed slaves now, and he stood before the assembled pongs confidently, seeing that, as usual, they were emaciated and weak. He spoke the usual things to them, and, as always, he found that word of his coming had gone before him. Finished, he gazed at them, wondering if there would be among them a male of leadership quality, for that was his most desperate need now, pongs who could assume the role of sub-leaders.
"Well, you're a skinny bunch," he said, spreading his hands and smiling, "but Du's goodness and the sweet things of the earth will soon have you looking as fat and sleek as these." He waved his hand at a group of freed slaves from his forces who had been filling themselves for a long time on the things that were natural Drinker food.