“We’ll do it that way, then,” Red-Beard agreed. “Do you want me to carry some message to your chief, Old-Bear?”

“If you happen to be near him at any time after you return to Dhrall, you might tell him that I’m well, that I’ll rejoin the tribe before the snow grows too deep, and that we’re now almost ready to fight a war.”

“I’ll do that, friend Longbow.”

“You’re a very dependable man, friend Red-Beard, and much, much wiser than your humorous behavior makes you appear.”

“It’s paid off many times, friend Longbow,” Red-Beard replied with a broad smile. “When people are laughing, they’ll usually do what you want them to do.”

“You’re even more clever than I’d thought, friend Red-Beard.” Longbow smiled faintly. “These are very unusual times, aren’t they? I’ve never called a man of another tribe my friend before.”

“It’s a very rare thing,” Red-Beard agreed. Then he flashed a quick grin at Longbow. “Fun, though,” he added in an imitation of one of Eleria’s favorite expressions.

Longbow burst out laughing, and the two of them clasped hands in an age-old gesture of friendship.

7

How can you be so certain that it’s going to rain, Longbow?” Rabbit asked as the two of them crouched well out of sight near the bow of the Seagull watching as the five skiffs approached the ships of Sorgan’s kinsmen.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, Rabbit,” Longbow replied. “It’ll rain when it’s necessary, and the ships guarding the Seagull won’t burn. Now, then, this is the way we’re going to do this. I want you to stay low and hand me arrows just as fast as you can. My right hand’s going to stay in one place—very close to the bowstring—and you’re going to put the arrows right between my fingers. If we do it like that, we’ll be able to put out twice as many arrows as I could shoot without your help.”

“There’s going to be five shiploads of unfriendly people out there, Longbow. No matter how fast you can shoot, that’s still an awful lot of people to kill off.”

“We don’t have to kill them all, Rabbit,” Longbow patiently explained. “A ship won’t go where its captain wants it to go unless there’s somebody at the tiller to point it in the right direction. You and I’ll only have five targets to shoot at, and between us, we can have five arrows in the air all at the same time.”

“So that’s why you’re so convinced that you and I can do this all by ourselves, isn’t it? A ship without a steersman at the tiller’s likely to wander around all over the harbor for the rest of the night.” Rabbit squinted across the dark water. “That’s going to take some pretty fancy shooting, Longbow,” he observed.

“No more difficult than shooting geese out of the sky, my little friend,” Longbow said. It occurred to him that he’d been calling a goodly number of people “friend” here lately. It seemed appropriate, but it was very odd. Longbow hadn’t called anyone “friend” for at least a half-dozen years.

Can you hear me, Longbow? he heard what seemed to be a whisper in his left ear.

Very clearly, he soundlessly replied.

I’ll need to know exactly when those people throw the torches at the ships around us. I don’t want to worry you, so you should know that this rainstorm won’t be very big. It’ll rain on those ships, but it won’t rain anyplace else, and it’s only going to rain long enough to put out the fire coming from the torches. We don’t want the crews of those five ships hiding from the rain in the cabin or down in the hold. They need to be where they can protect their own ships.

Right, Longbow silently agreed.

“If you’re going to do a rain dance or something, you’d better start now,” Rabbit said urgently. “The men in those skiffs just fired up their torches.”

“The rain’s going to start after they throw the torches, Rabbit,” Longbow told him. “We’ll want to be sure that they’ve thrown every torch they have before we bring down the rain.”

“You’re cutting it a little fine, Longbow,” Rabbit said in a worried tone.

“Trust me.”

“I hate it when somebody says that to me,” Rabbit complained. “Do you want me to blow out that lantern at the bow?”

“Why?”

“So that your arrows will be coming out of the dark. I’ve seen how fast you can shoot arrows, and if between the two of us we can put out twice as many arrows as that, those people out there won’t have any idea of how many people are shooting at them. That’ll probably scare them silly, and maybe they’ll just give up and run away.”

“Not a bad idea, Rabbit,” Longbow conceded. “If they run, we won’t have to waste arrows killing so many. Go blow out that lantern.”

Rabbit scampered forward and extinguished the lantern at the Seagull’s bow. “There go the torches, Longbow!” he called in a hoarse whisper, running back to his place.

Rain, Zelana! Rain! Longbow’s thought crackled.

I thought you’d never ask, she replied mildly.

There was a sudden flash of lightning and a sharp crack of thunder, immediately followed by a roaring downpour of rain.

The rain stopped as quickly as it had begun, but Longbow was certain that nothing would be able to set fire to the five ships now, since water was pouring down their sides in rushing sheets.

“Now, Rabbit!” Longbow said sharply, and he began loosing arrows as fast as he could, dropping the Maags in the skiffs first and then concentrating on the steersmen of each of Kajak’s vessels.

There was much dimly heard shouting coming from the five floundering ships. The oarsmen were in place, of course, but with no one at the tillers, the five ships wandered about the harbor like lost puppies, and every time someone was brave enough—or foolish enough—to rush to the tiller, an arrow came out of the darkness to welcome him. Longbow felt a certain grim amusement when the seamen aboard those ships chose to leap over the sides rather than rush to take the tillers when the captains commanded them to.

It was most probably the terror inspired by silent arrows coming out of the darkness with deadly accuracy that ultimately sent the seamen aboard five ships over the sides to swim through the chill, choppy waters of the harbor to the safety of the beach, and Longbow added to that terror by placing his arrows where they would be very visible. An arrow in the heart will kill a man, certainly, but in most cases few men will see the fatal arrow protruding from the dead man’s body. Longbow, therefore, carefully took aim at foreheads rather than chests, and of course he never missed. Three or four dead men with arrows protruding from their foreheads convey a message too clear to be misunderstood.