found a small rasc town where the road passed near the western mountains, but no military garrisons. Barring the chance presence of passing troops, a revolt in the lower hiingol would be free from military interference for at least four days. “The best way to defeat a foe with superior military skill,” Farrari told himself, “is to attack when he’s not around.”
He widened his range of exploration and once again began to steal from the durrlz— not grain, but the tubular grain bags. He laid out a route on his map and reconnoitered it carefully, calculating distances in the slouching ol pace. Suddenly he was ready, no reason to delay longer, nothing ventured nothing gained, nothing at all would come to an IPR agent who waited except old age, and old age on Branoff IV wasn’t worth waiting for. He rode out of the night to loom over the nightfire of ol village One. “Come!”
Bearing torches, they followed him. Villages Two, Three, Four—the ranks of Farrari’s army swelled and his confidence soared with each new addition. The route to village Five followed a long stretch of straight lane, and when Farrari looked back it seemed to him that there were very few torches behind him. He turned to investigate and came much too quickly to the end of the column. Only the olz of village Four were following. The others had gone back. He hurriedly retraced his steps. At village Three he found those olz resuming their meal around a replenished nightfire. Village Two, village One—his schedule was ruined, but stubbornly he started over again. “Come!”
When he reached the same stretch of straight lane, only the olz of village Four were following him. He grunted the word that sent them back to their village and retired to a hiding place to think.
He had been certain that the olz traveled long distances carrying their dead, but perhaps they merely passed them from village to village. His own memories of the feverish nights when he was one with the ol dead were too vague to be helpful.
“It’s possible,” he told himself, “that the olz never have gone—and therefore won’t go—farther from home than the next village. It’s also possible that they’ve never been involved in a project that required more workers than the population of their own village. They’d think they were no longer needed the moment I asked another village to join me.”
Either way, the movements of the mighty army he had envisioned were likely to be somewhat limited: his soldiers refused to leave home.
He could not sleep. His gril crushing grain kernels with its horn lips, adding a crunching sound to the rattling of the zrilm leaves, and Fararri’s mind kept contending with till silly notion of overwhelming militarily talented people with sheer numbers of clods who had never handled a weapon.
He needed help. A handful of IPR agents, or even one, could have kept the olz marching, but if he were so rash as to apply for assistance Jorrul would orate three pages of regulations to demonstrate that what he wanted to do was either impossible or forbidden.
He sat up suddenly. Distance, or the number of olz involved, had nothing to do with it. He had asked the olz to do something totally outside their experience: travel, with no accompanying work. If they carried their dead long distances, it was because there was labor to perform: transporting the bodies.
All he needed was a job of work for them to do on the march. “Something to carry,” he mused. “Weapons would be ideal—it’d give them labor to perform and at the same time make it look as though they were revolting. But where would I find enough weapons for an army of olz?” He didn’t even have non-weapons for them to carry.
Then he remembered his grain bags.
After five nights of frenzied activity he was ready to begin again. He led the olz of village number One to a cache of grain bags and distributed them, an armful to each adult ol. They marched into the night. At the next village he redistributed the bags, did so again at the third and the fourth—in the straight lane he looked back at an unending procession of torches. Village Five, village Six, another cache of bags—through the night Farrari’s army marched with slouching, dragging footsteps and grew village by village. At dawn a thousand olz were dutifully trailing after him and several durrlz were finding, to their consternation, that their work force had disappeared.
He brought his gril to a stop where the lane opened onto a durrl’s headquarters and waved his olz forward, telling them to drink and eat. As they moved up the slope toward the buildings, the durrl appeared and for a moment stood staring down the slope.
Farrari jerked his gril behind the zrilm, cursing himself for his monumental stupidity. If a word from a synthetic assistant durrl would set an army of olz in motion, a word from a genuine durrl would certainly send it home again.
When next he looked, the durrl, his assistants, their families and servants, were fleeing in panic. As the olz advanced up the slope they disappeared down the far side, obviously running for their lives, and took refuge in a zrilm hedge. Farrari recovered his composure and opened the grain and tuber stores and set the olz to raiding the durrl’s stocks of quarm. Soon the circle of buildings was filled with ol fires, everything Farrari could find in house or barn that could serve as a cooking utensil was in use, and the olz were gathered in mute circles waiting for their food. Farrari kept a wary eye on the zrilm where the rascz had disappeared. After a time they realized that there was no pursuit, and they emerged from hiding and hurried away.
Farrari rushed the olz through their meal, and before moving on he issued rations to them: a tuber and a measure of grain for each ol. There would be other durrl headquarters to raid, but this gave the olz something to carry in their grain bags.
The march resumed, with Farrari climbing stiles to recruit olz who were at work in the fields, and instead of avoiding the durrlz he began to seek them out—but every headquarters was deserted. The first fugitives must have sounded the alarm, and word of the marching olz had spread with a swiftness Farrari hesitated to believe.
At dusk they reached the highway, and Farrari left his swollen army resting around nightfires and sent his gril scampering east. At dawn he was back with another, smaller group of olz, and while they rested and ate he marched the first olz onto the highway and turned them south.
He could not have imagined a shoddier-looking army. It slouched forward, a motley, unarmed crowd lacking even the demented sense of purpose that chacterized a mob. The second group followed the first, and in the wake of both came a straggling tail of enfeebled sick, young children, and women carrying children, and these Farrari halted where the highway crossed a rippling stream of clear water. He left them in the shade of a zrilm hedge to await the return of the others. Then he rode along the marching column grunting orders to keep the olz moving.
They met no traffic, nor did any overtake them. For some reason Farrari never expected to understand, the rascz saw his farcical army as a sinuous monster flowing with irresistible force, and they had carried the warning in all directions.
At midafternoon they reached the deserted granary. Farrari attacked the huge grain crocks with a thick piece of quarm, and as each shattered, the lustrous, red-tinted grain gushed forth. A word and a gesture from Farrari, and the olz began filling their bags. As each ol emerged Farrari spoke two words. “Home Quickly!” The olz had only one speed, but impressed with the need for haste they would at least keep moving tirelessly.
