“And maybe put those poisoned stakes in front of the fourth one?” Ox added. “Then we could go back to mud-pits in front of the fifth one. After a while, they won’t know what we’re going to do next.”
“We’ve got some very evil people working with us, Narasan,” Sorgan said with a wicked grin.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way, friend Sorgan,” Narasan replied.
The sun had gone down, and a distinct chill settled over the mountains that lined the southern part of the Domain of Dahlaine of the North. Keselo had never spent any significant amount of time in the mountains, so he wasn’t really prepared for the sudden drop in the temperature after the sun went to bed—and this was still only autumn. The thick-furred cloaks of the Matans had seemed perhaps a bit ostentatious when Keselo had seen them for the first time, but if the winters here were as brutally cold as the autumn chill suggested, the Matan cloaks might even be a little bit on the light side.
“Nippy, wouldn’t you say?” Rabbit said as he joined Keselo near the mouth of Crystal Gorge.
“I might even go just a bit farther than ‘nippy,’ my little friend,” Keselo replied with a shudder.
“Try this,” Rabbit said, holding out a Matan fur cloak.
“Gladly,” Keselo said, taking the cloak and draping it over his shoulders. “You didn’t steal it, did you?”
“I don’t steal clothes very often,” Rabbit replied. “Most of the clothes on any Maag ship have never been introduced to the thing called soap, so they tend to be just a bit gamey. Actually, your cloak—and mine—are gifts from Chief Two-Hands. Since we’re here to fight his war for him, he seems to want us to stay on the healthy side. How long would you say it’s going to take to build those breastworks?”
“A week at the most. There are plenty of rocks lying around up here in the mountains, so things should go fairly fast.”
Then there was a sudden flash of intensely bright light and a double crash of thunder.
“Guess who,” Rabbit said sardonically. “Zelana’s brothers are nice people, I suppose, but they sure are noisy.”
“You noticed. How very perceptive of you.”
Dahlaine and his younger brother joined them. “Where’s Narasan?” Veltan asked.
“Most probably somewhere up that slope that slants up from the mouth of the gorge,” Rabbit replied. “He and Gunda and Padan have been picking out the locations of the breastworks their men will start building tomorrow morning. Have the bug-people started coming up the gorge yet?”
“We haven’t seen any of them so far,” Dahlaine replied. Then he pointed at the rubble that was blocking off the mouth of the gorge. “Who came up with that notion?” he asked.
“Commander Narasan thought that it might divert that smoke,” Keselo replied, “and, of course, it should make things difficult for the creatures of the Wasteland.”
“How were you people able to gather that much quartz so fast?”
Keselo shrugged. “We just chipped it off the sides of the gorge,” he said. “It wasn’t really very hard, Lord Dahlaine. The quartz up at this end of the gorge has been fractured many times over the past several centuries.”
“It might be even more useful if it were just a bit higher.”
“It was starting to get dark, Lord Dahlaine. We can go back up there in the morning and pile it higher, if you want.”
“Why don’t we take care of that, brother mine,” Veltan said with a broad smile. “I don’t know how your pet feels about things like that, but my pet enjoys smashing things enormously. She had hours of fun when we opened the channel through Aracia’s ice zone to give Narasan’s army access to the Land of Dhrall.”
“And it didn’t really bother you all that much either, did it, little brother?” Dahlaine suggested with a grin.
“It was my responsibility, Dahlaine,” Veltan replied in a pious tone of voice. “I always take pleasure in doing the things I’m supposed to do, don’t you?”
Dahlaine laughed. “Do you ever plan to grow up, Veltan?” he asked.
“Not if I can avoid it, no.”
“All right, then, let’s go smash quartz for a while.”
The sound was deafening, and the flashes of light were so intense that they made Keselo’s eyes hurt, but the barrier across the mouth of Crystal Gorge grew higher with each clap of thunder.
“Isn’t it nice to have gods around to do the hard work?” Gunda said in a pious tone of voice.
“Let’s get started on the first breastwork, shall we?” Narasan suggested.
“You just had to go and say that, didn’t you?”
3
It was still spitting a chill sprinkle of rain the following morning, but the scanty remains of the dense smoke-cloud were streaming off to the east as the prevailing wind skimmed them off the top of the quartz dike that now blocked the mouth of the gorge.
The standard procedure for erecting forts—permanent or temporary—had been in place since the war in the ravine above the village of Lattash in the spring of the current year. The Maag sailors gathered large rocks and carried them to the site, and the Trogite soldiers carefully put the rocks together to form the wall that was supposed to bring the enemy advance to a stop. It hadn’t always worked that way, but Keselo believed that it was a good way to start.
The first breastwork was nearly finished when Athlan came by to have a word with Keselo. “It isn’t working,” he reported glumly. “The water doesn’t sink down into the dirt far enough. We get wet dirt, but it doesn’t come close to being the kind of mud we want.”
“It sounds to me like another good idea just fell apart on us,” Rabbit said.
A peculiar sort of notion came to Keselo out of nowhere. “Is the wife of the farmer Omago anywhere nearby?” he asked Rabbit.
“I think I saw her back behind this fort you and your men are erecting here,” Rabbit replied. “Why do you ask? Do you think that she might be able to tell us how to make mud?”
“Maybe,” Keselo said. “Come along, Athlan. I think I know somebody who might be of some help here.”
They climbed over the partially completed breastworks and found Omago and his beautiful wife standing a few yards back.
“I’m not sure just exactly why,” Keselo said to Ara, “but for some reason I’m almost positive that you can tell us what we’re doing wrong.”
“Oh?” she said. “Just exactly what’s the problem?”
“We know that when water gets mixed with dirt, you get mud, but our friends from Tonthakan diverted several small streams into the bare dirt to the front of the breastworks, and the dirt isn’t turning to mud.”
Ara looked at the archer. “Did you stir it?” she asked him.
“Stir?” Athlan asked in a bewildered tone of voice.
“Oh, dear,” Ara sighed. “You haven’t done much cooking, have you?”
“I’ve roasted meat over open fires since I was only a boy,” Athlan said.
“Cooking meat and cooking flour aren’t at all the same,” Ara said. “I hate to tell you this, but turning dirt into mud is going to involve quite a bit of hard work.”
“When water mixes with dirt in the swamps back in Tonthakan, it turns into mud without any help from us at all,” Athlan protested.
“But it takes several years,” Ara explained. “It’s not one of those things that happens instantly. If you want mud this year, you’re going to have to stir.” She frowned slightly. “Actually, the easiest way to do this would be to dig out all the dirt and pile it up around the edge of the pit. Then let water run in until the pit’s about half full. Then shovel the dirt back in.”
“That sounds like a lot of work,” Athlan objected.
“Doesn’t it, though? Nobody ever promised you ‘easy,’ did they?”
Athlan sighed. “It seemed like such a good idea.”
“It was—and still is,” Keselo said. “You’re going to have to put in some hard work to get what we all want, though.”
“I guess yo
u’re right,” Athlan agreed glumly.
It was just before noon on the following day when Longbow came back on down from the rim of the gorge. “The bug-people have let their fires go out, and what little smoke is still in the gorge should drift out of the upper end before the sun goes down.”
“When do you think the enemies will start to move?” Commander Narasan asked.
“They already have. They’re staying a fair distance behind the last wisps of smoke, but they are on the move.”
“Are they really carrying those weapons of ours that they stole?” Captain Sorgan asked.
“A few of them are,” Longbow replied. “Some of them have swords, and others have axes, but the only things most of them are carrying are long, pointed sticks.”
“That doesn’t pose much of a threat,” Gunda said.
“I wouldn’t be too sure about that,” Sorgan disagreed. “They have that venom right in their front teeth, so they won’t have to carry it around in jugs the way we do. All they’ll have to do is spit on their spear points, and their pointed sticks will be just as deadly as ours. How long would you say it’s going to take them to get up here, Longbow?”
“Not much more than a day and a half,” Longbow replied. “They will have trouble climbing up over the rock-pile that’s blocking the mouth of the gorge—particularly if Athlan’s archers are up on the rim—on both sides. They may even try to scramble over that barricade after the sun goes down. They don’t usually come out after dark, but I don’t think we should take any chances.”
The clouds Veltan and Dahlaine had used to subdue the smoke that the creatures of the Wasteland had unleashed continued to roll up the gorge for the next few days, and they were still spitting rain mixed with snow.
Commander Narasan had prudently sent several flagmen up to the rim of the gorge to keep them advised of the inevitable approach of the bug-people. Keselo was still having some trouble with the fact that “bug-men” wasn’t very appropriate, since their enemies were female.
“One of your people up there on the rim is flapping his flag, Keselo,” Rabbit said early on the morning of the third day after the smoke had been carried away by the prevailing wind.
Keselo squinted up at the rim. “He says that the enemies are coming,” he reported.
“What a surprise,” Rabbit said. “We already knew that they were coming, didn’t we?”
“A little confirmation doesn’t hurt anything,” Keselo said, still intently watching the flagman’s report. “He says that the archers have seriously reduced the number of enemies coming this way.”
Then the warrior queen Trenicia came down from the breastworks to join them. “What’s that man up there saying?” she asked Keselo.
“The enemies are on their way,” Keselo replied. “What few of them are left, anyway. The flagman up there says that the Tonthakan archers have killed hundreds so far.”
“They’re not going to kill them all, are they?” Trenicia demanded, sounding more than a little concerned.
“It wouldn’t hurt my feelings much if they did,” Rabbit declared.
Trenicia scowled, but she didn’t say anything.
The signalman upon the rim of the gorge continued to give them reports, but so far as Keselo could determine, nothing new or unusual was happening.
“One of them just stuck his head up over that pile of quartz,” Rabbit hissed.
“You don’t have to whisper,” Keselo said. “They’re at least a half mile away.”
Then the flagman began to signal again.
“I was fairly sure that was going to happen before too much longer,” Keselo said.
“What now?” Rabbit demanded.
“The Tonthakans are running out of arrows.”
“They’re what?” Rabbit demanded. “I made thousands of those arrowheads.”
“Unfortunately, the Vlagh sent more thousands up the gorge,” Keselo replied.
“Then there will be some enemies for us to kill,” Trenicia said, sounding much relieved.
At first light the following morning the now-armed bugs came swarming over the shattered quartz barricade and crossed the open area between the northern mouth of Crystal Gorge and the edge of Athlan’s mud-pit—but they did not even pause there. To the astonishment of almost everybody standing behind the breastworks, the bug-people continued to charge, despite the fact that those ahead of them sank out of sight almost instantly.
“Are they blind?” Sorgan’s cousin Torl demanded. “Can’t they see what’s happening to their friends?”
“Bugs don’t really have friends, Torl,” Veltan explained. “They probably don’t understand what just happened to the ones who tried to run across the top of the mud-pit. There’s very little water out in the Wasteland, so most of them have never even seen mud before. They don’t realize that what’s there isn’t solid.”
“That should probably save a lot of arrows,” Rabbit added. “If they’re all going to drown themselves, the Tonthakans won’t need to kill them. The bugs will take care of it for themselves.”
Keselo frowned. “I don’t think that’s what’s going to happen, little friend. What they’re actually doing is constructing a causeway that will eventually run from the far side of the mud-pit to our breastworks here.”
“Using people as building blocks?” Rabbit exclaimed.
“You should probably stop thinking of them as ‘people,’ Rabbit,” Longbow said. “People do their own thinking, bugs don’t. If they need a solid road across the mud-pit, the overmind will build that road—out of whatever is handy. Since there aren’t any rocks available, the overmind will use its own bugs as building blocks—and the other bugs won’t even have to carry them.”
“That’s terrible!” Rabbit exclaimed.
“Terrible is what this war is all about, little friend,” Longbow replied.
“It will confuse them, Sub-Commander,” Keselo suggested to Gunda later that morning, “and we won’t lose any men in the process.”
“I’m getting just a little irritated by this business of building forts—or breastworks in this case—and then just turning around and walking away from them.”
“None of our people get killed, Gunda,” Padan said. “Isn’t that what wars are all about? Let the enemy do all the dying. Our main responsibility is staying alive, wouldn’t you say?”
“Are you going to go along with this, Narasan?” Gunda asked rather plaintively.
“It does make sense, Gunda,” Narasan said. “The fort—and the mud-pit, of course—have killed several thousand of our enemies, and it hasn’t cost us any of our own men. If the breastwork is deserted when the enemy reaches it, they’ll be very confused for at least a day. Then they’ll try another one of those senseless charges, and the Malavi will run right over the top of them.”
“And then we abandon the second breastwork as well?” Gunda asked.
“I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t,” Narasan replied. “When the bug-people try to attack the third breastwork, they’ll come face-to-face with catapults and fire-missiles. There’s a fair chance that we’ll be able to eliminate about a million enemies in these first three breastworks, and it won’t cost us a single life. It doesn’t get much better than that, Gunda. That thing called Vlagh will run out of soldiers—eventually.”
The Tonthakan mud-pit was quite a bit deeper at the center than it had been at the southern end, and more and more of the bug-people sank out of sight as the day wore on. Longbow spoke with his friend Athlan and Athlan’s chief, Kathlak, and the archers began to concentrate their arrows on the poorly armed bug-men who were crossing the improvised causeway.
“If we’re going to abandon this first breastwork after the sun goes down, we probably won’t want the servants of the Vlagh snapping at our heels,” he explained. “If they still have a few hundred feet to cross tomorrow morning, it’ll most likely be about noon before they find out that we aren’t here anymore. Then they’ll mill around here in the first fort while t
he overmind considers the options. I’m fairly sure that they won’t come any farther until the morning of the day after tomorrow.”
“When did you want us to jump them?” Ekial asked.
“I’d say along about noon, wouldn’t you, Keselo?”
“That should probably work out for the best,” Keselo agreed. “We’ll need some time to abandon the second breastwork, and I don’t think we’ll want the enemy close enough to interfere. They always seem to stop when the sun goes down—probably because they can’t see very well at night. Do you think they’ll pull back when it gets dark, Longbow?”
“They always did during the last war. It’s probably instinctive. We can start pulling out of the second fort as soon as the Malavi hit the enemy.”
“And then the poor little buggies will wander around in that second empty fort for a day or so looking for somebody to kill,” Rabbit added.
“Buggies?” Narasan asked, looking slightly confused.
“Rabbit came up with that a few days ago,” Gunda explained. “He seems to think it’ll insult the enemies and hurt their feelings or something.”
“How many more of these walls have your people erected so far?” Chief Kathlak asked.
“Eight, isn’t it?” Gunda asked Commander Narasan.
Narasan nodded. “Andar has people working on two more. He’s getting fairly close to the top of this slope. We might have to come up with something a bit stronger when we reach the top. We don’t want the enemies to get past us until the weather turns bad. Once winter arrives, I’m sure that this particular war will grind to a stop.”
“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.”