“Evidently some of the old stories had more truth to them than I’d been ready to believe,” Longbow mused. “The only ones I’ve encountered here in Zelana’s Domain have been the ones Sorgan calls snake-men. It would appear that the Vlagh has more than one variety of servants. I always thought that the people who told me about different creatures of the Wasteland were just making things up for the fun of it. It seems that I might have been wrong. This promises to be a very interesting war.”
More and more of the hooded creatures emerged from the shadows behind the ruins until the entire village was crawling with them.
“I think you were right, Keselo,” Rabbit said sombrely. “Those things almost have to be coming out of a cave back at the rear of that place. There isn’t room enough for that many of them in those ruins. Hadn’t we better get back up to the head of the ravine to warn Sorgan and Narasan?”
“In a minute,” Longbow replied, studying the ruin and the surrounding slope. “It has some possibilities,” he said thoughtfully.
“What has?”
“We know that the enemies are here in the ravine, and we know that they’re concealed in these imitation towns. We could attack them before they attack us and keep them penned up in the ruins long enough for our friends’ armies to get past these ruins—either down in the ravine or up along the rims. Sorgan and Narasan will have to abandon their fort and pull back. If they stay where they are, they’re doomed.”
T
hey carefully climbed back down to the north bench, and then they ran back up to the gap. Keselo and Rabbit were gasping for breath when they reached the Trogite fort at sunset, but Longbow wasn’t even breathing hard. Ham-Hand was standing near the back of the fort. “Where have you three been?” he demanded. “I’ve been looking all over for you. The cap’n wants to see you.”
“Where is he?” Longbow asked.
“Up topside,” Ham-Hand replied, gesturing toward the fort. “Lady Zelana’s brother stopped by, and he wants to talk to you.”
“That might make things a bit easier,” Rabbit said. “We just saw some things that might be a little hard to explain. Which one of Zelana’s brothers is here?”
“The younger one. You’d better get on up there, Rabbit. The cap’n ain’t none too happy with you right now.”
“I think we just saw something that’ll make him even unhappier,” Rabbit said as he followed Longbow and Keselo up toward the fort.
Hook-Beak was standing up at the front of the Trogite fort with Narasan and Zelana’s brother Veltan.
“Where have you been, Rabbit?” Sorgan demanded.
“Keselo and I saw something that looked a bit peculiar on our way up the ravine, Cap’n,” Rabbit explained. “We told Longbow about it, and he wanted to see for himself. We took him back to where we’d seen it, and we all went up the side of the ravine to have a closer look. I don’t think you’re going to like this one little bit, Cap’n.”
“What did you see, Keselo?” Commander Narasan asked.
“There’s an enemy army behind us, sir,” Keselo replied. “It appears that the ones who’ve been charging up the stairs are just a ruse to get our attention. The main enemy force is already behind us.”
“What are you talking about, Keselo?” Sorgan demanded. “We didn’t see a single snake-man on our way up here.”
“Ah—may I, Captain?” Zelana’s brother Veltan stepped in. “Just what led you to this conclusion, Keselo?”
“When the enemy attacked this morning, Longbow noticed something peculiar,” Keselo explained. “It seemed that more than half of the enemy force just vanished when they reached the foot of the stairway. It didn’t make any sense at all, and then I remembered something Red-Beard told me a few days ago. He said that there are some fairly extensive caves in these mountains. Longbow, Rabbit, and I put a few things together, and we came up with an answer that none of us liked very much. It appears that the stairway’s nothing but a hoax. A fair number of our enemies were charging up the stairway, but most of them went someplace else when they reached the bottom of the stairs. They had to be going
someplace,
and the notion of caves seemed to answer the question.”
“Where do those caves go?” Sorgan demanded.
“I was just getting to that, Captain. When we were coming up the ravine, Rabbit and I had seen several very ancient ruins high up on the side of the gorge. Red-Beard told me that the men of Lattash avoid those ruins because of some very old superstitions—which might even have some basis in fact. Anyway, to cut this short, Longbow, Rabbit, and I went a couple miles back down the ravine to the nearest of those ruins. Normally we wouldn’t have known where it was, but Red-Beard had told me that there was an old dead snag sticking out from the rim, and that the village was right below the snag.”
Veltan suddenly burst out laughing.
“What’s so funny?” Narasan asked him.
“Every time I turn around, that snag seems to come popping up,” Veltan replied. “When Dahlaine and I were trying to pinpoint the location of this ravine, he mentioned that snag. Evidently, his thunderbolt was what had killed it quite a long time ago, and that irritated Zelana to no end. Sorry, Keselo. Go on with your story.”
“Well, anyway,” Keselo continued, “we hid in some tall grass near the ruin, and it wasn’t very long before our enemies began to come creeping out of the shadows. I’d say that the bulk of the enemy force is behind us already, and they’ve rather effectively cut us off. We’re trapped up here, and if we try to go back down the ravine to Lattash, I’m fairly certain that the enemy forces hidden in those ancient ruins will attack us just about every step of the way.”
Hook-Beak started to swear. “We should have known about those caves, Narasan. We spent a lot of time in Lady Zelana’s cave down in Lattash while we were waiting for the spring flood. If there are caves under one hill, there are bound to be caves under others as well. I think we’ve been had. The enemy was there all the time, but he just laid low and let us charge up that ravine until we got all the way up here, and now he’s slammed the door behind us.”
“Not quite
all
the doors,” Longbow disagreed. “The rims of the ravine on both sides are still open, and there aren’t any of those old villages up there. We can go around the enemies and leave them sitting in the ravine waiting for us.” He scratched his cheek, squinting thoughtfully. “On the other hand,” he added, “if this clever game they played irritates you as much as it irritates me, we could probably come up with something to make life unpleasant for them. Red-Beard knows exactly where all those cliff villages are located, so we could conceal bowmen on both sides of each one of them. If we were to send a small force down each bench, the enemy would almost certainly rush out to attack them. As soon as the enemies are out in the open, the bowmen could make life very exciting for them, wouldn’t you say?”
“Now,
that
has some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it, Sorgan?” Commander Narasan said enthusiastically. “I hate it when an enemy outsmarts me, and Longbow’s idea gives us a way to get back at them.”
“Anything’s better than sitting here starving to death,” Sorgan agreed.
“Here, here, here, and here,” Red-Beard said, putting his finger on several spots on the representation of the north side of the ravine on Narasan’s carefully drawn copy of the sculpture back in Zelana’s cave. “The ones on the south side are here, here, here, and here,” he added, pointing out the others. “I’m not sure about the one near the place where the river bends. The side of the ravine appears to have collapsed a long time ago, and it took most of the village with it.”
“Seven, then—or possibly eight,” Commander Narasan said. “Are you absolutely certain that there aren’t any more, Red Beard?”
“I’ve been hunting this ravine for more than twenty years now, Commander, so I’m very familiar with it.”
“It’s not quite as bad as I thought, then,” Hook-Beak said with obvious relief. He looked at Longbow. “You said that you had an idea that might keep our enemies penned up in those ruins so that they won’t be able to interfere while we’re running away.”
“Retreating, Sorgan,” Narasan corrected in a pained tone. “It’s called retreating.”
“It’s the same thing, isn’t it? What’s this idea of yours, Longbow?”
“Your armies came up here along those benches on both sides of the ravine, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied, “and it appears that those imitation villages Red-Beard just pointed out to us were built at about the same time that the stairway at the gap was built, and they were in places where our enemies could watch anyone moving in the ravine. It’s all starting to fit together now. The stairway was built to deceive us. The imitation villages were probably intended to be the places where the enemy’s main attacks would originate. It would seem that this plan has been in the works for centuries, but it would also seem that the idea of people moving along the rims hadn’t occurred to them. The benches are easier and more convenient, but people
can
move along up on the rims if it’s necessary.”
“You and your people would know more about that than we would, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said. “We came up along the benches.”
“And I’m certain that the Vlagh had serpent-people hiding in all those imitation towns high up in the sides of the ravine, watching while you did,” Longbow added. “Now, if a fair number of your men started to go back down the ravine along those benches, the enemy would believe that your entire armies were returning to Lattash by the same route they used to come up here to the head of the ravine, wouldn’t they?”
“That sounds logical,” Narasan admitted.
“The imitation towns that conceal the cave mouths are tucked back under overhanging ledges,” Longbow continued, “so Commander Narasan’s men weren’t able to see the ones above them when they came up along the south bench, but Captain Hook-Beak’s men on the north bench
could,
isn’t that right?”
“I think I see where you’re going, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said. “Evidently, the enemies who built those forts didn’t realize that eventually we’d develop ways to communicate with each other over long distances. When my people up on the south rim see one of the enemy forts on the north side of the ravine, they can signal Keselo, and when Hook-Beak’s people see one on my side, Keselo can signal me. Even though we won’t be able to see the forts, we’ll know exactly where they are.”
“Right,” Longbow said. “Now, when Rabbit, Keselo, and I climbed up the north side of the ravine to have a closer look at that first cluster of buildings, we found a spot that was slightly above it and a little way off to one side. We could see almost all of the village from there, and I noticed a similar place over on the other side of the village. If I position well-hidden bowmen on both sides of the ruin, they’ll wait until the enemy charges down the slope to attack your decoy army down on the bench, and then they’ll shower arrows down on them from behind. A few enemies might roll down as far as the bench, but they’ll already be dead, so they won’t cause too many problems.” He paused, tugging thoughtfully at one earlobe. “I think we might want to position a fair number of your soldiers armed with poison-tipped spears between the bowmen and the enemies,” he added. “We wouldn’t want our enemies to interfere with the bowmen while they’re busy. Then, after the bowmen have eliminated most of the enemies, your soldiers can charge into the village from both sides and kill off the rest. Then we can pull down all the imitation buildings and block off the cave so that any enemies hiding back in there won’t be able to come out and cause us any problems.”
“Remind me never to get involved in a war when you’re on the other side, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said.
“It’s not really too complicated, Rabbit,” Keselo explained early the following morning as the two of them hurried along the north rim of the ravine in advance of Sorgan’s army. “There are about twenty signals, and most of them are concerned with dangers of one kind or another. If I wave my flag from side to side over my head, it means danger. Then the next signal tells the one who’s reading my signals just exactly where the danger’s located. If I wave the flag up and down on my right side, the enemy force is off to the right, and if I wave it to the left, the danger’s there.”
“That makes sense,” Rabbit said.
“Then, if I want my friends to stop right where they are, I wave the flag back and forth at about the level of my knees. You need to exaggerate quite a bit if you’re some distance away, because once you get more than a half mile off, your friend’s going to have trouble seeing you.”
“That might be all right in the daytime, Keselo,” Rabbit said, “but after the sun goes down, you’re out of business, aren’t you?”
Keselo laughed. “Actually, it’s easier at night. We use torches when it’s dark, and torches are very visible. Stay sort of close, Rabbit. I’m sure we’ll be passing a lot of signals back and forth across the ravine, and I’ll translate them for you as we go along.”
“Isn’t it sort of dangerous to use these signals during a war?” Rabbit asked. “I mean, if the signalers in every army know exactly what each signal means, won’t you be giving things away that you’d rather they didn’t know about?”
“That’s no problem, Rabbit. There are only so many signals, but each Trogite army has its own set of meanings. I might see an enemy soldier waving a flag, but I’d have no idea at all about what he’s saying, and we usually change the meanings of the signals quite often—particularly during a war.”
“You Trogites just love complications, don’t you?”
“It makes life more interesting, Rabbit. Doing things the same way over and over gets sort of boring after a while.”
A
very tall Maag was standing beside the white snag Keselo knew to be just above the enemy’s village. “What are you doing up here, Tree-Top?” Rabbit asked the lanky sailor.
“The cap’n told me to run on ahead,” Tree-Top replied. “I’m supposed to keep a lookout for Trogite flag-wavers on the other side of the ravine. There’s one over there right now, and he’s flopping that flag back and forth about something. Maybe your young friend here can figure out what he’s trying to tell us.”