The Maags came to their feet and met the charge with long poisoned spears.
The mindless charge continued for perhaps another quarter of an hour, and Keselo observed that fewer and fewer enemy soldiers were coming out of the ruins. “I’d say that he’s running out of people,” Keselo said to Rabbit with a tight grin.
“What a shame,” Rabbit said with a smirk.
“That’s not possible!” Longbow exclaimed suddenly.
“There aren’t really very many of them left, Longbow,” Keselo said. “The Vlagh may have more of them, but they’re back in the Wasteland.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Longbow said tersely. “Down there—just above the bench—one of the creatures is moving.”
Keselo shaded his eyes and peered down the slope. “I don’t see any . . .”
“Just to the left of that uprooted tree,” Longbow told him.
Keselo caught a faint flicker of movement, and then he saw one of the hooded creatures crawling very slowly over the limp bodies of the dead.
Rabbit was also staring down the slope. “Oh,
there
he is,” the little sailor said. “There must have been a weak dose of the poison on the arrow that dropped him.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Rabbit,” Longbow disagreed.
“Maybe he was just playing dead, then—hiding out among the carcasses so that he could sneak up behind Ox.”
Longbow shook his head. “They aren’t clever enough to do that.”
“There’s another one!” Keselo said sharply. “A little to the right of the first one. It seems to be crawling out of some kind of a hole in the side of the hill.”
“And another one!” Rabbit hissed. “They’re coming up all over down there!”
One of the hooded snake-men suddenly dashed down to the bench, ducked under the overly long spears, and bit one of the tall Maags who were following Ox. The sailor stiffened and fell even as the hooded creature slashed another Maag with the stingers along its forearm. It half turned and then collapsed when another burly Maag split its head with a heavy war axe.
“They’re coming up out of the ground all over the slope down there!” Rabbit shouted.
Longbow began loosing arrows as fast as he could, but more and more of the hooded creatures came out of their hidden burrows to rush down the short slope to attack the startled Maags on the bench. The creatures that Hook-Beak called the snake-men did, in fact, behave much like snakes, creeping slowly into positions very close to the north bench and the Maags, and then striking so fast that their unsuspecting victims had no time to react or defend themselves. The deadly venom brought screams from the dying Maags and hideous convulsions as the snake-men struck again and again.
Ox started to bellow orders, and his men began to regain their senses and to form up—in small clusters at first, fending off the attackers with their long spears, and then in more coherent groups, moving purposefully to kill all of the servants of the Vlagh. By then, however, Ox had lost more than half his men.
Then, even as the bull-shouldered Ox and his men cleared away the last of their attackers, another bellow came from the shadows at the rear of the ancient ruin, and the snake-men who’d been attacking Sorgan’s position abruptly turned and ran back to the ruin.
Sorgan, almost inarticulate with rage, came storming up the slope to the knoll, spitting curses with every step. “Why didn’t you tell us about those cursed mole holes?” he shouted at Keselo.
“We didn’t see them, Captain Hook-Beak,” Keselo said. “They’re completely hidden, and we were concentrating all of our attention on the village. We thought
that
would be the place where the snake-men would be hiding. The notion of burrows never occurred to us.”
“It’s my fault, Sorgan,” Longbow said tersely. “The signs were there, and I should have seen them.”
“This is starting to get real familiar, isn’t it?” Rabbit suggested. “First we find a stairway that doesn’t really go anyplace, because all it was there for was to hide the caves that led to that imitation village, and now we find out that the village doesn’t mean very much either, because the snake-men made their main attack from those mole-holes down by the bench. Every time we turn around, that Vlagh thing seems to outsmart us.”
“To make things even worse, they all just stayed in their holes and let us go on up to the head of the ravine,” Sorgan added. “Now we’re trapped up here, and the snake-men are between us and Lady Zelana’s territory. I don’t think we’re earning our pay. Keselo, why don’t you hustle on up to the rim and wave your flag? I have to talk with Narasan. I think we’re in a whole lot of trouble here.”
“Do you think we should chase them, Cap’n?” Rabbit asked.
“I don’t see much point to that,” Sorgan replied. “Like you said, that village doesn’t really mean anything. Narasan and I’ve got to come up with some way to get live men back down the ravine, and things don’t look very promising right now.”
Keselo and Rabbit moved very cautiously as they made their way back up to the rim, shying away from any depression or patch of raw dirt. The speed of the snake-men who’d attacked the Maags down on the bench had been most alarming, and Keselo and his small friend were both quite jumpy.
Sergeant Grolt was standing on the south rim of the ravine, and his first signal was very colorful. It roughly came out as “Why haven’t you been watching?” but there were some slight flares and wiggles involved, and they carried a strong suggestion that Grolt was inventing swearwords as he went along. The fact that Commander Narasan was standing by his side might have restrained the sergeant’s eloquence to some degree.
Keselo signaled
emergency
and then
conference.
Then he pointed his flag at the bottom of the ravine. It probably hadn’t been necessary, since Commander Narasan had almost certainly seen what had happened on the north bench, and most likely he’d ordered Sergeant Grolt to make the same suggestion. Grolt signaled
immediately
several times and then furled his flag to cut off any further discussion.
“Well?” Rabbit asked.
“The commander was way ahead of us,” Keselo replied. “Grolt was signaling for a conference almost before I was. Let’s get back to Captain Sorgan. Commander Narasan wants to confer with him right now.”
“I hope they can come up with some sort of solution,” Rabbit said as they started on back down the slope. “The way things stand right now, we’re in deep trouble.”
“You noticed,” Keselo replied dryly.
S
organ’s Maags were busily erecting a barricade along the front ledge of the dry creek bed where they’d concealed themselves to protect Longbow’s archers.
“It keeps them busy,” Sorgan said a bit deprecatingly. “I don’t know that it’ll do much good, though. I’ve never come up against an enemy who charges my position from under the ground before. What did Narasan have to say?”
“Sergeant Grolt was signaling
conference
almost before I’d shaken the wrinkles out of my flag, Captain,” Keselo replied. “Commander Narasan agrees that it’s time to talk.”
“I was fairly sure he’d see things that way. Let’s go on down and find out if he can come up with some way to get us out of this mess.”
“Carefully, though,” Longbow added. “Try not to step into any hidden burrows.”
“I’ll make a special point of that,” Sorgan replied.
The need for extreme caution made for slow going, and it was late afternoon before they reached the bench where Ox had put his men to work draining more venom from the numerous dead enemies piled in heaps there. “I sort of stole an idea from you, Cap’n,” Ox confessed. “That notion you had down near Skell’s fort about sharp stakes dipped in poison come poppin’ back to me when I saw that my people are right out in the open here and they ain’t got enough time to build no fancy forts. I figured that stakes might slow ’em down just a bit.”
“Poisoned stakes are probably a good way to even things up,” Sorgan agreed. “Tell your men to keep at it, and then you’d better come along with us. Narasan and I’ve set up a meet, and you were a lot closer to those mole holes than anybody else. I’m sort of hoping that you might be able to tell the rest of us what we should be looking for. We’re not going to be able to move very fast if we’ve got to probe every inch of ground with our spears.”
“That’s for certain, Cap’n,” Ox agreed.
They crossed the rock-strewn bench to the brushy slope that led down to the narrow stream that was the headwaters of the sizeable river farther on down the ravine.
Just then, from deep within the earth there came a deep booming sound such as Keselo had never heard before, and it was followed by a sharp crack. Then the ground beneath their feet seemed to shudder.
“What was that?” Rabbit demanded, his voice a bit shrill.
Longbow dropped to his knees and put his ear to the ground. When he rose again, he had a broad grin on his face. “I think life for our enemies just got very exciting,” he said. “I’d say that we’re getting some help.”
“I don’t quite follow you, Longbow,” Keselo said.
“That was an earthquake,” Longbow explained. “Not a very big one, but it was probably just the beginning. I’d imagine that there’ll be more of them as time goes by. They won’t bother
us
very much, but we’re out in the open air. The creatures of the Wasteland are down below in caves and tunnels and burrows, and being down under the ground isn’t a good idea when the earth starts to rattle and shake.”
“Do you think it might be Eleria again?” Keselo suggested.
Longbow shook his head. “Eleria and Lillabeth are more closely associated with the weather. This has to do with the earth, so it’s probably Yaltar or Ashad.”
“What are you two talking about?” Hook-Beak demanded suspiciously.
“We seem to be getting some help, Captain,” Longbow replied just a bit evasively.
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” Sorgan declared. “Let’s get on down to that little brook. Narasan and I need to talk, and it won’t be long before the daylight fades. Snakes are bad enough in the daytime, but the notion of coming up against them at night sends chills up my back.”
They chose a fairly clear stretch of the slope to follow on down to the small stream, and they moved cautiously, shaking every bush they came across with their spears or swords. They didn’t flush out any enemies, however.
“That’s a big relief, Cap’n,” Ox declared when they reached the brook. “Them snake-men are starting to make me real jumpy.”
“Sorgan,” Commander Narasan called from the other side of the narrow stream, “what’s all the delay here?”
“Just taking a few precautions, Narasan,” Sorgan replied. He turned to Longbow. “Do the snake-men ever try to swim or lay quiet underwater?”
Longbow shook his head. “They’re snakes, Sorgan, not fish.”
“Good. Let’s get across while we’ve still got some daylight.” Then he raised his head. “You’d better have your people get a fire going, Narasan—a nice big one. We’ll want lots of light after the sun goes down.” Then he started wading across the brook, kicking up large splashes as he went.
“We couldn’t really see very clearly from up on the rim, Sorgan,” Commander Narasan said as they gathered near the large fire Red-Beard, Gunda, and Jalkan had built. “As closely as we could tell, a fair number of the enemies who were running downhill toward the bench just fell down and played dead once Longbow and his Dhralls showered them with arrows.”
“Longbow says that they aren’t clever enough to do that,” Hook-Beak said. “Ox here was the closest to them. Tell him what you saw, Ox.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Ox replied. “Well, me and my men was all pretty happy when Longbow and his people showered arrows down on them as was charging down the hill at us, and we pretty much figured that we’d just won the day. Then a whole lot of
other
snake-men started creeping up out of mole holes that weren’t no more than a few feet from where we was all standing around celebrating, and they was right on top of us, biting and stinging my people afore we could blink twice. I lost more than half of my men afore I could get my wits together and start shouting orders. We managed to clean out the snake-men, but it really cost us a lot of good men.”
“They crawl around under the ground?” Gunda demanded incredulously. “That’s no way to fight a war. I’ve never heard of any soldiers that do that.”
“We’ve made a serious mistake by thinking of them as soldiers,” Longbow said. “Soldiers, or warriors, function in groups, but the creatures of the Wasteland don’t think that way. They attack as individuals. They aren’t really strong enough to fight a well-armed soldier, but they don’t have to be strong—just fast. Most importantly, though, they have to be close to those they intend to kill. They have to surprise those they’ve chosen as victims. Without surprise, they stand no chance of winning.”
“You know the country around here better than any of the rest of us do, Red-Beard,” Sorgan said. “Are there any passes back a ways in the mountains that’d get us back to Lattash without going down this cursed ravine?”
Red-Beard squinted at the nearby peaks. “I don’t think so, Hook-Beak,” he said a bit dubiously. “It’s too early in the year. There are a few passes higher up in the mountains, but they’re still clogged with snow.”
“That answers that, then,” Sorgan said glumly. “It looks like we’re going to have to wade through snakes all the way back down to Lattash.”
“Everything the snake-men have done so far seems to be based on deception,” Narasan mused. “First there was that stairway that was only there to hide those tunnels, and now we come across those imitation villages that don’t really mean anything either. I’d say that it’s entirely possible that both sides of the ravine are honeycombed with those burrows. We could very well have one of those snake-men lurking within five feet of every one of us no matter where we go in this ravine. This whole thing’s nothing but a death trap.”
“Burrowing
is
natural behavior for serpents,” Longbow explained. “The burrow is both a shelter from the weather and a hidden place from which to strike. It’s instinctive—which is about as far as the intelligence of a serpent will go.”
“If they’re that simpleminded, how did they manage to come up with the ideas of the stairway and these ruined villages?” Narasan demanded.