"Have the archers of Old-Bear's tribe joined you yet?" Longbow asked.
"They're still a day or so away. Your friend Red-Beard came on ahead to let us know that they were on the way. They'll probably reach the head of the pass at about the same time your fort-builders do."
Gunda joined them.
"You brought a lot of men with you," Ekial noted.
"That was Narasan's idea," Gunda told him. "He's always believed that more is better. He might be right this time, though. I'm sure that I won't need all those men, so I'll hand the surplus off to Andar, and he'll be able to build another fort about a mile on down the pass. If the Vlagh gives us enough time, we'll have a fort standing every mile or so down the pass, and our enemy will run out of bugs before she gets halfway down."
Then he looked at the lean, scar-faced horse-soldier. "Have you had your supper yet?" he asked.
"I've been a little busy," Ekial replied.
"I can't offer anything very exciting," Gunda said, "but you're welcome to join me if you want."
"I could probably eat," Ekial said.
"Let's go do it then."
Chapter Two
The river that came down through Long-Pass was somewhat wider than the one in Crystal Gorge, but not nearly as wide as the one that had been the source of the Falls of Vash. Keselo realized that the Falls of Vash weren't there anymore, and the river now rushed down to that inland sea that had drowned a generation of the children of the Vlagh and quite nearly all of the clergy of the Church of Amar. To Keselo's way of thinking, that particular disaster had purified the Trogite Empire to no small degree.
Despite Longbow's best efforts, it was about mid-morning on the fifth day when they reached the upper end of Long-Pass and Gunda caught his first glimpse of the projected fort site. "It's only fifty feet across!" he exclaimed.
"About that, yes," Longbow agreed.
"Didn't you tell Narasan how tight this is?"
"As I remember, I described it to him four or five times," Longbow replied.
"Why in the world did he send so many men up here?"
"I think it's called 'more is better,' or something like that, friend Gunda."
"You were right, Andar," Gunda said to his friend. "If I tried to jam ten thousand men into that skinny little opening, they'd be falling all over each other."
"It's about fifty feet wide, I'd say," Andar agreed.
"If that much," Gunda replied. "It widens out just a bit when it gets up near the rim on either side, but that won't be much of a problem."
"How long would you say building a fort there is likely to take?" Andar asked.
Gunda shrugged. "Three days—maybe four. There's plenty of granite lying around here. Squaring it off won't take too long." Gunda pursed his lips. "I think twenty feet high should do the job. When the main army gets up here, they'll have those poisoned stakes. If we plant those to the front like we've done before, I don't think very many bug-people will even reach the fort. We've got archers and spear-men—and those horse-soldiers as well. The Vlagh can send ten thousand or so bug-people here to attack the fort, but a dozen or so at most will actually reach it. Why don't you drop back a mile or so and find a good place to build that second fort you mentioned. When you find it, let me know, and I'll send you half of our men. We'll see how our first two forts turn out, and then we might want to move on to four. Give us a couple of weeks and we'll have at least a dozen forts blocking off this pass. That might just make poor old Vlagh feel sort of grouchy."
"Poor baby," Andar replied in mock sympathy.
"If you don't have access to mortar, you keep things in place with weight," Gunda was explaining to Keselo the following day. "The blocks should be squared off, of course, but it's the sheer weight that'll make your fort impregnable."
"That's a very useful thing to know, Sub-Commander," Keselo replied with mock enthusiasm. Gunda was very proud of his reputation as a master fort-builder, and it didn't really cost Keselo very much to heap praise on his superior.
"Now, then," Gunda continued. "Every three or four layers you should connect the upper blocks to the lower ones with interlocking grooves."
"I was wondering about that," Keselo replied with a perfectly straight face. "My big problem, though, is how you can lock the battlements in place."
"That does get a little tricky," Gunda replied. "You're picking this up quite rapidly, Keselo. Give me a little time and I'll make a first-rate fort-builder out of you."
Along with four or five professors of architecture at the University of Kaldacin, Keselo privately added.
"If you're not busy with something else," Gunda said then, "why don't you drop on back down the pass and see how Andar's fort is coming along. Andar and I should keep in touch."
"I'll go on down there immediately, sir," Keselo replied, snapping to attention. Right now he'd be more than happy to get away from Gunda's tedious lectures.
"I was just about to send somebody up to Gunda's fort to fetch you, Keselo," Sub-Commander Andar said. "A messenger just came up here from the main army. Commander Narasan wants to see you."
"Am I in trouble?" Keselo asked.
"Not that I know of. The messenger wasn't too specific, but I think Commander Narasan wants you to go on down to that silly temple to advise Sorgan that everything up here is pretty much the way we want it to be. The forts will be in place when the bug-people try to attack."
Keselo frowned. "The commander could have sent somebody else down to the temple, and that messenger would have reached Sorgan long before I'll be able to."
Andar shrugged. "You know Sorgan much better than an ordinary messenger would have, and your rank would tell Sorgan that he's significant to Commander Narasan. What Sorgan's doing down there's a little silly, maybe, but it will keep Veltan's sister off our backs. I'm sure that the commander has things he wants Sorgan to know about, and Sorgan probably has information for the commander as well. They both trust you, Keselo, so I've got a sort of hunch that you'll be doing a lot of traveling back and forth between the pass and the temple before this is all over. I'll send word on up to Gunda to let him know that the commander's got a job for you."
"I'd appreciate that, sir," Keselo said. Then he considered the distance he'd be traveling for the next several weeks. "I wonder if Ekial might lend me a horse," he murmured to himself.