"I didn't quite catch that, dear Narasan," Trenicia said in a milder tone of voice.
"Just thinking out loud, Your Majesty," Narasan replied.
"I thought that we'd discarded the 'Your Majesty' foolishness," she said a bit tartly.
"Sorry," Narasan apologized. "Habit, probably. Down in the Empire, people are very interested in rank, so we grow accustomed to spouting terms of respectfulness. They don't really mean anything, but we wave them around anyhow. I'm just a bit concerned about Sorgan's scheme, is all. He's one of the few friends I have, and I don't want to lose him."
"You have me as your friend, Narasan," Trenicia said. "That's all you really need. Someday we might want to talk about friendship. In time, friendship grows into something more interesting, and I'd say that we've almost reached that point."
Narasan actually blushed, though he couldn't for the life of him think why.
"Is your face turning red for some reason other than the beastly chill in this region?" Trenicia asked. "If you're having a problem, feel free to tell me all about it."
"I'm sure it's only the weather, dear friend Trenicia."
"Spoilsport," she replied accusingly.
"I'm not entirely sure that Sorgan's sophisticated enough to float his scheme past Aracia—or her priests. He can tell them that his scouts have actually seen the bug-people invading, but I don't know if they'd accept that."
"He has Veltan to help him, dear Narasan. That's all the help he'll probably need." Then she paused. "How in the world did you get so attached to a Maag pirate?" she asked. "I thought that Maags and Trogites were supposed to be natural-born enemies."
Narasan shrugged. "We've been allied with each other in three wars so far, and we've learned to trust each other. If he keeps things simple, he shouldn't have many problems, but sometimes Sorgan goes to extremes. All we really need is for him to keep Aracia and her priests out of my hair here in Long-Pass."
"That shouldn't be too hard," Trenicia said. "We're not talking about intelligent people here. Relax, dear Narasan. I'm sure that everything down in the temple's going exactly the way we want it to."
It was about noon when the main army reached the back side of a fairly standard Trogite fort. Trenicia wasn't at all impressed. "Is that the best your men can do?" she demanded.
"This is the back side, Trenicia dear," Narasan explained. "It's the front side that holds back the enemy. The back side is designed to make it easy for our soldiers to get inside the fort."
"What if your enemy sneaks around behind you?"
"Would the word 'how' offend you? The fort blocks off the entire pass in this spot. Believe me, dear, we Trogites have been building forts for centuries, we've come up with answers to just about all the 'what ifs' anybody can come up with. About the only one that concerns us is what's called 'burrowing.' That's when your enemy digs a deep hole in the ground some distance back from your fort and then starts to dig a tunnel."
"I knew that there had to be a weakness!" Trenicia exclaimed triumphantly.
"Take a look around, dear," Narasan suggested. "You won't see very much dirt. This is a mountain pass, and that means that it's mostly rock. I guess it's theoretically possible to burrow through solid rock, but I'd say that it'd take at least ten years to get as far as the front side of the fort—and another four or five years to burrow under the fort to get to the back side."
Trenicia glared at him for a moment, but then she laughed. "I was being just a bit silly there, wasn't I? It's just that I hate forts. The notion of being locked in one place for years and years makes me want to scream."
"You made very good time, sir," Sub-Commander Andar said when Narasan and Trenicia joined him at the front of the fort.
"Not as good as you and Gunda made," Narasan replied.
"How in the world were you able to cover a hundred and twenty miles in four and a half days?"
"Longbow discarded several customs, sir," Andar replied with a faint smile. "First he abolished the standard rest period."
"How was he able to persuade the men to do that? That custom's been locked in stone for centuries now."
"He used the cooks as the key to unlocking it, sir."
"The cooks? I don't quite follow you there."
"He put the cooks at the head of the column, sir," Andar explained. "He must have made a few threats, because the cooks did their best to keep up with him. That put breakfast, lunch, and supper farther and farther ahead of the men who felt the need to rest. It took the men a day or so to get his point. 'Rest or eat' is a little brutal, but it did get his point across. Sauntering along more or less vanished along about then, and running became all the rage—particularly after that lady cook from Lord Veltan's Domain took charge of the preparation of the meals. An occasional gust of wind went down the pass, and it carried the smell of her cooking down to the men who'd been stubbornly insisting that their right to rest was more important than anything else in the whole world. The pace of the army picked up quite noticeably at that point."
"That Longbow's an absolute genius," Narasan declared.
"I'd say so, yes," Andar agreed. "It seems that when he wants something, he always comes up with a way to get it."
"How far on up the pass is Gunda's fort?" Narasan asked then.
"Almost exactly a mile, sir," Andar replied. "That might vary a few times as we go on down the pass, but we'll always be quite close to a mile."
"I suppose I'd better go on up and say some nice things about Gunda's fort," Narasan said then.
"I'm sure he'll appreciate that, sir," Andar said with no hint of a smile.
Since it was obviously going to take the rest of the day for the main army to get past Andar's fort, Narasan and Trenicia went on ahead to Gunda's fort. Longbow was there, of course, and Narasan had learned quite some time back that when he needed information about the Creatures of the Wasteland, Longbow was the man to speak with.
Gunda's fort went quite a ways farther than the standard Trogite one in that there were huge boulders mixed in with the standard granite blocks. "It wasn't really my idea, Narasan," Gunda conceded. "Prince Ekial took a look at our rock wall and suggested that bigger rocks might add a bit. Then he had a fair number of his men start dragging those boulders here. I was more than a little surprised when I saw the size of the rocks a dozen or so horses could drag across the ground. No matter how many bug-people come charging up here, this is as far as they're going to get."