‘You know, cousin,’ Torl said, ‘I can’t remember the last time I twiddled.’
‘Go, Torl,’ Sorgan told him wearily.
Omago’s friend, Nanton the shepherd, had moved his flock to the southern end of the grassy plain, probably to keep the various soldiers up near the north end from poaching his sheep when suppertime rolled around, and Torl found him sitting beside a small fire and looking up at the starry sky.
‘Doesn’t it get awfully lonesome when you’re the only person around for miles and miles?’ Torl asked. ‘I mean, there’s nobody around to talk with, is there?’
‘I can always talk to my sheep,’ Nanton replied. ‘They don’t answer very often, but they listen fairly well. Is there something wrong?’
‘Well,’ Torl said, sitting down beside the fire, ‘that little creek of yours was quite handy, but right now it’s running bank full with Trog soldiers. Cousin Sorgan and the rest of us from the Land of Maag need to get back down to the river in a hurry.’
‘The waterfall would get you back down in the blink of an eye,’ the shepherd replied with no hint of a smile, ‘but that might not be the best idea in the world.’ He frowned slightly. ‘There is a stream-bed a mile or so north of that one I showed your brother. I don’t think anyone would want to come up that way, but if a man had enough rope, he could go down easy enough. It’s not quite a sheer cliff, but it comes fairly close. Would climbing down a rope bother you and your crew very much?’
‘We’re sailors, Nanton. We spend at least half of our time climbing up and down ropes. How long do you think it might take us to get back down to the river?’
‘Not much more than half a day. Downhill’s always been faster than uphill.’
‘Why, I do believe you’re right, Nanton!’ Torl exclaimed in mock surprise. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
The seemingly humorless native actually laughed, and that brightened Torl’s day. Making people laugh always made him feel very good.
Torl was about halfway back to the Maag encampment when he realized that just getting back down to the riverbank wouldn’t solve all the problems they were likely to encounter, so he went looking for Commander Narasan.
The Trogite encampment was quite a bit more orderly than cousin Sorgan’s disorganized cluster of tents and barricades. Trogs seemed to be obsessed with straight lines, for some reason. After Torl had asked a few soldiers where he might find Commander Narasan, he finally found the somewhat larger tent of cousin Sorgan’s friend.
‘We’ve got a bit of a problem, Commander,’ Torl said after he’d entered the tent.
‘Oh? What’s troubling you, Captain Torl?’
‘I hope this won’t offend you,’ Torl said, ‘but your ships are cluttering up that river down below so much that cousin Sorgan’s fleet won’t be able to get close enough for us to get on board our ships once we get back down there. If we’re going to block off that second invasion, we’ll have to get on down south in a hurry. Is there some way you could order your ships to move aside so that we can get through?’
‘Not personally, Torl,’ Narasan replied, ‘but I know of a way that you’ll be able to take care of it.’
‘You’re going to promote me to the rank of a general in your army, Narasan?’ Torl asked. ‘I’m very flattered, of course, but won’t that make the captains of your ships down there just a little suspicious?’
‘Very funny, Torl,’ Narasan said. ‘All I really have to do is write down some orders, sign the piece of paper, and then give it to you. When you get down to the river, wave the paper around, and my ships will get out of your way’
‘What a brilliant idea!’ Torl exclaimed. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
‘Do you really have to try to make a joke out of everything, Torl?’ Commander Narasan said. ‘Sometimes you’re as bad as Red-Beard.’
‘Laughter’s good for people, Commander. I owe it to all my friends to make them laugh as much as I possibly can.’
‘Why don’t you go make Sorgan laugh for a while, then - or maybe your brother. I don’t think Skell even knows how to laugh.’
‘Oh, he knows how, Commander, but he doesn’t like it. Our papa ordered him not to ever laugh, and Skell always does what papa tells him to - or not to do, in this case. I can make Skell laugh if I really have to, but I have to take off one of his boots first.’
‘That went by just a little fast, Torl.’
‘It’s terribly hard to tickle the bottom of a man’s foot when he’s wearing boots, commander.’
Cousin Sorgan was talking with Veltan when Torl found him. ‘I think I’ll need to visit your map-room when we get back down to your house,’ Sorgan said. ‘We weren’t paying very much attention to the southern part of your territory when we were studying your map before we came up here. We weren’t expecting any trouble down there, since the snake-men would almost certainly be coming at us from the north. Do you have the doors of your house locked or anything?’
‘We don’t lock doors here in the Land of Dhrall, Sorgan.’
‘How do you keep people from stealing everything you own, then?’
Veltan smiled, but he didn’t answer.
‘Oh,’ Sorgan said, looking slightly embarrassed. ‘Your people wouldn’t do that, would they?’
‘No, Captain. We don’t steal from each other around here. We leave stealing things to the Vlagh and its underlings. The map-room’s there. Look at it all you want to.’
The Maags of cousin Sorgan’s fleet had found that the standard rope ladders had been very useful during the war in the ravine above Lattash, so they’d brought dozens of them along when they’d come up to the basin above the Falls of Vash. Nanton’s description of the alternate route had been quite accurate, Torl noted, and the rope ladders turned out to be an almost perfect solution to what might have been a serious problem. It took Sorgan, Skell, and Torl less than half a day to reach the bottom of the almost perpendicular creek-bed.
Then they went along the riverbank looking for Padan’s friend, Brigadier Danal.
‘Absolutely not!’ the lean, dark-haired officer replied when cousin Sorgan bluntly told him to get his ships out of the way.
‘Ah - why don’t you let me deal with this, cousin?’ Torl suggested.