“You’re not serious!” Keselo exclaimed.
“Oh, yes. Always remember what One-Who-Heals said back in Zelana’s cave: The servants of the Vlagh aren’t intelligent enough to be afraid. If the Vlagh tells a thousand of them to attack, the last one that’s still alive will continue to attack until you kill it as well. The death of all its fellows will have no meaning for it. The creatures of the Wasteland don’t realize that every living thing dies eventually, so they’re not aware of the fact that they won’t live forever. They always seem to be surprised when death overtakes them.”
“They aren’t very big, are they?” Keselo asked.
“Very small—even smaller than Rabbit—but they’re very quick.” Longbow smiled faintly. “Try not to waste the poison on your sword tip. A small jab anyplace on their bodies will kill them almost instantly. You don’t have to drive your sword completely through them.”
“Now I’ll have to learn how to use my sword all over again,” Keselo said ruefully.
Longbow reached out and tapped Keselo’s iron breastplate with one knuckle. “This should prove quite useful,” he observed. “After one of them breaks off its fangs and the spurs on its arms on your iron shirt, it won’t be dangerous anymore.”
They moved farther and farther up the ravine for the next several days, and the pirate Hook-Beak kept Keselo busy maintaining contact with Commander Narasan. The fact that as yet there had been no contact with enemy forces seemed to make both Sorgan and Narasan more than a little edgy. Keselo noticed that Hook-Beak had started to carry his long spear in both hands rather than resting it on his shoulder, and the rest of the crew of the Seagull soon followed his example.
As they moved on up the ravine, Keselo noticed that the trees were thinning out and the underbrush wasn’t quite as dense. He definitely approved of that. If the forest thinned out a bit more, things might be more normal. The notion of venomous enemies lurking in thick brush all around him had made him very jumpy. As his nerves settled down, his curiosity began to mount, though. “This doesn’t look at all like the lower part of the ravine, Longbow,” he said to his friend one afternoon. “What happened to the trees and undergrowth up here?”
“Fire, probably,” Longbow replied. “If a dry summer comes along, all it takes to set the forest on fire is a lightning strike. Then, too, we’re quite a bit higher up in the mountains now, and the higher you go, the shorter the growing season is. That tends to stunt the trees and bushes.”
“I know that you’re very fond of the deep woods, my friend,” Keselo said, “but I’m much more comfortable with open space around me. Now that I can see more than ten feet, certain anxieties that were bothering me are starting to go away.”
“I’m so happy for you,” Longbow said with a faint smile.
On the morning of their sixth day out from Lattash, Hook-Beak sent scouts on ahead toward the clearly visible gap at the head of the ravine.
“Maybe the snake-men who got drowned in that flood was their whole army, Cap’n,” Ox suggested about noon. “Longbow ain’t seen no survivors yet.”
“If that’s all there were, Lady Zelana wouldn’t have gone to all the trouble and expense of hiring us, Ox,” Sorgan disagreed. “There’s got to be more enemies somewhere.”
Then Keselo looked on up the bench toward the head of the ravine, and he saw Rabbit running toward them as fast as he could. It was easy to see at that point how the little Maag had got his name.
He was gasping for breath when he reached them. “We seen ’em, Cap’n!” he wheezed.
“Where?” Hook-Beak demanded sharply.
“They’re still a good ways off,” Rabbit replied. “Longbow was up there just on this side of the gap. He told us to keep low, and then we went on up. There’s a big, flat plain on the other side, but it’s way down below, and there’s a slope that leads right up to the gap. The enemy soldiers are gathering at the foot of the slope.”
“How many?” Ox demanded, tightening his fist around the handle of his heavy battle-axe.
“I can’t count that high, Ox,” Rabbit confessed, “but I think we might be in a whole lot of trouble.”
2
Hold the men right here, Ox,” Sorgan commanded. “We don’t want a whole crowd up there just yet.”
“Aye, Cap’n,” Ox replied.
Then Sorgan and Keselo followed Rabbit on up to the head of the ravine. The river there was a narrow trickle of sparkling water that seemed almost to giggle its way over the stones. The trees were stunted here, and there were still a few patches of dirty snow back under their sheltering limbs. The air was clean, and Keselo could see for miles and miles out over the mountains of Western Dhrall.
Commander Narasan had evidently just reached the head of the ravine. He’d removed his iron helmet, and he and Longbow were quietly talking near the narrow gap that marked the head of the ravine.
“Rabbit tells us that we’ve finally located some snake-men,” Hook-Beak said.
“Just a bit more than ‘some,’ Sorgan,” Narasan replied glumly. “I think we’re going to be working for short pay this time out.”
“That’s what Rabbit told us. Are there really that many?”
“Come and look,” Longbow said. He turned and led the way up toward the narrow gap between two tall peaks. Keselo saw that his commander had been right. The gap would be a perfect place to erect a fort. No more than a few of their enemies could attack at any one time.
They passed on through the gap, and Keselo stopped and stared in awe at the rock-strewn sea of sand and rock lying a thousand feet below and stretching on out to the eastern horizon. It wasn’t just empty desert, however. A horde of tiny figures was coming across the barren land to the east, and the horde stretched across the Wasteland from horizon to horizon.
“It’s easy to see why the people who live there would rather find a more pleasant place to set up shop,” Commander Narasan observed. “I can’t for the life of me see how they manage to survive out there.”
“It’s a bit bleak,” Sorgan agreed. “The next question is how are we going to keep them from resettling in Lady Zelana’s part of the country?”
“Don’t rush me,” the commander said. “I’m working on it.”
Keselo had been staring down the slope, and he saw what appeared to be faint ridges that were far too evenly spaced to be the result of ordinary wind and weather. Idly he scuffed at the sand at the top of the slope with his boot. The rock beneath the sand was flat, and there appeared to be a straight edge where that rock butted up against the one beside it. He kicked away more sand. There seemed to be a straight line of squared-off rocks at the front of the gap. He dropped to his knees and pushed the sand away from the front of the flat rocks he’d just exposed. About a foot down, he came to another line of flat rocks. He raised his head and stared down the long slope. “That’s impossible!” he exclaimed.