After Veltan had regained his composure, he introduced Ariga and several of the other Malavi to the people who’d been living in Dahlaine’s cave, and then various horsemen quite proudly demonstrated the capabilities of their animals, and they seemed to take a great deal of pleasure in the astonishment their demonstrating caused. Tlantar immediately saw how valuable the horsemen were likely to be in the upcoming war, but “showing off” seemed to Tlantar to be just a bit childish. Childishness of one kind or another kept cropping up lately, for some reason. Tlantar sighed. “Oh, well,” he murmured, “if it makes them happy, I suppose I can live with it.” Then he saw that the beautiful mate of the farmer Omago was looking at him with an amused sort of expression.

And then she rather slyly winked at him.

7

Early the next morning one of the men Tlantar had sent north came down to Mount Shrak with a northern tribe member called Tlorak. “This one’s head seems to still be working, Chief Two-Hands,” Tlantar’s man said. “Most of the people up there are too afraid to even talk to me.”

“It’s that cursed pestilence, Chief Two-Hands,” the young Tlorak declared. “Everybody’s so afraid of everybody else that we can’t even hold back those nitwits from Atazakan.”

“You can still talk to each other, can’t you?” Tlantar asked the excited young man, “even if you have to shout? Your spear-throwers can drop spears a hundred paces away. You and your friends don’t have to be standing right next to each other, you know. You can stay some distance apart from each other and still be effective. You can avoid infection—if that’s what it really is—and hold off the Atazakans at the same time. Just be sure that you’re close enough to each other that the range of your spear overlaps those of your friends.”

“We should have thought of that ourselves, Chief Two-Hands,” Tlorak said rather sheepishly. “That cursed plague’s got us all so frightened that our minds don’t seem to work anymore.”

“There’s a young Trogite who works for Dahlaine’s younger brother who doesn’t believe that what’s been killing people in the northern tribes is a disease. He knows a great deal about diseases, and he swears up and down that no disease can kill a man in just a half day. He says that diseases can’t move that fast.”

“What’s killing our people, then?”

“The Trogite thinks that it’s a poison of some kind. If the Atazaks have been sneaking around poisoning wells and ponds, everybody who takes a drink of water will die. I think that might come very close to what’s really been happening up there. I’d say that you should tell your chief about that. If he sets men to guarding the wells, springs, and ponds up there, your people will probably stop dying.”

The face of the young Matan from the north went bleak at that point. “If that Trogite’s come up with what’s really going on up there, I think that it might lead to the extinction of the Atazaks, Chief Tlantar,” he declared. “When word of that gets out, it’ll start raining spears over in Atazakan like a spring thunder-shower. We’ll empty that part of Dahlaine’s Domain in about a month.”

Tlantar shrugged. “Whatever seems right and proper to your chief, my young friend,” he said. “That’s his business, not mine.”

A few days later the Maags went on down into the southern mountains to begin work on what they called a “fort.” Tlantar wasn’t exactly sure what was involved, so he went looking for Longbow.

“The Trogites are the experts when it comes to building forts,” the tall archer explained. “The Maags are going down to Crystal Gorge to lay down a base. Then, when Narasan and his army arrive, they’ll go on down there and build what’s very much like a straight-up-and-down wall made of rocks. The wall will block off the gorge, and the creatures of the Wasteland won’t be able to come any farther north.”

“Does that really work?” Tlantar asked dubiously.

“It has in the last two wars,” Longbow replied, “at least partially. During the first war, the bugs had burrows that came out in the ravine behind the fort. Then, in the war to the south, we had a very nice fort, but we were told to abandon it. In that war, we had two enemies instead of just one, and they were busy killing each other right up until a wall of water came blasting out of what looked like solid rock and washed both of our enemies away.”

“From what you just told me, it doesn’t sound like those forts are really all that useful, Longbow,” Tlantar said. “Your enemies got behind you during the first war, and you abandoned the fort in the second one.”

“Exactly,” Longbow said. “When you get right down to the bottom, friend Tlantar, those forts were really nothing but deceptions. Our enemies from the Wasteland were certain that the forts were our only defense, and that kept them looking at the forts instead of paying attention to what was really going on. You don’t need to spread this around very much, Two-Hands, but we have a friend out there who can do things that none of our gods can even think of doing. This friend can make mountains explode or bring whole oceans up out of the earth itself.”

“Why do we need all these outlander armies, then?”

“We don’t, really,” Longbow replied. “I think our friend out there wants to have the outlander armies here to see just how powerful she really is. The outlanders roam the world looking for gold, and there are huge deposits of gold here in the Land of Dhrall. After the outlanders who are here see what our unknown friend can do to people who irritate her, they’ll go on back home and warn all their friends to stay away from the Land of Dhrall, because if they come here, they’ll surely die before they can find even one speck of gold.”

“Just who is this unknown friend, Longbow?”

“I’m not really sure, Chief Tlantar, but I wouldn’t advise getting in her way.”

It was several days later when the Trogite army arrived at Mount Shrak, and it took Tlantar a while to get used to having people around who wore metal clothes.

After they’d all been introduced to each other, they went on into Dahlaine’s cave under Mount Shrak and gathered in what Dahlaine called his “war-room.” The outlanders carefully examined the miniaturized replica of Crystal Gorge and generally agreed that it was, indeed, defendable. “Once we have a fort in place, they won’t get past us,” the silver-haired Trogite commander declared.