“We’ve found that lances work fairly well,” Ekial replied. “That’s a weapon that’s very much like what you Trogites and your friends, the Maags, called a ‘spear’ during that war down to the south. A lance is about twenty feet long. We started using those a long time ago—except that they weren’t actually weapons back then. They were just long poles with padding wrapped around the end. We used them to push cows around so that they’d go in the direction we wanted to go. It was about fifty years or so ago when somebody came up with the idea of using an iron point instead of padding. It works fairly well at a distance, but when we get in closer, we use our sabres instead.”

“A sword, you mean?”

“A sabre’s not exactly what you Trogites would call a ‘sword,’ Padan. Your swords are thick and strong and straight. The Malavi sabre is longer, and it’s curved. It’s made to slash, not to stab—mostly because we’re moving when we use it. ‘Stab’ might work quite well if you’re standing still, but if you’re moving fast—like on horseback—‘stab’s’ not a very good idea. There’s a fair chance that your sabre might get tangled up in your enemy’s innards or caught between a couple of his ribs. If something like that happened when you’re riding fast, it could jerk your sabre right out of your hand.”

“That does make sense, I suppose,” Padan conceded.

Then Ekial turned to look at Longbow. “Just how far to the north of here is this invasion from Atazakan coming across the line?”

“Dahlaine’s map indicates about ninety miles,” Longbow replied. He looked at Tlantar Two-Hands. “Is that at all close to being right?” he asked.

“Pretty close, yes,” Tlantar replied.

“My party of horsemen should cover that in about two days,” Ekial said, “so we won’t have to go north for a day or so. When we get up there, we’ll have a look around, and then I’ll send a man down to meet you and pass on what we’ve seen.”

“I’ll let Dahlaine know that you’ll be going on ahead, Ekial,” Longbow said. “We want to be sure that he’s shut the wind down before you and your men reach northern Matakan.”

“Not a bad idea, Longbow.” Then Ekial grinned. “If there’s no wind blowing up there, my men and I might make a few charges in the direction of the Atazaks. If we can excite the venom-spitters, they might just eliminate about half of our enemies up there, and we won’t even have to draw our sabres.”

“How many men do you think Narasan will let us have?” Longbow asked Padan then.

“I’ll suggest ten cohorts,” Padan replied. “If Rabbit’s idea of stopping the wind works like it should, we won’t have any venom raining down on us, so ten cohorts should be enough. Are we going to take some Maags along as well?”

“Probably so. Sorgan’s idea of mixing people together during this little unpleasant mess to the north makes good sense. We’ve come up with quite a few useful ideas working that way during the past two wars, and there’s no reason to believe that it won’t work this time as well. Oh, tell Sorgan and Narasan that we’ll be taking Rabbit and Keselo with us. Between them, those two come up with very useful ideas every now and then.”

Keselo was walking along beside Ekial, and Longbow, who was just ahead of them, could hear them speaking quite clearly.

“I’ve been wondering about something, Prince Ekial,” Keselo said. “Have the Malavi ever used horses to carry things, or are they only for riding?”

“They started out as animals that carried things for us,” Ekial replied. “Riding them came a bit later. Why do you ask?”

“As you probably noticed during the war in Veltan’s Domain, we had a number of war-engines that turned out to be very useful. Unfortunately, they’re very heavy, so it takes a lot of men to move them. I was thinking about that here recently. This grassland is fairly level, so if we were to cobble some sleds together and mount the war-engines on them, your horses could probably pull those sleds along quite smoothly—and quite a bit faster than men could ever move them.”

“You’re talking about those catapult things that threw big gobs of liquid fire at the bug-people, aren’t you?” Ekial asked. Then he grinned. “Dropping those gobs of fire on the Atazaks would make life a bit unpleasant for them, wouldn’t it?” Then he squinted at Keselo. “I don’t think I’ve seen any of your catapults up here, though.”

“There wasn’t enough room on our ships to bring them along when we came up here from the south, so we’ll have to build new ones.” Keselo looked out over the grassland. “There might be a bit of a problem, though. I don’t think I’ve seen very many trees out here, so there’s nothing we can use to build them.” He sighed. “Oh, well,” he said. “It was an interesting idea, but I don’t see any way we’d be able to make new catapults.”

Longbow turned. “Don’t throw good ideas away until you’ve considered all of your options, Keselo,” he said. “There are plenty of trees off to the west in Tonthakan, and Padan will have ten cohorts joining us in a day or so. You can take a couple of those cohorts off to the west to cut down trees and make catapults. Then you’ll be able to mount them on sleds.” He turned to Ekial. “Do you think you’ll be able to train your horses to pull those sleds and get the catapults here where we’ll need them?”

“I was going to talk with him about that. There’s no real reason why the horses would have to do that all by themselves, is there? We pull things around fairly often in the Land of Malavi, but the horse has to have a rider to tell him what to do. If we tied one end of the ropes to the catapult sleds and the other end to the saddles of our horses, we’d be able to skid them along without too much trouble.”

“It looks like Sorgan Hook-Beak knew what he was talking about,” Keselo said then. “If you get people together from several different cultures, sooner or later they’ll come up with a solution to almost any problem, won’t they?” Then he straightened. “I’d better go speak with Sub-Commander Padan,” he said. “We’re going to need quite a few barrels of naphtha, pitch, and tar if we’re going to be throwing fire missiles at the Atazak invaders.”