Narasan smiled. “The catapult has many uses, Trenicia,” he explained. “When we want to break down a wall, we use very large rocks, but when we want to thin out the number of enemies charging on our position, we use hundreds of smaller rocks. A well-constructed catapult will throw those pebbles about a hundred feet up into the air, and then it’ll quite suddenly start raining rocks down on our enemies. Our little rock-shower might not kill all of our enemies, but it will reduce their numbers significantly. I’m quite sure that a shower of quartz fragments will be even more effective than ordinary pebbles could ever be. Quartz seems to shatter into very sharp fragments, and when they come raining down on our enemies, they’ll cut the bug-people all to pieces.”

“You people make war much more complicated than we do on the Isle of Akalla,” Trenicia observed. “We kill our enemies one at a time, and we’re usually face-to-face with the one we’re going to kill. You people who come from that place called civilization kill people you don’t even know from a long distance away.”

“The main thing in any war is winning, Trenicia,” Narasan reminded her. “If more enemies are killed than your friends are, you’ve just won. If it’s the other way around, you’ve lost. I’ll grant you that over the years we’ve made things more complicated by adding machines of one kind or another, but it still comes back to killing more enemies than the enemies kill of your people.”

“But are those machines you build strictly honorable?”

Narasan winced. Sometimes it seemed that every time he turned around, the word “honorable” kept popping out of nowhere.

Trenicia sat down on a large slab of quartz with a somber expression. “There’s so much I have to learn,” she said. “Things were happening down in the Domain of Dahlaine’s younger brother that I still don’t understand. I could see the value of these machines, of course, but I thought they were built mostly for knocking down the enemy’s forts. Then I saw them used to throw fire at enemy soldiers. I thought that forts were the main things in civilized wars, but it seemed that as soon as your people finished building a fort, they just walked off and left it standing there.”

“That was a very unusual war, Trenicia,” Narasan told her. “Forts are usually our primary way to hold back an invasion, but Longbow’s ‘unknown friend’ changed almost everything down in Veltan’s Domain. She’s capable of things that go beyond anything that Dahlaine or Zelana or Veltan can even imagine.”

“I know. She spoke to me not long after we reached Mount Shrak.”

“She did?” Narasan was startled. “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“She told me not to. I do silly things quite often, but crossing that one would go a long way past silly, don’t you think? Let’s just say that she’s here to help us, and let it go at that. Let’s get back to these ‘civilized wars.’ What are they really all about?”

“Land, usually,” Narasan replied, “and gold, of course. We take land away from others so that we can grow food on it. Then we sell the food to others—if they’re willing to pay for it.” He smiled faintly. “You’re not really interested in gold, though, are you?”

“Not really,” Trenicia said. “I prefer jewels. They’re prettier and much more valuable than the yellow lead that makes civilized people get so excited. What would you say is the most important thing you want to do when you’re fighting a civilized war?”

“We call it ‘take the high ground,’ Trenicia. You always want to be uphill from your enemy. If you do it that way, he has to climb to reach you.” He frowned slightly. “When you get right down to it, that’s what our forts are all about. In a sense, we make high ground when we build a fort.”

“It sort of keeps you stuck in one place, though, doesn’t it? You build a fort, and then you have to sit there. Doesn’t that make your wars sort of boring? When we fight a war on the Isle of Akalla, we spend most of our time running. We run in, cut down a lot of our enemies, and then run off. Then our enemy runs after us. After we get a few miles ahead of her, we circle around and attack her from behind. After you’ve done that to an enemy several times, she doesn’t have very many warriors left.” Then she pursed her lips. “I think maybe I should have a long talk with Longbow or those archers from over in Tonthakan. If I had bows and my warriors knew how to use them, I could own the Isle of Akalla.”

Narasan smiled. “I thought you already did own the isle,” he said.

“Oh, I do, of course,” Trenicia replied, “but there are a fair number of women there who don’t quite realize that—yet.”

Gunda’s fort was beginning to take shape now, and Narasan began to feel just a bit more relaxed. Dahlaine had assured them that it would take their enemies quite a long time to reach Crystal Gorge, but still . . .

Ariga and his horse-soldiers had been scouting off to the south of the gorge, and as yet they hadn’t encountered any of the invaders. If things kept going the way they were now, the fort would be complete long before the creatures of the Wasteland came anywhere near the gorge.

Then on a chilly, cloudy afternoon, Ariga came galloping up the gorge. “There’s company coming!” he shouted as he swung down from his horse.

“Well, finally,” Gunda said with a tight grin. “I was beginning to think they might have gotten lost out there in the desert.” He looked rather proudly at his nearly completed fort. “Let them come,” he added. “We’re ready for them.”

Sorgan Hook-Beak grinned. “I was starting to think that they didn’t like us anymore, and we’ve spent a lot of time building our welcome for them, and I’d hate to see it go to waste.”

“I wouldn’t get too happy yet, Hook-Beak,” Ariga said. “From what Ekial told me, the bug-people down in Veltan-Land didn’t have weapons of any kind—except for their teeth and fingernails. That’s changed, though. We saw a goodly number of them coming up the slope from that desert out there, and they’re quite a bit better-armed now.”

“What kind of weapons do they have?”

“You name it, and they’ve got it—swords, spears, axes, and clubs with iron spikes sticking out of them.”

“They’ve started to make real weapons?” Sorgan exclaimed.