“How far along had your men gone before the snow came?”

“We had the north bank fairly well blocked off by then. The south bank should be simpler. Four or five big boulders are about all it’s going to take. Then we’ll start on the walls that’ll block off the benches.”

“Do you think your fort down by the river’s going to stay put when that spring flood comes down the ravine?”

“It should, cousin. We didn’t build it out of pebbles. We levered large boulders off that shelf that runs along both sides of the river. Things went faster that way, and if a boulder’s so big that it takes a hundred men to budge it, it’ll probably stay put no matter how much water comes down the ravine. I wasn’t really thinking about floods when we picked the spot, though. I was just looking for a place that’d be easier to defend.”

“How did you learn so much about land warfare, Skell?” Narasan asked curiously. “I thought you Maags did your fighting at sea.”

Skell smiled. “When Sorgan and I were only boys, we joined the crew of a Maag ship captain called Dalto Big-Nose, and Big-Nose was famous for going after gold, no matter where it was—at sea or on land. His crew learned about fighting on land the hard way. We know which kinds of barricades are the most difficult to get across because we used to have to climb over all kinds of them to get at the gold Big-Nose wanted. A man can learn a lot about barricades when he’s standing behind one, but he learns a lot more when he’s trying to get over them.”

“Ah,” Narasan said. “That would be educational, I suppose.”

Zelana quietly came into the torch-lit chamber and glanced at Red-Beard’s handiwork. “Very nice,” she observed.

“Good morning, Lady Zelana,” Sorgan greeted her. “I was sort of hoping that you’d stop by. Is it possible that the river used to be a lot wider than it is now? Those rocky benches about halfway up the sides of the ravine look to me like they might have been gouged out a long time ago.”

“They were,” she replied. “There was once a vast inland sea where the Wasteland is now, but Father Earth shuddered and shifted, and that sea broke loose and ate its way down out of those mountains.”

“I’d say that we might want to use those benches when we go upriver, Narasan,” Sorgan suggested. “It looks to me like it’d be faster that way than it’d be down along the riverbanks. The benches seem to be wider and not so cluttered up with boulders and thick brush, but that’ll come later—after that spring flood’s over. Right now, I think our main problem’s going to be getting Skell’s men up out of the ravine without alerting the enemy. I’m sure they’ve got scouts watching everything we do. If Skell’s men pack up and move out, won’t that let the enemy know that it’s dangerous down at the bottom of the ravine? We’re sort of hoping that the spring flood’s going to take them by surprise, but if Skell’s men run away, won’t they get a little suspicious?”

“I’m afraid you might be right, Sorgan,” Narasan said, frowning, “and I can’t see any way around the problem.”

Rabbit was carefully examining the model of the ravine. “What are all these little cuts that run down from the rim?” he asked Red-Beard.

“Small streams,” Red-Beard replied. “They’re dry for most of the year, but they fill up during the spring runoff, and over the years they’ve eaten their way down to the main river.”

“Could a man get up to the rim if he followed one of them?”

“I’ve hunted deer in many of them. They’re steep and narrow, but a man can make his way to the top through them if he really thinks it’s necessary.”

“Then if Skell’s men got some sort of warning that the flood was about to start, they could get out of the ravine in a hurry if they went up through those cuts, couldn’t they?”

“It’s possible,” Red-Beard conceded, “but who’s going to warn them in time for them to escape the flood?”

“Which direction does that warm wind usually come from?”

“From across the sea to the west, and there’s no ‘usually’ involved. The spring wind always comes from the west.”

“Then it’ll blow through Lattash quite a bit sooner than it’ll go on up the ravine, won’t it?”

“What are you getting at, Rabbit?” Sorgan asked.

“If it’s that hot wind that sets off the flood, then Skell’s men can stay right where they are until the wind starts to blow, but it might cut things a bit tight if they wait until it gets that far up the ravine. They won’t really have to wait, though. There are a lot of Maag ships anchored out in the bay, and if you anchored a few way out at the inlet that leads into the bay, that hot wind would hit them hours before it made its way up to Skell’s fort.”

“So?” Sorgan asked.

“There’s at least one sailor on every Maag ship with a horn, Cap’n, and if I remember right, the Dhralls have horns, too. If Red-Beard and Longbow were to space out their horn-blowers up there on the rim of the ravine, they can blow their horns as soon as they hear ours blowing out in the bay. We could send Skell all the warning he’s likely to need by passing toots from the bay all the way up to the fort, and the toots will get there quite a while before the hot wind does. That’ll let Skell know that it’s time to pack up and get out of the ravine.”

Skell gave Rabbit a hard, unfriendly look.

“It sounds like a good idea to me,” Sorgan said.

“Would you like to wade through hip-deep snow to get up there and tell the men at the fort to start listening for toots, Sorgan?” Skell demanded.

“I couldn’t really do that, Skell,” Sorgan replied with mock seriousness. “They’re your men, after all, and it just wouldn’t be right if I ran up there and started ordering them around, would it?”

The weather cleared off a couple of days later, and there was definitely a faint smell of spring in the air. Rabbit and the other Maag smiths were still hammering arrowheads from the last few scraps of iron they’d scavenged from Sorgan’s fleet, but Rabbit periodically set his hammer aside and walked away from the loud banging noise of the arrow shop to listen carefully for the sound of the horns which were to announce the approach of the warm wind. Just about everybody in Lattash was listening for the horns. They all wanted that wind to arrive, but there were still many things that needed to be done first, so they were of two minds about it.