“Yes, sir,” Keselo replied, smartly straightening and clashing his fist against his iron breastplate. He was fairly certain that Hook-Beak found his strict adherence to military formality a bit irritating, but since this would probably be his last war, Keselo was determined to do everything strictly by the book.

He went to the edge of the bench, unfurled his red flag, and rapidly signaled to the Trogite force on the other side of the river.

His fellow Trogites halted and began to set up camp for the night, and Keselo rolled up his flag and returned to report to the pirate Sorgan.

“Did they get the message?” Sorgan inquired.

“Yes, sir. They’re starting to set up camp.”

“Good. Ham-Hand, grab some of the closer ship crews and put them to work setting up a good stout barricade across this bench, and then put out a night watch. We don’t want any surprises after the sun goes down.”

Rabbit went over to the edge of the rocky bench and looked down at the river. “She’s back in her banks, Cap’n,” he reported. “I’d say that Skell’s most likely back in his fort now.”

“We’ll see,” Sorgan replied. “I want to be absolutely certain sure that Skell and Torl are in those forts before we go too much farther upriver. Longbow thinks that our poisoned spears are going to solve the problem, but I want to have a good safe place to fall back to if he happens to be wrong.”

Several crews of Maag sailors threw together a rough sort of barricade, and Sorgan’s army settled down for the night around large fires. The night passed quietly, and they were up at dawn to continue their march up the ravine.

By noon of that day, Keselo noticed that the ravine was narrowing significantly, and the sloping walls above the benches were growing steeper.

They rounded a bend late that afternoon, and Sorgan’s sour-faced cousin Skell was waiting for them. “What kept you, Sorgan?” he asked.

“Don’t try to be funny, Skell,” Sorgan told him. “Have you got your ship crews back down in your forts yet? I don’t want to go much farther upriver until those forts are finished.” He hesitated, but then went on. “There’s something you should know, Skell. As it turns out, the enemies we’re going to be coming up against aren’t quite as helpless as Lady Zelana led us to believe back in Maag. It seems that she somehow forgot to tell us that they’re part snake.”

“You said what?” Skell replied in a flat, unfriendly tone of voice.

“They don’t have swords or axes or bows, since they don’t need them. They’ve got poisoned fangs instead.”

“I think I’ll go home now, Sorgan.”

“Don’t get all worked up, cousin,” Sorgan told him. “Longbow gave us an easy way to deal with the problem. He’s been hunting them down and killing them for twenty years now. The slick part is that he uses their own poison to kill them. He dips the points of his arrows into the poison sacks of dead ones and then shoots poisoned arrows at any live ones he comes across. We talked it over, and we’re fairly sure that poisoned spears will do the job almost as good as poisoned arrows will—long spears, if you get my drift.”

“Where am I going to find any dead ones to get the poison from?”

Sorgan grinned at his cousin. “I just happen to have a fair supply of the poison, Skell. An awful lot of the snake-men got drowned during the flood, and the Dhralls down in Lattash fished the carcasses out of the river and leeched the poison out of them. We ended up with jugs and jugs full of it. Since you’re my cousin, I’ll only charge you half-price for a dozen or so jugs.”

“Quit trying to be funny, Sorgan. Did Torl manage to get here yet?”

“He hauled in right after the flood came down the ravine. He should be here by midmorning tomorrow.”

“Good. I’ll put him to work over on the south riverbank. How many more ship crews can you spare us?”

“Thirty, maybe,” Sorgan replied. “I don’t want to be shorthanded if we come up against a major enemy army.”

“Thirty should do it. I’d say that the forts down on the riverbanks will be pretty much complete by tomorrow evening. Then we’ll start expanding up from there to block off the benches. Give us another ten days and we’ll have a wall stretching all the way across. If the enemy gets past you, we’ll be here to stop him, and you’ll have a safe place to hide after the enemy bites half your men to death.”

“Very funny, Skell,” Sorgan said dryly.

“Just looking out for the family, Sorgan. Once Torl and I finish building this fort, nobody, and I do mean nobody, is going to go any farther down the ravine without my permission.”

“I’d say that you’re earning your pay, then. You’re going to be the anchor for this whole campaign, so make your forts as strong as you can and hold them at any cost.” Sorgan looked around. “We’ll camp here for the night. I need to hammer out a few details with Narasan. Have you bridged the river yet?”

“No, we just swim across,” Skell said sarcastically. “It isn’t too hard—unless the boulder you’re carrying weighs more than a ton or so.”

“I wish you’d stop trying to make a joke out of this.”

“Stop asking stupid questions, then. Of course we’ve got a bridge, Sorgan. How do you think Torl and his people are going to get to the Trogite side to build his part of the fort?”

Sorgan let that pass. “We’ll probably move on up the ravine at first light tomorrow,” he said. “The Trogites and I’ll hold back any snake-men until your fortifications are all in place. As soon as you’re finished, send word upriver to Narasan and me. If this goes the way I think it’s going to, we’ll be in total control, so the enemy’s going to have to dance to our tune.” He turned his head. “Keselo, go signal Narasan. Tell him that we need to talk before we go any farther upriver.”

“Yes, sir!” Keselo replied smartly. He was a little surprised at the level of sophistication involved in Hook-Beak’s plan. The Maags seemed to be unthinking savages, but evidently they knew exactly what they were doing.

Captain Hook-Beak and Commander Narasan met just upstream from Skell’s partially completed fort early the following day. “Nice job,” the commander noted, “but won’t the river cause some problems on down the line?”

“Not for Skell, they won’t,” Sorgan replied. “If he and Torl do this right, this’ll be part fort and part dam. The snake-men don’t swim very well, and if there’s ten feet of water standing in front of the fort, they’ll have lots of trouble attacking. Torl should get here later today, and then things’ll go faster. Right now, there’s only about half a fort, but that turned out to be sort of lucky. That flood would have torn it to pieces if Skell’s men had finished. When Skell and Torl finish up down here, they’re going to extend the walls on both sides to block off the benches. Once that’s done, we’ll have a safe place to fall back to if things get wormy farther on up the ravine. I think our job’s going to involve holding back any enemy forces until Skell and Torl finish building this fort.”