“Not quite all the doors,” Longbow disagreed. “The rims of the ravine on both sides are still open, and there aren’t any of those old villages up there. We can go around the enemies and leave them sitting in the ravine waiting for us.” He scratched his cheek, squinting thoughtfully. “On the other hand,” he added, “if this clever game they played irritates you as much as it irritates me, we could probably come up with something to make life unpleasant for them. Red-Beard knows exactly where all those cliff villages are located, so we could conceal bowmen on both sides of each one of them. If we were to send a small force down each bench, the enemy would almost certainly rush out to attack them. As soon as the enemies are out in the open, the bowmen could make life very exciting for them, wouldn’t you say?”

“Now, that has some interesting possibilities, doesn’t it, Sorgan?” Commander Narasan said enthusiastically. “I hate it when an enemy outsmarts me, and Longbow’s idea gives us a way to get back at them.”

“Anything’s better than sitting here starving to death,” Sorgan agreed.

“Here, here, here, and here,” Red-Beard said, putting his finger on several spots on the representation of the north side of the ravine on Narasan’s carefully drawn copy of the sculpture back in Zelana’s cave. “The ones on the south side are here, here, here, and here,” he added, pointing out the others. “I’m not sure about the one near the place where the river bends. The side of the ravine appears to have collapsed a long time ago, and it took most of the village with it.”

“Seven, then—or possibly eight,” Commander Narasan said. “Are you absolutely certain that there aren’t any more, Red Beard?”

“I’ve been hunting this ravine for more than twenty years now, Commander, so I’m very familiar with it.”

“It’s not quite as bad as I thought, then,” Hook-Beak said with obvious relief. He looked at Longbow. “You said that you had an idea that might keep our enemies penned up in those ruins so that they won’t be able to interfere while we’re running away.”

“Retreating, Sorgan,” Narasan corrected in a pained tone. “It’s called retreating.”

“It’s the same thing, isn’t it? What’s this idea of yours, Longbow?”

“Your armies came up here along those benches on both sides of the ravine, Hook-Beak,” Longbow replied, “and it appears that those imitation villages Red-Beard just pointed out to us were built at about the same time that the stairway at the gap was built, and they were in places where our enemies could watch anyone moving in the ravine. It’s all starting to fit together now. The stairway was built to deceive us. The imitation villages were probably intended to be the places where the enemy’s main attacks would originate. It would seem that this plan has been in the works for centuries, but it would also seem that the idea of people moving along the rims hadn’t occurred to them. The benches are easier and more convenient, but people can move along up on the rims if it’s necessary.”

“You and your people would know more about that than we would, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said. “We came up along the benches.”

“And I’m certain that the Vlagh had serpent-people hiding in all those imitation towns high up in the sides of the ravine, watching while you did,” Longbow added. “Now, if a fair number of your men started to go back down the ravine along those benches, the enemy would believe that your entire armies were returning to Lattash by the same route they used to come up here to the head of the ravine, wouldn’t they?”

“That sounds logical,” Narasan admitted.

“The imitation towns that conceal the cave mouths are tucked back under overhanging ledges,” Longbow continued, “so Commander Narasan’s men weren’t able to see the ones above them when they came up along the south bench, but Captain Hook-Beak’s men on the north bench could, isn’t that right?”

“I think I see where you’re going, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said. “Evidently, the enemies who built those forts didn’t realize that eventually we’d develop ways to communicate with each other over long distances. When my people up on the south rim see one of the enemy forts on the north side of the ravine, they can signal Keselo, and when Hook-Beak’s people see one on my side, Keselo can signal me. Even though we won’t be able to see the forts, we’ll know exactly where they are.”

“Right,” Longbow said. “Now, when Rabbit, Keselo, and I climbed up the north side of the ravine to have a closer look at that first cluster of buildings, we found a spot that was slightly above it and a little way off to one side. We could see almost all of the village from there, and I noticed a similar place over on the other side of the village. If I position well-hidden bowmen on both sides of the ruin, they’ll wait until the enemy charges down the slope to attack your decoy army down on the bench, and then they’ll shower arrows down on them from behind. A few enemies might roll down as far as the bench, but they’ll already be dead, so they won’t cause too many problems.” He paused, tugging thoughtfully at one earlobe. “I think we might want to position a fair number of your soldiers armed with poison-tipped spears between the bowmen and the enemies,” he added. “We wouldn’t want our enemies to interfere with the bowmen while they’re busy. Then, after the bowmen have eliminated most of the enemies, your soldiers can charge into the village from both sides and kill off the rest. Then we can pull down all the imitation buildings and block off the cave so that any enemies hiding back in there won’t be able to come out and cause us any problems.”

“Remind me never to get involved in a war when you’re on the other side, Longbow,” Commander Narasan said.

“It’s not really too complicated, Rabbit,” Keselo explained early the following morning as the two of them hurried along the north rim of the ravine in advance of Sorgan’s army. “There are about twenty signals, and most of them are concerned with dangers of one kind or another. If I wave my flag from side to side over my head, it means danger. Then the next signal tells the one who’s reading my signals just exactly where the danger’s located. If I wave the flag up and down on my right side, the enemy force is off to the right, and if I wave it to the left, the danger’s there.”