They chose a fairly clear stretch of the slope to follow on down to the small stream, and they moved cautiously, shaking every bush they came across with their spears or swords. They didn’t flush out any enemies, however.

“That’s a big relief, Cap’n,” Ox declared when they reached the brook. “Them snake-men are starting to make me real jumpy.”

“Sorgan,” Commander Narasan called from the other side of the narrow stream, “what’s all the delay here?”

“Just taking a few precautions, Narasan,” Sorgan replied. He turned to Longbow. “Do the snake-men ever try to swim or lay quiet underwater?”

Longbow shook his head. “They’re snakes, Sorgan, not fish.”

“Good. Let’s get across while we’ve still got some daylight.” Then he raised his head. “You’d better have your people get a fire going, Narasan—a nice big one. We’ll want lots of light after the sun goes down.” Then he started wading across the brook, kicking up large splashes as he went.

“We couldn’t really see very clearly from up on the rim, Sorgan,” Commander Narasan said as they gathered near the large fire Red-Beard, Gunda, and Jalkan had built. “As closely as we could tell, a fair number of the enemies who were running downhill toward the bench just fell down and played dead once Longbow and his Dhralls showered them with arrows.”

“Longbow says that they aren’t clever enough to do that,” Hook-Beak said. “Ox here was the closest to them. Tell him what you saw, Ox.”

“Aye, Cap’n,” Ox replied. “Well, me and my men was all pretty happy when Longbow and his people showered arrows down on them as was charging down the hill at us, and we pretty much figured that we’d just won the day. Then a whole lot of other snake-men started creeping up out of mole holes that weren’t no more than a few feet from where we was all standing around celebrating, and they was right on top of us, biting and stinging my people afore we could blink twice. I lost more than half of my men afore I could get my wits together and start shouting orders. We managed to clean out the snake-men, but it really cost us a lot of good men.”

“They crawl around under the ground?” Gunda demanded incredulously. “That’s no way to fight a war. I’ve never heard of any soldiers that do that.”

“We’ve made a serious mistake by thinking of them as soldiers,” Longbow said. “Soldiers, or warriors, function in groups, but the creatures of the Wasteland don’t think that way. They attack as individuals. They aren’t really strong enough to fight a well-armed soldier, but they don’t have to be strong—just fast. Most importantly, though, they have to be close to those they intend to kill. They have to surprise those they’ve chosen as victims. Without surprise, they stand no chance of winning.”

“You know the country around here better than any of the rest of us do, Red-Beard,” Sorgan said. “Are there any passes back a ways in the mountains that’d get us back to Lattash without going down this cursed ravine?”

Red-Beard squinted at the nearby peaks. “I don’t think so, Hook-Beak,” he said a bit dubiously. “It’s too early in the year. There are a few passes higher up in the mountains, but they’re still clogged with snow.”

“That answers that, then,” Sorgan said glumly. “It looks like we’re going to have to wade through snakes all the way back down to Lattash.”

“Everything the snake-men have done so far seems to be based on deception,” Narasan mused. “First there was that stairway that was only there to hide those tunnels, and now we come across those imitation villages that don’t really mean anything either. I’d say that it’s entirely possible that both sides of the ravine are honeycombed with those burrows. We could very well have one of those snake-men lurking within five feet of every one of us no matter where we go in this ravine. This whole thing’s nothing but a death trap.”

“Burrowing is natural behavior for serpents,” Longbow explained. “The burrow is both a shelter from the weather and a hidden place from which to strike. It’s instinctive—which is about as far as the intelligence of a serpent will go.”

“If they’re that simpleminded, how did they manage to come up with the ideas of the stairway and these ruined villages?” Narasan demanded.

“I’d imagine that the idea of stairways and villages originated with That-Called-the-Vlagh,” Red-Beard suggested. “In a peculiar sort of way, it’s been behaving much like a fisherman. It baits its hooks with stairways and villages.”

“And we’re the ones who took the bait,” Rabbit added. “Now we’ve got to find some way to break that thing’s line.”

“Can anybody think of some way we might be able to flush those snake-men out of those burrows?” Gunda asked. “Water, maybe, or possibly smoke?”

“That might be a possibility,” Narasan agreed. “Smoke would probably be better. Even if it doesn’t kill them, it’ll reveal the locations of their burrows.”

Just then there was another of those deep booming sounds coming from deep within the earth, and the shuddering of the ground this time was more violent than it had been the previous time, and large boulders, unseated by the earthquake, came rolling down the sides of the ravine.

There was a sudden, deafening crash of thunder and a brief, blinding light. Then Veltan was there. His eyes were wild, and his face was deathly pale. “Get up out of this ravine!” he shouted. “Your lives are in danger!”

“What’s the matter?” Commander Narasan demanded.

“Move, Narasan!” Veltan shouted. “If you stay here, you’ll die! Run! And when you get up to the rim of the ravine, pull your people back until you’re at least five miles back up into the mountains! You’re standing right in the middle of the most dangerous place in the world! Get out of here just as fast as you can!”

From deep within the earth there came another series of sharp cracking sounds, and the ground beneath their feet began to shake again, but this time it convulsed so violently that it was almost impossible to remain standing.

Then, from off to the east there came a sound that went beyond sound, and a vast pillar of smoke and debris shot miles up into the sky.

“Fire mountain!” Red-Beard exclaimed. “Run!” He spun and ran up the riverbank.