Enchanters' End Game

"Whatever you call them - won't banging them along over those logs spring their seams?"

Anheg shrugged. "They all leak quite a bit anyway," he replied. "And it's always been done this way."

Durnik quickly saw the futility of trying to talk to the King of Cherek. He went instead to Barak, who was rather glumly considering the huge ship his crew had rowed upriver to meet him. "She looks very impressive when she's afloat," the big red-bearded man was saying to his friend, Captain Greldik, "but I think she'll be even more impressive when we have to pick her up and carry her."

"You're the one who wanted the biggest warship afloat," Greldik reminded him with a broad smirk. "You'll have to buy enough ale to float that whale of yours before your crew's drunk enough to try to portage her - not to mention the fact that it's customary for a captain to join in when the time comes to portage."

"Stupid custom," Barak growled sourly.

"I'd say that you're in for a bad week, Barak." Greldik's grin grew broader.

Durnik took the two seamen aside and began talking earnestly with them, drawing diagrams on the sandy riverbank with a stick. The more he talked, the more interested they became.

What emerged from their discussions a day later were a pair of lowslung cradles with a dozen wheels on each side. As the rest of the Chereks jeered, the two ships were carefully slid out of the water onto the cradles and firmly lashed in place. The jeering faded noticeably, however, when the crews of the two ships began trundling their craft across the plain. Hettar, who happened to ride by, watched for a few moments with a puzzled frown. "Why are you pulling them by hand," he asked, "when you're in the middle of the largest herd of horses in the world?"

Barak's eyes went very wide, and then an almost reverent grin dawned on his face.

The jeers that had risen as Barak's and Greldik's ships had been maneuvered onto their wheeled carriages turned rather quickly into angry mutterings as the carnages, pulled by teams of Algar horses, rolled effortlessly toward the escarpment past men straining with every ounce of strength to move their ships a few inches at a time. To leave it all to artistry, Barak and Greldik ordered their men to lounge indolently on the decks of their ships, drinking ale and playing dice.

King Anheg stared very hard at his impudently grinning cousin as the big ship rolled past. His expression was profoundly offended. "That's going too far!" he exploded, jerking off his dented crown and throwing it down on the ground.

King Rhodar put on a perfectly straight face. "I'd be the first to admit that it's probably not nearly as good as moving them by hand, Anheg. I'm sure there are some rather profound philosophical reasons for all that sweating and grunting and cursing, but it is faster, wouldn't you say? And we really ought to move right along with this."

"It's unnatural," Anheg growled, still glaring at the two ships, which were already several hundred yards away.

Rhodar shrugged. "Anything's unnatural the first time you try it."

"I'll think about it," Anheg said darkly.

"I wouldn't think for too long," Rhodar suggested. "Your popularity as a monarch is going to go downhill with every mile - and Barak's the sort of man who'll parade that contraption of his back and forth in front of your sailors every step of the way to the escarpment."

"He would do that, wouldn't he?"

"I think you can count on it."

King Anheg sighed bitterly. "Go fetch that unwhole-somely clever Sendarian blacksmith," he sourly instructed one of his men. "Let's get this over with."

Later that day the leaders of the army gathered again in the main tent for a strategy meeting. "Our biggest problem now is to conceal the size of our forces," King Rhodar told them all. "Instead of marching everybody to the escarpment all at once and then milling around at the base of the cliff, it might be better to move the troops in small contingents and have them go directly up to the forts on top as soon as they arrive."

"Will such a piecemeal approach not unduly delay our progress?" King Korodullin asked.

"Not all that much," Rhodar replied. "We'll move your knights and Cho-Hag's clansmen up first so you can start burning cities and crops. That will give the Thulls something to think about beside how many infantry regiments we're bringing up. We don't want them to start counting noses."

"Couldn't we build false campfires and so on to make it appear that we have more men?" Lelldorin suggested brightly.

"The whole idea is to make our army appear smaller, not bigger," Brand explained gently in his deep voice. "We don't want to alarm Taur Urgas or 'Zakath sufficiently to make them commit their forces. It will be an easy campaign if all we have to deal with are King Gethell's Thulls. If the Murgos and the Malloreans intervene, we'll be in for a serious fight."

"And that's the one thing we definitely want to avoid," King Rhodar added.

"Oh," Lelldorin said, a bit abashed, "I didn't think of that." A slow flush rose in his cheeks.

"Lelldorin," Ce'Nedra said, hoping to help him cover his embarrassment, "I think I'd like to go out and visit with the troops for a bit. Would you accompany me?"

"Of course, your Majesty," the young Asturian agreed, quickly rising to his feet.

"That's not a bad idea," Rhodar agreed. "Encourage them a bit, Ce'Nedra. They've walked a long way, and their spirits may be sagging."

Lelldorin's cousin Torasin, dressed in his customary black doublet and hose, also rose to his feet. "I'll go along, if I may," he said. He grinned rather impudently at King Korodullin. "Asturians are good plotters, but rather poor strategists, so I probably wouldn't be able to add much to the discussions."

The King of Arendia smiled at the young man's remark. "Thou art pert, young Torasin, but methinks thou art not so fervent an enemy of the crown of Arendia as thou dost pretend."

Torasin bowed extravagantly, still grinning. Once they were outside the tent, he turned to Lelldorin. "I could almost learn to like that man - if it weren't for all those thees and thous," he declared.

"It's not so bad - once you get used to it," Lelldorin replied. Torasin laughed. "If I had someone as pretty as Lady Ariana for a friend, she could thee me and thou me all she wanted," he said. He looked archly at Ce'Nedra. "Which troops did you wish to encourage, your Majesty?" he bantered.

"Let's visit your Asturian countrymen," she decided. "I don't think I'd care to take you two into the Mimbrate camp - unless your swords had been taken away from you and your mouths had been bricked up."