“Aye. For long and long. It wondered me often, your choice of the Lady Rhoann over her. Howbeit, ’twill be a
wondrous thing to be your brother-in-law as well as in arms.”
Tedric grinned companionably, but before he could reply they had to separate and go to work.
The king did not rest long; the heralds called Tedric in before half his job was done.
“What thinkst you, Tedric, should be next?” Phagon asked.
“First punish Devoss, sire!” Tedric snarled. “Back-track them-storm High Pass if defended-raze half the steppes
with sword and torch-drive them the full length of their country and into Northern Sound!”
“Interesting, my impetuous young blade, but not at all practical,” Phagon countered. “Hast considered the matter of
time the avalanches of rocks doubtless set up and ready to sweep those narrow paths-what Taggad would be doing
while we cavort through the wastelands?”
Tedric deflated almost instantaneously. “Nay, sire”” he admitted sheepishly. “I thought not of any such.”
” Tis the trouble with you-you know not how to think.” Phagon was deadly serious now. ” Tis a bard thing to learn;
impossible for many; but learn it you must if you end not as Hurlo ended. Also, take heed: disobey my orders but
once, as Hurlo did, and you hang in chains from the highest battlement of your own Castle Middlemarch until your
bones rot apart and drop into the lake.”
His monarch’s vicious threat-or rather, promise-left Tedric completely unmoved. ” ‘Tis what I would deserve” sire,
or less; but no fear of that. Stupid I may be, but disloyal? Nay, sire. Your word always has been and always will be
my law.”
“Not stupid, Tedric, but lacking in judgment, which is not as bad; since the condition is” if you care enough to make
it so, remediable. You must care enough, Tedric. You must learn. and quickly; for much more than your own life is
at hazard.”
The younger man stared questioningly and the king went on: “My life, the lives of my family” and the future of all
Lomarr,” he said quickly.
“In that case, sire, wilt learn, and quickly,” Tedric declared; and” as days and weeks went by, he did.
“All previous attempts on the city of Sarlo were made in what seemed to be the only feasible way-crossing the
Tegula at Lower Ford. going down its north bank through the gorge to the West Branch, and down that to the Sarlo.”
Phagon was lecturing from a large map, using a sharp stick as pointer; Tedric, Sciro, Schillan, and two or three
other high-ranking officers were watching and listening. “The West Branch flows into Sarlo only forty miles above
Sarlo Bay. The city of Sarlo is here, on the north bank of the Sarlo River” right on the Bay, and is five-sixths
surrounded by water. The Sarlo River is wide and deep, uncrossable against any real opposition. Thus” Sarlonian
strategy has always been not to make any strong stand anywhere along the West Branch, but to fight delaying
actions merely-making their real stand on the north bank of the Sarlo, only a few miles from Sarlo City itself. The
Sarlo River, gentlemen, is well called “Sarlo’s Shield.” It has never been crossed.”
“How do you expect to cross it” then” sir?” Schillian asked.
“Strictly speaking, we cross it not, but float down it. We cross the Tegula at Upper Ford, not Lower. . . . “Upper
Ford, sire? Above the terrible gorge of the Low Umpasseurs?”
“Yea. That gorge, undefended, is passable. ‘Tis rugged, but passage can be made. Once through the gorge our way to
the Lake of the Spiders, from which springs the Middle Branch of the Sarlo, is clear and open.”
“But ’tis held, sire, that Middle Valley is impassable for troops,” a grizzled captain protested.
“We traverse it, nonetheless. On rafts, at six or seven miles an hour, faster by far than any army can march. But ’tis
enough of explanation. Lord Sciro, attend!”
“I listen, sire.”
“At earliest dawn take two centuries of axemen and one century of bowmen, with the wagonload of woodworkers’
supplies about which some of you have wondered. Strike straight north at forced march. Cross the Tegula. Straight
north again, to the Lake of the Spiders and the head of the Middle Branch. Build rafts, large enough and of
sufficient number to bear our whole force; strong enough to stand rough usage. The rafts should be done, or nearly,
by the time we get there.”
“I hear, sire, and I obey.”
Tedric, almost stunned by the novelty and audacity of this, the first amphibian operation in the history of his world,
was dubious but willing. And as the map of that operation spread itself in his mind, he grew enthusiastic.
“We attack then, not from the south but from the northeast!”
“Aye, and on solid ground, not across deep water. But to bed, gentlemen-tomorrow the clarions sound before
dawn!”
Dawn came. Sciro and his force struck out. The main army marched away” up the north bank of the Upper Midvale,
which for thirty or forty miles flowed almost directly from the north-east. There, however, it circled sharply to
flow from the south-east and the Lomarrians left it, continuing their march across undulating foothills straight for
Upper Ford. From the south, the approach to this ford, lying just above (east of) the Low Umpasseur Mountains” at
the point where the Middle Marches mounted a stiff but not abrupt gradient to become the Upper Marches” was not
too difficult. Nor was the entrapment of most of the Sarlonians and barbarians on watch. The stream” while only
knee-deep for the most part, was wide” fast, and rough; the bottom was made up in toto of rounded” mossy”
extremely slippery rocks. There were enough men and horses and lines, however” so that the crossing was made
without loss.
Then” turning three-quarters of a circle, the cavalcade made slow way back down the river, along its north bank,
toward the forbidding gorge of the Low Umpasseurs.
The north bank was different, vastly different, from the south one. Mountains of bare rock, incredible thou sands of
feet higher than the plateau forming the south bank, towered at the rushing torrent’s very edge. What passed for a
road was narrow, steep, full of hair-pin turns” and fearfully rugged. But this, too, was passed-by dint of what labor
and stress it is not necessary to dwell upon-and as the army debouched out onto the sparsely wooded, gullied and
eroded terrain of the high barred valley and began to make camp for the night, Tedric became deeply concerned.
Sciro’s small force would have left no obvious or lasting traces of its passing; but such blatant disfigurements as
these. . . .
He glanced at the king, then stared back at the broad, trampled, deep-rutted way the army had come. “South of the
river our tracks do not matter,” he said, flatly. “In the gorge they exist not. But those traces, sire, matter greatly and
are not to be covered or concealed.”
“Tedric, I approve of you-you begin to think!” Much to the young man’s surprise, Phagon smiled broadly. “How
wouldst handle the thing, if decision yours?”
“A couple of fives of bowmen to camp here or nearby, sire,” Tedric replied promptly” “to put arrows through any
who come to spy.”
“‘Tis a sound idea, but not enough by half. Here I leave you; and a full century each of our best scouts and hunters.
See to it, my lord captain, that none sees this our trail from here to the Lake of the Spiders; or, having seen it, lives
to tell of the seeing.”
Tedric, after selecting his sharpshooters and watching them melt invisibly into the landscape, went down the valley
about a mile and hid himself carefully in a cave. These men knew the business in hand a lot better than he did, and
he would not interfere. What he was for was to take command in an emergency; if the operation were a complete
success he would have nothing whatever to do!
He was still in the cave, days later, when word came that the launching had begun. Rounding up his guerrillas, he led
them at a fast pace to the Lake of the Spiders, around it” and to the place where the Lomarrian army had been
encamped. Four fifty-man rafts were waiting, and Tedric noticed with surprise that a sort of house had been built on
the one lying farthest down-stream. This luxury, he learned, was for him and his squire Rahlion and their horses and
armor!
The Middle Branch was wide and swift; and to Tedric and his bowmen, landlubbers all, it was terrifyingly rough and
boisterous and full of rocks. Tedric; however, did not stay a landlubber long. He was not the type to sit in idleness
when there was something physical to do, something new to learn. And learning to be a riverman was so much
easier than learning . to be King Phagon’s idea of a strategist!