'Can you enter Kooh without endangering yourself?'
'I come and go as I please. The Devourers are delighted to have me teach the pongs that their role is to obey and to await their reward in Tseeb's clear-skied paradise after death.'
'Go, then,' Duwan said. 'Return to us when you have determined whether or not word of our warfare here in the north has reached the city. We will be there.' He pointed to the west. 'I think you can track us by the swath we leave in the green.'
'West?' Dagner asked.
'West,' Duwan said.
'Kooh is to the south,' Jai said.
'My warriors fought well today,' Dagner said.
'Against a few conscripts, traders, females, and children,' Duwan said.
'There is a small garrison of guards in Kooh, and there are the walls. We will march west, training our forces as we march, and only when we can field a disciplined force of at least two thousand will we attack Kooh.'
'And if the enemy learns of us and brings more forces into Kooh?' Jai asked.
'Then Du will guide us,' Duwan said.
On the westward march, the freed pongs of several villages swelled the ranks. The corps of bowmen was growing, with new weapons being made constantly. The great shortage was of swords. Dagner worked out a system of using axmen and swordsmen in a flying wedge, and, in theory, it was devastating. The freed pongs fattened on the bounty of Du and the earth. At last, Duwan called a halt and a camp was set up.
Now bow and arrow making was intensified. Now the training went on from the first to the last light of Du. The days were growing shorter, the change of season nearing. Jai and Dagner kept reminding Duwan that if Kooh was to be taken, it had to be soon, before the snows came and made marching difficult.
The nights were growing quite chill by the time Tambol returned. He came walking alone to find Duwan standing on a knoll watching the entire force of his army make a simulated attack on a walled city, the city represented by a rising wall of natural stone. Over a thousand pongs made the assault, using ladders of wood laced together by vines to climb the rocks. There were accidents. Pongs fell and were injured. Duwan was pleased with the progress of the training, but highly doubtful about the chances of this partially trained force against Kooh.
Tambol waited patiently until the exercise was over, the leaders had dismissed the various contingents of the army, and the evening campfires were beginning to make their smokes.
'Master,' he said, 'Kooh goes about its business. There is a garrison of a hundred guardsmen, and they are not the elite of the guards, but lesser ones, who consider the assignment in Kooh as exile from the pleasures of Arutan.'
'Are you saying that none escaped the settlements to carry word?'
'To all appearances, yes,' Tambol said. 'There have been no alarms. No urgent messengers have left the city for the south. A pong who serves in the guards' barracks heard that, soon, a force will be sent north, to find out why the settlements there have not started sending flesh and hides to Kooh. There seemed to be no hurry about this. So, as it stands, an attack in the next few days would come as a surprise.'
'We are ready,' Dagner said, with an outthrusting of his hardening chin. 'We must not lose the advantage of surprise, Duwan.'
'There will be help from inside the city,' Tambol said. 'I spent several days and nights in the pens. At a signal, pongs will break down the fences and open the gates.'
Duwan frowned. He still felt it was too soon. He had been thinking in terms of moving farther to the west, making winter camp and using the cold time for training and building his forces.
'Master,' Tambol said, 'they are waiting. They believe. They hunger for you.'
'Pongs who have no training, who have never known freedom, they will risk peeling to open the gates?'
'Master, those who have heard me, and believed me, teach day and night. Yes, they will open the gates. And when we have Kooh!' He looked to the sky and muttered a prayer. 'When we have Kooh the word will spread like wildfire when the rains fail. They will rise in Tshou, and in Arutan, and in the southern cities. We will march in triumph the length and breadth of this land!'
'I will think on this,' Duwan said, rising. He walked away from the fires, left the camp behind him, scarcely noticing
