The only hostage Var knew of was Sol, the prior Master of the empire. Why should his welfare loom so important now? The Master could hardly care for competition again.
They were ready. The men were trained and deployed in a ring entirely around the mountain. Special troops guarded the subway and its connected tunnels, and no strangers were permitted anywhere in the vicinity. Wives and children had no place in this effort; they were removed to a camp of their own a day's walk distant, and married non-volunteers guarded that region.
They were ready. But no attack was launched. Men chafed at the delay, eager to test their new weapons, eager to probe the dread defenses of the underworld. The mountain had a morbid fascination for them. They had guns and believed they could capture any fortress but to take the mountain would be like conquering death itself!
Then, on the very worse day for such an effort, the Master put the troops in motion. He ignored Tyl's dismay and Var's perplexity. At the height of a blinding thunderstorm, they charged the mountain.
Var and Tyl stood beside the Nameless One, at his direction, each privately wondering what manner of man the leader had become. They watched the proceedings from an elevated and carefully protected blind. It was difficult to see anything Jn the rain, but they knew what to watch for.
"The lightning will knock out some of their television, temporarily," the Master explained. "It always does. The thunder will mask the noise of our firing. The rain will camouflage our physical advance and maybe suppress the effect of their flamethrowers. That, plus the masses of men involved, should do it."
The old campaigner was not so confused after all, Var realized. The mountaineers would assume that no attack could occur in rain, and would not be ready.
The Master gave them field glasses-another salvaged device of the Ancients-and briefly demonstrated their use. With these, they were able to see distant sections of the mountain as though they were close. The rain blurred the image some, but the effect was still striking.
Var watched a troop of men, bedraggled in the rain, follow - a line toward the first projecting metal beams at the base of the mountain. The mountain was actually a morbid mass of gray, with stunted trees approaching the base and a few weeds sprouting here and there on its surface. Buzzards perched on the ugly projections, looking well fed. Even in the rain they waited-and surely they would feast today!
But there were paths up through the twisted metal, and these had been charted from a distance. The troops were prepared with cleats and hooks, and would pass in minutes an obstruction that might take a naive man half a day to navigate. Already the column he watched was beginning to splay, rushing for cover adjacent to the mountain.
Then the earth rose up and smote them down. Men were hurled through the air, to land broken. Smoke erupted, obscuring the view.
"Mines," the Master said. "I was afraid of that."
"Mines," Tyl repeated, and Var was sure he was marking down one more thing to be well wary of in future.
"They are buried explosives. We have no way to anticipate their location. Probably the weight of a single man is insufficient to trigger them; but when a full column passes ..." He paused meaningfully. "The area should be safe for other troops now, because the mines have been expended."
The sound of more distant explosions suggested that other regions around the mountain were being made similarly safe. How did he know so much, Var wondered. The Master seemed to spend most of his time reading old tomes, yet it was as though he had traveled the world and plumbed its secrets.
A second wave of men charged through the steaming basin where the mines had exploded. They reached the foot of the mountain, taking cover as they had been drilled to do. But there seemed to be no fire from the defenders.
The warriors climbed through and under the twisted beams, following the pathways they knew. From this distance the column resembled a lashing snake, appearing and disappearing in partial cover. Then men ran out on the first plateau above.
And fire spurted from pipes rising from the ground.
Now Var believed. He fancied he could smell the scorching flesh as men spun about, smoking, and died.
Many died, but already more were coming up. They charged the pipes from the sides, for the fire flicked out in only one direction at a time. They fired bullets into the apertures, and those who retained clubs and staffs battered at the projections and bent them down, and finally the fires died. The rain continued, drenching everything.
"Your men are courageous and skilled," the Master said to TyL.
Tyl was immune to the compliment. "On a sunny day, none would have survived. I know that now."
Then the return fire began. The thinned troops moved up the mountainside-but they were exposed to the concealed emplacements of the underworld, and the weapons mounted there were more than pistols.
"Machine-guns," the Nameless One said, and flinched. "We cannot storm those. Sound the retreat."
But it was already too late. Few, very few, returned from the mountain.
When they totaled up the losses, known and presumed, they learned that almost a thousand men had perished in that lone engagement. Not one defender had been killed.
"Have we lost?" Var asked hesitantly in the privacy of the Master's command tent. He felt guilty for not finding and keeping properly secret a subterranean route into the mountain. All those brave men might have lived.
"The first battle. Not the campaign. We will guard the territory we have cleared; they can't plant new mines or flamethrowers while we watch. Now we know where their machine-guns are, too. We will lay siege. We will build catapults to bombard those nests. We will drop grenades on them. In time the victory will be ours."
A warrior approached the entrance~ "A paper with writing," he said. "It was in a metal box that flew into our camp. It's addressed to you."
The Master accepted it. "Your literacy may have turned the course of battle," he said. Flattered, the man left.
Var knew that many of the women practised reading, and some few of the men. Was it worthwhile after all?
The Master opened the paper and studied it. He smiled grimly. "We impressed them! They want to negotiate."
"They will yield without fighting?" Var didn't bother with all the awkward words, but that was his gist.
"Not exactly."
Var looked at him, again not comprehending. The Master read from the paper: "We propose, in the interests of avoiding senseless decimation of manpower and destruction of equipment, to settle the issue by contest of champions.
Place: the mesa on top of Mt. Muse, twelve miles south of Helicon. Date: August 6, Bl 18. Your choice of other terms of combat. - - -
"Should our champion prevail, you will desist hostilities and depart this region for ever, and permit no other attack on Helicon. Should your champion prevail we will surrender Helicon to you intact.
"Speak to the television set in the near hostel"
After a pause, the Master asked him: "How would you call it, Var?"
Var didn't know how to respond, so he didn't.
"Sound sensible to you? You think our champion could defeat theirs in single combat?"
Var had no doubt of the Master's ability to defeat any man the underworld could send against him, particularly if he specified weaponless combat. He nodded.
The Master drew out his map. "Here is the mountain he names. See how the contours crowd together?"