Finally, in a short time for a star, the sun restarted and turned its thermostat all the way back to high. The rains came. Jungles regrew. And the ice... melted.
It started slowly, with more floods each spring than there'd been the spring before. Then the glacier started to break up, and the terminal moraine, the dam at the head of the valley, became intermingled with chunks and blocks of the ice. For a time, the dam grew higher, as the floods carried the silt and debris of four thousand years of glaciation to it. But finally, inevitably, the dam at the head of the valley burst. First came a trickle, then a flood, then a cascade, and finally, a veritable tsunami of water, crashing down the gorge in a flash flood to end all flash floods. It scoured the gorge wider than a hundred thousand years of lesser floods. It wiped out the small village that had been recently founded at the base of the gorge. And it drained the Vale of the Shin, leaving a fertile pastureland that simply begged for colonization.
And the mountain slept.
Erkum Pol wielded the machete like a machine, hacking away at the undergrowth while holding on to the rope to prevent himself from sliding back down the slope. It was also wrapped around his waist; it was a very steep slope.
" 'Set a few charges,' he said," Julian muttered as he slid sideways and stopped himself by grabbing a tree. Unfortunately, its bark was well provided with long spines, one of which jammed itself into his hand. "Aarrrgh! 'Blow up the side of the mountain,' he said. 'No problem,' he said."
"We have the explosives," Fain said, sliding down the rope beside him. "We have the 'shaped charges.' What's the difficulty?"
"Maybe emplacing them on a sixty-degree slope? We're going to have to dig out pits for the charges and hold them down with pins hammered into the rock. They have to have a bit of something holding them down. Usually, it's just the charge's case and the weight of the material, but in this case, we're going to have to anchor the cases, since they're pointing sideways. And I'm not sure any weight of cataclysmite is going to be enough to cut out from the bores."
"A trench," Roger said, coming hand-over-hand along the slope through the undergrowth. "We'll dig a shallow trench and fire them directly down. From this height, we should get plenty enough material to seal the river."
"We can do that," Fain said. "Like starting a new quarry."
"Exactly. In fact, if you can scratch out a trench in the loam, we can put in a line of det-cord which will practically make it for us."
"That will give away our position, Sir," Julian pointed out. The top of the Krath citadel was vaguely visible from their position, or, its northern bastion was, at least.
"They'll spot us up here before long anyway," Roger pointed out in return. "And they'll definitely notice when we blow the shaped charges."
The latter were waiting up the slope on the narrow track a local guide had "found" over the mountain. It was obvious that despite the best efforts of both the Gastan and the local Krath to restrict all commerce between them to Trade Town, and thereby tax it, plenty of smugglers moved through the hills around it.
"Captain Fain, put out some security teams and let's get to work," Roger said.
"Yes, Your Highness. It will be like old home week."
"What in the Fire do they think they're doing up there?" Lorak Tral wondered aloud.
The Sere's commander had envisioned the entire plan in a single instant when word of the High Priest's death reached him. For too long, the Shin, and the Scourge which pursued them, had been a thorn in the side of the Krath. But with the High Priest's death at the hands of humans (humans presumably allied with the Shin, judging from their actions), the stage had been set at last for the elimination of the Scourge. For two generations, the Scourge—most of them little more than jumped up Shadem and Shin themselves—had been on the upsurge. If they were permitted to continue to grow, the Krath would fall under the sway of slave-raiders. Better to use this opportunity to cut their legs off. By crushing Mudh Hemh, the Sere would show its importance to the council and the utility of the Scourge would be cut in half.
And it didn't hurt that it would leave him as High Priest.
"Perhaps they're planning to cut the supply line," Vos Ton said. The fortress' commander rubbed his horns nervously. "Even a slight stoppage in resupply will make our position difficult. I could wish you'd brought fewer troops."
Tral gazed up at the position and shook his head.
"Even with their rifles, they'll have a hard time stopping us from using the road. And they cannot stop us from taking Mudh Hemh."
"If we ever do," Ton groused. "Nopet Nujam is not a simple proposition. I warned you of that when you came up with this scheme."
"It's important to show that no one can simply walk in and kill our High Priest," Tral replied. "We must show them the error of their ways."
"Each day we laboriously besiege them gives them another day to try something new," Ton pointed out. "That's all I'm saying."
"No matter what they do, they are too few to truly affect us," the Sere replied. "Unless you think they can call the God of Fire down upon us?"
"No," Vos Ton replied, looking up at the figures, mostly hidden by trees. Even if they rolled rocks down, they wouldn't fall on his castle. "No, but I wonder what they are going to call down on us."
A moment later, a tremendous boom bellowed down the mountainside. A towering cloud of dust and smoke reared up, and then, as quickly as it had arisen, it rained down rocks and severed trees. They bounced and tumbled, battering downwards, and although most were captured by the trees below the cut, many made it all the way to the base, leapt off the last ledge, arced across the road, and ended up in the Shin River.
The roadbed at the narrows was cut into a shallow natural ledge that wended its way about ten meters above the river, higher than almost any reported flood. The few rocks and trees that made it to the river raised the water slightly, but the increase was only a fraction of the difference between its normal surface and the roadway.
"Are they trying to block the road?" Ton asked in a puzzled voice. "Or raise the river to block it?"
"Whichever it is, if they get enough into the river to become a problem, we'll send out a working party," Tral replied. Then he grunted in laughter. "Look," he added as the deep, rushing water broke up the shallow dam and carried it away. "The river does our work for us."
"Perhaps," the fortress commander agreed dubiously. "But I wish we had some reports from our spies. I would like to know what their conference was about. I want to know what they think they're doing up there."
"Hmmm..." Tral said. "We're almost ready for the great attack. We can move it up by a few hours; then, whatever it is, we'll have taken their fortress before they're able to use it."
"What about the Scourge force?"
"They were to attack as we did," the Sere leader said. "And, really, they were never to be anything more than a distraction. Whatever happens, it will be the Sere that breaks the back of Mudh Hemh for all time. It is that which will be remembered."