Free Var the Stick by Piers Anthony Page B

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