Harth turned to him with a chuckle. "You are a sly dog, Flane. You persuade a man that his death is a marvelous thing. Ah, well. You may be right. We'll do as you say, as usual. I see no other course."
Flane leaped from the cabin, sped along the tilting deck on the starboard side, half-running on the wall of the cabin. He shouted the men out of their battle stations, swept them up in the whirl of his own enthusiasm.
"Overboard with everything movable! Heave it over. Retain only food and weapons. Everything else goes. We've got to get the ship up that mountain!"
Aevlyn ran to him, to be near him, and to spur on the men with her presence. She put soft white hands to lamps and cushions, carrying them to the rail and casting them. Chairs and tables were borne by the men who formed quick-moving lines at Flane's directions. Soon the cabins lay stripped and bare, except for the men who clustered in them, polishing and sharpening swords and lances.
Flane went with Aevlyn to the prow of the magniship, hearing Harth bellow orders to the helmsman.
Inch by inch the crippled vessel went up. Scraping past the tops of trees, grating its keel on a jagged lip of rock, it mounted steadily. The trees fell away below, yielding place to massive rocks that lay piled and scattered on one another like sleeping kittens. Like giants slain and scattered in battle lay the boulders.
A bare space towered above the tossed rocks, flat on top and jagged at the sides. A steep path rose sharply to the level of the empty mesa, up which three men could walk abreast. It was the only means of entrance to the fortress of stone, for behind it, as though sheared by a gigantic sword, the cliff was cut away. Behind the mesa dropping thousands of feet straight down, a gorge was sliced into the mountain.
"We could hold that mesa forever," Flane grinned, "given enough food and water. Only three men can come at us at once. There is no way of retreat, except by falling to our deaths in the gorge."
Even Harth grunted, "It isn't so bad. A man could die a good death there, with his weapons red with his enemy's blood. As we all probably will."
Flane sighed, "If only we could get word to the Klarnva in Moornal and Yeelya! Then our stand here would be worth while. It would give the cities time to unite, to put an army in the field."