However, he was not relying on the ascent to slow the enemy. He had other plans. Here and for most of its length, the wetland was eighty or a hundred paces wide. That was enough.

By increments, the snow fell more thickly, imposing a premature dusk. A lifetime’s experience assured Klamath that the storm would soon wall out the rest of the world, but would not become a blizzard. It brought too little wind. But whatever happened, Rile’s forces would not stop for it. The Great God was surely angry. And he had a long way to go.

No doubt, Rile’s skirmishers could track General Klamath’s army despite the snow. They would lead the Great God’s forces to the place where that army had crossed Long Slough. But they might not sense the danger, not with snow and darkness in their eyes, their noses. If they carried lanterns or torches, so much the better for Klamath’s purposes. Their lights would reflect off the snowfall, foreshorten their sight.

From the General’s vantage, Long Slough looked unchanged: a thin sheet of dark water flowing sluggishly, interrupted here and there by straggling marsh-grasses and signs of bog. But its level was rising. It would rise more. In the distance, safely upstream, twenty Magisters of drought were at work, wielding their Decimates to draw down snow from the storm, water from other sources. As the stream deepened, it would conceal more of its dangers, its hungry muck and bogs, its lurking quicksand.

That was only the first of General Klamath’s gambits.

Earlier, riflemen had dug two long trenches in the slope below Klamath. One was perhaps fifteen feet above the Slough. The other was about that far down from the crest of the ridge. Both of them were deep. Klamath’s Magisters could stand in them without being seen.

To make those trenches, the riflemen had simply shoveled dirt and rocks into Long Slough. The debris would complicate the currents and add to the mire.

Now Magister Whimper and her remaining Magisters of drought were in the lower trench, heavily bundled against the cold and wet, waiting miserably. A few of them were at work increasing the snowfall, hastening the full weight of the storm. The rest would take their turns at the first sign of the enemy.

Magister Crawl and his fire-wielders occupied the upper trench with Brighten and her Magisters of lightning. For the present, they had nothing to do except keep themselves warm. Their task would be to provide cover if or when the Magisters of drought were threatened. Until then, they had been ordered to hold their Decimates in reserve. Fire and lightning would be needed if the riflemen and other Magisters were not enough.