Enchanter's End Game

to see what was happening.
    "They're anchored about a mile downriver," Barak was reporting to his cousin. "They've been here for about four days now. Greldik's more or less in charge."
    "Greldik?" Anheg looked surprised. "He doesn't have any official position."
    "He knows the river." Barak shrugged. "Over the years he's sailed just about any place where there's water and a chance to make some profit. He tells me that the sailors have been drinking pretty steadily since they anchored. They know what's coming."
    Anheg chuckled. "We'd better not disappoint them, then. Rhodar, how much longer will it be before your engineers are ready to start lifting my ships ap the escarpment?"
    "A week or so," King Rhodar replied, looking up from his midafternoon snack.
    "It will be close enough," Anheg concluded. He turned back to Barak. "Tell Greldik that we'll start the portage tomorrow morning - before the sailors have time to sober up."
    Ce'Nedra had not fully understood the meaning of the word "portage" until she arrived the following morning at the riverbank to find the sweating Chereks hauling their ships out of the water and manhandling them along by main strength on wooden rollers. She was appalled at the amount of effort required to move a ship even a few inches.
    She was not alone in that. Durnik the smith took one shocked look at the procedure and immediately went looking for King Anheg. "Excuse me, your Honor," he said respectfully, "but isn't this bad for the boats -as well as the men?"
    "Ships," Anheg corrected. "They're called ships. A boat is something else."
    "Whatever you call them - won't banging them along over those logs spring their seams?"
    Anheg shrugged. "They all leak quite a bit anyway," he replied. "And it's always been done this way."
    Durnik quickly saw the futility of trying to talk to the King of Cherek. He went instead to Barak, who was rather glumly considering the huge ship his crew had rowed upriver to meet him. "She looks very impressive when she's afloat," the big red-bearded man was saying to his friend, Captain Greldik, "but I think she'll be even more impressive when we have to pick her up and carry her."
    "You're the one who wanted the biggest warship afloat," Greldik reminded him with a broad smirk. "You'll have to buy enough ale to float that whale of yours before your crew's drunk enough to try to portage her - not to mention the fact that it's customary for a captain to join in when the time comes to portage."
    "Stupid custom," Barak growled sourly.
    "I'd say that you're in for a bad week, Barak." Greldik's grin grew broader.
    Durnik took the two seamen aside and began talking earnestly with them, drawing diagrams on the sandy riverbank with a stick. The more he talked, the more interested they became.
    What emerged from their discussions a day later were a pair of lowslung cradles with a dozen wheels on each side. As the rest of the Chereks jeered, the two ships were carefully slid out of the water onto the cradles and firmly lashed in place. The jeering faded noticeably, however, when the crews of the two ships began trundling their craft across the plain. Hettar, who happened to ride by, watched for a few moments with a puzzled frown. "Why are you pulling them by hand," he asked, "when you're in the middle of the largest herd of horses in the world?"
    Barak's eyes went very wide, and then an almost reverent grin dawned on his face.
    The jeers that had risen as Barak's and Greldik's ships had been maneuvered onto their wheeled carriages turned rather quickly into angry mutterings as the carnages, pulled by teams of Algar horses, rolled effortlessly toward the escarpment past men straining with every ounce of strength to move their ships a few inches at a time. To leave it all to artistry, Barak and Greldik ordered their men to lounge indolently on the decks of their ships, drinking ale and playing dice.
    King Anheg stared very hard at his impudently grinning cousin as the big ship rolled past. His expression was profoundly offended. "That's going too far!" he exploded, jerking off his dented crown and throwing it down on the ground.
    King Rhodar put on a perfectly straight face. "I'd be the first to admit that it's probably not nearly as good as moving them by hand, Anheg. I'm sure there are some rather profound philosophical reasons for all that sweating and grunting and cursing, but it is faster, wouldn't you say? And we really ought to move right along with this."
    "It's unnatural,"