The Hook Tribe's Armed war machine was running at full speed. The four regiments were building defensive works in their own sectors. They might not have steel or concrete, but the primeval forest had no shortage of timber. They blasted out the mountain with explosives, shored it up with logs to make air-raid shelters, and dug tunnels or communication trenches linking bunker to bunker. This kind of earth-and-wood work was no problem at all for people like Scholar, Gardener, Farmer, Monk and the others.
The valley was also digging large air-raid shelters, with hundreds of prisoners taking turns on the job. No work, no food; work, and you got to eat; the more you worked, the more you ate. Facing life and death, the prisoners knew perfectly well what the shelters were for, but they still had to go all out, or they'd just starve to death. Starving to death was even harder to bear than being shot to pieces.
