“Let him try,” said the d Dwarf. “At a we are as big as he is. And if he assaults us by land, he has the dert to cross.”
“True, friend,” said Edmund. “But is the dert a sure defence? What does Sallowpad say?”
“I know that dert well,” said the Raven. “For I have flown above it far and wide in my younger days.”（you may be sure that Shasta pricked up his ears at this point）“And this is certain; that if the Tisroc goes by the great oasis he ever lead a great army across it into Arland. For though they could reach the oasis by the end of their first day’s march, yet the springs there would be too little for the thirst of all tho soldiers and their beasts. But there is another way.”
Shasta listened more attentively still.
“He that would find that way,” said the Raven, “must start from the Tombs of the A Kings and ride northwest so that the double peak of Mount Pire is always straight ahead of him. And so, in a day’s riding or a little more, he shall e to the head of a stony valley, which is so narrow that a man might be within a furlong of it a thousand times and never know that it was there. And looking down this valley he will e her grass nor water nor anything el good. But if he rides on down it he will e to a river and ride by the water all the way into Arland.”
“And do the enes know of this Western way?” asked the Queen.
“Friends, friends,” said Edmund, “what is the u of all this discour? We are not asking whether Narnia or en would win if war aro between them. We are asking how to save the honour of the Queen and our own lives out of this devilish city. For though my brother, Peter the High King, defeated the Tisroc a dozen times over, yet long before that day our throats would be cut and the Queen’s grace would be the wife, or more likely, the slave, of this prince.”
“We have our ons, King,” said the first Dwarf. “And this is a reasonably defensible hou.”
“As to that,” said the King, “I do not doubt that every one of us would ll our lives dearly ie and they would not e at the Queen but over our dead bodies. Yet we should be merely rats fighting in a trap when all’s said.”