“Greetings!” Dadger said. “Permission to come aboard?”
“That usually comes a little earlier in the process,” came the response. It was from the fussy little chap dressed in the captain’s outfit with the mangy parrot. Thud was still coming around to the idea that this was the actual Laughing Larry.
“Begging all pardons,” Dadger said with a polite bow. “We are still learning the customs of the sea. All differences aside, the time has come for us to meet across the table and discuss our common interests.”
Behind him, Thud and the pirates had gotten the third barrel open. Clink popped up, blinking in the light.
“For example,” Clink called out, perfectly on cue, “we’d like to discuss your catapult.”
***
“I am questioning,” Laughing Larry said, “why I simply don’t turn this ship around and sail home.”
The dwarves were sitting in his cabin on the opposite side of his polished desk, largely bare save a leather mat for writing on and a ledger. Dadger eyed the ledger thoughtfully.
“We were hired to be here,” Larry went on. “And our patron is either gone or dead. Every minute I remain here is a risk that I’m no longer getting paid to take.”
“And yet you’re still here,” Dadger said. “Why might that be? Or should I hazard some guesses?”
Larry was silent, his fingers drumming on the top of his desk. They were out of rhythm. Larry didn’t seem to be musically inclined.
Dadger pressed a little. “I’m guessing the woman with the skull face has something to do with it.”
“It’s a tattoo,” Larry said. “The skull.”
Dadger nodded. “Her name is Obiya,” he said. “She’s an Archon of Roth.”
“I’m aware,” Larry said in a curt tone.
Dadger arched an eyebrow. “And yet here you are.”
“Spare me the judgmental bit,” Larry said. “We’re pirates. Morality is not our foremost concern. Coin, however, that we like.”
“And did she pay what she’d promised before leaving you dangling in the middle of a battle to run off after the frog people? Certainly, working with a creature such as her, you expected her to discard you the moment you were no longer of use. Payment up front would have been the only prudent course.”
Larry was silent, fingers drumming in 3.4/4 time.
“A little up front, at least?” Dadger asked. His fingers drummed on the arm of his chair, as if trying to correct Larry’s beat.
“Some,” Larry admitted grudgingly. “This has been a costly venture.”
“Lot of cargo on all those shipwrecks down there,” Thud said from Dadger’s right, having understood the cue Dadger had tapped out on the arm of the chair. The suggestion was a favorite angle of Dadger’s: soften the subject by pretending to be helpful, offering completely useless solutions in order to maintain the problem while improving relations.
“But you’ve hardly any crew to recover it,” Dadger said, his voice sad and sympathetic. “Is it them you’re staying for? A noble pirate captain wanting to rescue his crew?”
“Or,” said Thud. “Is it that yer bloody pissed at this Obiya lass and you wanna pull this whole mess down on top of her and make off with this book she’s tryin' for?” He paused and grinned. “Aye, there’s a spark in yer eye at that.”
“What is it you want to know about the catapult?” Larry asked.
Clink roused himself. “The range, chiefly. If it can’t shoot far enough as is then I’m gonna need to tune it up a bit.”
“Shoot far enough for what?”
The dwarves grinned in unison
Chapter Twenty-One
The morning dawned like any other in the sea maze; everything looked exactly the same and no one was sure what time of day it actually was. The team’s numbers had been thinned but it was enough. Thud had divided them up, as was his way. Thud had the notion that if you had a lot of dwarves available then you could do a lot of different things at once. The adage of “never split the party” was burned into the soul of everyone in the hazardous exploration industry, be they professionals or mere adventurers. The adventurers that didn’t heed the creed rarely survived long enough to move into the professional category. Thud reconciled this easily. He wasn’t splitting the party. He was splitting the team into parties. Problem solved.
It was necessary because Thud’s plans tended to have a lot of moving parts.
Clink, Durham and Leery went with Laughing Larry and the remaining pirates. The parrot, as a not-so-silent observer at several happenings of import, had lit on the notion that something interesting was afoot. Not having the wisdom to know that interesting events are often better to discover second-hand than they are to experience it had elected to remain on Larry’s shoulder in order to ensure that he maintained a suitable level of misery through the course of proceedings. Even if it had the wisdom it still would have gone, as if there was a chance that Larry was going to die, the parrot damn well wanted to be there to see it.
Ruby headed toward the turtle ship along with Doc and Gammi. They all had tasks and they either involved the turtle boat or didn’t require a particular place to be performed. This made one of the planned escape routes an automatic choice of place. Skulk and the wounded sailors went with. Wherever Doc went, the hospital followed. Ween was already looking forward to turtle swabbing.
All of the other parties were with Thud for the time being, along with his own. Most members of acquisitions team had been assigned to moving The Diplomat as they didn’t have a lot else going at at the moment. It had a negligible effect on their pace. The Diplomat could be divided up into a lot of smaller parts that were easily divvied up amongst all available backs.
The zombies had a more significant impact on their speed. They gamely tried to keep up, roped together and lurching after Dadger at the other end of the rope with the dexterity of a multi-legged steamer trunk where each pair of legs has its own notion of how to go about things. Their numbers had been thinned and many of the ones remaining were slightly charred about the head and shoulders. They’d strapped some of the sturdier ones with empty hogshead ale-barrels, letting them serve as unpleasant pack-mules.
Thud didn’t know how much time they had remaining. How far along were the merfrog efforts? Did they have five minutes or five hours? Thud reasoned that if it were five minutes then their pace didn’t matter much as they were already too late. In his experience, these sorts of things worked out to everyone getting where they were supposed to be just in the nick of time. His group were the ones setting the entire pace of the plan.
They came to the last stretch; the sea canyon full of shimmering lights. Lights that turned into jellyblobs that ate through steel. They stopped and spent a few minutes prepping the zombies, a process which involved removing the barrels they carried, some more ropes, a whacking stick and a fish. Eventually Thud nodded, satisfied. Each zombie was fitted with a variation on the headgear they used for the trap-checker chickens. A large hunk of raw and rank fish hung in front of their face, keeping them moving forward. And each had one of Mungo’s torches affixed to its head with the fuse wound around the torch a inch or so below the ignition point.
They waited until the mists around them slowed and began moving the other way. The jellies shifted existence, becoming solid. One by one the dwarves pulled the cord on the zombies, starting their torch with a flare of light and then giving them a firm shove forward.
The zombombs stumbled out into the canyon, chasing after their elusive fish dinners, torches bobbing and casting greenish hazes in the swirling mists. The jellyblobs began to converge, clustering around the torches, sizzling as they attempted to smother them. They came in the dozens to each zombie, clumping around them until they looked like walking grape-cluster shaped jelly-molds.
The first explosion went off with a geyser of gelatinous goo erupting out in all directions, staggering the next zombie in line. He went off seconds later and then it was like a string of explosive aspics. Goo
in an astonishing variety of colors coated the sand ahead. But the jellyblobs were gone, at least for the moment. It seemed like the sort of thing that there would be more of around somewhere.
Thud had no intention of waiting for their arrival. The squad moved forward at a jog now, figuring that if anything was going to announce their arrival a chain of exploding zombies might have been it. They came to the very last corner, stopping before they came in view of the towering spire. The dwarves set to work, assembling the ballista.
“There’s a change of plan,” Catchpenny said. The elf had crept up while Thud was distracted watching the work.
“Is there, now?” Thud asked. “Don’t recall making a change. Is this where you announce your true motives and betray us?”
“No. If you’ll recall, that was Aldine’s plan. The human.”
“Right. So what’s your change?”
“You and I trade places.” The elf rushed on before Thud could argue. “You know it makes sense. The job you’ve picked for yourself involves climbing, sneaking and shooting. No offense but I think I might have the advantage in all three areas.”
“It’s not a matter of skill,” Thud said. “Leery climbs better than me, Mungo’s sneakier and anyone on Vanguard is a better shot than I am. I’m doing it because it’s the least likely role to come out of this alive and I can’t ask anyone else to do it. My plan, my team, I’m taking the risk.”
“And you’re one of the least likely to succeed at it,” Catchpenny said. “You don’t want to put the weak link in the chain in the most critical position. You hire people that are good at what they do for a reason. Don’t roll the dice on your propriety versus waking up some ancient sea god.”
“Didn’t hire you for anything that I remember. You think I’d put someone not on the team in that spot?”
“I think you know you should assign the best person to do the job.”
Thud pointed at the ale-barrels. “You realize that those are your escape route?”
Catchpenny nodded. “I’ll be able to get to those faster as well.”
“Could do without anymore observations on me deficiencies.” Thud gave considered him for a moment. “That’s surprisingly noble of you. You’re sure you want to to this?”
“It’s the most interesting choice,” Catchpenny said. “It will be an adventure.”
***
Thud crept forward until he could just lean and see the tower in the eye of the sea.
The green orb crackling on top was brighter, he was sure of it. A large number of squished frogmen littered the sand and rock between the canyon mouth and the tower. A straight line of them with a twenty yard scatter width. Rend, he assumed. Whether the giant was alive or not he’d made a good accounting for himself. There were three figures atop the tower. Two humans and a frog. Aldine, Obiya and whatever passed for the merfrog’s version of power-grasping elder, he assumed. They may not have been working together previously but the three seem to have come to some accord. He wondered who had come out of the discussion with the book in their hands.
He’d put Dadger in charge of the ballista, as he needed the rest of the Vanguard with him. Dadger didn’t know anymore about ballista than what he’d learned in grade school. Dwarven grade schools occasionally required students to deploy siege equipment in order to obtain their lunch so most had a basic level of competence. Gryngo was acting as Dadger’s loader. There was an art to getting Gryngo to function effectively at any task outside of his explosive area of specialty but Thud had a knack for it when it was necessary. In this case it didn’t take much. He just had to make clear that performing the task of loading the ballista would allow dramatic things to happen. Gryngo liked dramatic things. They were what made him cackle the loudest.
Thud gave the order and they pushed The Diplomat around the corner into full view of the tower. If whatever was watching hadn’t noticed Thud before, it almost certainly would notice a piece of siege equipment. Ping fired it immediately. It was a rangefinder bolt. All of their specialty ammo was carefully weighted to be the same regardless of function meaning that if you sighted the ballista in with the cheap rangefinder bolts then the exciting bolts were going to hit the mark also.
In this case, the bolt went long, clattering against the side of the tower. Dadger made a note of the angle before adjusting as that looked like a potentially useful spot to shoot at later. The second bolt stuck in the sand at the base of the tower.
Perfect.
Gryngo pulled up the first custom bolt and began loading it, his shaggy black beard framing his corncob grin.
The empty hogshead ale barrels were lined up next to the ballista. The specialty ammo was stacked and ready.
It was time.
“Go,” Thud yelled.
They went.
They had reasoned that the frogmen didn’t have much in the archery department as this was not a weapon category that was of much use underwater. Crossbows or spearguns, perhaps. Spears certainly. They’d seen them used at the Battle of the Water Dancer. Thud wasn’t sure how far they could throw those spears but assumed that they would be inclined to do so at some point during the advance. This phase was more along the lines of a fortress assault than a dungeon crawl. Save that this tower had never been built with the intent of being a fortress. It was too narrow to contain many enemies and had no real defenses other than its height.
They ran forward, shields clanking on their backs, ready to be put to use if they started to seem necessary. Thud was in the middle, Rasp to one side and Grottimus to the other. Keezix and Max made up the flanks and Catchpenny followed in right behind Thud. The elf wasn’t carrying a shield, proclaiming that he would hide behind Thud if necessary.
The spears began to come as they neared the halfway point. Just a few, falling well short. Range finding throws. That was the cue. The chunk noise of the ballista firing came from behind them. The bolt sailed over their heads, dropping to land on target, right at the tower’s base. It began emitting great white puffs of smoke. The smoke rose, quickly, spreading into billowing clouds. As long as the defenders were ensconced in a tower it made sense to just put the smoke there rather than to try and cover the battlefield with it. The spears still came. The party broke and zig-zagged, doing their best to not be where someone who had just lost sight of them might expect them to be. The spears fell around them, thumping in the sand. They ran with their shields held over their heads. There was an occasional clang as one of the spears found its mark but was deflected away. They came to the first eddies of smoke and Thud could hear Gryngo cackle clear across the field as the next bolt fired.
For all practical purposes it was a large firework. Ping had adjusted the ballista trajectory to its earlier point and Gryngo had short-fused the round. It went off just as it came to the tower, sending out a blossom of crackling lights that flared out with a flash and a pop. For a species that didn’t have much in the way of fireworks or smoke in their cultural background, Thud figured the combo of smoke, flashes and explosions would provide a suitable measure of shock and awe. At least enough to give them an edge as they came charging out of the smoke and into whatever served as the tower’s lobby. All save one. Within the smoke at the foot of the tower, Thud paused and braced himself. Catchpenny was behind him at full sprint. The elf jumped, pushed off of Thud’s shoulder with his foot and disappeared into the smoke overhead. Thud started forward again, anticipating a thump from above and an elf landing on its head in front of him. It didn’t happen, however. The plan was on track.
Rasp and Grottimus were first through, firing their crossbows ahead as they entered. The opening in the base of the tower was part of the remaining stone lintel of whatever ancient structure had been here. It had been completed with a growth of coral, giving it a ragged and uneven perimeter. The chamber inside was mystifying. A temple of worked stone on the bottom of the sea, built by unknown hands. Stairs in the middle led to a raised dais. There had been no sea here when this was built. The dome of the ceiling h
ad fallen in at some point and the crumbled hole now led to the interior of the coral spire the merfrogs had grown on top. The dwarves shouldered in, their shields in front of them, tall enough to give them full cover. Their first impression inside was movement everywhere. The light was dim and the room writhed with scales and fins, glittering and slick.
There was no order. Spears jabbed at them without coordination. They were able to make headway by pushing forward, shields in front, the frogmen before them scrambling to get out of the way. More crossbow bolts came streaking in over their heads as the dwarves behind them came through. The merfrogs were scrambling upward into the tower, disappearing through the opening in the ceiling, climbing via a ramshackle construction of wood and net.
The Dungeoneer’s usual approach in a dungeon was simple and elegant. Get inside. Establish a foothold. Work out from there. The clock ticking against them wasn’t going to allow for that this time. If there were any surviving captives they were likely being held down here somewhere. In Thud’s experience, any sacrificing was most likely to be happening up top beneath the glowing orb but there hadn’t been enough room up there for extra sacrifice storage.
The interior of the ruin was largely empty space. At least, it had been intended as empty. Now it looked like a naval fleet had exploded in it. The merfrogs had dragged in scraps of shipwrecks and used them to create a means to ascend the tower. It was immediately evident to Thud that stone was the beginning and the end of the construction skills among the merfolk and he questioned whether they’d even done that. To call the conglomeration of planks and ropes, pulleys and sail a ‘spiderweb’ would have insulted any spider that had ever spun a line. Bits had been leaned against walls to prop up other bits that led higher into the tower. More pieces had been crammed under to try and support those, then ropes run to still more pieces. It looked as if it least a dozen different architects had been in charge, none of them capable of communicating with the others.
The Dungeoneers: Blackfog Island Page 24
