“Ah, don’t count ‘em out,” said Paddy. “There might be work for ‘em before this is through. Can use ‘em to plug up rat holes if nothin’ else.”
“Ah… yes, well, there are also about fifteen hundred of the city guard. Mostly spears and crossbows, but a company of musketeers, too. I can also call on about a thousand of my local liegemen from the countryside, but I haven’t done so yet. Not until I have something definite for them to fight.”
“Sir Hedrick mentioned that there have been some open attacks?”
“Yes,” the duke frowned. “At night we had been setting guard posts all over the city with three men in each. Larger groups, ten or twelve, patrolled the streets. Four nights ago, one of the guard posts was openly attacked by thirty or forty of the ratkin. One of the men was killed and another wounded before a patrol arrived and drove the vermin off. We did manage to kill a half-dozen of the ratkin, though. It’s the first time we’ve managed to secure any of the bodies. At least we know for sure what we’re dealing with.”
“Couldn’t have been much doubt,” muttered Paddy.
“No, but it’s good to be certain,” continued Albustus. “But then two nights later, another post was attacked. And when the nearest patrol arrived, they were ambushed by at least a hundred of the beasts. Only two men got away.”
“They’re testing your defenses,” said Dunstan.
“Yes, and wearing us down. The men won’t stand for being put out in such small groups now. The guard posts have to have at least twenty men and the patrols thirty or more. I don’t have enough men to cover the whole city with groups so large. That’s why we’re so happy to have you and your people here, Master Dunstan. Can you help out?”
“Aye, we can, but my whole force would only break down into thirty or forty patrols. Not enough—even with your troops—to secure the whole city. And in any case, just guarding areas isn’t going to solve the problem. We need to get rid of the ratkin, not just keep ‘em contained.”
“We are hoping that your halflings will be willing to go down into the tunnels and see to that, Master Dunstan,” said another man, a priest of the Church of the Children, Dunstan thought, from the look of his robes, but he couldn’t remember his name. “Our men can fit into the city sewers, but the ratkin tunnels are usually much lower.”
“We shall. But we need to plan out a strategy for this, not just go blundering around down there in hopes of finding and killing ‘em.”
At that moment, two men came bustling into the chamber. One was elderly and the other quite young. Their arms were filled with rolls of parchment. “My-my lord,” gasped the older one. “I-I’ve brought what you asked for. Or at least I hope I have. There is so much in the archives, and it’s never been properly cataloged. My predecessor left things in such a mess, and I don’t have the staff to properly…” The old man seemed agitated.
“Yes, yes, Master Paley,” soothed the duke. “Once all this is settled, I’ll see that you have all the help you need. Now, what have you brought us?”
“Well, my lord, fortunately, drawings such as you are seeking are stored in their own section. If they were all mixed in with everything else, then, by the gods, I’d have been a week just finding these! Really, my lord, you should come down there and I can show you just what a task I face every day and…”
“Yes, Master Paley, I’ll have to do that someday. Here, let’s clear off the table and lay these out.”
The parchments were very old, dust-covered, and cracked and splintered all too easily. But with care, they were finally unrolled and laid out on the table. Some were faded almost to illegibility, but Paddy fell on them the way he would a mug of really good ale and was soon almost oblivious to everything—and everyone—else in the room. He looked at one after the other, muttering to himself the whole time.
“I don’t know how much use these will be,” ventured the duke after quite a time had gone by. “They are very old and I’m sure there have been changes made over the years that never got recorded.”
“And surely the ratkin have been carving out their own tunnels since they got here,” said Sir Hedrick. “Those are the ones we need to know about.”
That seemed to get through to Paddy. He looked up and squinted at the knight. “Aye, we do. But the ratkin didn’t just walk into the city one day and start diggin’! Even you might have noticed that. So they surely started in the sewers and then dug their own tunnels from there. I don’t suppose you noticed where they might have been throwin’ the dirt and rocks from their diggin’?”
“Uh… there have been some unusual sand bars and rocks in the river the last few months,” said one of the counselors. “Some ships have gone aground in channels which are normally clear.”
“Yes, the beasties were tossing the spoil in the river,” said Paddy, nodding. “Makes sense. So, by starting with what we know of the sewers before they got here, we can…”
“I don’t see what that matters,” said the priest, his chubby face turning red. “We know they are down there. They are killing our people! My healers are busy day and night dealing with the diseases that are breaking out! You need to go down and get them!”
“They will, Your Grace,” said the duke, “they will. But you have to give them a little time to prepare.”
“Aye,” said Paddy, frowning at the priest. “I’ll just take these back to our camp and study them tonight and…”
“My lord!” exclaimed the archivist. “You can’t let this… this… person walk off with my documents!”
“Now, now, Master Paley, I’m sure Learned Bobart will take good care of them. But I think this is a good time to close the meeting. Our guests need to rest, and we all need to prepare for what lies ahead. Thank you all.”
The archivist and the priest went away grumbling, but the rest appeared in better spirits than they’d been at the start of the meeting. Duke Albustus escorted the halflings out. He waved his guards back so that they could have a moment of private speech. “Don’t mind Prelate Lesnak. He’s very worried about the people here, and I can’t blame him. But he’s never been a patient man.”
“Seems like half your job here is soothin’ ruffled feathers,” growled Paddy.
Albustus snorted a laugh. “Yes, it does seem like that sometimes! But without ruffling yours, Lear… ah, if you don’t like that title, what should I call you, sir?”
“Just call me Paddy. ‘Tis me name after all.”
“Very well, uh, Paddy, how long do you think it will take to devise your plan?”
“Depends on what I find in these drawings,” he replied lifting the rolls of parchment. “But I think I’ll have somethin’ to talk about by this time tomorrow. Mayhaps we can talk again—without the priest fella.”
Dunstan glanced at the duke. The Church of the Children wasn’t the only religion in the League, which was quite tolerant about people’s beliefs, but it was the largest denomination by far and held considerable influence on secular affairs. Its leaders could not be dismissed easily. But to his relief, the duke made no objections.
“Very well,” said Albustus. “Master Dunstan, I won’t ask your men to stand a watch tonight after your long march, but could you do so tomorrow night? It would help a lot and raise the spirits of the people.”
“Yes, certainly, my lord,” said Dunstan.
They left the city and walked back to their camp. The boys had already settled in, erecting tents and making themselves at home. A sizeable crowd of the locals were there. Some were trying to sell the halflings food and drink, but there were so many others there just giving it for free, business was poor. Before he went off to his own tent, Dunstan turned to the engineer.
“Paddy, you were right about the humans doing things big. It’s been a long while since I visited one of their cities and I’d forgotten just how big. Can you really come up with something? Because if you can’t, and we have to go down into those tunnels and dig those bastards out, it is gonna cost us more of our people than I want to th
ink about.”
“Aye, that’s for sure,” replied Paddy, nodding grimly. “Miles o’ tunnels, all black as pitch, and them vermin reoccupying them as fast as we clean ‘em out. We need a better way. I’m hoping that these plans will let me find it.”
* * * * *
The night passed uneventfully, the boys too tired for more than a song or two. Dunstan got up once during the night to attend to necessities and noticed a light burning in Paddy’s tent. He knew better than to disturb him.
The next morning, he drilled the troops for a while, but then just waited for the meeting with the duke. Paddy stayed in his tent. As the time for the meeting drew near, Dunstan went over to remind the engineer. Standing outside the tent, he could hear Paddy mumbling something in a sing-song manner. But then it stopped, and after a moment, the mumbles became clearer. “No, no it’s rubbish…. I canna do it from here… All rubbish…”
“Paddy?” Dunstan pulled the tent flaps open a few inches to peer in.
“Rubbish, I say!”
The sudden shout made Dunstan flinch back, but then he pushed his way into the tent. Paddy was crouched over a small camp table covered with new parchment, the human’s drawings in a pile on the ground next to him. The parchments were covered with a scrawl of ink. Paddy sat with a quill in his hand and an inkpot nearby, but his hand was shaking and spatters of ink were all over the parchment and the table—and Paddy.
“Paddy, are you all right?”
“What? What? Oh, ‘tis you, Dunstan. Aye, aye, I’m all right. What time is it?”
“Time to see the duke.”
“Ach, so it is. Well, let’s be about it. Here, I’ll need these.” He took a few of the old drawings and rolled them up. “Let’s go.”
“Do you want something to eat? You missed breakfast—and elevenses.”
“No, me stomach’s in knots right now. I’ll eat later.” He pushed past him into the sunlight.
As they walked toward the city, Dunstan dared to ask: “Didn’t go well, I take it?”
“What? No, no, it’s all right. I was just hopin’ I could take a shortcut, but it didn’t work. We’ll have t’do it the hard way. But I think we can do it.”
“Do what?”
“Win.”
They met in the same chamber as before, but aside from the duke, only Sir Hedrick and two other men were in attendance; Lord Barton, Albustus’s chief advisor, and Sir Giles, commander of the city guard.
“Were there any attacks last night?” Dunstan asked.
“No, all was quiet, thank the gods.”
“I’m sure they have spies planted in secret spots all over the city by now. They’re sure to have seen our arrival, and they are probably lying low to see what we do next.”
“I think you are right,” said the duke. Then he turned to the engineer. “So, uh, Paddy, do you have anything for us?”
“Maybe, maybe,” replied the engineer. “But I don’t want to raise any false hopes until I’m sure.”
“And what do you need to be sure?” Lord Barton asked. “We can’t wait forever, you know.”
“Oh, I know that! As for what I need, I’ll show ye.” He unrolled one of the plans on the table. It had a layout of the whole city, although from the date written in the corner, it was the city as it was over a hundred years earlier. The parchment kept trying to roll up again, so they pinned down the corners with cups and mugs.
“Now then,” said Paddy, pulling out a bit of charcoal from a pouch on his belt. “From what I could learn from all those other plans you gave me, there are main sewer lines runnin’ here… here… over here… and here. There are more, but these are all we need for now.” There were now thick black lines on the parchment.
The duke cringed and muttered. “Master Paley isn’t going to like this…”
Paddy took no notice. “Now, what I need is a rock sample, not just a loose stone, mind you, but a bit o’ bedrock chipped from the main stone. I’ll need six of ‘em. From these locations, or as near as you can get to ‘em.” He started marking spots on the map with his charcoal.
“And just what do you need them for?” Barton asked.
“T’do me work! I don’t ask you why y’need swords and spears for yer men, do I?” Barton snorted, but didn’t say anything more.
Dunstan leaned closer and stared at the map. “So you’re saying we need to go down in the sewers and then find a way further down until we can find bedrock and then hack off a piece of it for you? How big a piece?”
“Oh, big as yer fist, say. And I’m hopin’ you can find what you need right in the sewers. Pry a few of the building stones loose and see if there’s solid rock behind it.”
“That might be true in these four spots you have near the city walls, Paddy,” said the duke, “but I know that near the river, where you want the other two, they have to drive piles into the ground pretty deep before they find anything solid to build on.”
“Aye, I was afraid of that. Well, we could just start digging down until we find what we need, but that could take weeks. We don’t want to give the beasties that much warning of what we’re up to. I’m sure they’ve dug down far enough, so you’ll just have to find one o’ their tunnels and go as far down as you have to.”
“What do you need these rocks for?” demanded Barton. “If we are going to ask our men to go down in those holes, we want to be able to tell them why!”
Paddy looked annoyed. “I canna explain it to a… a…”
“A what? A human?” Barton was getting angry.
“That’s not what I meant!” snapped Paddy.
“It’s to work your magic, isn’t it?” asked Dunstan, hoping to calm things down.
Paddy glared at him. “Well, yes, I suppose ye could call it that if ye want. But it’s a lot more than that.”
Barton leaned back in his chair, looking thoughtful. “Well, why didn’t you say so before? Magic, is it? What sort? What do you hope to accomplish?”
Paddy snorted in exasperation. “I dinna have the time to explain me art to ye! Now do ye want me help or not?!”
“Of course we do, Paddy,” said the duke, who made a tiny gesture toward Barton with his hand. “We shall get you what you need.”
“My lord,” said Dunstan, “I would be willing to get the two samples near the river using my people. If Sir Giles and his men could manage the other four near the walls, I think we could get this done quickly.”
“That is an excellent idea, Master Dunstan. How quickly can you move?”
“We could go this afternoon, before it gets dark,” said Dunstan.
Sir Giles looked uncomfortable. “I… I’d prefer to wait until tomorrow, my lord. My men are edgy. I’d like to pick the men for the four parties myself. The best ones, you understand.”
“Very well, but no later than that. Is that acceptable, masters?” He looked from Dunstan to Paddy.
“It’s best that all six groups go at once to divide any reaction they might have,” said Dunstan. “We can wait a day. You all right with that, Paddy?”
“Yes, better for certain to get all six at once.”
“Very well then,” said Albustus. “We’ll move tomorrow at noon.”
* * * * *
The sun wasn’t quite at its peak when Dunstan led a company of his troops into the city. There was no telling how numerous the ratkin spies were or how good a system they had for passing messages, so all six parties were doing their best to look like ordinary patrols until they were ready to strike. They had put the delay yesterday to good use by unobtrusively walking around the city to locate the sewer entrances closest to where they wanted to go.
He had brought fifteen swordsmen, ten archers, and five with cut-down spears which he hoped wouldn’t get hung up in the close quarters they were likely to encounter. Plus four men with picks, pry bars, hammers, and chisels to get the rock Paddy wanted. They all wore stout leather jerkins and caps, but all their shields had been left back in camp. They would be too clumsy down in the tu
nnels.
Once the assault went ahead, another fifty halflings would converge on their entry site to cover their retreat if necessary. A second group under the command of Lurry Bevrige, his most experienced lieutenant, was doing the same thing across the river at the second location. Sir Giles’s men should be moving into position about this time too, at the other four locations. They had torches, ropes, and lanterns hidden among their gear. He hoped that he’d planned for everything.
The one thing he hadn’t planned for were the twenty or thirty children who had started following them.
Apparently, the sight of a group of armed soldiers just their size was irresistible to the little imps. More and more of them were tagging along, trying to mimic the movements of the halflings, laughing and shouting. He was a bit appalled that their parents were letting them wander loose in these dangerous times; but from their ragged appearance, maybe they didn’t have any parents. There were still a lot of things he didn’t understand about humans. Dunstan dropped back to the rear of his company.
“Toma,” he said, addressing one of his troops, “when we go in, you hold back and make sure none of these pups try to follow us.”
“Aw, but Dunstan…”
“No back talk! I mean it. In any case, I want someone minding the rope we’ll let down to get back out again. Don’t want that comin’ loose! When Lubbin and his boys show up, they can take over and you can follow us down if you want. All right?”
Toma didn’t look happy, but he nodded. “All right.”
“Good. Now on your toes, we’re nearly there.” Dunstan hurried back to the front.
Their entry point into the sewers was a metal grate he’d found yesterday. It was set into the street in a little square where two streets intersected. They approached it just as one of the city clocks struck twelve.
“All right! Go!” he shouted.
Four halflings with metal hooks ran to the grate and pulled it loose in one smooth motion. Others took out torches and lit them from the lanterns carried by their fellows. Dunstan peered into the opening and saw that the drop was only about eight feet. He grabbed the frame which had held the grate, swung his legs down, and jumped, short sword at the ready. “Follow me!”
Tales of Mantica Page 21
