There was only one blank sheet left when Paddy suddenly stopped. “More?” he whispered. “There’s more, you say? No, no, that’s enough. More than enough.” The quill fell out of his hand. “Enough!” he shouted, and Dunstan nearly fell over.
Paddy opened his eyes and blinked in confusion for a few moments. Then he closed them again and sighed a long, long, sigh.
“We done?” asked Dunstan.
“Aye, aye, we’re done.” Paddy opened his eyes again and stared right into Dunstan’s. “And if I can’t get me plan to work, we may all be done for good!”
* * * * *
“Forgive me, Paddy, but are you absolutely sure about this?” asked Duke Albustus. “How could they possibly have dug something so extensive without us knowing?”
They were back in the duke’s meeting room and the table was strewn with Paddy’s drawings. Somehow his magic and the rocks’ ‘memories’ had allowed him to draw a detailed plan of all the tunnels and chambers under the city. There were far more of them than anyone could have guessed—even in their worst nightmares. Mile after mile of tunnels; dozens, hundreds, of caves and chambers, leading down and down and down.
“This can’t possibly be right!” sputtered Lord Barton. “It would take thousands of ratkin, years to have done this!”
“Well, if y’don’t believe me, yer welcome to take me plans down there and check ‘em for yerself!” Paddy said.
“Calm down, Paddy,” said Dunstan. “They aren’t trying to insult you or your work, and I can hardly blaming them for being doubtful. This is…” he waved his hand at the drawings. “…pretty hard to believe.”
“We’ve only had the disappearances and attacks in the last few months,” continued Barton. “If there were thousands of them down there, as these plans would indicate, how have they been feeding themselves? And there would have been thousands of tons of dirt and rock from the digging. Where have they been hiding that, Learned?”
Despite Barton’s rudeness, it was a good question. Paddy looked sullen but kept his mouth shut.
“There… there’s another possibility,” said Dunstan.
“Really?” asked Barton skeptically. “Such as?”
“As you say, if there had been thousands of them down there digging all this recently, you would have had far more disappearances. But what if it wasn’t all dug recently?”
“What do you mean?”
“Perhaps there weren’t thousands working for a few months, perhaps there were just a few hundred, few enough that they could have fed themselves by stealing food or raising regular rats and eating them and no one up here would notice. For years, I mean. They could have been slowly digging the tunnels and the caves for years and years. In small amounts, the dirt and stone dumped in the river wouldn’t be noticed.”
“Aye, aye!” Paddy clamored excitedly. “Some of the memories… some of them were old… very old.”
“But why would only a few hundred dig out such an enormous complex of tunnels and caves?” asked the duke.
“To be ready when more of them arrive,” Dunstan said, grimly. “And it looks like they have.”
Albustus frowned deeply, his bushy eyebrows drawing close together. “You’re talking about an invasion. Not an infestation, an actual invasion. From outside.”
“It could be, my lord,” said Sir Giles. “There are tales that the ratkin were created by the dwarfs of the Abyss, but they’ve spread all through the lands since then. There could be dens of them anywhere, there’s no one to dig them out. The gods only know how many of them there could be out there beyond the borders of the League.”
“They could have sent an advanced party here years ago to make ready for this,” suggested Dunstan. “They slipped into the sewers unseen, and they’ve been at work ever since, getting ready for their fellows to arrive. The ratkin we normally see are little better than beasts, but they do have leaders, and some of them are very clever.”
The duke paged through the parchment sheets again. “If this is true, there is no way we can send our men down into this maze. We’d lose every one of them and the city would be left defenseless.”
“I think you are right, my lord,” said Dunstan. From the little he’d seen yesterday, there was no doubt in his mind that the ratkin lair would become a death trap.
The duke rubbed at his nose. “I can send word to the Council asking them for help. Have them send all the troops that are gathered at the muster here…”
“But that could take a month or more, my lord! We can’t sit back here and do nothing!” Lord Barton exclaimed. “The ratkin aren’t going to just hide there anymore! If we don’t go down after them, they will come up after us!”
“Aye, that’s true enough,” said Paddy, breaking his silence. “But there may be another way than goin’ down to them.”
“What do you mean?”
“Dunstan,” said Paddy turning to him. “In yer job, yer old job, I mean, when you found a nest o’ moles or field mice under a garden, would you dig the whole place up, tryin’ to get ‘em out?”
“Not if I could help it.”
“What would ye do?”
“Well, sometimes I’d use poisoned bait, but if there was water close by I’d… Flood them out!” He looked at the engineer, hope filling him. He was grinning.
“Aye, that y’would. And that’s exactly what we are gonna do!”
The duke leaned forward eagerly. “Can it be done?”
“After studyin’ the drawings I made, I think it can. T’won’t be easy, but I think it can be done. I’m gonna need a quite a bit o’ stuff from you though.”
“You’ll get it. What do you need?”
“I’ve made a list. But you should also call in all those liegemen you were talkin’ about before. If this works as I hope, there will be plenty for them to do!”
* * * * *
“What do you need the barges for?” Dunstan asked as he followed Paddy down to the city docks along the river. He had a copy of Paddy’s list, and while most of it made sense to him, he couldn’t see the need for fifteen river barges. Barges loaded with rocks!
“Water’s too low this time o’ year,” he replied. “And even in the rainy season, it wouldn’t be high enough. We can’t just trickle the water into their tunnels, y’know. With all the natural seepage they would have down there, they must have a right clever way of getting water out again, or they woulda been flooded out long ago. Pumps maybe. But whatever it is, it can probably handle any slow increase. No, we gotta dump it all in at once, surprise ‘em, or it won’t work.”
“Makes sense, but I ask again: what are the barges for? You can’t be thinking of using them like some giant set of buckets. How’d we pull ‘em up and empty ‘em into the holes? And why all the rocks?”
“No, yer right, Dunstan. I had a different idea. See that bridge down there?”
He looked down the river and near the edge of the city there was a stone bridge with five arches spanning the Allsop River. “I see it.”
“Lovely thing, ain’t it? I checked it out the other day and it’s really well built. Not like some of the things you see humans make. Almost as good as dwarf work. Heh, maybe the dwarfs built it for ‘em.”
“Paddy…”
“Anyway, all the water flows through those five arches. If we were to block ‘em up…”
“With the barges?”
“Right enough. Block up those archways and the water will back up right through the city. I’ve got six of the sewer outlets in mind, and once they’re good and covered with water, we can do the other things I’ve got planned and… well, then we’ll see what we’ll see.”
“Huh. But with only five arches, why do you need fifteen barges?”
“Well, I’ll sink the first five and…”
“Sink?”
“Of course. Just floatin’ ‘em up against the arches won’t do anything. So we get ‘em in position, knock holes in the bottom, and let ‘em sink. Once they’re settled, we do the s
ame with the next five and then the next five. All goes well, and we’ll have all five archways nearly stoppered. That will back the water up along the river like we want. Then… well then the real fun begins.”
“But the ratkin have measures to keep the sewer water out of their tunnels,” protested Dunstan. “I told you about that water-stop we had to crawl over. Just backing the water up into the sewers won’t do it!”
“Right you are! That was the real reason I needed the rocks to make those plans. I needed to know the layout of their tunnels and all. The beasties will have made provisions to handle any sort of natural influx of water. So we need to give them something they haven’t planned for. I’ll show you what we’re doin’ as soon as I finish up with these barges.”
Dunstan looked at his old friend. “You had this all planned out, didn’t you? Right from the start.”
Paddy shrugged. “I had the idea from the start. Wasn’t sure we could make it work. Looks like we might.”
They reached a dock where a number of barges were tied up and several of the duke’s men were waiting.
“Did you tell the duke you planned to sink those barges?” Dunstan asked.
“Ah… it might have slipped me mind.”
* * * * *
Three days later, they were ready. The duke’s vassal troops had arrived, the city guards were mustered, the second group of halflings were there, the barges were loaded and in position, and the women and children and old people were barricaded in houses, taverns, and temples, guarded by anyone else who could wield a weapon.
And the holes were dug.
Along with the barges, the holes were the key part of Paddy’s plan. In a dozen locations around the city, large excavations were underway. Half of them were decoys to prevent the ratkin from realizing what was really going on. Hopefully the vermin would think that the townspeople were making some foolish attempt to literally dig out the ratkin. They’d laugh and pull their forces away from the digging areas and wait for the humans to wear themselves out or make an even more foolish move to send their troops down into the ratkin tunnels. By the time they realized the truth, it would be too late.
The six excavations which were not decoys had been precisely located by Paddy using the drawings he’d made. Once the water started to back up, the existing sewers would bring the water right to where the digging was going on and then… then, as Paddy, put it, the fun would begin.
Dunstan, Paddy, and the duke met near the bridge to watch things get started. It was just before dawn and the river men were moving the barges into place. To Dunstan, who had no experience with boats at all, it looked like a tricky operation, but the men knew what they were doing. Using poles and long oars, they got the first five barges lined up with the bridge’s arches and let the current carry them up to the massive stone supports. Even from two hundred yards away, he could hear the wooden ends of the barges grinding against the stone as the river pinned them in place.
Shouts from the barge crews and from men on the bridge carried across the water. Ropes were let down and most of the men scrambled up them to safety. Two men remained behind in each vessel. Dunstan couldn’t see, but they were hacking holes in the bottom of the barges with axes. Then they too climbed the ropes up the bridge.
The barges, already lying very low in the water due to their load of rocks, quickly settled deeper. Once the water started to spill over their sides, they disappeared with amazing swiftness, leaving just some momentary swirls on the surface, which quickly vanished.
He couldn’t notice any immediate change in the flow of the river, but the second set of barges were already being moved into position. Things didn’t go quite so smoothly this time. Four of the barges reached their positions with no trouble, but the fifth did not and was nearly swept under the arch and on downstream. A great deal of shouting and activity followed with ropes being tossed to men on the shore, and after almost a half hour, the barge was finally pulled into the proper spot and sunk. All the watchers were chafing at the delay. The sun was fully up now and they wanted this to go quickly, so things could be settled before nightfall.
As the final set of barges were moved up, Dunstan thought he could see some change in the river’s flow. There were swirls and eddies around the bridge that he didn’t think had been there before. He focused on one section of the stone on the bridge, and as he watched, it looked as though the water was slowly creeping higher.
Then the last five barges sank from sight and things began to happen. There was a very distinct turbulence in the flow of the river through the arches, almost like the rapids in a river. The water was backing up! Just like Paddy had promised. Dunstan could clearly see the water climbing up sides of the stone supports.
“It’s working!” he cried.
“Course it is,” said Paddy. “The big question now is how fast it will work.”
“Looks like it’s working pretty fast.”
“It will, at first. But the flow is constant and the volume it needs to fill keeps gettin’ bigger as it backs up farther and farther upstream. Didn’t have good figures on the amount of flow or the width o’ the river, so I couldn’t calculate it exactly, but it will probably be noon or later before we can do the next step. But come on, let’s get some breakfast.”
Dunstan wanted to stay and watch the water climb. But he realized that he needed to eat, and anyway, a commander had to look calm and controlled. The duke invited them to eat with him, but he insisted on going back to camp and eating with his troops. Most of those troops had questions about how things were going, so he spent more time talking than eating, but eventually the meal was over and he and Paddy could go back and have a look at the progress of the river.
By midmorning, the water was up six or eight feet and getting close to the mouth of the sewer outlets closest to their improvised dam. “The locals tell me that durin’ the spring melt, the water gets higher than this, and they often have a back-flow in the sewers,” said Paddy.
“How high d’you think it will get?”
“Hard t’say. The barges are about five feet tall from bottom to top. Three of ‘em sittin’ on top of each other ought to raise the river twelve or fifteen feet, allowin’ for leakage. We might even get more than that ‘cause the support arches narrow down at the top, naturally, which might restrict the flow even more.”
“Fifteen feet will put it up over the banks in some spots,” said Dunstan, eyeing the water cautiously.
“Aye, it will. I warned ‘em about that, and they said they’d get the folks out of the buildings close to the river. Hope they did.”
By noon, the water was starting to move into the sewers, and Paddy decided they needed to proceed with the plan. He led Dunstan to one of the excavations which cut through the sewer line that would soon be flooded. The work crews were swinging barrels of the gunpowder Paddy had brought down into their hole. Water was already rising against a temporary dam built across the sewer line.
“Once the powder is in place and the fuse set, they’ll back-fill as much as they can,” said Paddy. “That’ll send the blast down more than up. Ought t’punch a hole right into their tunnels. I’d rather set off all six at once, but we can’t wait. This hole an’ the one on the opposite side o’ the river will be flooded long before the four farther upstream. Can’t risk having the water douse it all before we can blow it.”
Soon, the powder was all set, and fifty men were madly shoveling dirt and rock back into the hole. A messenger came saying that progress at the other holes was coming along at the same rate. Dunstan looked around at the surrounding buildings. “How much damage will the explosion do to these?”
“A fair amount, I’m afraid. We got all the people out o’course, but they’ll have some re-buildin’ t’do once this is all over.”
“It’s a shame,” said Dunstan, “but not near as much as they’d have if the ratkin have their way.”
“Now that’s the truth,” nodded Paddy. “All right, looks like we’re about ready.”
He walked over to the foreman and soon all the men were moving away to a safe distance. Dunstan joined him where the fuse came up out of the hole. Paddy pointed to it. “You want t’do the honors, Commander?”
Dunstan shook his head. “This is all yours, Paddy. You do it.”
“All right, get ready to run.” He had procured a small lantern and used it to light the fuse. It sparked and sputtered and burned off toward the hole. “Let’s go!”
Paddy trotted rather than ran, and Dunstan kept pace with him. They stopped where most of the men were waiting about a hundred yards down the street. The burning fuse was lost to sight and they waited. And waited. “Did the fuse go out?”
Boooom!
A massive explosion erupted from the hole and the ground shook. A geyser of smoke, dust, dirt, and rocks flew skyward. The cloud swirled down the street toward them, and pebbles and a few larger rocks rained down all around. One man yelled when a rocked bounced off his shoulder.
“In answer to your question,” said Paddy. “No.”
Dunstan grinned. “So did it work?”
“Let’s go see.” Paddy led the way back to the hole, as the breeze carried off the last of the dust and smoke. The opening was considerably larger now, and several of the nearby houses had some impressive rents knocked in them, too. Even before he got close enough to see down into it, Dunstan could hear water rushing.
The bottom of the hole was now a whirlpool.
Water flowed steadily into it from the direction of the river. Round and round it went and then down. Bits of wood and debris were sucked down along with the water. From time to time, huge bubbles would erupt, disrupting the flow for a moment. Paddy looked down and nodded. “Just like I was hopin’. The explosion blew through into a main ratkin tunnel that was below the sewer and now the river will fill it up—and all the connectin’ tunnels.”
Tales of Mantica Page 23
