Oberon's Dreams - By Aaron Pogue Page 0,75
other tunnels?”
“Aye. What, did you think we brought three clans down here one carriage at a time?”
“I had not considered it.”
“We have,” Ogden said. “And we’ve considered more than once what a twisting viper Ephitel can be. We have our plans for terminating this arrangement.”
“Do they involve a pile of those powder kegs in a vault beneath his mansion? And a very long fuse?”
Ogden gave a low whistle. “They hadn’t until now. I like your style, manling.”
“Call me Corin.”
“Would you know where to find this vault?”
Corin blinked. “I didn’t really…” His eyes fell on Kellen, breathing slowly now but still unconscious. Still far too pale. Corin nodded. “Yes. I think I know the way. And I left the door unlocked.”
“Glad to hear it,” Ogden said. “Biffin here can run the fuse, but once he lights it, run.”
Corin shook his head. “There will be others in the house. Cooks and servants. Decent guards.”
“We’ll set off a couple warning blasts before, then. Give them time to all clear out, then bring the sinkhole down.”
“You’re serious,” Corin said.
“We’re double-crossing Ephitel. We have to be.”
“I understand that,” Corin said. “But the risk—”
“It will stop him coming after us,” Avery said. “It will bury whatever cannons he has down here—”
“Alas, but most of those are with his troops,” Ogden said. “I saw to the deliveries myself.”
“What troops?” Corin asked.
“A regiment in Ephitel’s colors,” Ogden said. “Camped with all the others outside the city.”
“That’s where he’ll go,” Corin said. “If we cut off this venue, if we bring down his house, the only move he will have left is to get to that regiment and bring them into the city. He’ll march on the palace.”
Avery nodded. “He might be heading there already.”
“How long will that take?”
“It depends upon the traffic in the city, but knowing Ephitel…two hours? Three at most.”
“We have to stop him. He’ll use those guns against the citizens.”
Ogden gaped. “That seems too much, even for him.”
Corin raised his eyebrows. He pointed out into the cavern to one of the powder kegs mounted on a supporting pillar. “What do you think he intended for those?”
“A last resort, in case we were discovered.”
Avery snorted. “This is the ground beneath the Via Autunno, right to the palace bridge.”
Corin nodded. “He meant to move against the king, then sink the plaza and cut off any aid across the river.”
Ogden cursed. Even his second swore an oath. “I never meant to aid in this.”
“No,” the dwarven chieftain said. “We’ll have no part in it. Take down the powder kegs. Brick up the wall and earth it in. We’ll take the prisoners to topsides and be done with them.”
“And the sword?” Corin asked.
“That still depends,” Ogden said, “on if your valor lives or dies.”
That meant Kellen. The dwarves moved Kellen, Corin, and Avery out into the cavern, and then they set to work. For half an hour Corin divided his attention between their construction and the fate of the wounded soldier.
He watched a wall go up in an amazing time. Stones were carved and shaped and slotted into the demolished wall without a seam. When the work was done, Corin could not have guessed which bricks were new and which were old. It looked as though the ancient wall had never been torn down.
But the dwarves did not stop there. They brought barrowloads of dirt from elsewhere in the excavation, dumping, piling, shoring up, until the wall was buried behind a dozen paces of earth. A cannon could not have cleared a way into the cavern from the cellars. The mansion was sealed off.
But as rewarding as that process was to watch, Corin spent far more attention on the other. He watched the dwarven medics as they probed the yeoman’s wounds. They extracted both lead shots—horribly deformed from their brief flights—and bandaged all his wounds. They applied unguents from small clay pots and chanted prayers to pagan spirits of the dark. They spent every bit as much in toil and energy as their brothers moving earth or breaking rock, but with half an hour spent, they had nothing to show for it. Kellen still breathed—if irregularly and only in panting wheezes—but he hadn’t stirred. His pulse was feeble and his skin burned to the touch.
When Corin judged that half an hour had burned away, he dragged Avery to hunt down the dwarven chieftain. Ogden brightened as the two approached. “Has your valor wakened?”
“Age of reason!” Avery grumbled. “I have the better part of valor!”
Corin shushed him with a gesture