by Rick Johnson
Colonel Snart and his brother had always differed in some significant ways. Snart was a military beast, and a confirmed realist, with simple wants—never drinking better than Frog’s Belch Ale. His brother, the High One, loved the finest cheese, Rotter Wine, and was a wildly creative inventor, scientist, and philosopher. Or so he considered himself. To Colonel Snart, his brother was a pompous, self-interested fool, always talking about finishing Maev Astuté and becoming a god, while hammering on his anvil. As Snart saw things, his brother was a fool, pure and simple.
As different as they seemed to be, however, Colonel Snart and the High One were quite similar in one respect. If the High One seemed obsessed with perfecting inventions to increase the speed at which Maev Astuté was built, Colonel Snart was similarly obsessed with what he called the “tidy little trade.” Colonel Snart loved the “tidy little trade” that he had developed over the years in a variety of lucrative goods: slaves, trallés, building stone for Maev Astuté, and—the item that linked these together—silver.
For Colonel Snart, the “tidy little trade” was like a great military campaign and he loved it when all the pieces worked smoothly together, making silver pile up in his vaults. Not because he particularly cared about wealth, but because the piles grew higher when he skillfully waged his campaign. It was a campaign for silver. Colonel Snart rarely spent any of the vast wealth he accumulated. He preferred to give it to his special friends—special friends who just happened to be opponents of his brother.
The Colonel said nothing of this to ThunderUp, of course, as he led the Badger through the stores of supplies picking out items needed to prepare an ambush. After choosing a supply of thappa and sulphurous cacutti, the Colonel instructed ThunderUp in the art of ambush.
“What is needed for an ambush worthy of you,” Colonel Snart said flatteringly, “is a place well adapted to your talents and skills. Before I was ever a prisoner at Tilk Duraow, I commanded Club Wolf brazzens stationed at the foot of Destroyer’s Gap. The Gap is the only break in the Dunesback Weir—the highest mountain ridge in the Hedgelands. Destroyer’s Gap is the perfect place to prepare an ambush.”
“Why is it called Destroyer’s Gap?” ThunderUp asked.
“The Dunesback Weir is so high that the winds have to work hard to get over it,” the Colonel explained. “But there’s one place—the Gap—where there’s a break in the ridge. That means all the winds rush through there at ferocious speeds. Give all that wind a way to go through, and you get terrible strong winds through the Gap.”
“So the rebels will try to go through, and there’s only one place to get past the ridge, eh?” ThunderUp said slyly.
“Yes,” the Wolf replied, “and that’s not all. Destroyer’s Gap resembles nothing so much as a narrow lane snaking between two walls of perpendicular rock. There’s nothing but sand-blasted rock on both sides—an old Club Wolf in my command used to sing a rhyme about the place:
The trail grows narrow and hangs like a fly
Far and deadly above the river helling by
“Why sand-blasted?” ThunderUp asked.
“The other side of the Dunesback Weir is dry and rocky, nothing by treeless canyons and sand as far as the eye can see. All that wind trying to cross the ridgeline goes rushing through the Gap picking up sand as it goes. When the winds are flying full force, a beast can be buried in a few hours. It’s an extremely dangerous passage—but the only one there is. That’s why you set up your ambush there.”
“And you’re sure the rebels will go that way?” the Badger asked.
“There’s no other way they would go. I’ve heard them talking and know that’s the route they’ll take. Besides, any smart beast in their situation would see there’s no better way,” Colonel Snart said, smiling. “They’ll look at their maps and see that all the trails away from Tilk Duraow have Skull Buzzard barracks along them, except for the one through Destroyer’s Gap. For obvious reasons, there’s only seasonal traffic along that route. So there’s no permanent Skull Buzzard presence, only patrols during the busy season. The fools will be trying to get through at the worst possible time of year, so their greatest problem will be their own stupidity, not Skull Buzzards. They want to get to the sea, and the Gap is the fastest way to do that.”
“How far away is the Gap?” ThunderUp asked.
“Three days walking, Colonel Snart said. “If you leave at dawn, you’ll be there ahead of the rebels, with plenty of time to prepare.”
“So what’s the plan?” ThunderUp asked, quivering with excitement.
“Do you know what sulphurous cacutti is used for?” the Colonel asked.
“That’s the explosive they use on the Granite Hulks, isn’t it?” ThunderUp replied.
“Yes,” the Wolf said. “They cover the cacutti stones in pitch. Then the stones are placed where they want to blast. Workers light the pitch and it smolders several minutes—long enough for workers to get clear—then, KA-BOOM!”
“But if I’m going to ambush the rebels,” ThunderUp said, “won’t such a long wait for the KA-BOOM ruin my surprise attack?”
“No, because you’re going to do something different with the cacutti,” Colonel Snart said. “You notice I’m not sending any pitch with you. That’s because you’re going to use the cacutti to make forever-fire stones, not the explosives used on the Granite Hulks. Forever-fire stones are only used by the military, so few beasts know about them. You need sulphurous cacutti and thappa, a typical cleaning solution, to make them. You’ll carry those materials with you. Essentially, you wet the chunks of sulphurous cacutti in thappa. That makes the cacutti rock flammable, and once it’s lit, the fire won’t go out until the rock is ash. You can’t douse it with water, suffocate it, or even bury it—it’ll just keep burning. And it burns so hot it’ll singe your fur at twenty feet. So once you get some stones burning, no beast can get close to them.”
“Munnah!” ThunderUp exclaimed. “I guess you’re careful around them or you’re a dead beast!”
“That’s why we don’t make the stones here,” Snart replied. “You carry the materials and make them when you need them. And don’t let the cacutti touch the thappa until you’re ready to light it. The thappa evaporates fast and the cacutti won’t light if the thappa’s gone. Don’t get in a hurry—wait until the instant you’re ready to attack before you douse the cacutti with thappa.”
He paused, grinning wickedly at ThunderUp, thinking again that the slightly creepy Badger was smart enough to be useful, but stupid enough to be harmless.
“When those rotten escapees come along,” he continued, “you’ll be waiting above the trail. Wait until they’re below you before you mix the materials. Then drop all the cacutti stones into the thappa at once, so they’re ready to use. Pull them out one by one, light them, and toss them along the trail behind the rebels, cutting off their escape. That will create panic and confusion.” The Colonel stopped, looking expectantly at ThunderUp.
“Then what?” ThunderUp asked, puzzled why Snart had stopped talking.
“Indeed, then what?” the Colonel replied. “It’s up to you from there on. You’re a smart beast. You’ll have to look at the situation and decide the best means of attack. I picked the site, I set you up with forever-fire stones, surely you can figure out what then!” Colonel Snart growled.
“Well, with what you say,” ThunderUp said, his hackles up, “I’m expectin’ there’s boulders and stuff to drop on them.”
“Exactly,” Colonel Snart smiled. “Exactly. Any beasts not taken down in your attack will be trapped there. The Destroyer sandstorms will finish them off when they come through, like they do a few times a week.”
“How do I find Destroyer Gap?” ThunderUp said. “I’m ready to get to work.”
“I’ll draw you a map and I want you to memorize it,” Colonel Snart replied. “I don’t want you losing some fool piece of paper.” ThunderUp was eager, and quickly fixed the map firmly in his mind.
“Now whatever you do,” Colone
l Snart reminded the Badger, “don’t mix your materials until you’re ready to use them.”
Of course he did not want to risk an accident, and he had also purposefully misinformed ThunderUp about the functioning of forever-fire. Forever-fire stones did not, in fact, exist. They were an invention of Colonel Snart’s imagination—a good story told for his own purposes. It had nothing to do with the military, but was a discovery being explored for possible use in mining. The concoction Colonel Snart showed ThunderUp how to make actually produced a furiously expanding foam that dissolved whatever it touched.
Although he didn’t know it, ThunderUp was being sent to literally dissolve away the mountainside, including the trail through Destroyer’s Gap—and himself. Thappa, combined with sulphurous cacutti, reacted to produce foam at a factor of a million times the volume of the original ingredients! When ThunderUp dropped the pieces of caccuti in the thappa, within minutes a vast flood of rapidly expanding corrosive foam would flow down the mountain, making liquid of everything it touched. When all the material had reacted, the flowing mass solidified again, in whatever shape it had attained.
Snart’s plan was that ThunderUp, like the rebels, would never leave the mountains. It would not be helpful to have the snugs-crazed Badger around to tell more of the story than Colonel Snart would find useful. So it was, that when Colonel Snart and ThunderUp settled down to nap until dawn, neither slept a wink. ThunderUp was too excited and Colonel Snart was too watchful over all the details that could go wrong.
Mutiny
From her lookout high atop a Tilk Duraow tower, Bem Madsoor kept watch over the approaches to the fortress. Her attention focused on the main approach over the Bridge of No Return. At times, however, she also checked the surrounding terrain from other windows in the watchtower.
On one of these occasions, she was leaning from the window gazing with her spyglass, when she was startled by a cry rending the air like a knife. The shout echoed and re-echoed until she wondered if it would ever end. “SPEAK TRUTH AND FEAR NOTHING! – SPEAK TRUTH AND FEAR NOTHING! – SPEAK TRUTH AND FEAR NOTHING! – SPEAK TRUTH – SPEAK TRUTH – FEAR NOTHING. ”
The dramatic cry could not be mistaken. “Tē’d’Tē!” Bem breathed. “Something’s gone wrong! Some rogues have taken her, I’ll wager!” Then the fuller realization of the possible danger hit her: “I’ve got to warn the others! They’ll be ambushed! I’ve got to stop them.”
Racing down the long spiral tower stairs, Bem burst onto the parade ground. Breathless, dizzy, her legs shaking—pounding down the 300 steps in a few minutes had turned them to jelly. Her eyes scanned the area for Klemés. He was off to the side of the main group, talking with Helga, who had only just returned. They were near one of the main gates, pointing and talking. Realizing it would be best not to attract the attention of the main group, she walked over to them as normally as she could. Reaching them, she spoke rapidly, in a low gasping voice. “Klemés—Helga! Ambush! Lice-sucking rogues got Tē’d’Tē! Terrible danger! Stop the escape!”
“I thought I heard her cry out,” Helga exclaimed. “The walls are so thick and high, no one else seems to have heard anything. But Klemés was showing me how he was planning to seal the gates, and I was certain I heard something. Klemés didn’t hear it, so I was just trying to convince him that we should investigate.”
“It means disaster for our plan,” Klemés said grimly. “We don’t know what kind of force took Tē’d’Tē, and if they took her, they also took our first group of escapees.” Then he paused, closing his eyes in pain, as if hurting inside. “We lost Tē’d’Tē, one of the best beasts I ever knew—we lost the first beasts we sent to freedom—and Tē’d’Tē had the maps. Our plan to escape through the mountains is finished.”
“Finished?” Helga said fiercely. “We’re not finished! We don’t quit. We don’t stop. We keep going. What else is there to do?”
“I didn’t say we were quiting, Helga,” Klemés said evenly. “I said the plan we are using is finished. Which it is. We don’t know how many enemies we have out there waiting to ambush us. We don’t have maps of the mountains. It would be suicide to send all these beasts out that way now. The plan we had is finished—but that’s not quiting. We’ll come up with another plan.”
Bem had been listening, holding herself in check long enough to breathe again. “I’ll tell you what it is!” she said. “It’s that missing prisoner. He’s betrayed us. He’s a bilge-licker if I ever saw one—brother of the High One, Club Wolf Commander, Monopole of the High One’s caravans. He’s a solid bilge-licking, lice-sucking traitor all the way.”
“That’s the most likely possibility,” Klemés agreed. “We got so excited by our success and then so busy taking care of everyone, we forgot good sense for a moment. We should have been more careful with him.”
“It’s too late now,” Helga said. “And we can’t worry about every beast we have. There’s no time and we don’t know who all these beasts are anyway. Snart’s a bad apple—and we should’ve watched him. But we could have other bad apples, and we can’t watch everyone. Let’s not jump to conclusions. Maybe Tē’d’Tē and the others ran into bandits or something. We don’t know what happened. For now, we need a new plan. Then we move forward and deal with what happens.”
“The second group is about to move out,” Klemés said, “we’ve got to stop them.”
“What do I tell them?” Bem said, ready to rush off and stop operations.
“Tell them there’s a problem, but don’t tell them what it is yet,” Klemés replied. “Call them back to the parade ground. Once everyone is gathered together, we’ll explain the situation. No sense trying to hide bad news at this point.”
Within half an hour, the escape operations had been stopped. Everyone was back in the parade ground, disturbed and uneasy, sensing the worry of their leaders. Although no explanation had yet been given, the crowd was aroused and rumors flew: Skull Buzzards were at the gates ready to attack. The escape tunnels were booby-trapped. It was all a hoax and they were being returned to their cells.
As the crowd surged and murmered in the parade ground, Klemés, still only half sure what he was going to say, climbed atop a table. He stood for several moments, gazing across the parade ground, considering the rough and ragged mass of beasts before him. The misery and hopelessness etched in their faces hit him in the stomach. He knew the hunger and brutality they had been endured for so long. Many were thin from lack of food, their clothing worn to tatters, unwashed for months, faces filled with utter despair. With the collapse of the escape plan, rising hopes had evaporated. It was not hard to see that these sorry beasts were now even more desperate than before.
Stamping loudly, Klemés called for attention. “Hey-Hey!” he yelled. “There’s a mess to clean up,” he said, “and that’s the pure and simple truth. Our first escape party seems to have been ambushed. We’re pretty sure that Tē’d’Tē, and the rest of her party, were captured. We don’t know anything more.”
The spirit of the crowd changed instantly from unease and confusion to excited anger. Two thousand beasts who, earlier in the day, had been cooperative and eager to begin the journey, now grumbled darkly. Cries rang out: “Wha’s be’n had! You’s led us in’ta trap! The fools got us worse’n ever! We’re better on the Hulks than ambushed by Skull Buzzards!”
Klemés sensed the danger he faced. For a time, the unexpected release from bondage had lifted the cloud of hopeless despair. Now that spirit was dead. Although no one knew what had happened, the sudden end to the escape contained an unmistakable message. Something had gone terribly wrong. Beasts who had briefly hoped against hope, trusting in Klemés and his friends, now looked at him with eyes nearly crazed with distrust and fear.
One emaciated Cougar, his face furless and permanently scalded orange by a misfiring explosive charge on the Hulks, now rambled through the crowd, raving and moaning, muttering unintelligible curses. His wild eyes suddenly turned on Klemés, eyeballs protruding with a horrible, une
arthly glare, as he flung himself at the old Wood Cow. “Ye double-crosser!” the Cougar screamed, “You’re out to kill us all!” Clawing and scratching, the maddened beast tried to reach Klemés, but the Wood Cow was too quick.
The attacker may have been but a single crazed Cougar, but her hoarse ranting blended with a larger murmer that swept through the crowd like wildfire. Growling complaints and angry shouts left no doubt in Klemés’s mind that a storm was brewing.
As if carried by wind, angry distrust spread beast to beast. Klemés smelled mutiny in the air. The crowd closed in around him and his fiends, who had come to stand with him. So tightly did the mob squeeze toward them, that some of the smaller beasts in the crowd were in danger of being smothered, and cried out for air. Some lost their footing, and were nearly trampled as the once friendly crowd became a thousandfold mob.
Fear was not one of the old Wood Cow’s weaknesses, however. He knew the moment had come when he must act or wish that he had. In his years at sea, before being enslaved at Tilk Duraow, on one occasion he had seen this kind of panicked desperation in the eyes of a crew. Becalmed for weeks, starving, ravaged by disease, the ship’s crew had been on the edge of mutiny. On that occasion, Captain Ord, commander of the ship, had shown the most brilliant leadership Klemés had ever seen. Now, with everything hanging in the balance, he thought of Captain Ord. As he moved into action, his memories of that crew—how they had boiled wood, then chewed it for both food and water, skin hanging like sailcloth on bones—moved him to tears. Through the fog of years, he still heard Captain Ord and saw him breaking the spirit of mutiny with one mighty act of leadership. Klemés hoped he could pull off something similar now.