by Rick Johnson
“Brock-a-Brock-a-Brock-a-Brell-oooo.” The faint, but unmistakable, sound came from somewhere down the passage. Except for the weird yodeling in the distance, the rest of the fortress seemed silent as death. Torches, the only source of light, at intervals provided enough flickering light to see, but not enough to feel at ease. Walking slowly, being careful to make no sound, Helga and Christer proceeded down a number of passages, turning right, then left, then left again, always turning in the direction where the yodeling sound seemed loudest. After perhaps five minutes of such meandering, they reached a flight of rough stone steps leading downward. Helga descended the steps. Christer followed close behind. At the bottom, a heavy timber door, with massive iron hinges, handle, and lock, marked the end of their journey. In the dim light of the passage, a clear, bright line of light showed the edges of the door. Not only was someone yodeling inside, but there was an intense light source within as well.
Helga fingered the ring of keys in her pocket. Casting a look at Christer, she took a deep breath and quietly lifted the keys from her pocket. Examining them, she smiled. There could be no doubt which key fit the lock. The style of lock exactly matched one of the keys. Slowly inserting the key in the lock and turning it, the lock clicked. She pushed the door inward. Stepping quickly into the room, she said, “Not a word, Gogglet. We’ll explain—keep doing exactly what you’re doing.”
Gogglet continued yodeling and stirring a large pot that had a heavenly-smelling vapor rising from it. An intense fire, giving off a brilliant light, burned under the pot. Despite themselves, Helga and Christer were startled. Lady G had implied that Gogglet might be a bit unusual, but nothing prepared them for actually meeting him. His entire effect was either mysteriously off-center or insanely merry. Immensely shaggy white hair cascaded from the top of his head, down across his face, and, joining with a similar beard, extended all the way to his knees. Virtually nothing of his face was visible. Yet, the shape of the head and face were unmistakable. The vigorous way he stirred the pot; the massive shoulders; the tall, strong, and erect stature. There could be no doubt—they were now in the presence of an extremely ancient, but still forceful, Wood Cow!
Gogglet said nothing, but his eyes sparkled with a wild, unearthly excitement. Looking at him, Helga could not decide if he were slightly mad or barely able to contain some inner delight. Either seemed possible. Putting her questions about Gogglet’s sanity aside for the moment, she said, “Lady G sent us. We’re here to break the slaves out of here and need your help. Lady G said you know the fortress top to bottom.”
Still not stopping his yodeling, Gogglet motioned for his visitors to take a seat at a table at the side of the room. Without further explanation, Goggle returned to his pot-stirring and continued yodeling for perhaps another ten minutes. Then, he yelled, “CURST CRUST! DOOM MOOD! EVIL LIVE! DREAD ADDER! TAKE THEE AWAY AND LET ME SLEEP!”
Helga and Christer, uncertain about their new acquaintance’s mental stability, nearly abandoned their visit. Who would trust such a creature with their lives? How could they rely on advice and help from such a beast? Exchanging looks that mingled worry and puzzlement, they took no action for the moment, waiting to see what would happen next.
After his outburst, Gogglet reduced the fire to a gentle glow, put a tight lid on the pot, and stopped yodeling. Turning toward Helga and Christer, he bowed and joined them at the table.
“So sorry, dear friends, if my way of things is unexpected,” he said with a merry chuckle. “Don’t think bad of me. A bit of trickery comes in handy. All you see keeps the Buzzards thinking I’m a bit daft. Makes them keep me away by myself, which suits my purpose. The little ‘bedtime holler’ lets me stop the yodeling at the end of the day, and helps my image. Nothing like being a bit daft, to have them leave you alone. Now, with that out of the way, my Tilk Duraow stage-name—as I think of it—is Gogglet, but, seeing as how you’re Wood Cows like me, it would be a kindness if you’d call me by the name my parents gave me: Klemés.”
“Klemés!” Helga exclaimed. “My Great-Grandfather, Klemés ma di son Colé?”
“One and the same,” the ancient Wood Cow declared, leaping from his chair and hugging Helga close. The joyful reunion might well have consumed the entire night, but Helga and Klemés both knew that an extremely serious purpose had brought them together. After some promises to catch up later, their conversation returned to the task at hand.
“I’m wondering what you think about a plan I have in mind?” Helga asked. “I’ve heard that there are dragon pens on the main level of the fortress. If that’s true, I’m thinking there may be a way to release them to create a diversion. Seems like dragons running wild might take a bit of time and attention from the Buzzards. It might give us the time we need to open the slave cells.”
Klemés grinned wickedly. “What a howling good time that would be!” he said. “Certainly would create a diversion. But what then? You’d have free slaves, dragons loose, and Skull Buzzards running all over the place. How would you get the slaves out of here?”
“That’s why we need you,” Helga replied. “We need to know the best way to release the dragons to keep the Skull Buzzards occupied. And, we also need to know what escape route you’d recommend to get all those beasts out of here safely.”
Klemés sat silently for some time, thinking. After a few minutes, he stood up and walked over to the pot he had been stirring. He took a bottle down from the shelf above the hearth. Carrying the bottle back to the table, he set it in front of Helga.
“That is Shark Squeeze,” the old Wood Cow said. “That’s what I’m making in the pot I was stirring. All the cartilage left from the Buzzards daily Roast Mess comes to me. I chop it up with a grinder in my back room, and boil it with some special herbs I grow. When it’s boiled down, what’s left is the strongest glue you’ll ever find. I use it to repair the stone walls of the fortress—once it sets up, it’s stronger than stone itself. The stone will fall apart before that glue wears out.”
“And what’s that got to do with us?” Helga asked.
“When we let the dragons loose, we can open doors so that they’ll naturally run down to the Mess Hall. The smell of Roast Shark will make them fly right into the Buzzard’s dinner! Once the dragons are on their way, we’ll glue the doors shut and seal that entire wing of the fortress off!”
Helga looked at Klemés dumbfounded. “You mean seal the dragons and the Buzzards away together? With no way out?”
“That would be exactly what I mean,” the old Wood Cow laughed. “Seems to me, they deserve each other’s company.”
“Are you sure it will work?” Christer asked.
“Tilk Duraow was built as a fortress,” Klemés explained. “There are only a few entrances and all the doors leading to critical areas of the fortress are made of stone; they’re immensely strong. Once they are closed, they’re designed to be impenetrable. That’s great for defense, but it also means the same doors make an escape-proof trap looked at from a different perspective.”
Helga, Christer, and Klemés exchanged glances. There was a moment of silence. Then, they all slowly nodded.
“Once we have the dragons and Buzzards contained in one wing of the fortress,” Klemés continued, “we can open the cell block gates and let the slaves go free. When that’s finished, we’ll begin moving the slaves out of here. Although we could use the main entrance, I don’t recommend it. Too risky.” Helga and Christer agreed.
“So, we’ll use the escape routes I’ve discovered over the years,” Klemés said. “I’ve got four ways to get slaves out of here. All of them involve squeezing through some tight spots and a fair amount of danger. Not many beasts can go through any of them at one time. Using all the routes, it will take several days to get everyone out of here. No one knows them except me, and no one will be able to find them again, once I close them off, which I’ll do as I leave.”
“In the meantime, we’ll work as fast as we can to get everyone out,” Christer said.
> “And I’ll glue every entrance to the fortress shut,” Klemés said. “With no way in, or out, it won’t matter who comes to visit while our escape is in process.”
“You mean that we’re going to lock ourselves in this place and, essentially, throw away the key?” Christer said slowly.
“Yes,” Klemés said. “Once I’m done with this place, it’ll be no better than a huge chunk of hollow rock. Its days as a prison—or for any other purpose, other than as a grave for its last brazzen of Buzzards—will be over.”
With that somber image in mind, the three Wood Cows sat quietly for a few minutes, staring into the embers of the fire in the hearth.
“By the Ancient Ones,” Helga said at last, “making justice is a nasty business. May this be a step toward ending this tyranny forever.”
“It’s only a nasty business when tyrants refuse to get off the backs of their brothers and sisters,” Klemés replied. “I could have escaped this place long ago,” he observed, “but I stayed because I saw beasts dying on the Granite Hulks every day and knew their replacements were arriving every day. If the High One leaves us only one way to end this terror, that is his choice. Other choices are available.”
“I have one more question,” Helga said. “Is Davison here? Some of the family think he is.”
“He was a prisoner here, once,” Klemés said. “But he was one of the first I helped to escape. No one has heard from him? It’s been five years or so since I got him out of here!”
Helga stared at Klemés. “Five years! There’s been no news of him anywhere—what could have happened to him? He surely would have contacted someone.”
Klemés sighed. “There’s a lot of dangerous miles between here and home,” he said. “Anything could have happened.”
Helga pushed back from the table. “All right,” she declared, “enough talk and worry about things we can’t fix. We’ve got to move.”
Opening the door to his cell, Klemés slipped into the passageway with Helga and Christer following. Leading the way, the ancient Wood Cow walked quickly, but stealthily. The flickering torchlight in the passageway gave the Wood Cow’s mass of white hair a burnished luster as it darted ahead in the semi-darkness. Much more quickly than she’d expected, Helga heard the ghastly, but all too familiar, sound of monitor dragons hissing and snapping. Helga suddenly felt as if the breath of the hideous reptiles was, even at that moment, hot on her back, as it had been during her run with the dragon train. She shuddered. How close she had come to being torn to pieces. “Yes,” she thought, “there may be justice in turning Tilk Duraow into a locked gateway-to-hell.”
“The feeding gate for the dragon pens is over there,” Klemés said, indicating an area to the right of where they were standing. “It’s just down that service passageway from the main kitchen,” he continued. “After the Roast Mess is over, they cart the guts and leftovers down the hall to feed the dragons. The dragons haven’t yet been fed today. They will be ravenously hungry. We’ll open the doors to the kitchen; then the feeding gate to the dragon pens. The dragons will be out of there in a flash, following the smell to the kitchen. There’s many more dragons than there’s room in the kitchen, so they’ll storm on through into the Mess Hall. It will be instant chaos.”
“With the plan in place, each beast undertook a task. Klemés first glued doors closed to guide the dragons surely to the kitchen. Helga, being the most accomplished climber in the group, volunteered to walk atop the dragon pens on the precariously narrow rim, going pen to pen, loosening the latches to release the dragons. Christer took two torches down from their wall-brackets and stood in the passageway, ready to toss the torches down the passageway behind Klemés and Helga as they ran past him, their tasks complete. The torches burning in the hallway would deter any loose monitors from coming after them as they made their retreat.
As Helga prepared to climb to the top of the dragon pens, what had earlier, through the immensely thick stone walls, sounded like a kind of faint or distant metallic “whoof-wank” now was anything but faint or distant. The wild dragons were slashing at their iron pens with teeth and claws, throwing their weight against the fence, trying to break free.
The iron pens rattled so furiously that the stone floor vibrated as if a giant were shaking it. The double whammy of the terrifying snarl-scream-bellow of the dragons and the shaking of the pens had a stunning effect on Helga’s normally clear mind. Climbing up the side of the iron pens, she wasn’t so much scared, as her senses were knocked silly.
With the dragons only separated from her by two-inch thick iron bars, Helga’s stomach churned. But as she reached the top, and began to walk along the top of the pens, balancing on the narrow six-inch wide edge, her mind cleared, and a strange calm settled over her. Later, she told Christer that, “By the time I reached the top of the pens, I had accepted the fact I would likely not live through the assignment. Once I faced that possibility, my task became incredibly clear.” Calmly balancing on the rattling frame of the pen, Helga went pen to pen, throwing open the gates. As each gate opened, the dragons stormed out, and stampeded for the kitchen.
The operation went exactly as planned. Once the dragons were free, complete pandemonimum and chaos broke loose in the kitchen and Mess Hall. Hissing, shrieking, screaming, shattering glass, the rumble of tables being overturned; the success of the operation was palpable as the Wood Cows retraced their steps. Klemés hung somewhat behind, gluing possible escape route doors closed. By the time he was finished, so many heavy stone doors had been closed and forever sealed, that no sounds of the chaotic scene in the kitchen and Mess Hall any longer could be heard.
When the three Wood Cows gathered back in Klemés’ cell, each beast was trembling. No one was smiling. The look on each face told that every beast acknowledged that terror had ended centuries of terror for untold generations of slaves. Each beast alone with his or her thoughts and questions, it was some minutes before they were ready to proceed to the happier task of opening the cellblock gates.
Colonel Snart’s Return
“By the Power of Sparks and Iron, Maev Astuté will be finished!” Fropperdaft shouted above the clanging of his hammer. “And by the Might of My Own Inventions, no beast will stop me!” It was dark, except for the flaming light of the Throne Room’s forge. For several hours, the High One had been alone, working at the forge, turning out one piece of hammered iron after another. His face was hard and cold, his brow dark and heavy. Etched in his angry eyes, was a sharp cruelty formed by his almost constant ill temper over a lifetime.
That he could hammer white-hot iron with all his strength, yet with uncanny, amazingly accurate precision, made the High One laugh gleefully. “Ha-Ha-Ha! Fools! Dunderdolts! They imagine that they can stop me from finishing Maev Astuté—but I am smarter than any of them. No matter what they do, what troubles they cause me; piece by piece, I am inventing what is necessary. Nothing will slow the building project, nothing! My prototype balloon—my precious balloon—stolen! Did that slow the work? NO! I learned from that and turned my attention to designing a new lift for the Shèttings. More slaves make the work go faster. Now I am told that the Shèttings has been destroyed, the Wrack Lord may be dead, and my Skull Buzzard brazzens defeated. Will that slow the work? NO! I have a new invention! I am never out of inventions. It will be better than the lift! Each time they give me bad news, I prove them wrong! They will never awe me, never humble me, never make me fear them.”
He grasped the hammer with both hands as he spoke and commenced banging on a large piece of white-hot iron. There were towering, powerful schemes in his mind. Nothing would stop Maev Astuté from ascending into the heavens at ever-increasing speed. Fropperdaft would be remembered throughout time as the greatest builder of all the High Ones. For centuries, Maev Astuté had crawled into the skies, one level at a time. Those days were now past. Why should he, Fropperdaft, not finish Maev Astuté! He would be forever revered as a god!
This was his mood, when a knock came at the Thro
ne Room door. “Come in!” the High One growled, continuing his work. The door opened and the First Voice of the Most Revered Council entered.
“What is it?” Fropperdaft asked, barely slowing the pace of his work.
“Bad news, Your Greatness,” the First Voice said, with the slightest hint of a tremble.
“Bad news?” Fropperdaft laughed, darkly. “Don’t call it bad news. I’ve had enough of that already. If you must speak, tell me that you’re bringing me a problem I have to solve. That’s what all this so-called ‘bad news’ is, in any event! You, and the rest of my Ministers, are forever twittering about bad news! But, what it really is, is you dimwits giving me a new problem to solve. The most I can say for the Council, is that you have consistenly given me interesting problems to solve. Even those so-called rebels, thinking they have caused me great trouble, don’t know that I can solve whatever problem they give me. Let them see what I do now. Yes, they give me the most interesting problems to solve—which is much better that the endless blathering of my Ministers. So—tell me, what new problem did you bring me!”
As the High One was talking about new problems to solve, his mood changed. Laughing almost hysterically, he nearly worked the bellows out of his moorings, making flames roar in the forge. The white-hot iron he held there grew so hot that it began to melt.
The First Voice, terrified at how the High One might receive the message he carried, choked out his message. “Tilk Duraow has been destroyed by the rebels and all the slaves freed, Dear Lord Reckoner!”
“Taken?” Fropperdaft replied, pausing in his hammering.
“Taken over, Your Greatness, and all the slaves released,” the First Voice answered, shaking violently.