Vol.6, Ch.3, P.9
With spirit and stamina replenished, it was time to get busy. Quickly, I took up the ham’s wrappings and inspected them. Paper sleek with fat and oil—perfect. Eagerly, I got to shredding the sheets into narrow strips.
“Might have a knack for this, if I say so myself,” I murmured, as shrrat, shrrat went on the shredding. Next, I twisted and tied all the strips into a single, slick string. Big and burly though I was, such craft was none too delicate for my fingers. Perhaps I’d got all those years of swain-drudgery to thank for it.
Soon enough, it was finished: a long fuse of oiled paper. Very right, indeed: this rebel was about to set off some fireworks of his own, right here in this pantry. Of course, letting foodstuffs fall to ruin is never in my tastes, especially in such quantity, but there was no helping that.
Resolved, I then rushed over to the grains and produced from my pocket a blasting can—that is, the very same souvenir from Myrd that I’d saved. And after placing it within an opened sack of flour, I slipped inside the can one end of the fuse, and ran the other across a surface nearby.
This I left alone for a while as I then bustled about the pantry, collecting some nails into a pouch, tying my two “borrowed” lengths of rope about my waist, and making a terrible but intended mess over at the oils. And after gathering the crate-planks I’d pulled apart prior, I returned to the far end of the fuse as it sat ready.
“…Now or never,” I rasped to myself, as I grabbed a striker and a shard of flint. And then—flick! flack!—I struck some sparks unto the tip of the fuse. They took, and in not a moment, a flame was dancing upon and nipping away at the oily string. Like a candlelight it was: small, lazy, and altogether flimsy of force; but as it slowly burnt, it did not abate.
I looked at the rest of the fuse. I’d wrought it rather long. A little over half a passus, to be more precise. Thoughts raced.
“Half an hour, they said?”
Half an hour, indeed. Only, that was some while ago. Ten, twelve minutes now remained, I measured, till the soot-steel was to show up borne upon plank and shoulder. And at the rate it was burning, I reckoned with my naked eye that the fuse-flame would find the can just a little later than that. But that was fine enough. There was small need to be so punctual.
“Well, no turning back now,” I spurred myself. And after making my last preparations, I disappeared from the pantry.
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Ten minutes were almost up. There in the garth was I stiffly stooped, hiding myself amidst the shrubbery as best I could.
This place, too, had I noted when we were first guided through on our way to the parley. To picture things more pertinently here, the studitōrium was a complex of buildings; and sat at its centre was an open-air garth, encircled on all four sides by cloisters at ground level and high-rising walls above that. The garth itself, meanwhile, was greater in girth and grander in greenery than the more usual specimens elsewhere. It was even appointed with large and luscious trees—giving me quite the cover from any eye that might be watching from the higher storeys.
“I’ll be familiar with you yet, surely…” I murmured, as in my sight there spanned an outside stairway. At the eastern end of the garth it was, not far from the pantry passageway; and up along the building wall it ran, occasionally landing at doorways that led into each storey—but up and on up to the fourth and final floor it continued, where I guessed the command post in question was to be situated… and whither the soot-steel was like to be carried.
There were other stairways about, of course. To wit, those inside the buildings themselves. But there’s no use taking them. Or rather, no help; not with all the sentries and patrols posted higher up. Nay, if I must get past them and up there, then this stairway in the garth was my best chance, if not my only.
“Let’s see. Up a floor first, and then…” I muttered on, ordering the thoughts and ideas dancing in my pate. Meanwhile, I peered up at the higher storeys. Even whence I couched could some foes be found through the foliage. There they were, on the third and fourth levels of the buildings all about, revealing themselves at whiles as they patrolled past the windows… meaning, I grimly guessed, that there ought be many more of them lurking that I couldn’t see, especially with the appointed time drawing now so near.
A reckless rush thither would have me spotted and surrounded in the blink, I dared not doubt. Nay, this needed a plan; some panick to pry open a path to the soot-steel. Hence why I’d not been idle since departing the pantry. In that sparse span of time, I’d put together some… “surprises”, let’s say. A few were to be seen right now: holes that I’d hollowed out here in the garth’s turf with the planks from the pantry. They weren’t terribly gaping, mind; just four-odd palmī in depth each. But that ought suffice for my purposes.
As I played out in my mind the things soon to ensue, my ears caught echoing from the cloisters many clinks and clanks in concert.
“…There’s our parade.”
And none too late. In a moment, a train of men came marching in from the north-eastern corridors. Slow and steady they came, and with much caution, despite the safety of the studitōrium. And they numbered many. Vanguard, rearguard—all sides were attended. For at their centre were four men bearing a timber board. Upon this was a sight much like before: a long, canvas-clad object bound tight to the board by many coils of rope. But unlike last time, one end of the canvas was covered in what seemed like…
“…Soot.”
Indeed, there it was at last: my missing weapon. And not some counterfeit of it, either. There was no proving this, of course, save a feeling in my gut that truly, beneath the haphazard bundles of cloth, there lay the sword of scything soot.
The wheels in my head quickened. If there my weapon was, then I should like very much to pounce and plunder it back. But the fact remained that it was bundled and bound, like some devilry sealed and destined for the exorcists. And there was yet the score of escorts to consider, to say nothing of the men already posted aplenty in this complex. No question about it: lunge after it now, and I’d be a wolf caught in a storm of lions.
Steady, Rolf, I checked myself. The soot-steel’s near, but fumble here, and it’s farewell for ever.
Impatience stayed, I turned my attention to the entirety of the train of men, which, after a while, began pouring into the garth from its northern access. And then, up the outside stairs they went. The vanguard, however, slowed as they looked back. The four board-bearers, saddled with the slab of wolfsteel on their shoulders, were grimacing and groaning as they strove their way up the first steps.
An evil sight it was. But I kept calm. “…Any moment now,” I muttered.
And sure enough, in ten-odd seconds, my patience paid off—as an explosion thundered through the air.
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