hwrnmnbsol (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hwrnmnbsol) wrote2011-07-01 11:54 pm
hwrnmnbsol) wrote2011-07-01 11:54 pm
Nightworld (7)
They left the mastodon far behind them, having cleaned up the mess they had left behind. They tracked the hose to an encampment of Vlad's creatures that was too well defended to attack, so they slinked around it and plunged deeper into the Blue Warrens. The sound of the river grew ever louder, even though the passages snaked around and doubled back so often that nobody could remember which direction they were headed. Korvina still claimed to know where she was going, but Janosh often wasn't so sure.
When they rested, Georgi and Esmer went off to be by themselves, whispering to each other with heads touching. Bobo and Hodo snoozed while spooning each other, something that nobody found peculiar. Ispil preferred to go and stare blackly into the darkness by himself, which suited the others just fine. That left Janosh and Korvina. Janosh approached the SnowGuard while he was on watch, which meant equal responsibilities toward watching the passage for intruders, and watching Ispil for any signs of homicidal mania.
"What were the Zkarben doing back there?" he asked. "Making a monster?"
"Making a servant," corrected Korvina. "That mastodon would never be able to be much of a fighter again, but it probably could carry heavy loads. It's curious to find the Zkarben so far from home, however. There aren't that many of them, and they're hard to replace."
"The tunnels do seem to have a lot of Vlad's creatures in them," Janosh said. "I was under the impression that this way was clear and safe to travel through, barring the odd monster."
"That's what I thought," said Korvina. "Finding out why I'm wrong is part of what we're down here to do."
After ensuring that everybody got some sleep, except for Ispil who got some dark muttering, Janosh shared out some food and then the group got going again. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't cold in the Blue Warrens; currents of warm air kept the environment hospitable enough to avoid hypothermia, but not so hot that the ice melted. At times the ice overhead creaked and crackled as it shifted, and sometimes small chunks fell to everybody's consternation, but the glacial mass seemed largely solid.
After another half-day's travel (give or take), the noise of the rushing water became so loud as to drown out casual conversation. The tunnel the group was travelling in suddenly opened up, and the glow of light as bright as any suncalf up ahead signaled that something of interest was around the corner. Korvina got down on her hands and knees and crept forward the rest of the way; the others followed suit.
The walls of the passage melted away left and right, and the bottom dropped out of the corridor as well. Janosh peered over an icy ridge and found himself looking down into an open space as big as Stuvitze itself. Here the underside of the glacier had melted away from the bedrock until the ice formed a natural arching roof over a void. Meltwater from points on the glacier upstream had carved a shallow valley into the rock and formed into a raging whitewater river eighty feet across.
"The Cascade," said Korvina softly.
The ice cavern was lit by hundreds of the greenish globes that drifted across the ground and ceiling with no obvious guidance. The floor of the space was a beehive of activity. There were Zkarben going to and fro, and Mu Wolves as well, but there were many other monsters. There were creatures that looked like ants with the heads of lampreys; great ghostly-white fir trees that stomped about in herds and wittered to each other; crystalline puddles that flowed across the landscape, splitting and rejoining as the terrain dictated. There were Redcaps, all jutting jaws and grabby hands, pushing wheelbarrows; a trio of horse heads the size of barn doors slithered along on the same snail-foot, bits in their mouths allowing them to pull a sledge full of ice chunks.
"Look there," said Janosh. By the water's edge lay a half-dozen slender objects made of iron. They were clearly boats of some kind, but they were entirely metallic, and they were enclosed on the top as well as the bottom. Redcaps were crawling over them with more tools trailing long hoses, and some of these made fiery jets that shot sparks as they played over the hulls of these curious boats.
"Pretty," said Ispil, his eyes shining.
"Why do you build a boat like that?" Georgi asked. "It's all made of steel. It'll never float."
"Maybe it on purpose," said Bobo. "Maybe these boats is for sinking."
"Bobo, it best you talk less when there is thinking going on," Hodo said patiently.
"Hodo, it best you shut yap when there is breathing going on," Bobo replied.
"No, wait," said Esmer. "I think Bobo has it right. Maybe these boats *can* go underwater. Then these monsters could get inside them, and ride them down the Cascade and under the glacier."
"And come out in the Saubel," concluded Janosh. "Near Stuvitze."
"It's an invasion," said Korvina firmly. "That's what it's all about. The concentration of monsters on the glacier; the activity in the Blue Warrens. Vlad's gathered together forces from the Valley of the Monsters, and he's using his weird magic to build an army that can attack the Great Valley."
"But why?" asked Georgi.
"Why would Vlad attack the Great Valley, you mean?" Ispil glared at Georgi. "Which one of us is crazy?"
"No, I mean why now? And like this?" Georgi frowned at Ispil, then remembered who he was dealing with.
"I don't know," Janosh said. "But we've got to do something about this."
"How about that?" asked Hodo, pointing out into the middle of the ice cavern. The others craned their necks to see what he was talking about.
A slender pillar rose from a square foundation of dark rock in the middle of the open space. It stretched up hundreds of feet and met a crossbar of supporting beams that were pressed up against the underside of the ice ceiling. Above the beams was a deep, ugly fissure, and crumblings of ice threatened to drop down to the stone floor and crush anybody unlucky enough to be passing underneath.
"Look," said Bobo. "There no transverse bracing, Hodo. This job designed by dum-dums; it very susceptible to shear forces."
"That right, Bobo," said Hodo. "And also long column probably buckle under compressive shockwave. Vlad has obvious not heard of Young's Modulus!" The two brothers snorted at Hodo's little joke before realizing the others were staring at them.
"What?" said Hodo suspiciously.
"Oh, they just think we too dumb to talk structural engineering, Hodo," sniffed Bobo.
"Well, they can think again," said Hodo. "When we boys, me and Bobo have to decide on career path: join daddy in Gune & Sons design firm, or hit people with sticks. Bobo, sometimes do you think about road not taken?"
"Yeah," said Bobo wistfully. "That great place for ambush."
"Okay, so you're engineering idiot savants," said Esmer, treading on uncertain ground. "What's so interesting about that column?"
"It slap-dash job thrown up to patch up hole in ceiling," said Bobo dismissively.
"Yes, Bobo," said Hodo. "Monsters stink at making things. Look at sinky boat hulls, for instance. Angle of attack on bow planes poor because…."
"Yes yes yes," interrupted Esmer. "About the column. It's holding the roof up? Could we bring the roof down?"
"Uh, duh!" said Hodo, sharing a smirk with his brother. "Welcome to what columns do!"
"Yeah!" said Bobo. "Bringing column down not hard. Just pull on it hard enough and it slip right off base. Then run real fast because ice coming down quick."
"Those guys down there do the job," mused Hodo. He pointed at a team of enormous prehistoric oxen. They had needles and tubes snaking out of their skulls; a job had clearly been done of making them into zombies. They were pulling a pallet heaped with steel plates down to the water's edge, guided along by a pair of redcaps. The path of their slow progress would take them right by the column.
"Throw chain around that base, hook it to team, and heave," said Bobo, nodding. "Goodbye roof."
Korvina looked at Janosh. "Goodbye invasion."
Janosh got up and brushed off his knees. "How do we get down there?" he asked.
**
A plan was quickly devised and implemented. Janosh, Ispil, Bobo and Hodo found themselves looking out of a low crevice onto the floor of the ice cavern. The base of the column was only a hundred yards away, and the team of zombie oxen was next to it. Hodo crawled up next to Janosh. "Okay, now what we do?" he asked for the third time.
Janosh sighed. "We wait for the distraction that Team Hotness will make," he said.
Bobo snorted. "That cheap name," he said. "Georgi not deserving to be called 'hotness'."
Hodo slugged Bobo in the shoulder. "Georgi not *part* of Team Hotness. Georgi is *with* Team Hotness," he said. He turned back to Janosh. "Hey, what our team name?" he asked.
"Team Expendable," replied Janosh.
"Oh, cool," said Bobo.
"Everybody shut up; the lights in my head are getting brighter," whined Ispil.
From further down the cavern, a shrill whistle pierced the air, and Georgi could be heard piping up a storm. "OH, BOYS," called Esmer's voice loudly. Janosh put a hand over Hodo's eyes. "Don't look," he reminded everybody. "Nobody look."
Georgi's piping turned into a lively Gypsy number. Janosh forced himself to look at the monsters populating the floor of the cavern. Esmer had the attention of everybody, even the things that weren't even remotely human. They were all turned in her direction, heads or other sensory apparatus angled towards her position high in the ice wall. The monsters stood stock still. A Zkarben gaped. Somewhere in the space, somebody dropped a crowbar on the hard stone.
"Let's go," said Janosh, scrambling to his feet. Herding his team-mates (except for Ispil, who yanked his arm away from Janosh's touch) into a jog, the Meister's son led the way across the floor towards the oxen team. He dodged around a drooling toad-creature and brushed past a stand of the walking albino trees before closing on the zombie animals. Their redcap guides had been left behind, their conical hats tipped back comically as they watched the show, but the zombie animals plodded onwards.
"Take the chain!" Janosh shouted to Bobo and Hodo. As the Gune brothers began fiddling with uncoupling the drag chain from the sledge, Janosh and Ispil made for the oxen. They were pulling with all their might, but the animals weren't breathing heavily; in fact, they weren't breathing at all. A faintly luminous green sweat rolled down their flanks; the tang of the liquid in the air made Janosh's eyes water. Each zombie had a vat of fluid just like that sweat mounted on a platform yoked over their shoulders; Janosh was disturbed to see that the platform was bolted directly into the oxen's flesh.
"Oh, very nice, really excellent," whispered Ispil, climbing all over the oxen and examining their exposed brains. A large tube of the green goo piped directly into their brainstems, and a forest of silver needles thrust into the grey flesh made the oxen's skulls look like porcupines. "Fuck the skull of Vlad. Most extraordinary." Ispil tapped one of the needles; the oxen sneezed.
"Hey!" Janosh whirled to see nobody behind him; looking down, he saw the two redcaps, still blinking stupidly. "Whatcha think you doin', bub?"
Janosh drew his sword. "Bobo? Hodo?!" he called. "Time is short!"
"Aw, crap!" screeched a redcap. The two of them pulled short hammers off their belts.
"Get a load of the fancy highborn," snorted Bobo, unwrapping one end of the heavy chain from the abandoned sledge. "He think screeching can hurry things along."
"Show what he know," sneered Hodo, dragging a loop of the massive links towards the column. "You can't rush genius."
"Knees!" yelled one of the recaps, circling around Janosh to flank him. "Drag the biggun down!" His companion swung at Janosh's kneecap, but Janosh jumped over the hammer. A moment later he felt a searing pain in his other thigh; the redcap behind him had sunk his prominent jaws into his thigh. "Ispil!" shouted Janosh, clubbing the redcap with his sword hilt until the creature released him. "I need some help."
"Busy," said Ispil distractedly. He twisted a brain-needle thoughtfully, then jerked back in surprise as the oxen lowed loudly.
Janosh cut viciously at the redcaps, but his swing was too high; it cut the points of both their hats off neatly. The dwarves felt their damaged caps, and then their faces turned beet-red with rage. "No, seriously!" called Janosh. "I need some help here!"
"Yes, of course," replied Ispil absently. "Just a moment." He made a careful adjustment to all four needles in quick succession; the oxen began to veer off to the left. Ispil smiled. "Makes sense," he mused.
Janosh chopped off the weapon-arm of one of the redcaps, but the other one was on his back, one arm around his neck and the other trying to play hammer-and-anvil with his skull. "ISPIL!!" he gagged.
"Bust my balls with an ice-saw," swore Ispil, turning away from his studies. He stomped over to where Janosh was lying, breathing heavily. He was covered with bruises and scratches. Two very recently dead redcaps lay in pieces next to him. Ispil glared down at him.
"What?" Ispil demanded. "What was so important that you just *needed* to have me here?"
Janosh panted. "Nothing, I guess," he said.
"Nothing. Ha." Ispil shook his head in disgust. "This is why I kill people."
Bobo and Hodo came running up. "Okay, um, good news and bad news," said Bobo.
"Good news: chain is ready to go," said Hodo. He and his brother high-fived.
Janosh nodded. "And?" he asked.
"You have to ask 'what's the bad news'," moped Bobo.
"You're very close to imploding," Ispil warned.
"Oh, all right," sulked Bobo. "Bad news: oxen are moving slow. Won't take up the slack for another five minutes. Plus, monsters is waking up."
Janosh looked around and saw the problem. Some spidery creatures had climbed the wall to menace Team Hotness – creatures that likely as not didn't have any eyes, and so couldn't be mesmerized. Korvina was dealing with it, but the dancing had stopped. All the monsters on the cavern floor were coming out of their trances, shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes.
"Oh, brother," said Janosh. "Boys, it's been nice knowing you. Well… not 'nice' exactly."
"We know what you mean," said Hodo, drawing his sword and standing back to back with his brother.
"Yeah," said Bobo. "We had some good times. Well, not so much really 'good'…."
A crablike monstrosity advanced. "Ispil," said Janosh, "I want you to know that I think you're nuts, really batshit insane, and you frighten me deeply. I wanted you to know how I feel about you before it was too late." He looked over his shoulder. "Ispil?" he asked.
"One side, pedestrians!" snarled Ispil. Working the levers in the oxen brains like stick-shifts, he bore down on the largest needles. With a bellow the oxen team charged forward, plowing the crab-monster under their enormous hooves. Janosh and the Gune brothers dove out of the way just in time as the oxen galloped ahead, wreaking destruction around them. The slack went out of the heavy chain and it snapped as it went taut on the pillar. With a jerk the base of the metal rod jumped off its foundation and began rumbling after the zombie oxen. The cap of the column fell away.
Bobo and Hodo watched the column fall. "Timberrrrr," said Bobo softly. The column splashed across the Cascade and landed amidships on one of the metal sausages being built, cutting it in half and scattering the work-crews.
Janosh watched the roof. Clumps of ice began to fall out of the crevice, and then a few more. A lip of ice sagged downwards. Janosh grabbed the Gune brothers by the collars and yanked them into a run after Ispil.
They caught up to the maniac. The oxen had plowed into the wall of the cavern at full tilt and were now chunks of sour-smelling meat. Ispil was looking a little wobbly, but he was as happy as Janosh had ever seen him. "Woo!" shouted Ispil, pumping a fist.
"Oh, crap," said Hodo. The cave-in was stabilizing. Yes, the ceiling had sagged dangerously, and bits of ice were continuing to drop down and splatter on the ground. But the rumbling was slowing, and the ceiling wasn't dropping any lower.
"Maybe strength of superstructure in tension was higher than previously suspected," mused Hodo.
"Or weight of hole-riddled media was over-estimated," suggested Bobo.
"Sounds like you boys fucked up," Ispil said evenly.
"We should go," said Janosh. There were monsters coming.
"I hate when people fuck up." Ispil was very, very quiet. That, even Janosh knew, wasn't a good thing.
"Oh, come on now, let's do this later," said Janosh.
"REALLY HATE IT BAD," raged Ispil. He staggered out into the cavern, heedless of the approaching monsters.
"Yeah, you go hate it over there," said Bobo quietly.
"HATE YOU! HATE YOU!" screamed Ispil, pointing two middle fingers at the vault's ceiling. This was interesting enough to the monsters that they drew up short, peering to see what Ispil was pointing at before biting the crazy human's head off.
There was a loud cracking sound from overhead. "HATE! YOU!" shrieked Ispil. The ice began to avalanche down again.
"Oh yeah!" shouted Hodo. "Hate has a shearing stress!"
"We run now," suggested Bobo, pulling Hodo into the exit passage. But Janosh was running the other way. As ice began to shower down generally across the ceiling of the cavern, Janosh ducked and dodged pieces as he ran after Ispil. Ispil stood in the middle of a terrified knot of monsters, all gaping at the ceiling falling down on them. Ispil's face was exultant.
"Hate you," he whispered beatifically as the ceiling fell down. He didn't even protest as Janosh slung him over his shoulder and began to run.
A curtain of falling ice swallowed them both.
When they rested, Georgi and Esmer went off to be by themselves, whispering to each other with heads touching. Bobo and Hodo snoozed while spooning each other, something that nobody found peculiar. Ispil preferred to go and stare blackly into the darkness by himself, which suited the others just fine. That left Janosh and Korvina. Janosh approached the SnowGuard while he was on watch, which meant equal responsibilities toward watching the passage for intruders, and watching Ispil for any signs of homicidal mania.
"What were the Zkarben doing back there?" he asked. "Making a monster?"
"Making a servant," corrected Korvina. "That mastodon would never be able to be much of a fighter again, but it probably could carry heavy loads. It's curious to find the Zkarben so far from home, however. There aren't that many of them, and they're hard to replace."
"The tunnels do seem to have a lot of Vlad's creatures in them," Janosh said. "I was under the impression that this way was clear and safe to travel through, barring the odd monster."
"That's what I thought," said Korvina. "Finding out why I'm wrong is part of what we're down here to do."
After ensuring that everybody got some sleep, except for Ispil who got some dark muttering, Janosh shared out some food and then the group got going again. He was pleasantly surprised to find that it wasn't cold in the Blue Warrens; currents of warm air kept the environment hospitable enough to avoid hypothermia, but not so hot that the ice melted. At times the ice overhead creaked and crackled as it shifted, and sometimes small chunks fell to everybody's consternation, but the glacial mass seemed largely solid.
After another half-day's travel (give or take), the noise of the rushing water became so loud as to drown out casual conversation. The tunnel the group was travelling in suddenly opened up, and the glow of light as bright as any suncalf up ahead signaled that something of interest was around the corner. Korvina got down on her hands and knees and crept forward the rest of the way; the others followed suit.
The walls of the passage melted away left and right, and the bottom dropped out of the corridor as well. Janosh peered over an icy ridge and found himself looking down into an open space as big as Stuvitze itself. Here the underside of the glacier had melted away from the bedrock until the ice formed a natural arching roof over a void. Meltwater from points on the glacier upstream had carved a shallow valley into the rock and formed into a raging whitewater river eighty feet across.
"The Cascade," said Korvina softly.
The ice cavern was lit by hundreds of the greenish globes that drifted across the ground and ceiling with no obvious guidance. The floor of the space was a beehive of activity. There were Zkarben going to and fro, and Mu Wolves as well, but there were many other monsters. There were creatures that looked like ants with the heads of lampreys; great ghostly-white fir trees that stomped about in herds and wittered to each other; crystalline puddles that flowed across the landscape, splitting and rejoining as the terrain dictated. There were Redcaps, all jutting jaws and grabby hands, pushing wheelbarrows; a trio of horse heads the size of barn doors slithered along on the same snail-foot, bits in their mouths allowing them to pull a sledge full of ice chunks.
"Look there," said Janosh. By the water's edge lay a half-dozen slender objects made of iron. They were clearly boats of some kind, but they were entirely metallic, and they were enclosed on the top as well as the bottom. Redcaps were crawling over them with more tools trailing long hoses, and some of these made fiery jets that shot sparks as they played over the hulls of these curious boats.
"Pretty," said Ispil, his eyes shining.
"Why do you build a boat like that?" Georgi asked. "It's all made of steel. It'll never float."
"Maybe it on purpose," said Bobo. "Maybe these boats is for sinking."
"Bobo, it best you talk less when there is thinking going on," Hodo said patiently.
"Hodo, it best you shut yap when there is breathing going on," Bobo replied.
"No, wait," said Esmer. "I think Bobo has it right. Maybe these boats *can* go underwater. Then these monsters could get inside them, and ride them down the Cascade and under the glacier."
"And come out in the Saubel," concluded Janosh. "Near Stuvitze."
"It's an invasion," said Korvina firmly. "That's what it's all about. The concentration of monsters on the glacier; the activity in the Blue Warrens. Vlad's gathered together forces from the Valley of the Monsters, and he's using his weird magic to build an army that can attack the Great Valley."
"But why?" asked Georgi.
"Why would Vlad attack the Great Valley, you mean?" Ispil glared at Georgi. "Which one of us is crazy?"
"No, I mean why now? And like this?" Georgi frowned at Ispil, then remembered who he was dealing with.
"I don't know," Janosh said. "But we've got to do something about this."
"How about that?" asked Hodo, pointing out into the middle of the ice cavern. The others craned their necks to see what he was talking about.
A slender pillar rose from a square foundation of dark rock in the middle of the open space. It stretched up hundreds of feet and met a crossbar of supporting beams that were pressed up against the underside of the ice ceiling. Above the beams was a deep, ugly fissure, and crumblings of ice threatened to drop down to the stone floor and crush anybody unlucky enough to be passing underneath.
"Look," said Bobo. "There no transverse bracing, Hodo. This job designed by dum-dums; it very susceptible to shear forces."
"That right, Bobo," said Hodo. "And also long column probably buckle under compressive shockwave. Vlad has obvious not heard of Young's Modulus!" The two brothers snorted at Hodo's little joke before realizing the others were staring at them.
"What?" said Hodo suspiciously.
"Oh, they just think we too dumb to talk structural engineering, Hodo," sniffed Bobo.
"Well, they can think again," said Hodo. "When we boys, me and Bobo have to decide on career path: join daddy in Gune & Sons design firm, or hit people with sticks. Bobo, sometimes do you think about road not taken?"
"Yeah," said Bobo wistfully. "That great place for ambush."
"Okay, so you're engineering idiot savants," said Esmer, treading on uncertain ground. "What's so interesting about that column?"
"It slap-dash job thrown up to patch up hole in ceiling," said Bobo dismissively.
"Yes, Bobo," said Hodo. "Monsters stink at making things. Look at sinky boat hulls, for instance. Angle of attack on bow planes poor because…."
"Yes yes yes," interrupted Esmer. "About the column. It's holding the roof up? Could we bring the roof down?"
"Uh, duh!" said Hodo, sharing a smirk with his brother. "Welcome to what columns do!"
"Yeah!" said Bobo. "Bringing column down not hard. Just pull on it hard enough and it slip right off base. Then run real fast because ice coming down quick."
"Those guys down there do the job," mused Hodo. He pointed at a team of enormous prehistoric oxen. They had needles and tubes snaking out of their skulls; a job had clearly been done of making them into zombies. They were pulling a pallet heaped with steel plates down to the water's edge, guided along by a pair of redcaps. The path of their slow progress would take them right by the column.
"Throw chain around that base, hook it to team, and heave," said Bobo, nodding. "Goodbye roof."
Korvina looked at Janosh. "Goodbye invasion."
Janosh got up and brushed off his knees. "How do we get down there?" he asked.
**
A plan was quickly devised and implemented. Janosh, Ispil, Bobo and Hodo found themselves looking out of a low crevice onto the floor of the ice cavern. The base of the column was only a hundred yards away, and the team of zombie oxen was next to it. Hodo crawled up next to Janosh. "Okay, now what we do?" he asked for the third time.
Janosh sighed. "We wait for the distraction that Team Hotness will make," he said.
Bobo snorted. "That cheap name," he said. "Georgi not deserving to be called 'hotness'."
Hodo slugged Bobo in the shoulder. "Georgi not *part* of Team Hotness. Georgi is *with* Team Hotness," he said. He turned back to Janosh. "Hey, what our team name?" he asked.
"Team Expendable," replied Janosh.
"Oh, cool," said Bobo.
"Everybody shut up; the lights in my head are getting brighter," whined Ispil.
From further down the cavern, a shrill whistle pierced the air, and Georgi could be heard piping up a storm. "OH, BOYS," called Esmer's voice loudly. Janosh put a hand over Hodo's eyes. "Don't look," he reminded everybody. "Nobody look."
Georgi's piping turned into a lively Gypsy number. Janosh forced himself to look at the monsters populating the floor of the cavern. Esmer had the attention of everybody, even the things that weren't even remotely human. They were all turned in her direction, heads or other sensory apparatus angled towards her position high in the ice wall. The monsters stood stock still. A Zkarben gaped. Somewhere in the space, somebody dropped a crowbar on the hard stone.
"Let's go," said Janosh, scrambling to his feet. Herding his team-mates (except for Ispil, who yanked his arm away from Janosh's touch) into a jog, the Meister's son led the way across the floor towards the oxen team. He dodged around a drooling toad-creature and brushed past a stand of the walking albino trees before closing on the zombie animals. Their redcap guides had been left behind, their conical hats tipped back comically as they watched the show, but the zombie animals plodded onwards.
"Take the chain!" Janosh shouted to Bobo and Hodo. As the Gune brothers began fiddling with uncoupling the drag chain from the sledge, Janosh and Ispil made for the oxen. They were pulling with all their might, but the animals weren't breathing heavily; in fact, they weren't breathing at all. A faintly luminous green sweat rolled down their flanks; the tang of the liquid in the air made Janosh's eyes water. Each zombie had a vat of fluid just like that sweat mounted on a platform yoked over their shoulders; Janosh was disturbed to see that the platform was bolted directly into the oxen's flesh.
"Oh, very nice, really excellent," whispered Ispil, climbing all over the oxen and examining their exposed brains. A large tube of the green goo piped directly into their brainstems, and a forest of silver needles thrust into the grey flesh made the oxen's skulls look like porcupines. "Fuck the skull of Vlad. Most extraordinary." Ispil tapped one of the needles; the oxen sneezed.
"Hey!" Janosh whirled to see nobody behind him; looking down, he saw the two redcaps, still blinking stupidly. "Whatcha think you doin', bub?"
Janosh drew his sword. "Bobo? Hodo?!" he called. "Time is short!"
"Aw, crap!" screeched a redcap. The two of them pulled short hammers off their belts.
"Get a load of the fancy highborn," snorted Bobo, unwrapping one end of the heavy chain from the abandoned sledge. "He think screeching can hurry things along."
"Show what he know," sneered Hodo, dragging a loop of the massive links towards the column. "You can't rush genius."
"Knees!" yelled one of the recaps, circling around Janosh to flank him. "Drag the biggun down!" His companion swung at Janosh's kneecap, but Janosh jumped over the hammer. A moment later he felt a searing pain in his other thigh; the redcap behind him had sunk his prominent jaws into his thigh. "Ispil!" shouted Janosh, clubbing the redcap with his sword hilt until the creature released him. "I need some help."
"Busy," said Ispil distractedly. He twisted a brain-needle thoughtfully, then jerked back in surprise as the oxen lowed loudly.
Janosh cut viciously at the redcaps, but his swing was too high; it cut the points of both their hats off neatly. The dwarves felt their damaged caps, and then their faces turned beet-red with rage. "No, seriously!" called Janosh. "I need some help here!"
"Yes, of course," replied Ispil absently. "Just a moment." He made a careful adjustment to all four needles in quick succession; the oxen began to veer off to the left. Ispil smiled. "Makes sense," he mused.
Janosh chopped off the weapon-arm of one of the redcaps, but the other one was on his back, one arm around his neck and the other trying to play hammer-and-anvil with his skull. "ISPIL!!" he gagged.
"Bust my balls with an ice-saw," swore Ispil, turning away from his studies. He stomped over to where Janosh was lying, breathing heavily. He was covered with bruises and scratches. Two very recently dead redcaps lay in pieces next to him. Ispil glared down at him.
"What?" Ispil demanded. "What was so important that you just *needed* to have me here?"
Janosh panted. "Nothing, I guess," he said.
"Nothing. Ha." Ispil shook his head in disgust. "This is why I kill people."
Bobo and Hodo came running up. "Okay, um, good news and bad news," said Bobo.
"Good news: chain is ready to go," said Hodo. He and his brother high-fived.
Janosh nodded. "And?" he asked.
"You have to ask 'what's the bad news'," moped Bobo.
"You're very close to imploding," Ispil warned.
"Oh, all right," sulked Bobo. "Bad news: oxen are moving slow. Won't take up the slack for another five minutes. Plus, monsters is waking up."
Janosh looked around and saw the problem. Some spidery creatures had climbed the wall to menace Team Hotness – creatures that likely as not didn't have any eyes, and so couldn't be mesmerized. Korvina was dealing with it, but the dancing had stopped. All the monsters on the cavern floor were coming out of their trances, shaking their heads and rubbing their eyes.
"Oh, brother," said Janosh. "Boys, it's been nice knowing you. Well… not 'nice' exactly."
"We know what you mean," said Hodo, drawing his sword and standing back to back with his brother.
"Yeah," said Bobo. "We had some good times. Well, not so much really 'good'…."
A crablike monstrosity advanced. "Ispil," said Janosh, "I want you to know that I think you're nuts, really batshit insane, and you frighten me deeply. I wanted you to know how I feel about you before it was too late." He looked over his shoulder. "Ispil?" he asked.
"One side, pedestrians!" snarled Ispil. Working the levers in the oxen brains like stick-shifts, he bore down on the largest needles. With a bellow the oxen team charged forward, plowing the crab-monster under their enormous hooves. Janosh and the Gune brothers dove out of the way just in time as the oxen galloped ahead, wreaking destruction around them. The slack went out of the heavy chain and it snapped as it went taut on the pillar. With a jerk the base of the metal rod jumped off its foundation and began rumbling after the zombie oxen. The cap of the column fell away.
Bobo and Hodo watched the column fall. "Timberrrrr," said Bobo softly. The column splashed across the Cascade and landed amidships on one of the metal sausages being built, cutting it in half and scattering the work-crews.
Janosh watched the roof. Clumps of ice began to fall out of the crevice, and then a few more. A lip of ice sagged downwards. Janosh grabbed the Gune brothers by the collars and yanked them into a run after Ispil.
They caught up to the maniac. The oxen had plowed into the wall of the cavern at full tilt and were now chunks of sour-smelling meat. Ispil was looking a little wobbly, but he was as happy as Janosh had ever seen him. "Woo!" shouted Ispil, pumping a fist.
"Oh, crap," said Hodo. The cave-in was stabilizing. Yes, the ceiling had sagged dangerously, and bits of ice were continuing to drop down and splatter on the ground. But the rumbling was slowing, and the ceiling wasn't dropping any lower.
"Maybe strength of superstructure in tension was higher than previously suspected," mused Hodo.
"Or weight of hole-riddled media was over-estimated," suggested Bobo.
"Sounds like you boys fucked up," Ispil said evenly.
"We should go," said Janosh. There were monsters coming.
"I hate when people fuck up." Ispil was very, very quiet. That, even Janosh knew, wasn't a good thing.
"Oh, come on now, let's do this later," said Janosh.
"REALLY HATE IT BAD," raged Ispil. He staggered out into the cavern, heedless of the approaching monsters.
"Yeah, you go hate it over there," said Bobo quietly.
"HATE YOU! HATE YOU!" screamed Ispil, pointing two middle fingers at the vault's ceiling. This was interesting enough to the monsters that they drew up short, peering to see what Ispil was pointing at before biting the crazy human's head off.
There was a loud cracking sound from overhead. "HATE! YOU!" shrieked Ispil. The ice began to avalanche down again.
"Oh yeah!" shouted Hodo. "Hate has a shearing stress!"
"We run now," suggested Bobo, pulling Hodo into the exit passage. But Janosh was running the other way. As ice began to shower down generally across the ceiling of the cavern, Janosh ducked and dodged pieces as he ran after Ispil. Ispil stood in the middle of a terrified knot of monsters, all gaping at the ceiling falling down on them. Ispil's face was exultant.
"Hate you," he whispered beatifically as the ceiling fell down. He didn't even protest as Janosh slung him over his shoulder and began to run.
A curtain of falling ice swallowed them both.