The Lady Bruze frowned. “Can’t throw rocks at Clout! Clout Highbulp now!”
“Nobody tol’ him so, though,” little Pert reasoned. “So maybe okay throw rocks.”
“Bad idea!” Bruze snapped. “Pert hush!”
“Go sit on tack, Lady Bruze,” Pert suggested.
Blip and Tunk were back, then, just outside the grate. Behind them they dragged a long, slender pole of pliant willow wood. “Fling-thing broke,” Tunk reported. “Devasta … smither … all busted up. Got piece of it, though.”
Ignoring the combat going on just beyond, several gully dwarves squirmed through the grate and studied the pole. The thing was nearly twenty feet long, shaped like a sapling with all its branches trimmed off. The remains of leather lashings hung from its ends.
“How this thing work?” several wondered out loud.
Gandy paced the length of the pole, studying it. “Maybe plant it,” he decided. “Then bend it over for throw rocks.”
“Plant it where?” Bron puzzled.
“Right there,” Gandy pointed at a mound of debris. “Where rocks are.”
“Okay,” Bron said. With others helping, he lugged the pole to the top of the mound, and used his broadsword to force a gap between stones there. A half dozen gully dwarves raised the pole upright. It swayed this way and that.
“Other end up,” Scrib said. “Plant big end, not little end.”
“Okay.”
They turned the pole and thrust its butt into the hole Bron had made. It fit tightly, reluctantly, but with six or seven pairs of hands working on it, it finally settled in with a satisfying thunk.
Bron picked up a large stone, it was almost as big as he was, then paused, frowning at the tall shaft. “How fasten rock for throw?”
Scrib puzzled over the problem for a moment, then turned and grasped old Gandy by an arm and a leg. Unceremoniously, he flipped the Grand Notioner upside down and peeled off his robe. “Use this,” he said, holding the empty robe aloft. “Make sack. Rock sack for fling-thing.”
Gandy, naked now except for a tattered rag around his loins, got to his feet, muttering angrily.
With the robe and some bits of thong, Tunk started up the staff. It shivered and swayed, throwing him off. “Need a hand here,” he said.
Having nothing better to do, seven or eight gully dwarves began climbing the upright pole. Others, momentarily losing interest, wandered about the fringes of the battlefield, picking up whatever caught their eyes-a few knives and short swords, an axe of two, a leather boot …
Under the weight of ascending Aghar, the willow staff swayed and began to bend. By the time most of them were halfway up, the pole was bent in a tight arc and its tip was only a few feet from the ground.
Bron grabbed the vibrating tip, clinging with one hand, while the swaying pole swung him this way and that. “High enough!” he barked. “Tie it on!”
Obediently, the gang on the pole clung where they were, and Gandy’s robe was passed up to them. With thongs, they secured its sleeves to the pole, then a brigade of helpers handed up a stone. Those on the staff wrestled the stone into place and dropped it into the open top of the fluttering robe. It fell through, and out the bottom, taking one or two gully dwarves with it.
“Oops,” Tunk said.
“Need more thong, tie up end of sack,” Blip suggested. “Anybody got more thong?”
As one, those crowding the top of the bent pole bailed off, and those dangling from its underside let go, all of them searching for bits of thong.
The pole, released, whistled upright. Bron, still clinging to its very end, found himself flying-tumbling through the air, over the heads of the men locked in mortal combat below, and the great portal of the tower loomed to meet him.
Somewhere behind him, Scrib stared, wide-eyed. “Fling-thing work pretty good,” he said.
“That not rock!” Pert shrilled. “That Bron!”
“Pretty good shot, though,” several of the gully dwarves observed.
Scrib found his chalk and got busy, scrawling doodles on his slate. He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he had come to the realization that when something momentous, or at least unusual and interesting, like Bron flying through the air, occurred, squiggles should be drawn to commemorate it.
Making up squiggles as he went along, Scrib wrote it down.
Gandy leaned on his mop handle staff, gazing upward sadly. The breeze was cold on his naked old hide. High above him, his robe whipped and fluttered like a dirty blue flag, and the Grand Notioner didn’t have the slightest notion how to get it back.
Encouraged by their success, Tunk and Blip rounded up several of their reluctant peers and began climbing the fling-pole again. This time when they reached Gandy’s robe, about the time it neared the ground, they tied off the bottom of it with cord and filled it with fifty pounds of gravel. Then they all piled off and the pole snapped upright. The load of rock took the momentum and continued it, arcing toward the base of the tower, where fierce fighting was going on.
The problem was that the load of gravel, once confined to Gandy’s robe, stayed there. When it took flight, propelled by the released pole, it took both robe and pole with it.
“Nice shot,” Scrib said, adding more doodles to his slate. “Can’t do it again, though.”
“Quit foolin’ ’round!” the Lady Bruze demanded. “Le’s go find Clout!”
“Clout a twit,” several around her pointed out.
“Highbulp, though,” the Lady Lidda said. “Okay, ever’body go upstairs.”
“Can’t get in there.” Tunk pointed at the wide portal in the tower’s base. The opening was filled with humans in combat.
“Then climb wall,” Lidda said. “Ever’body come on!”
When Graywing and Dartimien reached the tower they were fighting for their lives. Both Gelnians and Tarmites-interrupted in their attempts to slaughter each other-had turned on the intruders. Now like a pack of raging beasts, the combatants surrounded and harassed the “outsiders.”
Graywing parried a thrusting pike, kicked aside a Gelnian warrior and disarmed a Tarmite right behind him. Beside him Dartimien was a frenzied flurry of lithe motion, stabbing here, slashing there, now and then releasing a dagger to do its deadly work.
“These people are getting mean,” the plainsman panted, whirling to drive back several attackers.
“It’s what we get for butting in,” the Cat snarled. “This is their private war, and I don’t think we’re welcome.”
“Make for the tower gate,” Graywing ordered, indicating the portal which was now behind him. “We’ll take cover in there.”
Dartimien sneered. “We’ll have to get in, first. Look.”
Pivoting, Graywing glanced at their destination, now only a few feet away. In the doorway were icemen-huge, glowering brutes brandishing axes the size of singletrees. “Gods,” he muttered.
But they were committed now. There was no turning back. Clearing a space around them, their blades driving the attackers back, the Cobar and the Cat found themselves face to face with Chatara Kral’s best mercenaries.
“You!” one of the giants rumbled, recognizing Dartimien. “I owe you this, little man.” He grinned, raised his axe … and froze as a thrown dagger blossomed in his throat.
“Only three knives left,” Dartimien muttered, as the iceman pitched forward, blood spurting from beneath his beard. “I’d better start recovering them.”
“Count your toys later,” Graywing growled. His blade rang against another descending axe, barely deflecting it. The shock of impact numbed his arm, and the iceman towering over him growled and struck again. Graywing dodged aside, evading the great blade by inches. He tried to thrust with his sword, but the giant parried it easily with a huge, banded arm.
The axe rose again, and suddenly the iceman stumbled back. His face was covered with disheveled gully dwarf, clinging to his head.
“Oops,” Bron said. “Sorry ’bout that.”
