DENDURON
(CONTINUED)
The first part of Alder’s plan was simple. He had to make his way into the new tak mine. He had no doubt there would be guards. Guards didn’t worry him. He had the element of surprise on his side. They wouldn’t expect an attack to come from a Bedoowan knight.
The second part of his plan wasn’t as simple. He had to destroy the mine. Igniting the tak wouldn’t be the problem. Being somewhere else when it erupted would. He didn’t have much time. That fact was made all too clear when he moved past the rows of knights who were listening to King Rellin’s speech. Now that he was closer, he heard some of what Rellin was saying. Rellin was pontificating, using words like “glorious victory,”
“spreading the empire,” and “triumph of the superior tribe.”
Empire? When did the little world of the Milago and the Bedoowan become an empire? It chilled Alder to hear how the power of tak had completely corrupted Rellin. He was once a good man. He had fought for his people and against injustice. Now he was about to fight for power and glory.
Alder shuddered when he realized that Saint Dane’s prophecy was about to come true: The first domino of Halla to fall would be Denduron, just as he had predicted several years before. It may not have played out exactly as Saint Dane wanted, but what did that matter? Or maybe this was exactly what Saint Dane wanted. Maybe this was how he’d planned for his grand scheme to unfold all along, and the Travelers were only going along for the ride. There was no way to know. There was only the mission. Alder had to stop the war. To do that, he needed to destroy the tak.
As he hurried past the assembled knights, he could feel tension radiating from the masses. They had their game faces on. They were ready for battle. He knew the feeling. It was bloodlust. This wasn’t an exercise. They were about to march on the Lowsee. From what Alder remembered, he guessed it would take the rest of the day and into the night to move the army of knights up and over the mountain and into attack position. Just moving the cannons would take most of the night. His guess was that they would take up positions under cover of night and attack at first light. Alder knew he didn’t have much time. If he was going to stop this war, he would have to destroy the tak before the army left. He not only had to seal the mines, he had to find a way to destroy whatever they had already dug out of the ground.
Alder’s journey brought him through the Milago village, past farmland and toward the field where the Bedoowan knights were training with tak. He wanted to see how they were using the explosive. What he saw didn’t calm his fears.
He peered over a tall berm of dirt built up to contain flying shrapnel. It was definitely needed, because there was a lot of shrapnel flying around. Alder saw several cannons to his right. Each were manned by three Bedoowan knights. They seemed to be practicing. One knight packed a small amount of the red-clay tak and gently lowered it into the muzzle of the six-foot-long black cannon barrel. The second knight loaded a round cannonball on top of that. The third knight aimed the cannon. Their target was a wall of hay bales set up nearly fifty yards in front of them. At least, it used to be a wall of hay bales. It was now a mass of burning debris, surrounded by huge crater holes from the cannonballs. The tak was very effective.
Once all was ready, the third knight scratched a small metal device that Alder realized was making a spark. The knight held it next to a thin rope that dangled from the rear end of the cannon. A fuse. After two flicks, the rope was set on fire. While the three knights stood back and covered their ears, the fuse burned quickly until it reached the back end of the cannon. An instant later… boom! A cloud of smoke blew out of the barrel, and two seconds later the cannonball hit the pile of burning hay dead on. When the projectile landed, it exploded as well, sending up another cloud of smoke. This second explosion rocked the ground, nearly knocking Alder down. The sound was deafening. Alder figured the cannonball must have had more tak inside it. No chunk of metal alone would have exploded like that.
The tak cannons were deadly…and deadly accurate. Alder knew that the Lowsee wouldn’t stand a chance, and neither would Denduron. He had seen all he needed to see. He skirted the training ground, headed for the remote area where he and Siry and Pendragon had used the dygo to find the new vein of tak. They had deliberately dug far from the Milago village for safety. Alder was happy about that. Perhaps, he thought, when the mine exploded, it wouldn’t damage the village. Much. It all depended on which way the underground vein of tak ran. He hurried through the woods, trying not to think too far beyond the next step. One thing at a time. Just keep going. Don’t get caught. Don’t stop. When he reached the end of the woods near the clearing with the tak mine…
He stopped. He didn’t expect to see what was there before him. When he left Denduron only a few days before, the mine was nothing more than a hole in the ground. Now there was a building. A huge building. It was made entirely of wood, with a flat roof. The structure stood higher than any other building in the Milago village and took up many times as much ground. It looked like a giant storage building. Alder feared what might be stored inside.
There were two large doors in front. They were closed and guarded by two Bedoowan knights. If Alder was getting into that building, it would have to be past those knights. The show was about to begin. Everyone would soon know that Alder was back. He straightened up, held the wooden stave at his side, and walked boldly toward the building. As he drew closer, the guards stiffened.
“What is your business?” one of them growled.
Alder didn’t break stride. “I have news from King Rellin,” he said with authority. “We must all assemble on the field for his final instructions.”
The knights gave each other a quick, confused glance.
“Those are not our orders,” the first knight responded. “We are not to leave our posts.”
Alder didn’t recognize either of the knights. He was relieved about that. He didn’t like hurting his friends.
“Your orders have been changed,” Alder said as he drew closer to the guards. “You are to move immediately to-” He didn’t finish the sentence. He quickly brought his stave up and jammed it into the gut of the first knight. The second knight was so surprised he hesitated before reacting. It cost him. Alder flicked his stave, catching him under the chin. The knight’s head flew back and his feet flipped up into the air. The knight landed square on his back with a sickening thud. Before he hit, Alder had already flashed his stave back toward the first knight, catching him on the side of his head. The knight crashed against the building. At the same time, Alder spun backward with his body and the stave, catching the second knight square on the jaw. Within four seconds both knights lay unconscious at Alder’s feet.
Alder stood over them as casually as if he had just swatted two flies. After defeating an entire army of dados, getting past two Bedoowan knights was somewhat less of a challenge. Alder stepped over his fallen comrades and pushed open the large wooden door that led into the building. The sudden darkness inside made it difficult to see. He stood with his back to the door, on full alert. Though he couldn’t make out detail at first, it was clear to him that the entire building was one room. There were windows near the ceiling that glowed with the light from the suns of Denduron. Alder waited impatiently for his eyes to adjust. After a few seconds he began to make out shapes.
His heart sank. The room was an arsenal. Most of the floor was taken up with rows of brand-new, gleaming cannons. To the rear was a cache of what looked like thousands of tak-filled cannonballs. The giant room was ringed with balconies that were laden with tak arrows, bows and crossbows. Another balcony was filled with what looked like small bricks of tak. They weren’t fancy, but if one of those tak bombs exploded, it could destroy a house. Or eight. Alder’s fears had become reality. The people of Denduron had been busy. They were ready for war. The tak mine had provided tons of explosives. With weaponry like this, Alder had no doubt that the Bedoowan army could overrun the Lowsee, and any other tribe they set their sights on. The conquest of Denduron was about to begin, along with the fall of Halla.
Alder walked forward in a daze, staring at the tools of death and destruction that loomed over him. He almost didn’t see that he was about to step into a hole. He pulled up short at its edge and peered down into the darkness.
“The mine,” he whispered to himself.
It was the same hole that he and Pendragon had dug with the dygo. Only now there were ore-car tracks leading down into it. The shaft was steep, but not straight down. It was walkable. This was a working mine. From the looks of the arsenal, it was a productive one.
