D. MacHale - Raven Rise

I actually thought we might have a chance of stopping the war on Denduron. Why not?

That feeling of confidence lasted for about as long as it took me to look into the armory building. Alder had described it as the storehouse for the Bedoowan arsenal. He told me about the rows of cannons and the stacks of bows and arrows that sat waiting for war. He said there was enough firepower contained in that building to overrun the simple Lowsee, destroy their tribe, and move on to any other enemy the army decided to victimize next. I didn’t doubt him. Trouble was, what I saw inside the armory was in some ways more frightening than knowing such an elaborate arsenal existed.

What I saw was nothing. The armory was empty. Cleared out. Not a single arrow or cannonball was left. Alder had described a huge stockpile of weapons. There was nothing like that in sight. It suddenly made sense why there was only one guard stationed out front. There was nothing left to guard. The weapons were gone and I knew where they went. They were headed over the mountain with the Bedoowan knights, who were on their way to destroy the Lowsee. My heart sank. Our plan was to destroy the arsenal, but there was no arsenal left to destroy. We were too late.

We would have to find another way to stop the war. But first, Alder had to be rescued. I moved quickly, following his description of the armory. Finding the tak mine wasn’t hard. Near the mouth of the tunnel was a small pile of tak bricks.

I took two, along with a length of fuse and one of the friction starters Alder described to me. I had a fleeting thought that I should run down into the mine and just ignite the tak again. But that was too risky. Alder had failed at that once. There were probably miners and guards down there. I didn’t need to be caught and dumped into the jail cell next to my Bedoowan friend. No, I had to stick to the plan and spring Alder.

I took one of the bricks and gingerly broke off a piece of the soft mineral. If you remember, it was gritty and pliable, like clay. It was also volatile. I had to be fast, but careful. I ran to one of the inside walls of the armory and gently pressed a line of tak along the base of the wooden wall. The process scared the heck out of me. If I handled the tak too roughly, it would hit back with a big boom. I kept breaking off pieces and smearing the soft mineral along the base of the wall, making a long, rust-colored line.

I heard a sound from down in the mine. Clang! Somebody had dropped a tool. It was innocent enough, but I feared that somebody might be coming up. I had to work faster. After smearing most of the tak brick on the wall, I was ready. I took a small piece of fuse no more than two inches long and jammed it into the space between the wooden boards, making sure the end touched the smear of tak. I sparked the starter and lit the fuse. Backing away, I hoped I had smeared the right amount on the wall. I didn’t want an explosion, I wanted a fire. A diversion. I had made a thin line of tak about twenty feet long on the wooden wall. If it didn’t blow up, it would burn. At least, I hoped it would.

I backed away to the door of the armory and waited. It wouldn’t be long. The fuse would only take a few seconds to reach the tak. I actually put my fingers in my ears, in case I hadn’t spread it thin enough. Two seconds later I heard a sharp fizzle. The fuse hit the tak and instantly shot along the line, faster than I had imagined. The flare was brighter than I had imagined too. I had to squint or I would have l been blinded. Iwaited for an explosion. It didn’t come. Perfect. The wall of the armory was burning. The tak was so powerful it had already eaten through the wood. Flames began to lick up the side of the huge wooden structure. We were in business. The armory would soon be blazing.

I couldn’t leave the unconscious guard in there to die, so I quickly dragged him outside and dumped him a safe distance from what was about to be a burning building. If all went well, help would soon arrive to put the flames out and he’d be in no danger. If things went badly, well, I didn’t want to think about that. SoIdidn’t. I ran back inside, grabbed the dado weapon and the second tak brick, then ran out for good.

I sprinted across the training ground, jumped over the berm of dirt, and turned back to watch. Smoke was already filling the air. The tak was doing its job. If this fire wasn’t put out quickly, the whole place would go up. It was exactly what I wanted. I got up and moved quickly back toward the village. I had gotten about halfway back to the stockade when I heard the urgent clanging of a bell. It had to be a fire alarm. Whoever was ringing it wasn’t announcing lunch. The ringing was furious. Instantly people emerged from their houses and looked around nervously. A patrol of Bedoowan knights ran past me, headed for the armory. They knew where the problem was. What they didn’t know was that I was about to cause another problem somewhere else.

I made it back to the stockade easily. The whole way, I passed Bedoowan knights sprinting the other way, toward the burning armory. My hope was that Alder would be left unguarded.

He wasn’t. One guard remained at his post. That was okay. I could handle one guard. The poor guy was about to get a very big surprise. I ran quickly to the back of the stockade, where I gently broke a Silly Putty egg-size chunk off the tak brick and molded it along the upper edge of Alder’s barred window opening.

“Do not use too much,” Alder cautioned as he peered at me from inside. “I have no protection in here.”

I didn’t know how strong the bars were. If I didn’t use enough tak, all we’d do was alert the guard. If I used too much, there wouldn’t be enough left of Alder to break out of anywhere. It wasn’t an exact science. I decided to use only one piece of tak. I pressed the explosive along the entire top edge of the window and jammed a fuse into the soft material.

“Under the bed,” I commanded.

Alder didn’t need to be convinced. Before I could ignite the fuse, he was hidden safely under his cot. At least, I hoped it was safely. I sparked the starter. Ten seconds to detonation. This time it wasn’t about the fire. It was about the boom. When that tak went off, there was no telhng which way the bars would fly, so I ducked around the corner. I put my back to the wall and waited. And waited. It felt like forever. I was second-guessing myself, thinking I should have used less tak when boom! The tak erupted, much more strongly than I expected. I quickly glanced back around the corner to see the square frame of bars flying away from the building, with smoke trailing behind as if it were jet propelled. I sprinted to the window, choking on the smoke.

“Hey!” I called. “You okay?”

Alder’s head popped up from below the charred, gaping hole that was once a window frame. He was smiling. “I guess there is no longer need for secrecy,” he announced with a grin.

Before he could climb out, I was tackled from the side. I never saw it coming. It was a total blindside hit. It took me a second to realize that the guard had heard the explosion too, no big surprise. It wasn’t subtle. He had run around to investigate and jumped me without so much as a “Halt!” or a “What’s going on here?” The guard hit me. I hit the ground. He sat on top of me, pinning my arms with his knees, and wound up to punch me in the head. There was nothing I could do but wince. The punch never came. I looked up cautiously to see Alder looming over the guard. He had caught the guy’s hand at the top of its arc.

“Please do not hit my friend,” he said calmly.

The Bedoowan guard didn’t have time to react. Alder clocked him with his other hand. Simple as that. The guard tumbled off me. He wasn’t knocked unconscious, but he was reeling.