D. MacHale - The Merchant of Death

They were absolutely, totally wrong.

Alder finally found the leader. It was a miner who stood toward the front of the group giving orders. Alder ran up to him and said breathlessly, “The bomb…the tak bomb. It is more deadly than you could imagine! If Rellin succeeds, it could kill us all! We must get everyone down into the mines to-”

That’s when it happened. That’s the moment when Uncle Press threw the small bomb at the quig and made quigburger. The miners all looked in the direction of the Bedoowan castle as the explosion thundered through the hills. Then just as the last echo died away, the leader shouted, “Death to the Bedoowan!”

There was a huge cheer and the miners began running toward the castle. Alder had to dive out of the way for fear of being trampled by the stoked-up miners as they rushed to their destiny. They had no idea that they were headed right into the full force of the Bedoowan army.

The stadium was almost empty. Even Queen Kagan had left to watch the show. Four Novans had lifted up her throne and carried her up the stairs and out to the battlefield. Those pale little guys must be a lot stronger than they looked because that throne and that fatso must have weighed a ton. The three miners who brought the tak bomb with Rellin were gone too. They had run off to fight with their comrades. The only ones left in the huge stadium were me, Loor, Uncle Press, Rellin, and a dead quig. Actually two dead quigs, but the second one looked more like Hamburger Helper.

Rellin struggled to get to his feet. Uncle Press gave him a hand. These guys weren’t enemies. They both wanted the same thing, sort of. Their only disagreement was how to go about getting it.

“Your miners aren’t prepared to battle those knights,” Uncle Press said to him. “The tak may prolong the fight, but the Bedoowan will crush them.”

“Perhaps,” said Rellin. “But better to die fighting, than as a slave.”

Those were powerful words. I had seen the horrible lives the Milago lived. If they were going to die, at least now they would die with some dignity. It was a terrible choice, but maybe it was the right one. Rellin then said, “Permit me to join my men?”

Uncle Press picked up the spear he had used to stop Rellin from exploding the bomb. He looked at it, then handed it to the chief miner. “Good luck,” he said.

Rellin took the spear, gave a small nod of thanks, then took off running to join his doomed men. We watched him run across the stadium grass and bound up the stairs toward the battle that was about to begin. I wondered if I would ever see the guy alive again. Uncle Press then picked up another spear.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“I’m going back to the Milago village,” he answered. “The Bedoowan are going to suffer casualties. That’s never happened to them before. I’m afraid they’ll get angry enough to continue on to the Milago village and take it out on some of the villagers.”

“But how can you stop that?” asked Loor.

“I can’t,” was his answer. “But I can help Alder get them down into the mines. The knights won’t go down there and it’ll give them a chance to cool off.”

“We’re coming with you!” I said.

“No,” ordered Uncle Press and pointed to the ore car full of tak. “See what you can do about that bomb.”

“Like what?” I asked.

Uncle Press started to run off, but turned back to us and shouted, “I don’t know. Get rid of it. Dump it in the ocean. Just don’t let the Bedoowan have it.”

I watched as Uncle Press ran up the stairs. After a quick wave back to us, he disappeared over the lip of the stadium and was gone. I looked to the ore car, then to Loor.

“Is he crazy?” I said. “This is too heavy to carry up those stairs!”

Loor started grabbing the glaze stones from off the top and throwing them aside like they were common rocks. “Not if we make the load lighter,” she said.

“And what if we slip and drop it down those stairs?” I countered. “It’ll make just as big a bang now as before.”

“Then we must be careful not to drop it,” she shot back.

Yeah, no kidding. I walked over to the cart and tested the weight. It was heavy! It had four wheels that rolled on the rails down in the mines, and handles both front and back that were used to push or pull it. I didn’t care how strong Loor was, the two of us were not going to lug this thing up the stadium stairs. I reached in and dug down beneath the glaze until I found the tak. It was soft, like clay. I was thinking maybe we could pull it apart into smaller pieces and take it up that way, rather than transport the whole thing at once. I scraped it with my finger and pulled out a small piece. For something so deadly, it looked pretty innocent. Like I wrote before, it was rust-colored and soft like Silly Putty. I easily rolled it into a marble-sized ball. The texture was kind of gritty and there was residue that stuck to my fingers as I rolled it.

“Are you going to help me?” asked Loor impatiently as she unloaded the glaze.

“I have an idea,” I announced and ran toward the quig pen. Loor watched me as if I had lost my mind, but she needn’t have worried. My plan didn’t involve going back into quig world. No way. In fact, as an afterthought I stuck the little ball of tak into my pocket to free my hands and then closed the door to the pen just in case any more of those bad boys were wandering around inside. It was a smart thing to do, but it wasn’t the main reason I went over there. I was looking for the water faucet where the Bedoowan knight filled the water bucket that he used to wash away the blood of the Milago miner. When I found it, I turned the handle so that water poured out slowly. I then checked my fingers to find that they were still covered with the rusty-colored tak residue. I stuck my fingers under the faucet, rubbed them together, and the tak dissolved! That was exactly what I hoped would happen. This stuff may be a powerful explosive, but it was still a natural mineral that would dissolve in water. Thank you, Mr. Gill, and eighth-grade Earth science. He thought I was asleep in class most of the time. I wasn’t.

“What are you doing?” shouted Loor.

I quickly grabbed one of the wooden buckets that was near the faucet, filled one, and lugged it back to Loor and the ore car.

“We are wasting time, Pendragon,” Loor said with growing impatience.

I ignored her and dumped the bucket of water into the ore car. Loor had this angry look on her face like I was being an idiot again. I stood back with the empty bucket and watched. In a few seconds my patience was rewarded. It was only a small drip, but the water had worked itself down through the tak and was running out between the wooden floorboards of the ore car. The water was rust-colored, which could mean only one thing…the tak could be dissolved!

“We don’t have to lug this thing out,” I announced. “We can dissolve the tak like dirt.”

Loor stuck her finger under the drip of water and saw that it was indeed full of dissolved tak. She thought a moment, then said, “More water!”

She jumped to her feet and ran back to the faucet for another bucket. For the next ten minutes we ran back and forth between the faucet and the ore car, dumping water inside. Little by little, the tak turned into liquid and ran out of the car. When enough of the tak dissolved so that we could move it, we began taking turns pushing it around. My idea was to spread the tak around enough so that its power would be diluted all over the field. The rusty liquid ran out of the car, poured onto the field and sank down below the grass like some deadly fertilizer. I had no idea what kind of problems this would cause later on. For all I knew, once the tak dried this could be like a minefield. But I didn’t care. The main thing was that the power of the huge bomb was gone forever.