Michael Sullivan - Avempartha

“They will all die anyway,” Royce snapped at him. “That’s just my point. We can’t stop it from killing them. All we can do is decide whether to die with them or not, and I really don’t see the benefit in sympathy suicide.”

“We can do something,” Hadrian asserted. “We’re the ones who stole the treasure from the Crown Tower and put it back the very next night. The same two that broke into the invincible Drumindor, we put a human head in the Earl of Chadwick’s lap while he slept in his tower, and busted Esrahaddon out of Gutaria, the most secure prison ever built. I mean we can do something!”

“Like what?”

“Well…” Hadrian thought, “we can dig a pit, lure it there and trap it.”

“We’d have better luck asking Tomas to pray for Maribor to strike the Gilarabrywn dead. We really don’t have the time or the manpower for excavating a pit.”

“You have a better idea?”

“I’m sure I could come up with something better than luring it into a pit we can’t dig.”

“Like what?”

Royce began walking around the still smoldering stick forest, angrily kicking anything in his path. “I don’t know, you’re the one who thinks we can do something, but I know one thing; we can’t do squat unless we can get the other half of that sword. So the first thing I would do is steal it tonight while it’s gone.”

“It would kill Thrace and Arista for certain if you did that,” Hadrian pointed out.

“But then you could kill it. At least there would be the closure of revenge.”

Hadrian shook his head. “Not good enough.”

Royce smirked, “I could always steal the sword while you and Theron fool it with the blade Rufus was using.” Royce allowed himself a morbid chuckle. “There’s at least about a single chance in a million that might work.”

Hadrian’s brow furrowed in thought, and he sat down slowly.

“Oh no, I was joking,” Royce backpedaled. “If it could tell the blade was missing last night, it can tell the difference between the real thing and a copy.”

“But even if it doesn’t work,” Hadrian said, “it might give me time to get the girls away from it. Then we could dive in a hole-a small hole, that we do have time to dig.”

“And hope it doesn’t dig you out? I’ve seen its claws, it won’t be hard.”

Hadrian ignored him and went on with his train of thought. “Then you could bring the other half of the sword, have Magnus forge it and then I can kill it-see it was a good thing you didn’t kill him after all.”

“You realize how stupid this is, right? That thing decimated this whole village and the castle last night, and you are going to take it on with an old farmer, two women, and a broken sword?”

Hadrian said nothing.

Royce sighed and sat down beside his friend, shaking his head. He reached into his robe and pulled his dagger out. Still in its sheath, he held it out.

“Here,” he said, “take Alverstone.”

“Why?” Hadrian looked at him, puzzled.

“Well, I’m not saying Magnus is right, but, well, I’ve never found anything that this dagger can’t cut, and if Magnus is right, if the father of the gods did forge this, I would think it could come in handy even against an invincible beast.”

“So you’re leaving?”

“No.” Royce scowled and looked in the direction of the tower of Avempartha. “Apparently I have a job to finish.”

Hadrian smiled at his friend, took the dagger, and weighed it in his hand. “I’ll give it back to you tomorrow then.”

“Right,” Royce replied.

“Did your partner leave?” Theron asked as Hadrian approached him walking up the slope of the scorched hill that once was the castle. The old farmer stood on the blackened hillside holding the shattered sword and looking up at the sky.

“No, well sort of, he’s headed back inside Avempartha to steal the other half of the sword just in case the Gilarabrywn tries to double cross us. There is even a chance it might leave Thrace and Arista in the tower while it comes here, and if it does Royce, can get them out.”

Theron nodded thoughtfully.

“You two have been real good to me and my daughter. I still don’t know why, and don’t tell me it’s the money,” Theron sighed. “You know, I never gave her credit for much. I ignored her, pushed her away for so many years. She was only my daughter, not a son-an extra mouth to feed that would cost us money to marry off. How she ever found the two of you and got you to come all this way to help us is…well, I just don’t think I will ever understand that.”

“Hadrian,” Fanen called to him. “Come down here and see what we’ve got.”

Hadrian followed Fanen down the hill to the north edge of the burn line where he found Tobis, Mauvin, and Magnus working on a huge contraption.

“This is my catapult,” Tobis declared, standing proudly next to a wagon on which a wooden machine sat. Tobis looked comical in his loud-colored court clothes propped up on a crutch Magnus had fashioned for him, his broken leg strapped down between two stiff pieces of wood. “They dragged it out here when I was bumped from the roster. She’s exquisite, isn’t she? I named her Persephone after Novron’s wife. Only fitting, I thought, since I studied ancient imperial history to devise it. Not easy to do either, I had to learn the ancient languages just to read the books.”

“Did you just build this?”

“No, of course not, you silly man. I am a professor at Sheridan. That’s in Ghent by the way. You know the same place as the seat of the Nyphron Church? Well, being brilliant, I bribed some church officials who let slip the true nature of the competition. It would not be a ridiculous bashing match between sawdust-filled heads, but a challenge to defeat a legendary creature. This was a puzzle I could solve; one that I knew did not require muscle and a lack of teeth, but rather a staggering intellect such as mine.”

Hadrian walked around the device. A massive center beam rose up a good twelve-feet, and the long thick arm was a foot or two longer than that. It had a sack bucket joined to a lower beam with torsion producing chords. On either side of the wagon were two massive hand cranks connected to a series of gears.

“Well, I must say I have seen catapults before and this doesn’t look much like them.”

“That’s because I modified it for fighting the Gilarabrywn.”

“Well, he tried,” Magnus added. “It wouldn’t have worked the way he had it set up, but it will now.”

“In fact, we fired a few rocks already,” Mauvin reported.

“I’ve had some experience with siege weapons before,” Hadrian said. “And I know they can be useful against something big like a field of soldiers or something that doesn’t move like a wall, but they’re useless against a solitary moving enemy. They just aren’t that fast or accurate.”

“Yes, well that is why I devised this one to fire not only projectiles but nets as well,” Tobis said proudly. “I’m very clever that way you see. The nets are designed to launch like large balls that open in mid-flight and snare the beast as it is flying, dropping it to the ground where it will lie helpless while I reload and take my time crushing it.”

“And this works?” Hadrian asked impressed.

“In theory,” Tobis replied.

Hadrian shrugged. “What the heck, it couldn’t hurt.”

“Just need to get it in position,” Mauvin said. “Care to help push?”

They all put their backs to the catapult, except, of course, for Tobis, who limped along spouting orders. They rolled it to the ditch that ringed the bottom of the motte and within range to fire on anything in the area near the old manor house.

“Might want to get something to hide it-rubble or burnt wood maybe, so that it looks like a pile of trash,” Hadrian said. “Which shouldn’t be hard to do. Magnus, I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”