Chapter Two Hundred and Fifty-Three - Granite Springs Calls For Aid

The dam hadn’t had time to change since I’d last seen it. I guess even the hard-working mole people could only do so much in a few hours. The same guard was standing at the top of the wall, and he squinted at me as I came closer.

“Hello!” I called up. “It’s Broccoli Bunch! I have a letter for the general!”

The mole person blinked a few times. “Hello again,” he said. “Give us a moment then.”

I was quite happy to wait. While I could wick off the sweat with my Cleaning magic, that didn’t change how warm I was feeling, or even how burny my muscles were. It was nice to stand still and let things settle.

Actually, getting rid of all my sweat was probably a bad idea. Sweat was meant to help cool a person off, and I was feeling very warm. Something to keep in mind when I didn’t need to be presentable in front of an important general person.

The drawbridge gate lowered, and the same guard mole I saw above waddled out to come closer. “Are you alone, miss?” he asked.

“Yup,” I said. “It’s just me.”

“Ah, I see. Wonderful. The general is a little preoccupied right now, but you may enter. The general will be with you shortly.”

I grinned as wide and happy as I could. “Thank you!” I said as I followed the mole person guard back in. A few workers spun a wheel around once we were within the fort, and the gate rose with a clatter of chains. “So, do I need to wait somewhere in particular?” I asked.

The guard mole reached up and scratched at his wide neck with his clawed hands. “I don’t know. Just around here, I suppose.”

“Oh, okay. Can I stay with you then?”

He shrugged. “I don’t mind. I’ve never talked to a bun before.” He stared. “You are a bun?”

“Yup! Though I started off as a plain old human.” I nodded. “So, what’s your name? I can’t keep on calling you ‘the guard mole’ in my head.”

He chuckled, a raspy sort of sound. “I’m Diggo, of the Undervalley clan. So, you were a human first? Is that how it works for all buns?”

“Hmm? No, most buns are born as buns. At least, I think so. There would need to be a lot of people turning into buns, otherwise.”

“That’s interesting, I guess,” Diggo said. “We don’t have any buns in town. I’d have heard of them.”

“Is it mostly mole people then?” I asked.

The mole guard nodded. “Yup. For the most part just normal folk. A few sylph too. Strange ones at that, but nice enough. I know some villages have a human or two as well, but none near here.”

“That’s neat,” I said. “I guess it can be harder for some people to adapt to living underground. I know I’d have a hard time. I need some space to move around in.”

“Really? I find being out here in the open stressful. Look at all that sky. You can’t know what’s going to come swooping out of it.”

I glanced up at the clear blue sky, bright and inviting, with a cheerful sun dancing above. “Sure, I guess,” I said. I wasn’t going to argue against his fears.

“Captain Bunch,” a familiar voice called out. I shifted, a smile coming up as I saw General Holey walking my way with a couple of guards at his back. “You’ve come alone?”

“Hello, general,” I said. “And yeah, I have. Bastion sent me with a letter for you.” I tugged the letter out and handed it over.

The general took it, eyed the seal for a moment, then popped it open and read its contents. “Hmm,” he said as he reached the end. “An amphiptere.”

The guards around him shifted, and I heard Diggo take in a sharp breath. Were they so dangerous that even the mention of one made the mole people nervous? I guess they were natural adversaries.

“Did you observe the creature yourself, captain?” General Holey asked.

I shook my head. “I didn’t. But I did see some of the plans and maps the Inquisition people drew up. I don’t know what Bastion’s letter says, but I think the whole kerfuffle here was caused by that monster’s presence. The miners couldn’t dig where they’d been digging before, so they shifted closer to your village. It was really poorly handled though. They shouldn’t have ignored your letters the way they did.”

“I see,” the general said. “And I agree on the latter part. It was a cruel and rude gesture to make. Not to mention politically unwise. But I suppose with an amphiptere around they might not have been thinking straight.”

“It might not be around for long. Bastion is gathering soldiers from the base in town, and he’s asking the guard to help too. I think he’s planning on having everyone work together to kill it. I don’t know if they really need all those people for one beastie though.”

The general sniffed. “I mean no offence, captain, but you’ve made your ignorance plain with such a comment. I don’t doubt that the garrison, the Inquisition, and the town guard all working together will be able to kill or, at the very least, injure the beast, but it won’t be a task easily done.”

I shrugged. I was always willing to admit to being ignorant; it was the best way to become less ignorant after all. “I’ve never seen one. And I’ve never fought one either. I’ve seen dragons though.”

“And would you think a fight against a dragon would be easy?”

I had to think back. Would fighting Rawrexdee be easy? What about his mom? “No. No, that wouldn’t be an easy fight. They’re big, and smart, and very strong.”

“An amphiptere is no dragon. They lack the intelligence and the gift for magic, not to mention the claws. But they can become quite large and powerful, and while they lack the magical finesse of a dragon, they can use it the way a brute uses a hammer.”

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I didn’t like the thought of so many people risking themselves to fight something like that. A lot could go wrong, and people could get hurt. “This isn’t going to be fun, is it?”

“I doubt it,” the general said. He turned to one of the mole people next to him. “Prepare the First Platoon. Volunteers only. Fill in the gaps with volunteers from Second. Heighten the guard at the fort.”

“Can I help?” I asked.

The general shook his head, then paused and made a “one-moment” gesture before turning to his other guard. “Prepare the burden beetles. We’ll hardly need them if things turn sour and I’d rather have everyone be fresh on arrival.”

The soldiers ran off to do the general’s bidding, and within seconds shouted orders filled the air as more mole people were roused into action.

The general observed his fort gearing up, then he turned towards me. “Captain Bunch, would you mind accompanying me back to the quarry?”

“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “I’d probably just be in the way if I went back now, and I really don’t like not being able to help.”

“I understand,” the general said. “Give us all a moment. We’ve trained for rapid deployments often enough that I do hope my troops here can be ready in a reasonable amount of time.”

I nodded and stepped back, making sure I wasn’t in the way as soldiers rushed around. There was a lot of clanging and banging as mole people slid into armour and formed up in a square in the middle of the fort, long spears held by their sides.

A few mole people with more elaborate hats moved over to the general and asked some questions in low tones. I could always make out the moment when the general told them they’d be fighting an amphiptere. There would be a flash of fear, then their eyes narrowed and they looked almost happy as they ran off to shout more orders and wave their little arms about.

I stared as a section of the ground was removed by mole people with crowbars, and a line of huge beetles were led out of the ground, each one longer than I was tall, and big enough that they reached my waist.

I thought I’d seen something similar in Deepmarsh, in some farmer’s field, but I’d almost entirely forgotten about them. “What are those?” I asked the general when he didn’t look so occupied.

“Never seen a burden beetle? They’re docile enough, though convincing them to stay in the open air requires some training. We use them to pull carts underground.”

“Are they smart?”

“No smarter than a sylph’s horse,” the general said. “Less, even.”

The burden beetles had strange barding that required two mole people to put on. They were brought to one side of the fort where carts with big wheels and posts in their middle were hitched to them, four beetles to each cart.

The gate was lowered again, and the carts, some four in all, were led out of the fort by drivers sitting right behind the beetles. “Come on, captain,” General Holey said. “We’re taking the lead cart.”

I nodded and followed after the general. A few others followed after him too, staff and people who I figured were officers. We climbed aboard the cart and basically stood at the back. There weren’t any seats, just some poles coming out of the middle to hold onto.

A group of soldiers ran up behind us and fitted some spears into little holes on the side of the cart, each one at an angle from the middle so that the cart had a dozen spikes sticking out of it above our heads.

“What are those for?” I asked.

“It makes it harder for any flying creature to swoop down and grab someone off of the cart,” the general explained.

“Oh,” I said. That was a rather terrifying answer. “Does that happen a lot?”

“There are a few predators that like to target us,” he explained. “The sylph are targeted as well, but they have better eyes than we do, and can generally see a threat coming in time to react. We have to adapt to things differently when we’re on the surface.”

I nodded, then leaned to the side to see the other carts behind us. Soldiers were clinging onto them, maybe a dozen well-armed and armoured mole people on each. They had little swords by their hips and, of course, their long spears sticking out above their cart. All of them wore the same heavy plate armour, big breastplates and metal bands around their legs. They were pretty noisy, especially when they moved their heads to look around.

They had neat chainmail hoods on, with wide-brimmed metal hats above those. The only differences I could see in their armour were some that had a crest on their helmet to make room for feathers, and a few that had cloth robes on.

“Are the ones with skirts girls?” I asked the general.

He stared at me for a moment, then looked back to the carts I was eyeing. “No? The half-robes are traditional garb worn by mages. Can’t you tell a male from a female?”

“I... not really, no,” I said. “What’s the difference between a boy mole person and a girl mole person... wait, are you?”

“I’m male,” the general said. He didn’t sound amused, but something about the way his whiskers twitched said he was. “The men will be broader in the chest, and a little taller besides.”

“Oh,” I said. I guess that helped, though with the armour it would be hard to tell them apart.

Probably best to just ask if I wasn’t sure. It was better than sticking my foot in my mouth, even if I had the flexibility to manage that.

“Alright!” General Holey called out. “Let’s go kill an amphiptere!”

The soldiers cheered, and we were off.

***