They stopped their overladen train five miles from today’s goal and waited until dark before Jon and his men made their way toward the depot. He had no happy memories of that place, and though he still wasn’t sure exactly what it was for, he knew that in some ways assaulting it would be more complicated than the real fight that waited for them in the valley. There at least, they had a plan, but here he had only a goal and the certainty that they had likely beefed up the defenses since his last visit.
That was why he was only bringing his best with him. He could have brought 200 men, but that would have only doubled the casualties and made the stone men lock down their hidden fortress that much faster. 20 men could sneak through the dark a lot faster than 200. If they ran into real trouble, which was possible, considering this was giant country as the dwarves liked to call it, he could always send up a signal flare for reinforcements.
The group went quick and quiet, traveling east along the shadowy tree-dappled boulder field at the bottom of the north slope, avoiding the worst of the scree where they could. They encountered no patrols and saw neither trains nor giants on the way there. That caution proved wise when they were a few hundred yards away. There he could see a watchtower rising into the night, illuminated by the crescent moon. It was a new feature that definitely hadn’t been here on his previous trip. It would have made his long walk down the tracks a lot more hopeful with that kind of beacon.
There was no way of knowing that the watch hadn’t seen them or even if the tower was occupied, but Jon acted as if it was. The area had some patchy snow, even this time of year, and it clung to the crevices and the shadows, just like they did. It was only when they got close enough that Jon could smell the wood smoke that he stopped his men.
“You see something,” Rian hissed at his elbow, knives in hand.
“No. But I smell something under the wood smoke,” Jon whispered back.
“Pipe smoke?” Rian asked after a moment of sniffing the air.
Jon nodded at that. They both knew what it meant. Someone was outside. Whether they were on break or on watch, it would only take one person to sound the alarm. So, they slowed down to a crawl, approaching as far from the railroad tracks as possible. It was only when they worked their way through the last of the brush that they saw the two dwarves on the porch with their brands leaning against the wall next to them while they chatted and puffed on a pipe.
From this distance, a single volley would be required to make sure they were both taken out, but that would make for an awfully quick sprint to the door to try to breach it before whoever was inside thought to lock it, but approaching further without taking the pair out was just asking to get someone shot. Jon didn’t like either answer and stood there in thought for a moment with his weapon drawn and aimed as he weighed his options.
Creating another entrance was always doable. From the walls, he could easily reach out to one of the artillery shells inside and detonate it, but depending on how many others exploded in a chain reaction, such a brash move could easily bring the whole place down. He’d brought a couple earth bloods just in case they needed to try to pull the earth out of some metal, but neither Hal nor Geoff were particularly strong earth bloods, and experience in the past had been inconclusive. It was better to focus on what his team was best at, killing and breaking things.
“Alright, Rian, here’s the plan,” Jon said. “And it’s crazy, so you’re going to love it. I want you to crawl out there just as far and as fast as you can, and we’ll cover you.”
“What am I supposed to do when I reach ’em then?” he asked like it was a foregone conclusion.
“When they see you, or when they move to head inside, we’re going to open fire. You just stay low, and as soon as they’re down, I want you to run to that door and keep ’em from slamming it shut, okay?”
“But if I reach them without being seen, I can slit their throats, right?” he asked with a laugh as he got down on his hands and knees and started crawling away while Jon suppressed a smirk. One day his friend was actually going to try some of the crazy shit he threatened to do all the time and get himself killed.
Everyone waited tensely, weapons aimed, as Rian crept closer and closer through the shadows. It was only when they finally finished talking and got up for their weapons that the shorter one looked in Rian’s direction, spotting him instantly. He didn’t have much time to do more than open his mouth and point, though, because as soon as Jon pulled the trigger, everyone else did too, filling both dwarves with holes as more than half of their shots landed.
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Rian was up like a shot after that, running fearlessly towards the door. Even with no obvious weapons on display, he knew too well what he’d asked his friend, even if he didn’t. Dwarves were wily, and his previous adventure here had certainly made them more than a little paranoid. After holding his breath for longer than he realized, though, Rian finally made it to the door and pushed it open. Jon started running to meet him then. Some of his men ran with him while others stayed behind to reload.
Halfway to the entrance, someone started pushing back hard against the door Rian had just opened and almost managed to slam it shut, but his friend wedged his thick dirk in the hinge, preventing it from closing completely. There were shouts of alarm now, and soon there would be more dwarves looking to kill them, but all of that would matter a lot less once they were inside.
Jon breached the door by blowing up the powder flask of the dwarf on the far side of the door and putting a bullet in him as soon as they were through. He only had two shots left, but he didn’t want to make the men he was fighting suffer any more than they had to.
“I almost made it,” Rian said as they went inside.
“You did,” Jon agreed. “Certainly farther than I could have.”
Their moment ended as soon as they took cover on the far side of the door, taking turns shooting at the dwarves that were appearing even as Jon’s men started to rejoin him with now-loaded weapons. The last time he’d been here, there were only three dwarves. It had been an overwintering skeleton crew that relied on weather and secrecy more than manpower to guard their treasure, but Jon’s last trip had almost certainly taught them the error of their ways, even if only by accident. He hadn’t even taken anything, but that hadn’t mattered. Just like with the dwarven powder, it was the knowledge that was truly important, and this time it was more about protecting a myth than hoarding a weapon, even though the Giants and all the other weapons they hid up here certainly straddled the line between both categories.
For the next few minutes, the fighting was fast and furious, but none of the dwarves that tried to hold them off with brands had any luck. How could they when Jon could render their weapons inert with a thought? The two that charged the line in their underwear like screaming berserkers wielding battleaxes came the closest, but they both fell under withering fire just before they reached Jon’s soldiers. He swallowed hard at the realization that if they’d had time to put on armor, they could probably have cut down two or three men each before blood loss got them.
It was a good reminder that he should never underestimate the stone men.
Even after almost a dozen dwarves appeared and fell in turn, they didn’t really have a chance as Jon and his men pushed deeper and deeper inside the facility. Even if he hadn’t been able to steal the ammunition from their brands, they were simply outnumbered. It was clear that all they’d done was practice defending the building as a whole. So, just as dwarves were wont to do, they did exactly that, rushing to their position, or the closest defensible place they could get to out of habit and duty, rather than falling back to a secondary defensive location and giving the invaders hell.
Jon would have felt bad about how easy it was if victory hadn’t felt so good. In the end, only Thom had been shot in the leg, and he didn’t seem to be in any danger of keeling over any time soon. Indeed, once they bandaged him up, he was limping along with the rest of them as Jon led them towards their goal. After all, besides kicking the wasp’s nest a little more, there was really only one reason to come here, and that was the armory that this place existed to protect.
He’d expected some kind of last stand in the warehouse or maybe one final dwarf ready to cook off the stockpile of explosives that they stored here and kill them all, but when they finally entered the vast room, they found neither. Instead, they found a warehouse that was largely empty save for the largest objects. Whether it was because of his last trip or because of the brewing war he was fomenting, the place had been stripped, and few of the wonders he’d seen on his previous trip remained.
“What in all that’s holy are those?” Thom asked, looking up at the metal giants that dominated the room, making Jon smile. He was sure his reaction had been similar the first time he’d been here, and acting as unaffected as he was now at the sight of the unholy union between a statue of a fifteen-foot tall dwarf and a locomotive engine was still an effort.
“That - is a story to tell once we’ve cleared the rest of the compound and sent out the signal,” he said with a shrug. Giving one last look at the two shining giants that stood there at rest before he turned and walked back out of the room.
After that, the orders came quickly as he broke his men up into three squads, and they quickly ransacked the rest of the building, looking for any more opposition. They found no one, though, which was about what Jon expected. The stone men weren’t big on hiding or laying in ambush, so finding one cowering in the corner would have been a pretty dishonorable act.
He wouldn’t have minded finding Fedon or some cowardly cousin of his looking for the chance to surrender, because even though he might know more about dwarven magic than any other man alive, he had no idea how to start or operate the giants that were here, and he would have gladly traded mercy for a few pointers.
That wasn’t going to happen, though, so by the time the rest of his army was pulling up outside, he was busy ordering men to open up the loading bay doors and pretending to have some idea of what was left regarding the remains of this dwarvish treasure trove.