A Thief in the Night

chapter Eighty-five

“Heave!” Balint called. Croy and Mörget hauled on the ropes they held, their backs straining. Croy’s arms felt as numb as wood, but still he pulled. “Heave!”

The barrels shifted a foot farther up the ramp.

They were a quarter of the way up, with a good hundred feet of incline to go.

Each of the barrels was too heavy for the knight or the barbarian to carry themselves, and the five of them together made an immense weight. They could be turned on their sides and rolled across flat stretches of floor, but getting them up to higher levels was beyond human strength.

“Heave!”

Luckily Balint had a pulley in her pack, and enough rope to make a block and tackle. Croy understood little of how that actually helped—something to do with multiplying the force involved, the dwarf had said. He hadn’t really been listening. What he did know was that the barrels were moving, inching their way up a long ramp to the top level of the Vincularium.

“Heave!”

Of course, once the humans and the dwarf did get up there, the revenants would certainly come to kill them. Croy and Mörget would have all the grim work they could handle, fighting off the undead elves long enough to get the barrels into place.

He didn’t worry about that. He kept all his attention on his rope. It helped if he thought there was an elf in a noose on the other end.

“Heave!”

“Useless dwarf, be still!” Mörget shouted. “You aren’t helping.”

Up on top of the barrels, Balint looked down at the barbarian with a hurt expression. “If you don’t pull at the same time, we run the risk of breaking the rope. At which point the barrels will slide all the way back down—and hopefully, roll right over your bloody big foot in the process,” she said. “Now, together, heave!”

Croy pressed his boots hard against the surface of the ramp and pulled for all he was worth.

“I don’t understand why we’re doing this at all,” Mörget said. “Yes, yes, it’s a powerful weapon. More powerful than anything I’ve seen before, you say. But my sword and my axe are good weapons, too. Good enough, if you ask me.”

“Heave! And what of your demons, friend? What of those creeping birdshits you came to slay? You’ve seen how hard it is to kill them with your pig-sticker and your wood-chopper. Wouldn’t you prefer to kill them all in one stroke? Heave!”

Mörget grunted explosively, but he heaved.

“Tell me again, then, why this will work,” he insisted.

Balint sighed dramatically. “Heave!” Her knocker tapped away at the top of one barrel as if trying to guess what was inside. “The entire Vincularium is held up by three massive columns. Heave! It’s an elegant design, a real joy to look at, but it’s about as vulnerable as a maidenhead when the fleet comes in. Heave! It’s like a three-legged stool. Not much use if you—heave!—remove one leg. Shatter one of those columns, just one, and—”

“And the whole thing crashes down,” Mörget said.

“Heave!”

Croy’s back burned with the effort, but he heaved.

“The weapons in the barrel will let us cut through such a column?” the barbarian asked. “Won’t one of us need to be here to use the weapons, though? And that one will be killed, too.”

“Heave! That’s the best part. We can set the barrels so they activate only after we leave. By the time they take light, we’ll be in the escape shaft and headed home. We’ll have to run like a pregnant—heave!—a pregnant lass for the privy, but we’ll escape with our hides intact, and the whole damned mountain will come down, crushing every living thing in this hole. Heave!”

“The whole mountain, you say,” Mörget repeated. Then he let out a booming laugh.

“Heave!” he called, in chorus with Balint.

Croy pulled hard on the rope. Would he go with them, he wondered, when the time came? What remained for him outside this dark pit? Perhaps he would stay, and watch, and listen to the elves scream as their bodies were crushed to pulp.

Yes. He thought he might enjoy that.

“Heave!”