Chapter 175: Battlelines are drawn

As Milo and Brutus went to leave, they were stopped by Helen Brownfur. "Hold up, young one. I need to know your intentions in talking to this Gangrene."

Milo shrugged. "I'm not sure myself, to be honest. A lot depends on him. Rifkin was working with him to cause damage to the Hollow. We can't let him inside, but we can't just leave warriors on our doorstep. I don't want to let him make the next move. Maybe we can convince them to leave, or we must fortify our front door or close it altogether. I'm hoping Gilad will come with me. I already talked to the Master Clawhammer and Petey."

Helen sighed. "And let me guess, they told you they'd support you, and you speak for them?"

Milo nodded. "Is there something wrong with that?"

The master gatherer looked down at her ring. "No, nothing wrong. And very predictable. We are used to those with strong personalities dealing with outside problems. But Bleusnout is poisoned, and Gilad is acting odd, as are far too many in the Hollow. We shouldn't be putting all the responsibility on your tail, but that's what will happen, no matter how much I dislike it. You have my support and that of Gendifur. That makes five of us and the majority of a conclave. Could you speak with Gilad? Even addled by bad cheese, he will have some advice for you. But I agree, something needs to be done. I will send a runner to Arlothe and see if he and Cremona can take a break from dueling to aid you in your 'discussions.'"

"And meanwhile, I'm putting you back to bed. Politics is over; time for another dose of blood that Tallsqueak donated." Gendifur sent the wobbly master gatherer back to bed, then looked at Tallsqueak. "You must be weak as a newborn after all I took out of you. Remember that. A fight will take a lot out of you, and very fast. My advice is not to fight."

"But...if you have to, eat this first. It's aged Parmesan from Bibbiano Hollow. It is very potent." Milo put it in his pouch, trying to ignore the smell coming from the cheese. Gendifur handed an even larger chunk to Brutus.

Brutus gave Gendifur a quick hug, and the two left the infirmary, heading for the front tunnel of the Hollow.

Gangrene stared at the remains of a cage-cart and frowned. There was little left of Grackle. He'd been beaten with his own prod and most of his hair had fallen out from the electric shock. It takes a lot of storm magic to even get a fiend's attention. A fiend prod set to high would cause serious wounds if used on lesser beings, as Grackle had found out. Someone had taken away his prod, and used his fiend rod on him, hen slammed him into a cage, and then bent it so severely it couldn't be opened. Neither of his little fiends was around, of course. He mused how children could always surprise you. Grackle had been sure that with enough discipline, they wouldn't rebel as they got older. He'd been wrong and paid for it. They'd grown mean and feral, just as he'd promised. Ironic that Grackle was a victim of his own success. The question now was, where had they gone?.

Two fiends, even small ones, couldn't just walk up to a Hollow without the alarms going off and summoning every guard they had. And nothing like that had happened. More likely, they had killed Grackle and escaped back into the tunnels around the Hollow. Wild Cheese Fiends were a menace to everyone, but not something he could deal with right now. He kicked the cage, nearly knocking the cart over, angry with Grackle. He had needed those fiends! The two of them could have dealt with the dwarven mercenaries that Limburger Hollow had hired. Now he was going to have to lose some troops to their guns.

Grackle opened one eye and moaned. "Cheese? Potion?...please." Gangrene smirked. It was time for another lesson, not for Grackle, but for his other underlings. "Why waste resources on a failure? You had your chance." Gangrene grasped the bent steel cage and ripped it open in a show of strength not lost on the watching guards. Two large hands lifted up Grackle by his head, one hand over his mouth to prevent him from screaming. The General squeezed until bone shattered and grey matter oozed between his fingers. He tossed the body to the ground and ignored it.

Gangrene came to a decision, it was time to finish this. The Hollow was weakened by spiders and cheese. The population should be docile. He'd given his operative within the Hollow as much time as was needed, and Sneakybadguy had failed him. Of course, that meant Gangrene owed him nothing at all. He'd promised a passive population and an open front door. But the Hollow was closed off by dwarves and guards, and humans had attacked his caravan. It was time to do things the hard way. "Get everyone ready—full armor and weapons. I want everyone to eat their first two pieces of Battle Cheese. Wait for my command. We'll hit that front door hard and not stop until we have the entire Hollow under our control. But first I want some answers. And I want us as close as possible before we charge. Someone find a parley flag."

Gilad was sparring in the arena when Tallsqueak and Brutus arrived. It was all thirty of his students versus just the Tailmaster, and Gilad was winning. As the last student was knocked to the ground, Gilad turned and smiled at Milo. "Excellent. Better fighters have arrived. I will engage both of you at once."

Milo held up his ring and walked into the arena, followed by a nervous Brutus. "Conclave business, Tailmaster. The cheese caravan is an invading army, and we must deal with them."

Gilad shook his head as if to clear it. "That doesn't seem right. They are friendly merchants bringing us tasty cheese that helps us focus on our fighting. Are you making up excuses not to duel with me, Tallsqueak? But no matter, you are in the arena. Prepare yourselves."

Milo looked into Gilad's eyes. They were clouded by bad cheese and hours of sparring. He was totally focused on fighting. "I need to go deal with General Gangrene. He thinks his warriors can conquer the Hollow because they are better fighters."

Gilad stopped suddenly, just before he was about to launch a kick at Tallsqueak. "Gangrene, you say? I thought that overly-large merchant looked familiar. I hadn't seen him in four decades, and he was always in his Earthen Armor. Bah, we will see about this! You lot! Form ranks. We have real fighting to do."

Tallsqueak spoke softly to the Tailmaster. "If he sees our fighters, he may run away. If you stage our forces on this side of the tunnel, I will negotiate with him and may be able to taunt him to call a charge. When he is close, we can engage, and he won't be able to get away to spread his lies."

Gilad patted him on the back. "That is clever thinking, Scout Master. You are right; if shown a superior force as we have here, he will disengage and run like a coward. I've seen him do it before. We will attack as he comes through the tunnel or I hear him call the charge."

"So, what are you two thinking about this situation?" Boom-Boom was being uncharacteristically serious, which worried Two-Screws. He looked at Sledgemonkey. "I'll bow to your wisdom. You can't shoot straight, but your take on politics is usually straight on."

"Well, thank you for that compliment" The oldest of the Engineers looked over at the 'Cheese Caravan.' "Those folks don't act like merchants. Their soldiers. They keep watches and have armor and weapons handy. And they were really organized. Sure, they put on some song and dance for Milo's people, but that's not their purpose. And those smiles never get to their eyes. Watching them in that little battle, they were about to clean up those humans even without our help. And this might be my paranoia talking, but they aren't happy we are here."

Two-Screws nodded. "The last part is true. At first, I thought they were just jealous of our superior firepower and boyish good looks. But I get the feeling they see us as a bump in their road."

Boom-Boom smiled. "This bump is a landmine that will explode damned easy." The other dwarves nodded. All of them turned as Engineer Milo came walking up with the big guard that had been on gate duty before. "And that boy looks like he's been stuck on the Whirl-and-Hurl for too many hours."

Milo waved to the engineers and started to walk over, passing by the mechanical spider and its new mistress. Barracuda picked that moment to roll over and belch, and her backpack rolled off the spider, scattering its contents at Milo's feet. Brutus started to pick things up, but Milo stopped him. "Let me do this. Some of the stuff scavengers carry around can explode easily. They have hair triggers on all their guns. And if it isn't a bottle of alcohol, it's a gun, no matter what it looks like." The big guard stepped back a few steps. He remembered seeing the 'guns' in action and had a healthy respect for them.

Milo picked each item up carefully. The haircomb had a retractable knifeblade. The large knife concealed a one-shot pistol—the brace of pistols were really shotguns. Boom-Boom had told him some stories about the dwarven pirate clan he had married into, but seeing what one of them packed in their backpack was an eye-opener. He thought the pound of jerky was probably just food, but he wouldn't be surprised to find out it was explosives. At least the explosives were what they appeared to be. There wasn't much you could hide in a block of cataclysmite that was more deadly than the explosive itself. After repacking it all, he put the pack into the spider's cargo chest. Barracuda had been using it as a pillow while she slept off the barrel of beer she and the spider had drank.

The spider was so drunk it couldn't even hiss at him. It was just mumbling some song about a shipwrecked scavenger and an ogre on a desert island. Milo didn't know much about an Ogre's anatomy, but surely some of those verses were exaggerations? He patted the spider on its fuzzy head and went to talk to his brother engineers. "I have a problem."

Sledgemonkey bent his head toward the caravan. "So we gather. How do you want to handle it? Official Treaty between your Hollow and our Guild? Mercenary contract? Or should we just get bored and start shooting? I don't think you're getting out of a fight, so make sure you prepare for the project correctly."

Milo scratched an ear and hesitated a moment. "Ideally, without having to involve you in Hollow affairs. But..."

He smiled at them. "You're here. You have big guns you like to use. And you need a few hundred tons of ore that's sitting in mines the Hollow controls."

Two-Screws stroked his chin. "True. Be a shame not to give Sledge a chance to calibrate his guns."

The Engineer sighed. "Yeah, I'll admit I need the practice. Not doing any target practice for a few hundred years can degrade your shooting skills. And I do like the look of all that shiny ore just sitting there. How about we work out a trade of the ammunition we use for one ton of deep copper? We'll throw in the work of shooting it for free."

Milo was happy with that. "Turns out I have the authority to approve that deal. We can say I hired you as mercenaries. I'll mine the ore myself if needed. After this is over, we can work out the rest."

Boom-Boom looked over at the shiny cannon his wife and Vary were polishing. "You had me at Big Guns."

Brutus yelled over. "Don't want to disturb your conversation, but I think someone's coming to talk to us. They have a parley flag out, making it official."

Milo looked across the cavern. The massive form of Merchant Greensleeves, AKA General Gangrene, was moving towards them, escorted by six soldiers. Two dozen more followed behind at some distance and stopped at the halfway point, and the rest of the cheese caravan's guards and workers were behind those.

Milo and Brutus walked out to meet them. Both of them were nibbling on blocks of aged parmesan as they went.

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