The Trials of Toolgod: Book Three
I admit that, with all the fighting and scrambling, I had been somewhat concerned for my safety in the past few years. But now that things have toned down a little, I can realize that my fears were baseless and were purely the imaginations of a hassled and uncertain mind. Today, I forced myself to talk with one of the guards so he could give me a tour of the fort's defenses.
The young buck smiled at me.
"And here, ma'arm, we have the control room. This control room features an open-air design that is placed near to the front to ensure that any dwarves running from big nasty enemies will only have to run a short distance from the gates in order to reach the safety of these levers."
"But won't that mean that invading forces will also have just as short a walk before they're in control of our primary defenses?"
The guard looked at me, puzzled.
"I... I don't suppose I'd thought about it that way, ma'arm."
"I guess not..."
Collecting himself again, the guard showed me the general construction of the fort.
"...and here we have the west gate, protected by two rows of three-wide cage traps, and the eastern gate which is similarly protected. Both are solid iron drawbridges, geared and ready to raise up and repel any attacker that dares try and knock it down. We also have an emergency southern gate installed for added diversity."
"Southern gate? I don't see anything."
The guard pointed to a fisherdwarf that was crawling over some rubble about fifty feet away from us.
"That?! But that's just a hole in the wall! Literally! It looks like someone half-decided to put a slab of rock there and then got bored! It's an open floodgate to the outside world, and it hasn't even got a secondary wall to keep it away from the fortress proper! It's just a dead straight run!"
"Exactly ma'arm, that's why it's the emergency gate. If anyone came through it, it'd be an emergency."
"I'm going back inside..."
"Hey there Deler, where ya headed?"
"I'm going downstairs to sulk in the forges... You?"
"Oh, I'm on official renewal duty from the mayor's office, so I was just heading down to the mead hall for a drink. Listen, you might want to come along... The lower levels are kind of blocked off."
"What?! What do you mean? Blocked off by what?"
"Well... They stink."
I clasped my hand against my forehead, holding it there for a moment before sliding it down my face in an attempt to wipe away the exasperation that was boiling up.
"They stuffed more bodies in the staircase, didn't they."
"Well yeah, there's that, but some folks have been talking about a new stench down there. Something in the caverns is really making the place smell something awful."
"In the caverns? Like what?"
"Well, there have been rumors..."
"Save a drink for me, I need to go into my room and weep for a while..."