The spear-threatening gnoll barely had time to look up and twist his face into something that resembled alarm before the shadow passed and the gnoll's spear bounced into the trench, the flint head crushed and the wood splintered.
"Six-fifty-two!" came a deep, rumbling voice that could be heard over the sound of crashing wood and screaming gnolls. There was another, high-pitched voice mixed in that was lost in the deeper, deadly counting. Whump! "Six-fifty-three!" Whump! "Six-fifty-four." Whump! "Six-fifty-hang on, we just winged him!" Whump! "There we go! Six-fifty-five!"
Bunniswot cautiously peered over the edge of the trench to witness the ongoing devastation. The agent of destruction, mowing down gnolls right, left, and center, looked like a siege engine, the type that was normally lugged up by invading armies to storm the local castle. Except that this particular engine lacked the units of troops that were normally used to ferry it, and was moving about on its own.
No, not completely on its own. Perched on its back was Underhill, and his was the higher voice that Bunniswot had heard amidst the rampage. Underhill would beckon and shout, and the great runaway siege engine would spin around and roll through enemy gnolls, toppling trees, flattening tents, and crushing everything in its path.
Whenever it struck another gnoll, a great shout would go up, as if the True Gods were keeping tally of the battle.
The engine was effective, but nondiscriminating in its targets. The device struck an ogre plinth dead on, and the aeon-old carving vaporized in a puff of stone dust. Some gnolls had chosen to hide behind the plinths for protection, while their wiser brethren had dashed for the swamp at the first sight of the flame-red creature. The siege engine plowed through stone columns and gnolls as if they were one being, and with double the glee.
"Six-sixty!" It bellowed as it caught a gnoll cowering behind a plinth and decimated both.
Bunniswot was delighted to see that Underhill had not only rescued himself from the temple, but had brought aid. Still, the destruction of the plinths was too high a price to pay, and the gnolls seemed in full flight already. The red-haired scholar struggled to his feet and waved, using both arms, and shouting for Underhill to direct the behemoth elsewhere.
As Underhill saw him, the hobgoblin's face lit up, if the combination of shock and fear could be considered "lit up" in humanoid terms. The hobgoblin said nothing, but motioned, fingers splayed, palms downward, raising and lowering his hands frantically.
There are times when, under stress, an individual cannot understand a common sentence or a particular written word, or is confounded by such simple matters as whether a door opens inward or outward. This was one such time for Bunniswot, and he stared dumbly at the mounted hobgoblin, trying to piece together what he meant by… ah! He must be signaling Bunniswot to get down.
By that time the device had turned to face the entrenched scholar, and Bunniswot realized that the horrible visage at the front of the siege engine was also the horrible visage in the temple.
So it was not a siege engine at all. The creature spun its huge rollers and snapped off two more pillars while clos-
ing the distance between itself and the terrified scholar.
Bunniswot swooned, and in the swooning saved his own life, for he toppled backward. Had he tried to dive sideways, or even engage his brain in the question of what to do, he would have been too late, and the Abyss-engine would have crushed him.
As it was, he came to, alert, as soon as the heavy shadow passed over him again. A deep voice vibrated through the soil. "Missed that one. Hang on while I hit 'im again."
Bunniswot thought about rising and running, but caught himself. Instead he flattened himself further, trying to burrow his body into the deep, twice-turned soil of the trench.
The shadow passed a second time, very quickly, and then a third, this time from the side. Each time the scholar was convinced the entire trench was going to collapse on him, but each time the trench held, and the shadow passed.
Finally the great engine rolled over the trench and parked, leaving Bunniswot directly underneath in its inky black shadow. The scholar willed himself immobile.
"What now?" said Underhill's voice.
"I can grade down to him," said the engine, in a voice so low that it made Bunniswot's teeth ache.
"And that would take?" asked Underhill.
"Hmmmm." The engine made a sound like a gnomish device. "Figuring soft soil, about a week. Less if it rains, little… ah, Toede."
Toede? thought Bunniswot. As in Highmaster Toede?
"Sounds boring," said Underhill/Toede, sounding more pensive and worried than bored. Bunniswot wondered which one of the two was trying to crush him to death.
"And you have a better idea?" grumbled the engine.
"Uh-huh," said the hobgoblin. "A place where you can make your quota in a day's work."
"I'm game," said the engine.
"The only thing," added the hobgoblin, "is that there is a special individual I want you to make number one thousand. A particularly large and nasty frog."
Again the rumbling. "Don't know if it counts. Frogs don't talk, and that's a basic rule to counting."
"Oh, this one talks, and plots, and schemes," said the hobgoblin. "Promise me you'll go after this one and I'll guide you to Flotsam."
The engine grumbled a little, something about a "sure thing" right here versus a "maybe" tomorrow. The hobgoblin explained, patted, and cajoled, and suddenly Bun-niswot knew that this was Toede-the legendary, venomous, dangerous, twice-dead Toede.
The engine rolled off the trench, and there was more crashing as birch trees and plinths snapped in its path.
Bunniswot sat up carefully, ready to fling himself to the ground in case the great engine reversed itself. But no, it was pounding its northerly way up the path, trampling a wide swath with it. And on its back was the hobgoblin Toede, who turned and waved as they disappeared into the brush.
Bunniswot's knees failed him. He had to try several times to organize himself in a sitting position on the edge of the trench. He was surrounded by the remnants of the camp. Everything the scholars had abandoned was now smashed, along with a dozen extremely two-dimensional and soil-impacted gnoll corpses. The engine had been thorough in its devastation, in that not a single plinth seemed to have survived unscathed. I could have died, he said to himself. And you were spared, he answered himself. By Highmaster Toede, he added.
Bunniswot looked around at the wreckage, and then rose, walking to the fire. He kicked at it until all the larger sticks had been scattered, and stomped on the hot ashes until they were dying embers.
Then he returned to the trench, grasping his shovel and shoving the rag in his pocket. He began to uncover the last surviving words of the ogres, his unwanted life's work that almost had become his death's work.
There was not a great deal of opportunity for chat during the journey from the camp to Flotsam. This was due both to a limited range of discussion, and to the fact that the juggernaut had been designed without any idea that anyone would ever care to ride it. As a result, it lacked such modern amenities as seats, windows, springs, or intentional handholds.
Toede found that he could manage by a tactic he called "hanging on for dear life," which worked fairly well. He shouted directions whenever he could, bellowing over the noise of Jugger's passage. Once or twice Jugger had to slow to reasonable speeds to learn which way to proceed, but as soon as Toede said anything, or even motioned, the infernal device was off with a commotion.
It was early dusk when they hit Flotsam. Jugger's total had reached the six-nineties by that point, aided by a handful of farmers, a pair of elves, one or two stragglers who could have been among Renders's fleeing scholars, a few gnolls, and two creatures that Toede thought counted but Jugger said were undead zombies and as such were "gimmies."