>>6073930By full moon-up (9pm) you see it: one of the pair of watchmen on one platform stands up and gives a short <span class="mu-i">pippip</span> whistle, and waves to the other platform. One watchman on the other platform acknowledges, waves back.
The pair on the first platform dim their lamps by half, and mount bucklers behind their lamps, to keep the remains of the light off their eyes.
The pair on the second tower raise their lamps higher and brighter, and start to smoke to stay awake. They'll probably keep this up half the night, then switch over, so they'll be half rested at breakfast, maybe continue half a shift more, for money's sake.
Too bad they didn't figger <span class="mu-g"><span class="mu-i">you</span></span>.
•••
You come up under the sleeping platform; the shadow cast by the lamps almost reaches the whole way down to the workshed there.
You wait more, watching the thin threads of baccy smoke drifting up, the little snatches of talk back and forth.
When the talk stalls, and one of the lanterns gets taken down from its pole, you prime yourself to go. When you see the removed lantern get brighter on the platform, you know it's glass has been removed and they're rekindling their pipes.
You move, using your darkvision to spy for patches of soil exposed on the pit wall. You land lightly, quickly, frogscotch across the lilypads, and you are in cover again, inside the workshed, when you hear the rattle of the lantern being raised again. Then the talking starts; they didn't hear you.
You peek up: they're leaning on the back fencing of their watchplatform; you are out of their line of sight. Keep talking, dumdums.
You whip out the Wondrous Pillager Pouch and start helping yourself to the discarded Stuffs in the workshed. Tangled piles of cord twine and rope; long rock chisels blunted from use; broken shovel heads, pickax heads, mallet heads, all worn tool iron; torn tarping, bent marking pegs, poles and planks; two halves of a sharpening wheel, a broken drill head, a half cracked mining helmet. The old, the battered, the misused, everything that won't be missed. All inna Pouch! It's right useful, this Pouch: the storage space of a castle, the size of an apron pocket. There's no sound of things krashen or krumpen when you chuck em in, and they're nice and sorted separate when you pick them out. You wonder if you can bag live hostages in it.
You've picked enough and pause to listen.
They're still talking. Doofi.
The workshed had been cleared of the BIG lewts, leaving only the normal stuff. The only way you'll get any is to dig them up raw.
You start digging on the blind side of the rubble hill, quietly sweeping a picking. You find a goddess head of stone, cracked from the top of one ear diagonal past the chin. One eye and half a mouth gone, but still enough for you to know she priddy, and you want to cram your chubber in.
One day, Toady. One day. You're going to master the Carrionpede, and masculate all the weakling gods, and pregging <span class="mu-i">ALL</span> their goddesses.
