Casserole Diplomacy and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page B

it. Perhaps his men shared the same agitation to get on with things that dogged him; or maybe they were just anxious to complete the road and return to their families. Whatever the case, the guilds had worked cooperatively for once, and would have posted their first injury-free day had it not been for the knifing.
    Bertwold walked the length of his new machine, checking the work. Inside the frame from the levelling machine, they had placed the arm from the digging machine, hinged on a massive, metal pin. Bertwold nodded at the end of his inspection, deciding it would make a passable catapult.
    He surveyed the castle wall with his telescope, settling on a spot midway between the towers.
    The men stood ready.
    Bertwold barked an order and three bare-chested men bent to the task of turning a large windlass that drew the catapult’s arm lower. A ratchet snicked in time to the men’s grunts. When the arm would go no lower, a second crew wrestled a round, black bomb into the cupped palm at the end of the arm. Lumpkin, who Bertwold had placed in charge of the catapult, jotted a few quick calculations on a pad he held in his hand, and directed the men to angle the cart ever so slightly. A moment later, he turned to Bertwold and said, “Weady, Sur!”
    Bertwold nodded.
    “Fur!” Lumpkin shouted at a burly man holding a mallet.
    The man raised his eyebrows in a quizzical look.
    “Fur! I said!”
    “Beg your pardon?”
    “Fire,” Bertwold said quietly.
    “Oh,” the man said, then turned and knocked the ratchet stay free with his mallet.
    The arm flashed upwards, and the cart jerked sharply, its wheels momentarily lifting off the ground. Bertwold watched the bomb arc towards the castle.
    It struck near the top of the wall and exploded, a thunderous sound rushing back to them a second after the flash. A section, just above the point at which the missile struck, slowly tumbled backwards and out of sight, leaving a small, but noticeable gap, like a missing front tooth.
    The men cheered and Bertwold turned to look at Lumpkin. Though it was hard to tell, he thought he could detect a smile of satisfaction beneath the green mass of broccoli.
     
     
    “Aieee!” shrieked Miranda, dancing backwards when the wall tumbled down, narrowly missing her and burying Poopsie, who had been seated in the rose garden. “Aieee!” she said again. Then, recovering her composure, she stamped her feet in indignation. How dare they? she thought. The insolent insects! “That’s it!” she said to the rubble heap that had been Poopsie. “Now I’m really mad!”
    “Now, now Miranda, better not to get yourself worked up,” Poopsie’s voice was barely audible from beneath the debris. “They’re only doing what mortals usually do. Let’s think about this thing rationally . . .”
    “No!” Miranda shouted as a large section of the fallen wall began to stir, loose dirt and stones trickling off its edges. “I will not let this go unpunished!” The chunk of wall floated upwards, then hovered. Another piece began to shift.
    “Please, Miranda, before you go throwing away perfectly good body parts on a pointless gesture.” Poopsie’s voice was clearer now, and Miranda recognized the wheedling tone. She knew it was his own precious body parts he was really worrying about. “After all, we’re the ones who landed in the middle of their pass. It’s not as if they came here just to raze the castle.” A geyser of dirt and stones shot from the hole and fell to the ground, forcing Miranda to hop back two more steps.
    “Are you taking their side?”
    Poopsie clambered from the pit as best he could on his one good leg, covered in dirt but otherwise unhurt. “No, dearheart. I’m just saying you have to see it from their point of view.” The stone slabs suspended in the air dropped back into the hole with a whump .
    “Humph,” she said. She eyed him closely, wondering what part of himself he had sacrificed to escape the rubble. He shook his head