Chapter 139. Warm Lamp Mayhem

Much to my surprise, the whole "walk out with children" part works flawlessly... And then I stop being surprised when I notice a pair of boots sticking out of the horse trough. I guess someone did come by to check the stable, but Falstaff's men are clearly on the ball. I peer into the trough out of curiosity. Oh, blackjacked. Nice. Well, not for the fellow, he's gonna have a hell of a headache tomorrow, but on the other hand, he'd be alive to experience it. When I enter the stables, most of the kids are already outside, having been stuffed into carriages and trotted out. The stablehands are very "busy" putting up a fiction of having a big old cleaning session for all the horses and carriages, while we're at it. Nice, gives them a plausible reason why would a whole bunch of carriages leave one after another, if the pretense is that they are going to the river one by one to be washed up there. For all I know, they just might actually carry out exactly what it looks like, just with a "drop off kids on the way" detour.

"Welp, I got all I wanted out of the mansion." - I remark, causing everyone to stop what they are doing to peer at me.

"Jungfrau Gillespie." - one of them ventures. They all have facewraps, hats and big coats on, but the sound of the voice is unmistakeably a woman. A big one, while we are on the topic. On a whim, I sniff discreetly... Huh. Anne-Marie, now what are you doing here, I wonder? Back in Berlinger I had her pegged as a subordinate of Klaus, but looks like she's not quite so simple. Wonder who is she ultimately loyal to. Come to think of it, I can do a little probing right now.

"Hello again." - I retort - "That's quite impressive, getting here only a few days after me. It's, what... two hundred leagues to Berlinger, give or take?"

She doubletakes but then chuckles - "About right, yes. What gave me away? I thought the mask and the coat would keep me obscure."

Huh. Probably she is loyal to Falstaff and Hiram, then. I have a distinct hunch that she'd try to fob me off if she truly worked for Klaus. Or maybe she's the actual liaison between Klaus and Falstaff, come to think of it.

"Well..." - I muse - "Your height coupled with your voice was the big first hint. It is not that common for me to see a woman taller than myself, you know? But the cincher was the smell. Consider this a free tip for Falstaff on what other spells he might want to crib from me. Giving yourself a dog's nose sensitivity can be a chore to adjust to at first, but the utility is well worth it for those of us who need to ferret out secrets."

ALL of them doubletake at once and turn towards me, the naked interest clear even through their disguises. "...Pardon me, are you implying that you have... been using sniffer spells on a routine basis?" - she ventures - "And it does not destroy your will to eat anything at all?"

I sigh. "No." - I then deny firmly - "I am implying that I have altered my nose to always keep my olfaction sense keen. Your food problems likely come from the fact that most sniffer formulae I have come across are abrupt increases in sensitivity. Of course, it would mess with you. The trick is that you need to ramp it up little by little and take your time for a couple months raising the sensitivity of the spell used little by little each day until you are no longer suffering from synesthesia. Give your brain some time to develop the channel for receiving smells."

"...shreyb dos arop rekht itst!1...write this down right now!" - Anne-Marie hisses to one of them, making the man curse quietly and whip out the notepad. One of the things I had given dwarves a hint about, yes. I am guessing that I do have some enthusiastic customers here already. She turns back to me, smiling so widely I can clearly see her mask distorting. "Pardon my ignorance, but what is... synthesia?"

"Sy-ne-sthe-si-a." - I correct her - "Everything we perceive, be it visual, audial, tactile, olfactory, gustatory, proprioceptory, arcane or telepathic, all of it goes through our brains. If the input is beyond the capacity of the brain for that specific sense, the overflow will be interpreted as something from the other sense. Ever smelled something so bad your vision dimmed, for example? Well, that is it."

She blinks at me, mouthing several of the words I used to delineate senses. Did I use the words that don't exist yet?

"Senses. Visual is what you see, audial is what you hear, tactile is what you touch, olfactory is what you smell, gustatory is what you taste, proprioceptory is the sense of how your own body is positioned and where, arcane is all sorts of magical sight and scrying and telepathic is mind reading." - I explain - "You can enhance all of those senses, but if you ramp any of them too much, it will overwhelm your capacity and cause synesthesia. Hell, most people do not even perceive arcane at all without synesthesing it into the physical five."

The sound of furious scribbling makes me notice that there are three notepads out now.

"...And we are still in the stables." - I deadpan - "Let's wrap things up here, we can talk about senses and how they overlap and the proper ways of enhancing them on the way to the next objective, alright?"

___

"...Really?" - Falstaff deadpans - "It has not even been a day, jungfrau, why are my people weird already?"

I scratch the back of my head. "I had no idea you people thought synesthesia was an insurmountable obstacle." - I explain - "Your brains can be trained for better throughput if you take your time to inure you to the volume of detail the enhanced senses grant you gradually."

He purses his lips thoughtfully. "On one hand, I am definitely enthusiastic about the idea. Coupling the capability of the hound with the cleverness of a person is definitely something highly valuable in our craft. On the other hand, I am now full of dread thinking who else might have gotten insights from you and what will they put those knowledges towards..."

I shrug. "Well, I might mention all of that to sir Malachi once I get back to Parsee, but honestly, I don't really have all that many people I actually talk to, to begin with, you know?" - I dismiss his implication - "You lot warrant less caution simply because you answer to Hiram and I consider him to be one of the closest allies. So no real problems giving HIS people a little leg-up on the possible competition."

"Fair enough. Back to the problem at hand, though." - Falstaff knows when to let go of the topic, it looks like - "The keep in question is protected by gargoyles and therefore, using your airship to go there is not a good idea. I do not know if they can actually cause enough damage to bring you down or not, but the damage they will cause nonetheless. I'd rather not risk neither our princess nor your harem in that manner. That leaves traveling by horseback. I'd offer a carriage, but the roads in the vicinity of the keep, or rather the lack of them is a problem."

Not really keen on getting on a horse, to be honest. The horses are even less keen on the idea, it looks like, because all of them nervously prance away from me as soon I get closer than a touse. Apparently, I am unsettling to them. Come to think of it, out of all domesticated animals, only cats and geese do not shun me. The rest, well... yeah. Nervous in my presence.

"You know, I don't think this is going to work." - I muse - "I'm no equestrian and your horses are quite insistent they'd rather I don't try to become one. How about something alternative?"

"I'm open to suggestions, because the only other option I can think of is simply keeping up with horses by using body reinforcement magic." - he agrees.

Now, he did mention gargoyles before and I am in a peculiar mood. Falstaff is low-key warning me off from showing off too much new stuff, and that makes me want to show off even more. But he is also right and I'd rather not cause everyone problems by cluing one of the bad guys into something worthwhile. So let's just show off something a couple dozen steps away from contemporary know-hows.

"ZSU, I choose you." - I muse, as I start piecing together the conjuration. Lots of fiddly details, takes some concentration.

"Zee Sou?..." - someone repeats behind me. Wonder what they are assuming. Zee is sea in Kraut, so... Heh. Probably something outlandish. The reality is going to be... even more so, anyhow, so...

"Gotter im himmel!2Gods in heaven!" - yep, Falstaff is impressed. Twenty tons of metal suddenly settling down right next to you might give you a bit of a... start.

"Well, I think we're good to go." - I suggest as I pull the lid of the driver compartment open.

"Vas iz das?3What is this?" - I think he is VERY startled. Whatever.

"This, Falstaff, is ZSU-23-4. Also known as Shilka. I'm pretty sure I can keep up with your horses on this." - I suggest as I hop up and start wiggling into the driver seat. Soviet engineering with all that it entails, yeah. Including kinda fucking cramped crew spaces. Whatever, I can be liquid when I want to be, so not the problem.

He visibly wants to object, but then just shakes his head and walks over to his fellows. There's about a dozen of them, including Falstaff and Anne-Marie. I am not introduced to the rest, and probably shouldn't be expecting it to happen later. No real reason to. I give them a moment to get on the horses, then I run my fingers over the tumblers and levers. I never drove this before, obviously, but I do have some minimal experience driving tracked tractor from a previous life - and I have internet-enabled brains. Given the relative age of the system, the official manuals for it are quite literally available for download on the net, provided one has some idea how to word the search query.

With a series of solenoid clacks, the starter whines to life. A nice sound. A nostalgic sound. Now, I just... BAAAM! Hah, backfire! No matter, it caught up. Now let's idle a little bit, big diesels need a bit of time to get the heat up before putting the gear on. For now, I... am gonna facepalm. Of course, the horses will NOT care one whit about something like this. Thankfully, no panic galloping happens, but now the squad that's supposed to follow me is at arpent of distance and I doubt they are going to get closer for a while. Fine, then. I conjure some copper and quickly shape a bunch of earpieces, which I then go to hand to Falstaff.

"We're going to need to talk to each other, so here." - I show them how to put it on and explain that it's basically a differently shaped copperphone that's always on, so that we can have convenient discussions regardless of me driving an extremely anachronistic vehicle and scaring the shit out of horses. Literally.

___

"But why does it make so much noise?" - Falstaff is curious about diesel engine.

"Well, basically? It is fueled by an alchemical concoction that explodes if squeezed. So we put a little bit of it into the plunger, push on it, it explodes and pushes the plunger back. The force of the explosion is much more than the force needed to squeeze the fuel to an explosion, so... have a bunch of plungers all attached to the same lever in a way that whenever one of them explodes, the other gets squeezed, and there you go." - I explain, peering through the night vision periscope. Trying to drive with the normal lights was a no-go - horses could somehow deal with "roaring monster" following them at arpent's distance, but they definitely aren't fine if the "monster" illuminates them as well. The one time I turned the lights on, they galloped and it took us almost half an hour to get everyone back on track. So now I'm having IR spotlight blasting ahead and picking my way through it. Technically speaking, I could probably just open the lid because I can see IR with my own eyes, but damn it, if I bothered to make a complex toy, I'mma play with it to my heart's content!

...Why are they increasing the distance? Whatever. I can see them on night vision just fine, so not the problem. The lack of road, as Falstaff put it, is not really a problem either. No heavy machinery to really make a mess out of it yet, so... yeah, everything is fine. It does help that it hasn't rained for a while. The grounds here are prone to swamping, after all.

Speaking of swamps, I think we are getting close. In fact, I can see the keep already somewhat. Just as I notice it, Falstaff pipes up.

"Almost there. Maybe we should not get too close, they will hear your, uh... vehicle." - he suggests.

"Pretty sure they already did, to be honest. It's a quiet night, engine sounds tend to carry. Besides, it's not like I am planning on stealth in this. Actually, wait a moment..." - I have already put some of me into the turret, obviously. Normally, it's three men in there, pretty cramped together, too. Now, with just me, it's pretty spacious and I have more than enough tentacles to account for six arms. Now, let's see... I need to turn this on, and then this, and then I ramp this up slowly while the tubes heat up... I have a weird feeling using triode lamp tech. It feels obsolete and exceedingly new at the same time, weird.

---TWAO....TWAO....TWAO....---

...I think I am "hearing" radar in passive mode. To be frank, I turned it on only due to a combo of "if I'm playing, I'mma do everything" and the fact that I am learning to operate this as I go from the scanned manuals, and those say to turn on and heat up the radar before going cannons hot. Speaking of radar, it DOES seem to pick up something. Weird, why is there some kind of... Are those rising up?... Fuck it, active mode now, I need all the info I can get!

---BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRM!---

Ow. Owity ow ow ow. That is a lot of oomph... What is this, even? I pop open the driver compartment and stare at the winged statue plouging into the ground in front of me. Several others fall down inbetween me and the keep, a bunch of crashing sounds from inside the keep suggesting a lot of falling stones in there somewhere. I turn down the radar back into the passive scan, and in the ringing silence, I can "hear" something reminiscent of chicken peeping from inside the keep. So. Somehow, gargoyles are doing something on the radar frequencies. Maybe that's how they coordinate? I heard stories from Falstaff about how gargoyles can act in unison, maybe... Oh. Shit. The ones close to me are probably done for, they are silent, but the keep suddenly roils with them. At least a hundred of those all come up, and I have no doubt they are definitely looking in my direction with blood in their eye. But... I do have a radar.

---BARARARARARARARARARARARARRARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARARRRRM!!!---

Before, I just manually aimed the radar in the direction of keep and hit the search. Now, I have selected sector searching mode, wobulation active and moving target selection. Which means that I am hitting the gargoyles with radar warbling through the selection of frequencies and while at the same time using the system autotuning modulation and amplitude to highlight the moving targets the best. Thankfully, the makeup of gargoyles is sufficiently radar-dense to make this partially viable. Now, I'mma... nevermind. I was about to start firing, but apparently, gargoyles are weak to radar trauma.

"What is happening?" - not sure who it is exactly but one of the Falstaff's men definitely. And then another of them rides right in front of me! Shit. I turn the radar off immediately, but even so, the overly gallant guy falls off his horse, keening and clawing at his helmet. He had the... dubious luck of catching the edge of the microwave ray with his head only.

"...Falstaff, what the hell was that guy trying to pull?" - I ask in the silence that follows - "Get him out of there, it's safe if you keep your heads low. I'll heal him after we finish with the keep. He should be fine, but will probably have temporary blindness and a lot of headache."

"What was THAT!" - is his exasperated response as a couple of men get off the horses and run over to the guy writhing on the ground, their heads low just as I suggested. Nice to see they can follow instructions, at least.

"That was me scrambling what passes for minds in those gargoyles." - I retort with certain asperity - "Your guy is lucky minds of stone and minds of meat are less alike than one might think. What was he trying to pull, anyway?"

"Probably, shield you and your vehicle from gargoyles. Not that you really needed the shielding, I suppose." - he quips - "That takes care of gargoyles, I believe. Now we just need to slaughter some traitors and call it a day."

"Look alive, I think they're about to join the party!" - I snap at him. The gates of the keep are opening. Pretty quickly, too. Since there is no moat, there is no drawbridge either. I'm guessing they lifted up the portcullis grate beforehand and... yep, looks like they're about to attempt a horseback sally. Not a bad idea if we were a contemporary force, they can clearly see there's only maybe a dozen of us, and counting their retainers and guards, I'm tentatively guessing they can offer about fifty horsemen. More than enough to scatter us and run everyone down in detail. If we were just a squad of horsemen, that is.

By the time the gates are open, I already have the turret facing them and peering through the optic scope. Little known fact - while Shilka was envisioned as a purpose-built anti-aircraft vehicle, it is terrifyingly effective against infantry and lightly armored targets. Cavalry too, though in my previous reality, that kind of match didn't really happen much. No one fielded cavalry as actual field forces since the second world war, after all. Cannons uncapped, manual mode selected, let her rip.

The actual noise of autocannons going off right above my head is unbelievable. The actual carnage that happens inside the gates is even more so. Armored horsemen meet 23 mm fragmentary burst rounds arriving in hundreds and spectacularly transform into assorted meat and blood spray. The length of burst I let them have is merely five seconds, but that is enough to send out nearly three hundred shells. The first two seconds are spent getting through the column of horsemen, who were spectacularly unlucky to have had been mostly stuck inside the portcullis and right behind it and got all shredded. The rest of the ammo wrecks the hell out of the ground floor facing the gates. Nice.

Capitalizing on the shell shock, I take my time to shoot the hell out of gate towers next. Not really keen on some jackass deciding that pouring some hot oil on my associates is a good last-stand option. Still enough ammo. Shoot the windows then. And the walls between. Hell, a good part of the keep is just wood, shells wreck it right up. Considering every fourth round is incendiary, well... By the time I reach half the ammo, the keep is burning in many places and Falstaff is frantically signaling to me to stop firing.

"Sup?" - I ask him, massaging my ears at the same time. I really should have put on a helmet, or at least closed the driver's lid, it was way loud.

"Enough, the keep is clearly broken. If you wreck it anymore, checking for survivors is going to become dangerous to ourselves." - he suggests, his lips pressed in thin line - "Honestly, you could have stopped right after breaking the sally."

"Didn't want someone trying to pour hot oil on you people out of spite." - I retort, eyeing the utterly wrecked gate towers - "Reasonably sure that's not possible now."

The overhead in portcullis suddenly collapses on top of the assorted gore, opening up the gate to the sky, the gates themselves ponderously tipping over and slamming flat on the ground as if to underscore my point.

"Right. Let's take a look at your hothead and then go see what survived inside." - I suggest as I climb out of the driving compartment. No real reason to let Falstaff know there is more of me in the tower, let him think the whole thing is controlled from down there.

The guy in question is fine. Well, as fine as one can be after essentially sticking his head into a microwave. His helmet took the most of impact, thankfully for him, and the clawing he did was to try and pull it off because taking all that energy at once made the helmet uncomfortably hot. As it is, he is already tended to by a couple of his fellows who seem to have some light magic proficiency and even stands up on his own. Still, Falstaff leaves him and one another fellow to guard the horses and my artillery, while the rest of us go explore the keep.

___

"...What were they doing here?" - I ask in befuddlement. The entirety of men participating in the salle was expected. The presence of wives/aunts/daughters/elders/whatever on the ground floor, however, was not.

"Probably setting up the place to treat the wounded and preparing to defend the gates if their main force ended up being distracted by a feint." - Falstaff muses, as he examines the collected remains. Using a combination of magic and good old hard labor we had managed to collect most of the heads and other such body parts that could help identify the people. Morbid but necessary.

"To sum it up..." - he muses, as he checks people off on his list - "Hansliches were ended by you back in the town mansion. Kleineschatzes are accounted for." He points out a pair of heads that according to him belongs to Adonis and Hilda. Very contrastful. Adonis looks like he's barely twenty, and Hilda is an old crone despite being the youngest. Wonder if they really were a couple.

"Norns were ended even earlier, so from that county we are missing only Ambercrombes. None of whom is present here." - he continues - "Fonzes are all accounted for, and so is baron Hexenjaeger. He was in the head of the salle, by the way. Apparently, they counted on his expertise to turn away your spells, if the numbers of amulets on his person are of any indication. I am guessing he was not expecting an alchemical attack, of all things."

Falstaff pauses and briefly shudders, before continuing - "Speaking of which, I am so increasing the budget for our alchemists going forward. Those weapons of yours are beyond destructive, jungfrau... Oh well, back to our muttons. From the Fonz county, we are missing Dachaufreissers and Brikhiters. It is somewhat surprising none of the Brikhiters were present, as this keep belongs to their family, but then again, I suppose they are using their fallback in the bogs. Any ideas on that front?"

"Don't worry about them." - I riposte smoothly - "I already know where the keep is and will lead you all there in the morning. It will have to be in the morning and on foot, the way through the bogs is not horse-friendly at all."

He blinks. "How did you manage that, if it is not a secret?" - he inquires - "I had problems finding out anything about the hideout in question."

"Dachaufreissers were using something similar to the far-seeing spheres Sultanate uses for diplomacy to observe their children at the mansion." - I explain - "I used that to backtrack the signal to the keep and from there it was simple."

And this is where we are interrupted.

"Sir!" - one of his guys pops up - "There are people in the basement. They have barricaded themselves in one of the rooms down there. We avoided letting them know of our presence so far, but we can not find out who is there and why without being seen."

I am guessing he reports in Albish for my benefit. Sure enough, Falstaff tilts his head in my direction - "Let's go see who's there? My money is on Ambercrombes."

___

They were indeed Ambercrombes. All five of them. And now I can finally see why Falstaff just shook his head before when I asked about brothers being unmarried. They are unmarried because they all wear slave collars. And wielding swords. And are advancing towards us while shouting that they have no choice but to fight to the death if they are not given safe passage for their entire family. Hm. Their mother... over there. Father right next to her. And apparently, he is the slave master for his sons, I can see the magical connections from the collars to the bracelet on his arm. So he is forcing his sons to be cannon fodder? Looks like the collars were not placed recently, they probably grew up with them, given how tight they are...

Fine, I have an easy cure for THAT. Their father is hiding behind that screen over there. Sturdy enough to keep arrows off him, that's true... and the way his connection is warped, I am assuming he is wearing dragonscale amulet. Connections to Sultanate, I'm guessing. Both things are their cultural artifacts and if anyone ever bothered working out how to make dragonscale dispel effect avoid slavery collars, it would be Sultanate indeed.

Alrighty then. I pull out one of the flintlocks, aim at the screen and pull the trigger. BAM. Blood spray from behind. Nice, right in the noggin. Blasted his brains all over the walls.

"...Dear, no... NOOO!" - annd his wife is apparently deeply distraugh... nevermind, went right for the bracelet. Have a bullet too. Blowing the smoke off the barrels, I peer at the sons who are standing still and stiff. Huh, the collars were supposed to pop... Or not. Actually, they are locked into a sort of tetanus right now, until someone else takes the control bracelet. Who the fuck would treat his own sons like this?

I stroll past them, plucking the swords out of their hands as I go, then pick up the bracelet, pull it off the cadaver's arm and snap it in halves. Three synchronous clatters echo through the room.

"...Thank you!" - one of the brothers manages suddenly - "Thank you for letting us die free."

I look at Falstaff. He looks back at me.

"...Myeah, no." - I then offer - "You people are not getting off so easily. Since you were enslaved before you became adults, you fall under the children clause."

"...Jungfrau, they are still adults..." - Falstaff hems - "It will cause complications."

"They are Ambercrombes." - I riposte - "Their relative is the dean of Parsee Academy. I'm pretty sure his family would take them in."

He shrugs - "Yeah, if you can manage to get them out of Kraut for good, his excellency will be satisfied with this much."