Lost Ones (eBook)

Pete Prown (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2016 | 1. Auflage
200 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-0911-1 (ISBN)

Infos

The third book in the 'The Chronicles of Dorro' saga, THE LOST ONES finds the village of Thimble Down battling one crisis after another. A summer drought is wreaking havoc, while at the same moment, a child suddenly goes missing. And then another! Mr. Dorro and his young friends, Cheeryup and Wyll, must act before more children disappear ... something all the more eerie after the arrival of two strangers in the village.

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The third book in the "e;The Chronicles of Dorro"e; saga, THE LOST ONES finds the village of Thimble Down battling one crisis after another. A summer drought is wreaking havoc, while at the same moment, a child suddenly goes missing. And then another! Mr. Dorro and his young friends, Cheeryup and Wyll, must act before more children disappear ... something all the more eerie after the arrival of two strangers in the village.

Textauszug

The Driver Spike

 

“Sheriff, I can’t remember the last time we’ve had the pleasure of your company in the library,” said Dorro, looking up from the reference desk.

“Never mind the pleasantries, Winderiver—the well at Fell’s Corner has failed,” crabbed Forgo. “Completely dried up, except for a trickle. Some of the boys went down to dig a new hole, but found that the well is sitting on a sheet of rock. Only a few drops are bubbling through since the water levels are so low.”

“I’m researching well-digging techniques at the moment, but not coming up with much. Halflings have hand-dug wells for centuries, and if one is sitting on a ledge of granite or shale, there’s not much we can do.”

Forgo looked unimpressed. “This time, failure is not an option,” he continued. “If the Fells Corner well is barren, then the others in the village will dry up in less than a week. We need a solution and we need it now.”

“But Sheriff, I—”

“Sorry Dorro, I’ll have to seek advice elsewhere. This is a crisis and Thimble Down needs its water; even the river is starting to look low. I’ve heard of this happening in the past—a heat wave destroys the wells in a town, and without water, the entire village is forced to relocate. Sure, we can get by for a little while with river water, but we can’t sustain the town for long without our wells.”

At that, Forgo turned on his heels and walked towards the door. “But Sheriff, can’t I help somehow?”

“I’m going to see Rufus Lickspittle and see if he’s come up with anything. You can tag along, if you’d like.”

Slapping his quill down as if he was slapped across the face, Dorro rose and followed Forgo out the door. At the last second, he flipped a sign in the library window from Open to Closed! He didn’t know when he’d be back.

 

***

 

“Ah, gentlemen, so pleased to see you.” Rufus Lickspittle rose from his own modest cherry wood desk and grandly gestured for Dorro and Forgo to enter. “Is there anything I can help you with? Some light reading to help pass those long hours at the gaol, perhaps? I do have some fine adventures featuring heroic sheriffs and lawmen, if that would interest you.”

“Actually, we have a real problem, Mr. Lickspittle—a big one,” said the Sheriff grimly. “Our village is losing its water supply in this heat wave, and one of the key neighborhood wellheads went dry today. Unfortunately, there’s no information about wells in the library,” he added, turning and looking at Dorro dismissively, “but we’re hoping that you might have some ideas.”

Rufus Lickspittle rubbed his hands together and furrowed his eyebrows. “Oh dear, yes, I heard about your woes—nay, our woes—now that I count myself as a resident of Thimble Down. I’m afraid well-digging is not in my realm of expertise, Sheriff.”

Forgo knew this had been a last-ditch effort and looked at the floor in exasperation.

“However, gentlemen, I’ve spent much of the morning looking at some recent technical papers from the College of St. Borgo and stumbled onto something interesting.” Forgo looked into Rufus’ dark eyes as the bookseller continued. “This is a long shot, gentlemen, but worth an effort. It will require a fair amount of heft, including no less than a half dozen villagers, preferably of the large-muscled variety. And do you have a blacksmith or pony stable?”

“Why yes,” interjected Dorro. “We have a new blacksmith in town, who has set up his forge right next door to a stable. Just a few paces up the road is a wainwright’s shop, where they build and repair our wagons, carts, and drays. Our former blacksmith—” the bookmaster coughed awkwardly, “Errrr, he met an unfortunate end a few months ago. But this new one, a fellow named Bog, seems quite competent.”

“If you’ll give me a minute to close up here, I’d suggest the three of us voyage over to Mr. Bog’s establishment and have a little conversation,” said Rufus with grin. “Certainly, I can’t promise anything, but these new techniques hold some promise.”

“Let’s go!” shouted Forgo in an almost gleeful manner. Dorro looked at him strangely, but no matter—he knew this was their best hope and followed the two out the door.

 

***

 

Within two hours, much had transpired. Rufus, Dorro, and Forgo dashed over to Bog’s forge and immersed themselves into a fascinating discussion about wagon axles. Bog soon dispatched his boy to the wainwright’s shop and returned with the wagon builder himself: a certain Dowdy Cray, driving a dray cart that carried a slim and extremely long axle in the back, roughly twenty-four feet long (in fact, it was a “master” piece of iron from which he would normally cut four axles).

They quickly brought it into Bog’s forge, upon which the blacksmith thrust one end into his fiery furnace. He removed the glowing end, now alight with molten orange heat, and took to beating on it with a variety of large hammers and mallets.

It was a sight to behold as—amid a shower of hot sparks—he shaped it. After he had finished and dunked it into a steaming bucket of water, the tip of the axle had become pointy, somewhat like a dull spear tip.

In the interim, Rufus Lickspittle took Forgo and Dorro to a carpenter’s shop nearby and asked its owner if he could expeditiously fashion a wooden beam roughly seven or eight feet long, with a hole in the middle. The Sheriff and bookmaster looked perplexed, but Rufus seemed confident and carried on. Forgo had also assured everyone these tasks were backed up by the treasury of Thimble Down and the good word of the Mayor. That inspired this collective of craftsman to work that much harder and faster on Lickspittle’s plan, which still wasn’t clear to any of them.

“There, we’ve assembled most of the critical pieces,” proclaimed Rufus. “We have the wagon axle, which in this case, will serve as a driver spike. The wooden beam will lie across the top of the well and guide the driver. Now, Mr. Bog, if we can borrow a few sledgehammers and round up a few burly gents, we can get to work.”

And thus it was that Dorro and Forgo found themselves at the dried-up well in Fell’s Corner while Rufus Lickspittle expounded on his plan in the blazing sunlight. It was another beastly hot day, but with a crisis at hand, many had ventured to Thimble Down’s shabbiest neighborhood to see the action. Even the Mayor had shown up, so grave the situation.

“First, carefully lay that beam across the top, with the hole pointing vertically,” directed Rufus to a group of strong villagers used to heavy manual labor. “Nicely done. Now, good sirs, grab the driver spike and feed it down through that aperture. If my calculations are correct, there should be two feet of the driver protruding from the top of the beam. Excellent!”

True to form, the driver bar stuck up from the beam, while the pointed end sat some eighteen feet below, its tip resting on wet shale rock at the bottom of the old well. “Now, my fine fellows, grab a hammer and jump up on the edge of the well!” bellowed Rufus, waving his arms excitedly and inspiring the crowd to cheer the workers on. “Now strike, lads, and strike hard! Go around in a circle, and try not to hit each other on the noggin.”

Slowly, the hammer gang began banging the driver with their hammers, trying to work out a process. It was awkward at first, but eventually they found a rhythm and began raining formidable blows on the driver spike.

Bang! Clang! Bang!

Clang! Bang! Clang!

They labored for a while, but then grew tired. At that moment, Rufus called on the next wave of hammerers to jump to the fore and begin a new round of blows.

Clang! Bang! Clang!

Bang! Clang! Bang!

It was exciting at first, but after a while, the crowd grew slightly bored, and even the workers tired of the incessant hammering. Lickspittle, however, kept exhorting them to continue, and even Forgo got into the act, promising each Halfling a silver piece if they kept going. That inspired the strikers, and they poured their strength into renewed blows upon the metal driver.

“Do you think it will work, Sheriff?” asked Dorro meekly. “It’s been over an hour. I don’t know how much longer those poor fellows can keep going.”

“Why, I’ll go up there myself if they get too tired, Winderiver,” said Forgo impatiently. “I might even conscript a few more villagers to work the hammers—and that would include you!”

Dorro gulped and decided to keep his mouth shut. Suddenly there was an odd noise, a dullish bang-thud that didn’t sound right. Rufus leapt up on the well wall himself and felt the tip of the driver, which was blunted and hot from the incessant pounding. He tried to budge it with his bare hands, but it wouldn’t move. Then he grabbed a small hammer and started to whack it on the sides, and still it wouldn’t budge. The bookseller got a strange glint in his eyes and a smile spread across his thin face. He rose to his full height, which was taller than anyone else in Thimble Down, and shouted, “Now boys, this is the moment! The driver is wedged into the rock ledge and has hit something. I don’t know if it’s water or just another layer of sand or gravel. But we’ll never know until we get the driver out. I need your muscles one last time.”

At that, Forgo shouted out, “Not only will you get a silver piece, but if you get that driver out in five minutes, at the Hanging Stoat...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 21.7.2016
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Fantasy / Science Fiction ► Fantasy
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-0911-6 / 1543909116
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-0911-1 / 9781543909111