West to East Journey

"Yes, I have it here somewhere," the kender declared from under the table.

  "The kender has the long-lost map?" Sir Wolhelm exclaimed, forgetting that he had been interrupted again. He glared under the table, but the kender had vanished.

  "Yes, of course. And he is a most qualified cartographer," Commodore Brigg asserted.

  "The gods help you," the young Knight in the gray robes sighed.

  With a puzzled look at this remark, Commodore Brigg continued, "We intend to sail round the northern shore of Ansalon until we reach the Blood Sea of Istar. We'll stop off in Flotsam to replenish our supplies-"

  "I have additions to those orders," Sir Wolhelm inserted hastily, while still searching beneath the table for the kender. The young Gray Robe read from his tablet. "When you reach the city of Flotsam, you are ordered take on board the Thorn Knight, Sir Tanar Lobcrow, and extend him every courtesy."

  The gnomes exchanged puzzled looks.

  "Whatever for?" the commodore exclaimed. "I have no need of a sorcerer. My crew list is already completed."

  "You are so ordered, Brigg," Sir Wolhelm said. "If you want the Knights of Neraka to finance this excursion of yours, as agreed, you must abide by our terms. We want one of our own on this voyage, but we'll not needlessly risk the life of even one Knight until you have proved you can sail your ship from here to Flotsam."

  "I assure you, Sir Wolhelm, the MNS Indestructible will reach Flotsam," the commodore responded in insulted tones. "However, my ship is not built to accommodate individuals of your… your…" he paused, waving his hand vaguely toward the Knight Commander.

  "Stature," Snork whispered.

  "Stature!" Commodore Brigg snapped. "Yes, that's it. This is a gnome-built ship built for gnomes, and, well, the occasional kender. Your Knight will be most uncomfortable, rest assured. One might even say cramped. We've agreed to turn over all logs, maps, records and so forth, upon our successful return. That should be sufficient. I should think that would satisfy your… how shall we say?… curiosity about our venture."

  The Knight's face darkened, and the muscles along his jaw began to quiver. "There is no point in arguing. You have been ordered to take Sir Tanar aboard at Flotsam, and that is what you shall do. Sir Tanar will see that you do not accidentally get lost along the way and, for example, fall into the hands of any Knights of Solamnia."

  "Very well," the commodore sighed. Obviously flustered, he turned back to the professor. "As I was saying, we will put into port at Flotsam. From there, we sail to the center of the Blood Sea, dive to the bottom, and enter the chasm that once led to the Abyss. In the wall of this deep crevasse is an opening, a cave, from which the Polywog emerged all those years ago at the end of their legendary west-to-east journey. We should emerge in the New Sea somewhere near the Isle of Schallsea."

  "Sounds impossible," the professor said while gnawing thoughtfully on the pencil in his mouth.

  "Perhaps-but let me remind you that no one is going anywhere until these ordinance experiments are completed," Sir Wolhelm said.

  The professor's eyes narrowed beneath his shaggy white brows. "These maybe ordinance experiments to you Knights, but they are scientific experiments to me," he snarled. "Need I remind you that my life quest is to unravel the mystery of buoyant stone? And these experiments, I tell you, are a complete failure!" He stabbed his pencil into the ream of wet schematics he had thrown onto the table upon first entering the tent. Then he drew the pencil from his beard, hurled it to the ground and stomped on it vehemently.

  "Every time we come up with a useful, time-saving device you military types twist our machines to your own evil uses!" he shouted while stomping around the tent. "Take the gnomeflinger, for instance, designed to transport gnomes to the various levels within the central shaft of Mount Nevermind. You use it to hurl rocks to batter down the walls of your enemies. Or the cheese-holer, an ingenious device designed to put the holes in cheese, yet you make it an instrument of torture! Science has ever been the pawn of the military!"

  Sir Wolhelm rose, his face scarlet with rage, hut fortunately whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the young Thorn Knight. "Come now, Professor. They haven't been a complete waste of time. And there is still the last and greatest of your experiments-Big Bertrem." He pointed out over the sands toward the catapult of truly monstrous proportions, requiring the pulley systems of three normal catapults just to draw, and a crew of well over two hundred gnomes. The stone currently being loaded onto it was easily large enough to knock a dragon out of the sky.

  "Well, hmm, true, I would like to see Big Bertrem fired, just once," the professor said dreamily, his pique momentarily forgotten. He reached twitchingly for the pencil behind his ear, then spun back to the table and began scribbling calculations of the tangents of imaginary circles.

  The Knights nodded and smiled to one another over the gnomes' heads.

By the time the sun had dropped an hour closer to the horizon, the gargantuan ballista was ready. From their vantage point in the tent, Commodore Brigg and Navigator Snork could see the professor scurrying about in its shadow, shouting last-minute orders. Someone lit the stone with a torch, setting fire to the tar covering every inch of its surface. As the flames blazed up, gnomes scattered in all directions, leaving the professor alone by the catapult's release. In the light of the westering sun, they saw an axe rise up, then flash down. A report like the cracking of a whip echoed against the cliffs. There followed a tremendous bone-shaking thud, and a wave of sand spread like ripples in a pond away from Big Bertrem. The throwing arm rose slowly, bending under the weight of the massive flaming stone, but then counterweights swung into place, and a gout of steam escaped from what appeared to be a smokestack. Two giant flywheels, attached to the fulcrum post, began to whirl faster and faster. The throwing arm of the catapult hesitated for a moment, like a diver taking a deep breath before leaping, and then the entire contraption flipped over backwards, pivoting around a point in space centered on the house-sized stone. The spinning fly wheels dug in, throwing up a huge fountain of sand that instantly buried three dozen members of the Mishaps Guild who were rushing in to record and measure the event as it was happening. Meanwhile, the flywheels found purchase in the sand and the thing began to move. Its steam whistle screaming, the monstrous catapult tore across the beach and up into the hills beyond, where it sailed over the crest of a ridge and disappeared in a cloud of dust, rocks, and uprooted trees.

  Within moments, Professor Hap-Troggensbottle appeared from the wreckage down the beach, a bit battered but alive. His eyes beamed with delight. He approached the tent, slapping sand and dust from his beard and eyebrows. A pencil, snapped cleanly in two, dangled behind his ear.

  "I'm tempted to think you did that on purpose," Sir Wolhelm accused as he emerged from the tent.

"I assure you, I could not produce that result again unless I tried," the professor answered as he approached Commodore Brigg. "Now, what is the status of your ship? Are we prepared to disembark?"

  "Yes," the commodore harrumphed, "except we are still looking for the security officer. We were hoping to get a Knight-a real Knight and not some blasted sorcerer. The name we have is Sir Grumdish. Do you know him?"

  "Grumdish?" Sir Wolhelm snorted as he approached. "Never heard of him."

  His aide-de-camp, the young Thorn Knight, leaned over and whispered something into his commander's ear. Sir Wolhelm's eyes narrowed. "Him!"

  He turned to Commodore Brigg, smiling wolfishly. "Yes, of course. Take him with you. By all means. Sir Jarnett will show you to him. He isn't far." He strode away, calling for the squires to saddle Sir Jarnett's horse.

  Within moments, a seemingly reluctant Sir Jarnett was mounted and leading the three gnomes and their kender companion up into the hills, taking a path not far from the one trailblazed moments before by Big Bertrem. When they had gone, a squire approached and reported that Sir Wolhelm's warhorse was missing. The Knight eyed the hills suspiciously, considering whether to send a patrol to arrest the kender, but then he shook his head in disbelief, silently reprimanding himself. "Not even a kender," he muttered.