121: The Mines

So, remember, mum, we had to go up to the mines above Unterfraus to rescue the villagers who we think had been captured by rat men. Fred stayed in the village to bury the village priest and the villagers who had died in the raid. Perhaps, mum, they were the lucky ones, as it looked like the others had had their eyes plucked out and were then forced up the hillside and into the upside-down world.

On the way up, Erina asked Guido about his strategy for attacking the mine, and Guido couldn’t really answer and just said it would be a fluid one, and that he would protect her with his sword. I think Erina asks him questions like this just to annoy him, but he seems to take these at face value, whereas I often ask him genuine questions in good faith, but he gets annoyed by those.

Anyway, I told Erina that we would play things by ear, and observe the mine from a distance to see if it was being guarded, and then act upon that intelligence, which Erina said was a good answer. And this just annoyed Guido more, that she should be paying more attention to my strategical insights than his. So he hurried on up the track ahead of us. I followed him to talk more about strategy but this just annoyed him even more. Perhaps he was just upset that we had got to Unterfraus too late to stop the villagers being dragged away.

When we got to the mine we could see some buildings around a single entrance, with a track going into the darkness and several wagons with ore in them, and stuff. But there was no sign of any rat men. Guido was ahead of us, and he went straight towards the entrance, but as he approached it we heard a massive explosion and loads of dust and debris flew out of the entrance, covering Guido.

And when the dust had settled we went into the mine. I went on ahead and after a bit saw that there was a green glowing section of tunnel. And it looked like that tunnel was extremely well hewn and smooth, unlike the rest of the mine that had been hacked out with pick axes. But the smooth tunnel ended after a few yards as it had been collapsed by the explosion.

I could see, among the debris, some papers and pieces of wood. And one of the bits of wood had a coat of arms on it. I took it back to show Blume and she said it looked like the Kaerzburdger coat of arms. (We had seen Henricus von Kaerzburdger when we went to visit the graf, mum. He was a bit whiny.) And she also said that it looked like the wood could be the remains of a barrel of black powder. And a barrel like that, with that coat of arms, would probably be for military use, so we wondered what Kaerzburdger military black powder might be doing in a von Holzbek mine.

Erina explained to us that the barony of Holzbek was loyal to Middenheim, but used to be part of Hochland, and had become more associated with Middenheim about five hundred years ago. I think she said that the Kaerzburdgers had been quite aggressive in their treatment of Holzbek. But she didn’t seem to think that Hochlanders were really prepared to try to take it back. I think the Kaerzburdgers would like to expand their territory, but even so, it was hard to know why their black powder had turned up here, being used by the rat men.

We went back into the mine, and Erina studied the green glow in the tunnel in her magical sort of way, and I think she found it a bit repulsive. And then she started gathering lots of imaginary fire towards her, using the debris and heat of the recent explosion, and when she had gathered enough (she seemed to be finding it very difficult and took a bit of time, mum) she blew it back at the green glow. And I think eventually she managed to cleanse the rock of the taint of the green glowing rat man whatsit, but I don’t know for sure, as it soon got so hot inside the mine we had to leave her to it.

When that was done, we decided we would try to blast through the cave-in ourselves. Guido searched around the mine buildings for some more explosives but he couldn’t find any, so we just had to use our three bombs.

Blume set the three bombs up very carefully in their precise locations, but she kept looking through her legs to calculate the correct angles, which looked a bit strange, but she said it was a proper technique she had learned at university. And when Blume had set them up, Erina ignited them from a safe distance while we stood outside. But we could tell that the blast was nowhere near as big as the first one, and when we surveyed the damage we were only a few yards further into the tunnel.

And so we explored the rest of the mine, but we didn’t find anything interesting, or anywhere that might lead to the rat man tunnel. I think we were resigned to the fact that all the villagers had been taken away and imprisoned in the upside-down world. Guido looked around outside the mine for other ways down into it but he couldn’t find anything.

This reminded me of the story of the Harlequin Hurdy-gurdyist of Hovelhof and so I took the time to recount that story, which made everyone sad. And Erina placed the hurdy-gurdy on a pile of stones outside the mine entrance as a tribute to those who had died, and all the ones we were not able to rescue.

Remember, mum, at the end of the Harlequin Hurdy-gurdyist of Hovelhof there is a boy with a bad leg who isn’t able to keep up with the harlequin and the rest of the children, so he never gets to go inside the mountain. And he spends the rest of his life lamenting this, as the promise in the harlequin’s music was so enticing.

I think I might be that boy, mum, as I want to see the upside-down world really badly, and I dream of it every night. And this could have been my chance to get there, but the way was closed to me, because I was too slow (or rather, because Guido insisted we had to spend another night at Gladbeich). And Erina was taking it badly, too, mum, as she was pounding at the rock of the cave in and glowing, but not in a good way.

We had a discussion about what to do next, and we didn’t want to give up on the villagers of Unterfraus, even though I think we all knew it was a bit futile now that the rat men were so far ahead of us. And we decided that Fred and Blume would go to Dunfurter to see if they could get any people to help us, and the rest of us would stay to look for other ways into the mine.

So we waited for two days for Blume and Fred to return, and when they did they had just five old miners with them. And they looked at the cave in and said it would take weeks to shift.

Blume had done well to get them, though. The steward at Dunfurter was a bit of a jobsworth, and had asked Blume lots of awkward questions, and Blume had had to pretend that we were after normal beastmen, and then he was insistent that beastmen didn’t live under ground. And in the end she sort of implied that the graf would pay for any help they gave us.

The miners had been digging for about five days and hadn’t made much progress with the cave in, and we had not been able to find any other way into the upside-down world, when a company of Holzbek soldiers turned up. Their captain talked to Guido who told them what we had been up to. And they insisted that they take control of the mines for the baron of Holzbek to undertake their own investigation. And he said something about sending out flyers encouraging people to come to Unterfraus to help repopulate the village and restart the mine.

So that left us with little choice but to leave Unterfraus. We decided to go back via Hohenfahrt so we could look into the grey wizard of the woods and see what that was about. On our way Guido was really grumpy. I think he must have been really upset that we weren’t able to rescue the poor villagers as he said this was the worst adventure he had ever been on, and if these events had been written by god then they must be a very bad god indeed, who didn’t know how to write a proper adventure. Anyway, mum, I’ll tell you what happens next in my next letter.