I spent even less time thinking about my throwing knives. Might as well try to bring down an elephant with tavern darts.
Munch, munch. The sandwich really was pretty stale. At that moment, the smell of the boiling oil hit me. Olive oil, by the Old Geister!
“Say what else you will,” I muttered happily, rising to my feet, “but at least Even Worse Hands have a decent sense of cuisine.”
I ambled over to the kettle and dipped the sandwich into the oil. Just a quick dip, enough to soften up the bread and give the dry beef a bit of flavor. As I munched on the now-much-improved sandwich, I contemplated the problem further.
A solution was going to be needed pretty quickly, so much was obvious. No sooner had I dipped the sandwich than I saw Greyboar go sailing through the air. The left Even Worse Hand had a pretty mean half nelson of its own. Fortunately, Greyboar was back on his feet and met the scuttling charge with a roar and a grapple.
Still, things were not looking good. Hrundig’s right arm must have been badly bashed up—maybe even a greenstick fracture—because he was now wielding his sword left-handed. Benny had picked up so many bruises that he looked like a leopard. The Cat had a black eye and a gash on her arm, probably from one of those horrid fingernails.
To make things worse, all of them—even Hrundig—were starting to show the first signs of fatigue. Whereas if Even Worse Hands were feeling weary at all, I couldn’t spot it. Something was going to have to be done quick, or the conclusion of this brawl was, as they say, foregone.
Thinking, thinking . . .
My eyes fell on the tray on the opposite side of the huge kettle. The one holding all the implements for flaying Benvenuti’s hide.
It was a huge tray, of a size to match the kettle. Necessary, of course, to hold all those implements—which were themselves of a size to fit Even Worse Hands.
Fit Even Worse Hands . . .
* * *
One of your big-and-burly-type adventurers would have shrieked “Eureka!” at that point. Assuming they could manage a word with three syllables. But when you’re my size, the first thing you learn is “couth.” So I daintily finished up the sandwich—okay, I wolfed it down, but it was a suave kind of gulping—and raced around the kettle to the other side.
To my delight, the tray was one of those folding things. You know, the sort where the legs have hinges and can be tucked away for storage. (Though why anyone would need to store something in a cavern is a mystery. It’s not as if, judging from the detritus, Even Worse Hands was what you’d call a meticulous housekeeper.)
Just to make things perfect, the tray was a tripod. With the third leg being the one away from the kettle.
Ah, the joys of quick thinking! It didn’t take me three seconds under the thing to figure out how the mechanism worked. Pop this; push in that; give the hinge a good kick.
Down it came, the whole side of the tray, spilling the flaying implements onto the cavern floor. When everything settled down, the lip of the tray was still leaning against the kettle, held there by the two legs still solid.
Only it wasn’t a “tray,” now. It was a ramp.
I stuck my fingers in my mouth and whistled. I’ve got a damn good whistle, if I say so myself. Not in Abbess Hildegard’s league, maybe, but pretty close.
And I was probably—hate to admit this, since it casts a poor light on the state of my suave couth at the moment—what they called “hopped up.” So the whistle penetrated even the din of the battle.
Hrundig looked up. Using a few words and some gestures, I indicated my plan. (Well. Okay. Hopping up and down and shrieking like a maniacal monkey, I indicated my plan.)
As I’ve said before, despite appearances Hrundig is no dimwit. An instant later he was bellowing his own directions.
Benvenuti got the gist of it right away. Before you knew it, he had the middle finger of the Even Worse Hand snatched up in the bullwhip and was dragging the Hand toward the kettle.
Trying to, anyway. One of the Even Worse Hands doesn’t drag easily, even for a man as big and strong as Benvenuti. Hrundig tried to help him along by driving his sword into the meat of the Hand’s thumb and pushing. But another jab of the thumb sent him flying again.
Fortunately, the Cat stopped flitting around in her usual whimsy and got with the program. Uttering a she-wolf shriek, she drove the lajatang like a spear right through the skin and sinews on the back of the Hand. The lajatang was now sticking out from both sides, as if the Hand had been pierced by a huge pin.
Quick-witted as always, Hrundig scrambled back onto his feet and grabbed the other end of the lajatang, just below the ferocious blade. A moment later, he and the Cat were each heaving up and half-carrying the Hand toward the kettle while Benny kept dragging it.