Book 6 - Mystery of Shadow Mountain - Chapter 14: Recon

         The next morning, I wake to the smell of bacon.  What better way to start the morning than that?  Mrs. Ingisson made for her family and Annabeth and I a meal that anyone would enjoy.  Although, practically any meal that has boar bacon in it, I will eat.  We all sit down to eat a meal filled with bacon, fresh bread, corn, and apples.  Did I say there is bacon?  Because if I did not, there is bacon.

         Feeling much better, especially after eating bacon, Annabeth and I thank the Ingissons for a fine meal.

         Mr. Ingisson offers, “I am not sure how long you plan to stay here on Aberdeen, but please feel free to come back to our home at any time.  If you want, you can stay in our home for as long as you are here.  In fact, you are welcome anytime.”

         “Thank you, Mr. Ingisson,” I nod.”

         “Please,” he said.  “Call me, Mak.”

         His daughter chimed in grinning, “You can call me Dot.  My full name is Dotta Ingisson, but everyone calls me Dot.”

         “Alright,” Annabeth chuckled.

         I look at Mrs. Ingisson, “Do you want to get in on it?  You can call us Jarl and Annabeth.  Annabeth is the pretty one, just in case you would get us confused.  That, and she has purple hair.”

         Annabeth folds her arms and rolls her eyes as Mrs. Ingisson laughs, “You can call me, Thorhild if you like.”

         Dot then walks over to Annabeth, tells her to kneel down, and then whispers in Annabeth’s ear; her whisper is not really a whisper, more of a raspy tone of voice, “Boys are so annoying aren’t they.”

         “Yeah, that they are,” Annabeth replied.  “But I think I can forgive Jarl.”  Annabeth adds a wink in my direction; I then roll my eyes and shake my head.

         We bid the Ingissons a good day while we go about our day.

         “So, what are we going to do now?” Annabeth asks me once we are out and walking through the forest.

         “If I were a betting viking,” I answer.  “I bet the last place you want to go is back into town and see a person, whose name I shall leave unsaid but it rhymes with Blabber-Bean, so let’s go find this mining camp in the heart of the island.”

         Annabeth agrees but counters my remark, “Actually,” she says giving her open left a few light fist smacks with her right hand.  “Mr. Blabber-Bean is a person I would very much like to see today.”

         “Maybe you can hit two Twins with no stone,” I state.  “After what I heard and our encounter with him yesterday, there is a good chance he shows up today at the mining camp.”

         Ignoring my dry humor, she asks, “What makes you think Blabber-Bean will show up?”

         I reply, “Well, when a new player comes into play that will threaten what you have going on, you want to be sure what you have is safe, secure, and not going anywhere.”

         “Logical,” Annabeth declares.

         “Thank you, Watson,” I respond.

         “What?” she adds.

         “Nothing,” I say to her.  “Let’s go.”

         With a general idea of where this mining camp would be, plus a map provided to us by Mak before breakfast, we make our trek through the forest to find it.

         After an hour of concentrating on tracking and following the map, it did not take a landmark to tell us we are nearing the mining camp.  You could hear it from where we stand.

         Annabeth uses her left hand to hold her nose for a brief second as waves her other hand in front of her nose, “You can smell it too.  Pew-we.”

         The smell or rather fumes of coal being excavated and soot from that as well carried quite a bit of distance into the forest.  To fix this and to get a better view, I suggest to Annabeth that we climb a tree.  She agrees and quickly pics out a large, strong oak tree that will support both our weights.  Good thing she did not hear-.

         “And don’t make any remarks about my weight,” Annabeth smiles as she goes first up the tree.  “Even though I know you would never say them.”

         “I would never say them to insult… pepper maybe… but not to insult,” I retort.

         She sighs, “I should have included puns in that statement too.”

         I add, “I guess I shall stick to the task at hand.  Ah?”  I obviously point to my hand which grabbed a small, dead branch which is now a stick.

         She has her hands full of branches, so she branch-faced instead of facepalmed; then she quips without even looking at me as she continues her climb up, “You’re such a stickler for details.”

         “Ah, she’s a very punny,” I reply.

         Annabeth could only sigh, “You are one man that’s tough to beat at puns.  This could go on for ages and might at best result in a tie.  But let’s not stick around for that, we have better things to be doing then sticking it to each other with puns.  We need to branch out into different things, leafing nothing behind.”

         “And here we go again,” I laugh.

         She and I made our way up the tree and found a good perch overlooking the mining operation.  We have a good view of everything, even the ocean on this side of the island, not to mention having fresh air.

         We get ourselves situated into comfortable perches and start scanning the operation with our spy glasses.  My perch is a solid branch under me as if I am on a dragon, with two branches on either side of me that I will use as arm rests.  Annabeth’s is slightly to my right.  She is sitting normally on a branch, which is jutting out to the right.  And she has a branch in front of her to use that to lean on.

         After a couple minutes of scanning the area, Annabeth declares, “I don’t see anything out of the ordinary, yet.”

         As soon as she said that, “Oh, I see something.”

         “What?” she excitingly asks.

         “Something that is rather bad,” I respond pointing to the back, nearly out of vision.

         With a disgusted tone of voice, she adds, “I should have known he was into this.”

         In the back, we could just make out dragon fire proof cages with dragons inside them.  There is too many constructs blocking our vision that we cannot make out what the dragons look like.  Plus, a shadow from being in tunnel through the small mountain which juts out and runs into the ocean.  It is a short tunnel, so one can see all the way through and see light on the other side.  However, the dragon cages around in the shadow of the overhang and the wall behind the cages.

         The mining camp has the appearance of a fort more than a just a mining operation.  It has guard towers, walkways, and gates.  There are vikings everywhere patrolling the pathways while others work on hauling coal out and heading back into the caves.  The fort spans roughly fifty yards, a hundred if you include the docks they have near the harbor.  By the looks of it, it is good harbor for large ships.  Not quite sure how wide it is, seeing how we are only viewing it from one angle, but by the size of this operation, the veins to whatever they are hauling in and out looks to run deep.

         “I gotta tell you, Annabeth,” I state, thumping my right thumb on my spy glass as I give my left eye from being closed to let my right eye see.  “I am not totally convinced what they are hauling out is coal.  I mean it looks like coal and we smell coal, but if those dragon cages are not a sign to indicate something more is going on here, I don’t know what else is.”

         Annabeth acknowledges and agrees.  We return to our reconnaissance of the mining fort.

         There are guards in each tower, which the towers’ spacing is at each corner of this side of the operation.  The aforementioned fifty-yard section is the main fort section with a main gate that has a larger tower offsetting it just to the right of the gate if you were facing back to the south.  The guards look nothing like a serious viking type, but they look serious enough on protecting the fort.  Nothing much is can be seen but the “normal” operation, if you can call it that, of the mining camp.  To this point, we spent almost fifteen minutes surveying the goings on.

         Still wondering if Aberdeen… excuse me… Blabber-Bean will show up; Annabeth and I just wait.

         “Annabeth?” I ask.

         “Yes, Jarl?” she replies, still looking through her spy glass.

         I put mine away on my belt for the time being, “May I ask you a question?”

         “Sure,” Annabeth says, doing likewise with her spy glass on her belt.  “What’s up?”

         “Have you thought of a date?” I ask.

         “A date?” she echoes, but then tries to hide a smile.  “I’m more partial to grapes, than dates.”

         “Haha, very funny.  I thought of that as soon as I said it,” I quickly say and then go on.  “Anyway, let me ask it a better way.  Have you thought of a date of when you would like our wedding?”

         Kind of caught off guard, she pauses for a split second and then replies, “Being betrothed, I always think of us now, that day, and then after.”

         “But I mean, what day would you like it to be?” I better explain.

         “I know,” she says confidently but then says a bit softer.  “I hadn’t really thought of when to actually do it.”

         “I understand this is rather an odd place to talk about this-,” I start.

         Annabeth adds in, “With what we do, this is rather romantic in its own way.  We are busy with something a lot of the time and don’t usually have a lot of time to ourselves.”

         “Which is why a bring this up,” I go on.  “I want to know when you are ready.  Because I don’t want you to think that I am putting it off or-.”

         “Jarl, you’re fine,” Annabeth assured.  “You are a really great viking and an even better best friend.  You know I would do anything for you.  I know you would for me.  You’ve proved that over and over, and I hope I have for you.”  I nod as she continues.  “I love you, Jarl.”

         “I love you too, Annabeth,” I smile.  “So, what do you think we should do?”

         Annabeth’s face suddenly changes from smiling to almost horror, “Woah, woah, wa… wait.”

         I tilt my head backwards, squint my eyes at her, and look at her, “I was about to say we should wait for the right time to do it… So… I agree… But…”

         “No, stupid,” she said, grasping for her spy glass and pointing at the tunnel that has the dragons.  “Look.”

         “Oh,” I realize.  “What do you see?” I question reaching for my spy glass.

         Looking through it taking a second to find the spot Annabeth is speaking of, “I do not see-.”

         What I then saw, my heart sank and my shoulders dropped.

         Garth and Hyrith with hands cuffed and a chain leading from Garth’s wrists to Hyrith’s!  Then paraded along behind them chained as well is Cazi, Dawn, Hannah, and Ali!

         I know Annabeth wants to yell, but she instead whispered in a very angry manner, “If I see that Aberdeen guy again, I’ll… I’ll…”

         Annabeth trailed off and I am left speechless.  With the fact that our friends were very near where I had crashed into the wave the other day, they could not have gone far even without their dragons.  Before this, I was surprised not to hear of any news of any more strangers being washed ashore here or some of the neighboring closer islands.

         “I wonder…,” I began but then am interrupted by something answering my question.  “Yep, that’s what I was thinking.”

         As our friends walked past the dragons, the dragons reacted defensively as they walked past.  Not because they are in fear of their lives… but that of our friends!  Those dragons are our dragons!  Our friends fought against the chain to go at there dragons, but between Aberdeen yanking the chain back and the guards shoving them back, our friends are forced to get back in line.  Annabeth’s fists clinch for a moment and then she lets go.  I did the same at the same time.  We saw each other clinching our fists, so we let go in order to clear our minds and come up with a plan.

         Annabeth then guesses, “Watch Aberdeen walk in behind.”

         And guess who did just that?

         Aberdeen walks in behind them.  When it is announced that Aberdeen has arrived, all operations paused to come greet him.  With no work being done, we could now clearly hear what is going on.  The volume of voices being heard is also aided by the fact we are down wind by an east by southeast breeze.

         Someone who looks like one of the ones in charge of the mining camp, came right up to Aberdeen as soon as he entered the main gate, “Did you get the other two dragon riders?”

         “No,” Aberdeen replied.  “But they should not be a problem.  The one is injured and the other one won’t be a problem.”

         Annabeth remarks, “We’ll see about that.”

         Aberdeen continues, “Even if they cause trouble, they won’t be a problem anyway seeing how we have six dragon riders but eight dragons.  With two riders unaccounted for, it is safe to assume that the other two belong to the ones I encountered.”

         I add, “That answers that question.”

         I am happy to know but angry at the same time.

         Aberdeen goes on, “Is everything set for the meeting tonight?”

         “Yes,” the other viking responded.

         “Good,” said Aberdeen.  “We want to make a good impression on our visitor.  If we want to fully take over this island and expand our business into other regions, we need the support of this visitor.”

         “But don’t you think working with this viking is a bad idea?” another viking questioned.  “I mean, sure they have the supplies, but there are as good as a threat as they are an ally.”

         “That is why I plan to double cross them,” Aberdeen declared.

         The viking surrounding the meeting looked as if this the first they have heard of it, Aberdeen went on, “Don’t be too surprised.  I told you all this before.  If we hope to gain any more power in the land, we must do whatever it takes.  We’ve practiced this before, now it is time to show me and those coming exactly who we are.”

         A third viking asks, “What do we do with these riders?”

         “I don’t know,” Aberdeen sighed, turning around to look at my friends.  “They probably would not be very good workers, knowing what we are doing.  So, we won’t put them in there also for the fact to keep them away from what we are doing so they can’t spill the beans.  But I may have something else in mind.”

         Dawn without hesitation asks, “What is that?”

         Two guards from the side step in to immediately punish Dawn for speaking up.

         Aberdeen waves them off and adds, “Maybe our visitor could put them to better use.”

         The looks of fear on my friends’ faces is almost enough for me to go down there right now.  But that would be just plain stupid.  After the look of fear, angry took over.  So, did mine.

         Aberdeen then shoves Garth back into Hyrith which in turn nearly knocks everyone over, Aberdeen menacingly declares, “Get moving!”

         Aberdeen leads our friends into a side building.  The building is right across from our dragons’ cages, but the wall of the fort, of about fifty feet, stands between them.

         I remind myself and Annabeth that our friends’ and dragons’ best chance at escaping is up to us.

         “We need to be level headed and have a plan of action,” I told Annabeth.  “The room for error on this is next to nothing.”

         “What are you planning, Jarl,” Annabeth’s tone is now that of excitement.

         I smile, “Let’s just say that Aberdeen will have two unexpected visitors tonight.  If all goes to the plan I am still figuring out, Aberdeen won’t even know we are there.”

         “Like that’s going to happen,” Annabeth realistically stated.

         “Yeah,” I agree.  “But to get in a fort like that, we need to do some good old fashioned stealthy sleuthing.”

         Once Aberdeen had entered the building, the mining operations of the camp went back to normal.  Staying for another ten minutes, nothing more was of note.  So, we decide to return to the Ingissons, come up with a plan, and then return under the cover of night.