Tunnel Rat

Chapter 153: Further Investigations

The Cheese Caravan was in full swing, and Limburger Hollow was celebrating. The local musicians had joined with those in the caravan to put on an enthusiastic show. The Caravan was supplying cheesy snacks and fruit drinks to anyone who would provide music. Francis Longwhisker, the famous bard of Gouda Hollow was singing all the old favorites. Dancing and music ran long into the night, nearly to the next day.

The caravan was doing a brisk business trading cheese for the goods the Hollow produced, and at very good prices. Many families were stocking up on the tasty wheels and slabs to put away for the holidays. And with every purchase came some of the caravan's newest offering, a soft and slightly sour cheese with caraway seeds. It was delicious when spread on crackers.

The new cheese master was so taken with this cheese, that he had traded some of the Hollow's cheese for enough for several meals. And he was giving two pieces at each meal as long as everyone promised to get lots of dancing in to work off the cheese. The extra cheese went a long way to make up for several meals of fried mushrooms. The new chef was having a hard time keeping up with meals and was preparing those easiest to him. Luckily, the inhabitants of the Hollow were easy going as usual. They knew poor Rifkin was doing a lot without his usual helper, Smiley.

Up on the roof of mess hall, three shadows sat, talking in low tones, and using their skills to blend into the shadows. Occasionally jelly beans were shared and eaten. Milo had found the twins and the three of them were going to do a bit of creative scouting tonight. Milo wanted the twins to follow Rifkin when he left, while Milo investigated the cellar for clues.

After talking with several people, he couldn't see how the cheese could have come up the stairs into the mess hall and then left the building. There simply wasn't enough time. And if the cheese hadn't left by that route, it must have gone by another, or was still down there. He and the twins had come up with a few ideas:

-A vast storage pit had been dug to hide the cheese. Then the dirt scattered on the floor, making the distance to the ceiling 3" less.

-Someone else had a Smugglers Stash in the Hollow. They were also Tier 6 and had upgraded their Stash many times. Milo explained the concept by telling them a little bit about the mage who had made extra rooms and magic doors. This led to the next idea.

-Someone had access to an Arcane Cheese Vault. This was an exciting concept for all of them. A safehouse for all your cheese, and yet it essentially travelled along with you. Perfection.

-The cheese had been molded into the shape of a ratkin, clothes put on it, and the whole thing turned into a cheese golem that walked out with no one noticing. Maybe many cheese golems? Could you have an army of cheese golems? They wouldn't last long against a Cheese Fiend, but maybe for fighting spiders? Even if this wasn't true, the twins made Milo promise to look for something about Cheese Golems in the library of the tower.

-There was a hidden entrance to a tunnel, or another cave.

The last was the most probable, and by far the most boring. However, secret doors and tunnels were still pretty cool. The twins promised to behave and trail Rifkin if Tallsqueak promised to show them the secrets of any tunnels he found. The party at the Cheese Caravan had gone long into the night and nearly into the next day. Rifkin had kept the mess hall open for late night snackers, proclaiming that the Hollow was having a holiday and he would try to have food ready for as much of the day as he could. He was bustling around his kitchen serving snacks and cheese to everyone who came in, and even sending people off with bags of food for those who hadn't come to the caravan.

Eventually, long past the normal time it would stay open, the lanterns in the mess hall were extinguished, and Rifkin locked the doors and left for the night. The twins melted into the shadows and Milo lost track of them. He waited for a few minutes and then began his own investigations.

Greensleeves was satisfied with the evening and the late-night celebrations. He had toured Limburger Hollow, gawking like a tourist and complimenting everyone. They had an impressive Mage's Tower. The reputation of the Tower of Strife was well earned. It housed a huge compliment of talented students, and the clans who lived there were rumored to be quite wealthy. One had gained so much cheese that they had donated eighty-five wheels to the hollow!

Enemy mages were always a danger. They could punch far above their weight class if allowed to burn up their mana. He would have to make sure they were neutralized early Of course, having those same mages on his side would make conquering more hollows very easy.

Limburger had rich mushroom and vegetable fields, enough that some were barely harvested. He could increase the population of slaves here, and send many wagons of food to supply the armies he would build. And those armies would be supplied weapons from this same hollow! The mines contained a great abundance of ores. Limburger Hollow was a little gem just waiting to be militarized.

While many of their residents had fighter training, they had less than a dozen guards, and only two were full time. Of course, they bred immense guards in this hollow, far larger than his own warriors. He was anxious to see how well they could fight.

He had managed to only briefly contact his agent here. Their plans were going well, with just one teeny, tiny problem. Their new scout master was getting suspicious and asking questions. Having met him, Greensleeves understood the danger. The last thing he needed was a scout actually doing his job. He had worked with his agent to set in motion a plan to eliminate Tallsqueak, once and for all. Limburger hadn't had a scout master for decades. He hoped to help continue that trend.

Milo used the door into the mess hall with the repaired lock. After making puffcakes that day, he had spent a few minutes fixing the locking mechanism that had bent when Larry walked through the door. It was easy enough to fix, with just a few bent pieces out of alignment. It meant that this time as he moved through the shadows and up to the door, it took no time at all to open it and slip inside.

The mess hall was dark, but he could see easily. He carefully made his way to the back room, and the stairway to the cellar, checking carefully as he went. Too much had already happened, and he was trusting nothing at this point. At the bottom of the stairs, he paused to listen at the doors to the cellar and examine the locks, hinges and door frame. The lock showed signs of having been worked on recently. There were scratches where the mechanism had been removed and then put back into place. One of the screws was also new. Milo suspected that the key Bleusnout had used to come down here would no longer work.

It wouldn't stop him, just slow him down. He had expected to have to pick this lock. He removed his tools and got to work. There was no trap attached, but the lock was very stiff. It took him a full five minutes to get inside, pausing to listen both through the door and to the room above. He carefully opened the door after oiling the hinges to prevent any noise. He opened the door, and hopped over a simple trap of a string attached to empty cans. If that was the best trap in this place, he wasn't worried.

First stop was Bleusnout’s little office, where he kept all of his paperwork, recipe books, and research materials. Everything looked to be in order. Milo spent an hour going through the desk, notebooks, and research journals. He memorized a lot of information about making cheese, but didn't see anything at all that seemed to bear on the situation. Carefully putting everything back, he began looking at the rest of the cellar.

Rack after rack where large wheels of cheese had sat were empty. This was the cheese that the Hollow consumed with their meals and for snacks each day. The hundreds of ratkin in Limburger Hollow would go through a surprising amount each day. Even at just an eighth of a pound each would come to over a hundred pounds a day. The amount Milo had won from the eels wasn't even a week's worth of cheese, despite it being higher quality. The daily cheese was mostly cheddar and limburger that the Hollow made themselves.

The area for cutting and preparing cheese to be served was also empty, but had been used recently and not cleaned. There was a sour smell in the air. Milo looked over each knife and spoon, and on some he saw evidence of a soft and sour cheese. Something on a knife was moving. A very, very small mite. Looking around, Milo found sacks that had held the cheese. Each had spider mites crawling around on the insides. Someone had been cutting up Milkenbase here. But where had the spider cheese come from? Had Bleusnout traded for some and been eating it that night? That might explain the mites in the samples that he had taken, but not the chef's overdose, or the problem of the missing cheese.

Moray had complained of having to put the cheese on the far side of the room. Milo padded quietly over to that area, and began examine things. There were some broken crates in a pile, but no shipment of cheese. Oddly, there was a lot more dust on this side of the room, mostly on the floor. In some places it was half an inch thick. He thought of Tweedle’s theory about digging a pit and covering floor in dirt, and it amused him. There was of course, not enough dirt for that theory, but it bothered him. What would you hide by putting dirt on the floor.

In this case it wasn't a suspicious blood stain or a hidden map carved into the rock. What his examinations revealed were scrapes and scratches as if heavy crates had been dragged in the direction of the wall. One scrape went right up to the wall.

Milo checked around that area, and found two suspicious looking cracks in the stone.

Some sort of disguised opening was here, but where was the trigger to open it. It took another half hour to find it. A small outcropping of stone about the size of the end of his thumb could be moved. The little rock was twenty feet down the wall from the rock. When moved an inch, there was a small click, and the door opened a half inch. It was a simple mechanism. The trigger simply pulled on a long wire that released the catch.

He silently opened the door until he could move inside. A long corridor greeted him. It was five feet wide and six feet tall, with smooth rock on the floor, ceiling and walls. Ten feet down were two side corridors. He debated leaving the door open, but the latch on this side was large and obvious, next to the lock. There was no chance of being locked in. He shut the door and moved further into the room. The smell of cheddar was strong in the air.

At first, he was amazed at what he was looking at. The rock of the two side corridors had been carved to form long shelves from floor to ceiling. Each shelf was under an opening a foot high and two-feet deep. On the rocky shelves was cheese. Big rounds of cheddar cheese. Underneath each five-pound wheel was the date it had been made, by who, the method, type of milk, and anything that had been added to the regular recipe. The side corridors went twenty-feet. There were four shelves with ten cheeses on each. Eighty wheels per corridor and a hundred and sixty altogether. The hallway he was standing in extended deep into the rock beneath the Hollow, and ever six feet was another pair of cross-corridors with another hundred and sixty wheels.

This was the long-term cheese storage for the Hollow. Bleusnout had obviously known about it. The writing on the tags was his. Milo moved further down the corridor. After passing a dozen crossroads, the hallway he was following came to a T. Across from him was a large room with casks of aged Limburger cheese. The smell was intense and very nice. Some of the dates indicated the cheese had been aging for decades. Opening one of those casks would be delicate work.

To the left, the corridor revealed another dozen rooms with hundreds of casks of carefully sorted and dated Limburger. The dust in this corridor was less disturbed than the passage to the right. Many feet had recently come this way, and there were scrapes on the floor. The corridor went fifty feet and turned, then opened into a large cavern. Stacked inside were many crates and boxes of cheese. There was a small cot with someone sleeping next to it. Milo moved towards them, scanning the ceiling, feeling for traps, and listening for noise.

That was how he found the pit. It was hidden with a cunning illusion, as had the other one in the hidden caves where one of the twins had almost fell in. He stepped around it and quietly advanced on the sleeping figure. It was Smiley, and Milo could have made as much noise as he wanted, and he wouldn't have woken him up. Smiley's eyes stared up at the ceiling, a wild look in them, he was sweating and his breathing was ragged. Checking his mouth and nose, Milo saw obvious traces of Black Mold.

And then his Danger Sense told him he was about to die, and he dove for the ground as a high-powered and very silent crossbow fired a poisoned bolt at him.