Eighteen – Mutiny Part Two

It takes the convoy three days before they reach the edge of the wilderness. From here they have to make their way through the dense vegetation. Earlier that day, one of the instructors returned, namely instructor Alan. He says that they went out together to catch up with the convoy, but that Bob unexpectedly left. Probably back to the training camp to release the captain and the messenger. Fortunately, Bob didn't know where the new legion was going, as it had been agreed that they would meet halfway between training camp and the wilderness.

For now, Raidon can't pay attention to the guy. Finding the right place in this wilderness is difficult enough. Only halfway through the evening they suddenly find the right place. Although it's getting dark, Raidon wants to continue searching because he feels like they're almost there. Suddenly he feels that the place should be more to the right. He has no idea why he suddenly has that feeling, but he decides to take a look anyway. Less than twenty meters away, they suddenly find themselves in front of a heavily overgrown wall.

Since it is already dark by that time, they decide to set up a camp outside the walls as the best they can do. The next day they can explore in full light what is still standing of the former fort. It is impossible to make a camp like Raidon learned from the manuals, because of the trees and the dense vegetation, they decide to put extra men on guard. They are in the wilderness after all and the biggest danger comes from wild animals. With enough sentries, that danger should be minimal.

The next day at first light, Raidon, Gareth, Morris and two clerks are ready to go and have a look at the fort. There is not much left. Hundreds of years of neglect have caused a lot of damage to the buildings and the walls. The buildings have become ruins without a roof and the outer walls have crumbled. It's a foundation to build on, but first everything needs to be cleaned and tested if it's worth preserving. However, the old fort is large enough to keep everyone inside. There is also much less vegetation within the walls because the entire courtyard was once tiled.

That same day they make a start with cleaning up the fort. Everyone helps, with only the instructors remaining as sentries. Within a few hours, the biggest mess of the courtyard is cleaned up and they can set up camp there. With everyone helping, this was a quick job. The rest of the fort will take much longer. No one in the New Legion knows much about building. The only things they know are those that they learned before joining the New Legion. However, there are a few clerks who know a thing or two. One in particular knows quite a lot. This young stocky bookworm named Duncan is privately studying to become an engineer. Although there is little chance that he will ever be singled out to become a real engineer, it has always been his hobby. Raidon thinks he has seen some books that Duncan might be able to use and searches through the library books for them. Indeed, there are books for the engineering corps that was connected to the old legions.

Together, Raidon and Duncan take a look at the fort to figure out what needs to be done. The drawings in Raidon's handbooks are a great help in knowing what it once must have looked like. While the staff members from the camp make dinner and put the camp in order, Raidon and Duncan tell the soldiers which jobs should be done first. The vegetation has to be removed and thrown outside the walls. After that, the loose stones and debris must be brought to a corner of the square. These can later be used to build with. Since it is impossible to get onto the walls, the instructors are standing guard outside.

All in all, it takes them two days to clean up the biggest mess in the fort. Even with the help of all the tools they were able to take with them from the training camp. Once that's done, Raidon and Duncan decide that there should be more visibility outside the fort. For this, trees are felled and thickets must be removed. Then they can see from the fort who is arriving. Perfection is not an issue, but safety is. So most soldiers led by Gareth set to work cutting down trees. The wood is stored and stacked. The remaining branches are sharpened so that they can be used as stakes.

Meanwhile, a few men are busy removing a large tree stump in the middle of the square of the fort. The tree apparently fell over and rotted away years ago, but the stump still stands. Because the stump is rather rotten, it takes a lot of time to remove it. The top has completely decayed, but the roots are still strong. Halfway through the afternoon it seems that they have almost succeeded. Raidon, meanwhile, is making a round through the fort and comes over. The stump is pulled away and John, who was pushing, almost falls into a deep hole.

"Gods, I thought I was done for!"

Carefully, the stump is pulled further away. Together they all look down. The hole underneath is perfectly round.

"It looks like a sealed pit," says one of the soldiers. Indeed, not only are the walls of the hole made from large cut stones, there are also parts of a wooden hatch with which the well had once been sealed.

"Let's see if there's still water in it," Raidon concludes, "that saves a lot of lugging buckets to and from the stream."

John picks up a piece of stone from the pile of rubble.

"Every second is something five meters deep I think," says John. Some look at him in amazement. That's why he says:

"Read your handbooks, there's a lot in there."

Then he drops the stone. Tensely they look at the stone, until it disappears from view. Suddenly they hear a ringing from the well.

"THREE!" exclaims John. "So the well is about fifteen meters deep. But that was a special sound."

"It sounded like metal."

They decide to lower someone with a torch into the well. Since he had such a big mouth, John is instructed to go down.

After he has taken off his armor, a rope is tied around his waist with a lantern attached to it. Carefully he then climbs into the pit.

"John, what’s it like to enter your own black hole," jokes one of the soldiers, to which John makes an obscene gesture.

Slowly John sinks down. Raidon has placed six soldiers at the other end of the rope to ensure that it is held tightly. That this caution is not a superfluous luxury is evident when one of the men accidentally lets the rope slack too much. Suddenly the other men can't hold on to the rope anymore, and with a scream John falls several meters down.

Then suddenly it seems as if John has been smashed to the bottom, because the rope is stopped in one go.

"Would John be dead?" the guilt-conscious soldier asks no one in particular.

"That’s not possible, is it? We didn't hear a thump that he ended up on the bottom."

Carefully, Raidon bends over the edge of the pit to look down.

And really, a long way down is John. He has his hands and feet clamped to the side of the pit.

"Thanks, no!" Shouts John when he sees Raidon. "I’ve shaved off the skin from my hands. Let those slackers pay a little attention."

Now a lot more carefully, the men lower John down again. A little later it sounds from below:

"Easy now, I see the bottom," and then, "I'm here! There are corpses here, man! With armor and all. They’re like ours."

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The descent is not very pleasant for John. For him it is not really a problem to climb, he often had to do that while living on the street in the past. Then, however, he did not have a large lantern hanging around his waist that swung back and forth with every tug of the rope. In addition, that stupid lantern sometimes bumps into his body in very unfortunate places.

And then suddenly the ground seems to fall out from under his feet. Or wait, he thinks, there was already no ground under his feet. Those idiots must have let go of the rope.

With a tremendous effort, John pushes his arms and legs to the sides to brace himself against the edges. It costs him some skin and blood from his palms, because they are not protected by boots like his feet, but then he stops falling.

When he sees the sergeant peering down a little later, he can't resist shouting up some obscenities.

A little later he sees some formless shadows below him in the darkness. That's why he shouts upstairs that they should lower him a little slower. Indeed, it does not take long after that before he is at the bottom. The bottom seems to be made from the same large stones from which both the wall of the fort and the walls of the well have been made.

Since he still can't see what the shapes are that lie here and there, he quickly turns on the lantern. Fortunately, the sergeant has given him a glowing fuse, so he doesn't have to mess with flints or anything like that.

Once the lantern is lit, he can have look around.

The shapes he saw earlier turn out to be armor. Around them are other pieces of equipment that apparently came loose when the harnesses were thrown down.

John holds the lantern a little closer to one of the harnesses. From the helmet that is still on the harness, two dead eyes stare back at him.

Immediately John stumbles backwards, only to stumble over one leg of another corpse. When he has recovered a little from the shock, he calls upstairs what he has found.

"John!" it comes from above. "Undress those corpses so we can bring out the harnesses."

"Hell no, you can forget that, sergeant!" He shouts back. No way does he want to even think of touching these mummies here in this dark hole.

"I’ll tie the rope around their waist. Then you can lift them up in their entirety. Let the others touch the stiffs up there where there is sunlight."

No sooner said than done, John loosens the rope from his waist, with some difficulty because the knots have become really tight. Then he ties the rope to the corpses one at a time.

When all the corpses are gone, John looks around a bit more. Once this well must have been in use, but where did the water come from? The walls of the well look the same everywhere. All made of the same stones.

While holding the lantern high to get the most light, John searches the entire bottom of the pit. There's just nothing to be found. On a whim, he decides to check a little higher as well.

Actually! At eye level, a piece of the wall seems to look different than the rest around it. It turns out to be a cover plate. In the past, the water seemed to come in here and was pushed upwards. Unfortunately, there is nothing that resembles a mechanism by which the cover plate is operated.

After some more fiddling with the cover plate, John gives up and lets himself be hoisted up. However, when he is almost there, with only a few meters to go, he feels an abnormality in the wall.

Since the men above him have already dropped him once, John has kept his hands and feet against the wall all the time while going up. This makes it easier for him to brace himself should something happen.

Unfortunately, he turned off the lantern before going upstairs, so he can't see what it is he feels. One stone feels different from the others. There is a kind of cross in it with two grooves that are a bit deeper and two grooves where there seems to be something in it. The cross is quite large, because the stones are almost as big as John's forearm.

After some fiddling, he manages to pull the piece out of the grooves. It turns out to be a lever that you can turn so that it can fall into the grooves in two ways.

With difficulty, John manages to turn the lever and push it back into the cross in the stone. Then he quickly lets himself be pulled further up.