[continuing chapter 3]
"You lot have the easy job," Wen said to the other men. "All you have to do is stand about fifty feet away from here and shout insults at the garrison. Strip naked and show them your buttocks. Do whatever you have to in order to keep their attention. Oh, and you are absolutely forbidden to get yourselves shot in the process. Understood?"
"Yes, sir!" the men shouted, in something pretty close to unison. Their smiles were unnerving as they set off, trotting.
"What about you and me?" Lum asked. "I'm not going to like this, am I?"
"That will rather depend on how effectively the others distract the garrison," Wen said. "As for you, all you really have to do is give me a light, and then let me stand on you."
"Oh, is that all?" Lum said in a faint voice. "Here, perhaps?"
"Nothing so easy. Right under the wall. Once I've got this fuse safely tucked into this grain-sack."
The men began shouting insults at the garrison, most of which cast aspersions on the parentage of the men whose heads were just visible over the top of the palisade. Sure enough, within moments of the broadcast beginning, arrows began to fly—about as badly aimed as before—in the direction of the crewmen. "Now's as good a time as any," Wen said, and ran toward the wall.
"Oh, Amida Buddha and Guanyin," Lum said, following.
"See?" Wen said as Lum arrived, puffing. "That wasn't so bad, was it?"
"Ask me again when the pot of boiling oil appears up there," Lum said. "Now what, Sun Tzu?"
Wen laughed. "The Art of War this isn't," he said, holding out a small bundle of straw. "This is The Art of Opening Gates Without Getting My Ass Shot Off. Give me a light." Lum produced a flint and steel, and soon the straw was glowing, with an occasional flicker of flame. "Thanks. Now, please bend at the waist, and brace yourself. I'm going to be jumping onto your back in a moment."
"Of course you are," Lum said. Wen looked at him, ready to say something appropriately cynical. Then he looked again:
"Did your patch just shift eyes?" he asked.
"What in the world are you talking about?"
"Never mind." Wen took one of the lengths of fuse and stuffed it into a small sack of grain he'd appropriated from the village granary. Around the outside of the bag he'd tied various small bits of metal, mostly nails and hooks taken from the overturned fishing boats.
Wen lit the fuse. When it was sputtering with malevolent certainty, he took the grain-bag and slung it over the top of the palisade. Panicked shouts were already sounding from the other side of the wall as he leaped onto Lum's back and jumped up, reaching up for the top of the palisade.
When he pulled himself up to where he could see over the wall, he saw the bag lying in the dirt behind the closed gate, the fuse hissing and sparking. The members of the garrison who'd been defending the wall on either side of the gate had retreated a good fifty feet, and some of them hadn't yet stopped running.
Laughing, Wen pulled himself over the top of the wall. There was a narrow ledge on the other side, from which the soldiers had been firing arrows. It wasn't much more than a tall man's height from that ledge to the ground, and by the time the defenders had realized what he was doing, Wen had dropped to the ground and hoisted out of the way the big wooden bar holding the gate closed. One or two badly aimed arrows thwacked into the gate as he opened it, but none came close enough to worry him. By the time Wen stepped outside the fort again, yelling for the others to charge the gate, the wiser members of the garrison were shedding their armor and clambering over the wall on the opposite side.
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