The Iggles are in the Nest (Cumberland Saga)

Lliam was an avid reader and his favorite author by a very wide margin was Patrick McManus.

Like many young men, Lliam lamented that he had been born in the wrong century. If only he had been born when men like young Patrick and Rancid Crabtree and Retch Sweeney roamed the earth, the sky was full of “iggles” and every rivulet was choked with rainbow trout...then he would have been a square peg in a square hole.

And like every young man who harbored such thoughts, he was 100% wrong.

Lliam had never heard his mother and Blain have what he would call a “heated discussion”. At least, not until last night.

Blain approached him in the morning and suggested that they take a walk before breakfast.

“Do you know what a “Senior Class Trip” is?” Blain queried Lliam.

“Never heard of it but it sounds like something old people do” Lliam replied.

“Not quite” Blain replied with a chuckle. “Many high-school students take a trip during their last year of high school to make memories. Usually they go to a tourist place and party...a lot of them don’t remember much because they partied a little too hard.”

“Did you go on one?” Lliam asked.

“Yep” Blain replied. He wasn’t going to elaborate. Thank God the gift he caught from that girl from Pennsylvania could be cured with a stout dose of Augmentin!

“The way I figure it, you are almost done with your formal education and I want to suggest a Senior Class Trip for you and one of your friends” Blain tested the waters.

“Where would we go?” Lliam asked, practically.

“It would be an extended camping trip. You and your buddy wouldn’t have to do any chores. Just spend your time fishing, and snaring rabbits and one other thing…” Blain said.

“Sounds like a vacation” Lliam said, thinking of all the wood he wouldn’t have to cut and all of the construction he was doing and chickens that needed plucking. “What is the one other thing?”

***

Sally dropped the two boys off a quarter-mile west of where Chapel road crossed Soddy Creek. From there, Eddie and Lliam bushwhacked south sticking to the woods that rimed the lip of the Soddy Creek canyon. They over-shot their mark and had to backtrack to insert along the gully that defined the east edge of Bob’s 30 acre food-plot. They found a knot of young pine trees sixty yards north of where the drive entering the property elbowed from east to south in direction.

Both young men were outfitted with 3 pounds of dry biscuit mix, a pound of grits, a small jar of peanut butter, a repurposed ketchup bottle filled with lard, a wrist-watch and a small walkie-talkie. They brought their choice of fishing gear and ten snares, each. Lliam reluctantly left his pellet gun at home.

One of the newcomers had donated a small, multifuel camp-stove that burned unleaded gasoline. The blue flame was invisible in the daylight.

They expected to be in-the-field for seven days before resupply became necessary. They were 12 miles by road from Copperhead Cove and 8 miles as-the-crow-flies.

Looking out over the deer-battered portion of the field that had been planted to kale, turnips and clover the year before, Lliam saw unwary small game foraging for food. There were five small ponds of about an acre each within a quarter-mile of their outpost and if they weren’t swarming with bullheads and bream then Lliam would eat his hat.

***

Samson invested a half-day with Shannon constructing the training facility. It consisted of little more than poles laid on the ground defining the walls and hallways. Short, straight sticks with bricks at both ends defined the location of doors.

Most of the morning involved getting the distances and orientation just right. He did that by having Shannon close her eyes and pretending it was night-time and having her walk from the outside door that opened into the kitchen to the door that led to the dining room...and so on. He had her repeat this multiple time, moving the bricks to fine-tune where the “doors” were in the actual house.

In that way he established the locations of the dining-room/parlor, the three bedrooms and the two bathrooms. From there, he had Shannon guestimate the distance and orientation of each room’s walls. It quickly became clear that it was going to be impossible to “clear” the dining-room/parlor without having the bedrooms on the left side of the hall being “downrange” so the raid would have to be ever-so-slightly staggered in time.

After lunch, Samson brought the team to the training site two-by-two starting with the men who had been in the military and actually been in the Sandbox. Samson relied heavily on them. They would be the ones tasked with clearing the bedrooms on the left. Those were the most dangerous jobs because they would be cleared AFTER the dining-room and any goblins would (likely) be alerted.

Samson first walked them through it dry. Then he had them carrying sticks to simulate weapons. The men did not comment on the rude props. They had done dumber things while in the services.

The first two men gave Samson a short critique at the end of their hour-long session.

Only one of the second group had been in the military but he had been a mechanic.

None of the remaining men had been in the service and while they had not commented on the “weapons” Samson had noted some raised eyebrows.

Sig wasn’t thrilled about losing the men for the training. While the introductory round was only an hour each it would go up to two hours each in the run-up to the actual raid. He did have a little bit of heartburn on the men being relieved of heavy-duty as at least two of them had minor sprains that needed to heal before they were 100%.

Meanwhile, the women were working nonstop turning chickens into canned meat.