Bastion

hoofed ones, and they hadn’t gotten the benefit of naps in the caravan the way the humans had.
    “Well, now I envy you,” Milles said, as he came up to Mags, watching Jakyr for the sign that the food was ready.
    “Because of what this place was?” Mags hazarded.
    The Sergeant nodded. “I’d give a hand to be able to explore it properly.” He sighed. “Who knows what you’re likely to find!”
    Mags smiled. “Know what’d suit me best right at this moment?” he asked, then answered the rhetorical question. “Supper!”
    The sergeant laughed. And a moment later, Mags’ wish was answered.

9
    T he Guardsmen left first thing in the morning; Mags, as usual, was awake even before he heard them moving about. They were quite quiet; moving carefully so as not to make much noise, drawing water, building up the fire, preparing to make use of the cold rations they had brought with them.
    Well, it was going to be a very long, chilly trip, and Mags couldn’t see sending them off on little more than a couple of bars of trail rations. Not that the things weren’t edible; they were, and really not bad, either, so long as you didn’t mind gnawing on them like a beaver on a branch. Still.
    Mags used one of his cooking lessons to make them a basic sort of breakfast; he took the trail rations and some cut oats and made a very good porridge with it, which was even better when he loaded it with dried berries and added a little honey. They were more than happy to wait for him to cook it when he offered, and they were equally happy to clean up the dishes after they finished. When everyone had a belly full of hot food and the mess had been disposed of, Mags saw them off—everyone else was still asleep—and got a lantern. He had a good idea how he wanted to spend his time until Jakyr woke, at the very least.
    Knowing that this cave had served the former occupants as a living space, there was one thing that should be herethat no one had yet located (or at least had yet identified) that was pretty vital to comfort. He had a pretty good idea where he would put such a “room” if he were the one laying out the cave, so he went looking for it. Knowing that the cave complex had been created by Hawkbrothers made his task a bit easier. If this were all a natural cave, the former occupants would have had to make do with how they found things. But this was, in part at least, not so much a cave as an excavation. So positioning should follow rules of logic.
    He was looking for a small room. It would be off the main cave, accessed by a narrow, but smooth-floored, descending tunnel . . . and hopefully with ventilation coming into it and going up through another chimney crack.
    As soon as he found such a tunnel, he followed it, and . . .
    Well, well, well. Logic had not failed him. The tunnel ended in a small roomlike area. At the back was a large niche, big enough for three people to fit in with room to spare. The niche was about knee height, with a flat bottom, a sort of floor to it. The sort of thing that, if you were in, say, a Palace, would have a statue standing in it. But here, there were three equally spaced, carefully smoothed depressions, and in the depressions were large holes.
    This was the privy. And this was, by the standards of what they had planned on creating, a very nice privy.
    Even if the bandits had used this, it had been so long ago that whatever mess they had created here was long since cleaned away by time, insects, and the atmosphere of the cave itself. He peered down one of the holes, holding his lantern over his head and deflecting the light downward; it was too deep to see the bottom.
    That was a good sign. The deeper it was, the farther away the deposits would be.
    He dropped a pebble down one; he heard a far-off “tick” when it landed, not a splash of water, which was what he was hoping for. The last thing they needed was to have their water supply contaminated. So the well they were getting their water from was either a true well, or the water source had no direct connection to this cave.
    Of course, if he were building such a thing . . . beneath the well opening above would be a good deep pool, preferably rain fed or fed by a slow spring. Something with high walls around it. Overflow would only be periodic, and it would flush what was deposited here down deeper into the caves and away from the drinking source.
    Maybe some day someone will come here and get into these lower caves and see if