Chapter 148: Explosions and Dilemmas
While it was expected for the night to be dark, aside from the pale moonlight from the waning crescent moon, it felt like there should be more noise to Jonas. Especially with what he knew was going on.
Yet, he carefully escorted Elmo to where he'd seen the catapults before. He suspected that the plan of whoever was behind this attack was to use those to burn the entire manor down, so as to kill everyone in it, but he couldn't be sure of that. Regardless, he wanted to eliminate it as a possibility. So it couldn't even be used as a backup plan or anything.
As he reached to corner of the building, he saw torches around the catapults to give more light to the people working on them, which indicated to Jonas that they weren't so worried about discovery at this point as they had been earlier. The catapults were already loaded again with the people just standing around, talking with each other in quiet tones. It was clear to Jonas they were waiting for a signal of some kind, but he couldn't be sure what. With a quick count, Jonas could see there were a total of ten catapults.
The smell wasn't the same as before. Which meant he was sure that what the catapults were loaded with was something else. Quite possibly more flammable. Though, whatever it was, it wasn't something he knew that he wasn't familiar with.
The barrels that had been loaded onto the catapults had a piece of cloth attached to them, but it hadn't been lit, which he suspected wouldn't happen until they'd received the signal to launch. Which meant he had a perfect opportunity to cause some chaos among their ranks as well as to destroy the catapults before they could be used again.
Jonas turned back to Elmo and nodded. "What I need you to do is use your Brimstone Fire on the catapults. I don't care if it's on the catapults directly or on the barrels loaded on the catapults," Jonas whispered to him. "Maybe it would be good to mix it up, but as long as the catapults are destroyed that'll be good enough."
Elmo nodded, his face resolute. While Elmo clearly had reservations about attacking actual people, Jonas was sure they could work on that, but at the moment, catapults weren't people, so that was at least one obstacle from getting Elmo to do what he needed him to do. However, he didn't expect Elmo to turn back to him and ask questions!
"Why are the catapults so close to the mansion if they're being used to burn it down?" Elmo whispered back.
Jonas resisted the urge to try and pull his own hair out. "As far as I can tell, it's so they can claim that it was some other entity that launched the attack. While these catapults will launch the barrels higher up with less forward momentum," Jonas said, trying to come up with words for what he pictured their opponent's plan was.