The Skeleth (13 page)

T
om lay awake, just inside the door of Tristan's great hall. He found himself in no danger of nodding asleep—instead it felt as though the watches of the night had stretched out forever, and that ten sunrises should already have come and gone. He tried not to think of all the folk who would likely be dead by the time the sun truly did return, should any part of his plan go amiss.

He turned onto his back. A roof of braced and pillared hardwood arched high above him, over a floor of patterned stone strewn with moldering rushes. Trestle tables ran the length of the chamber, all at odd angles, all covered in dust. Tapestries hung between the pillars that braced the walls, each depicting a man at life size beneath a coating of soot. A knight stood square and grim within the first on the left, his gray beard flowing out over his chain cowl and the point of his sword driven down through the head of the twisted creature
at his feet. A very tall man stood bent as though to squeeze himself into the frame of the first tapestry opposite. He wore huntsman's green and cradled a great boar-spear in the crook of a lanky arm. Tom remembered the stories well enough—he looked upon Tristan's old companions, the Ten Men of Elverain, the great heroes who had ridden with him against the Nethergrim long ago. He found himself wishing that they could somehow come alive, that some unknown magic would bring them leaping from their tapestries for one last daring rescue, but instead they stood frozen in the warp and weft of their cloth, looking down upon the scene of their old friend's ruin.

Tom crossed his hands on his belly. He shut his eyes and opened them—then shut and opened them again. How long could it possibly take Rahilda to get the word out to her neighbors? How long to move what needed to be moved? Were they arguing about the merits of his plan? Would they try it? Would someone betray them? He rolled onto his side, pressed to the flagstone floor by his doubts.

When the moment long awaited arrived at last, it shouldered anticipation aside without the slightest courtesy. “Fire!” Tanchus burst through the front door of the hall. “Fire in the village!”

Tom sat bolt upright. The men in the hall had helped themselves to no small portion of the ale, but even so, the cry of “Fire!” had them up and scrambling in a heartbeat.

Hamon Ruddy snorted awake. “What's that? Fire? Where?”

“Fire in the—” From the grunt and thud that came next, Tanchus tripped over a bench in the dark.

Tom got up onto the balls of his feet. He peered about him, and in the glow of the embers from the hearth spied the brigands rising from their stupor to a quick-spreading panic.

“Ow!” Tanchus kicked the bench he had fallen over and let out a stream of truly vile curses. “Fire in the village! In the barns, the grain sheds, the food stores! Fire!”

Amidst the chaotic shouts that greeted the news, Tom heard the crossbowman rounding on Aldred Shakesby. “You jack-in-the-dirt! I told you we should have hauled the food inside the walls. You've ruined the whole caper!”

“Shut your mouth! Move!” Aldred clattered about for his sword. “All of you, up! Move!”

Tom slipped out into the courtyard, stealing through the shadows by the wall and through the rubble of the unfinished keep. He watched the brigands charge outside in a mob and thought he had completely escaped notice—but then he walked right into the path of the jailer rushing forth from his post in the tower.

“Hoy!” The jailer grabbed Tom by the shirt. “Where are you going? What are you sneaking about for?” He held his sword, a thick, saw-bladed thing that looked better suited to torture than to open battle.

Tom made a face of horror, which was not so hard to do given the circumstances. “Fire, fire in the village!”

The jailer blanched to his stubbly jowls. “The food. All the food!” He let go of Tom and turned to yell. “Raise the gates! Raise the gates, we've got to get that fire out or we'll all starve!”

Tom slipped back into the shadows and ran crouching to the smithy, an open structure built without a north-facing
wall. Shadows grew into shapes as he crept farther in: a stack of wood, a barrel, tongs, and then an anvil. He leaned around the anvil to peer into the courtyard, where a swelling mass of brigands collected by the raising gates.

“Half of you, stay behind to watch the walls!” Aldred barked himself hoarse beneath the gatehouse. “D'you hear me? No, don't all of you just—curse you all, listen to me! Get back here!” No one seemed to heed him. As soon as the inner gate had been winched above the height of a man's head, the brigands charged off in a mass through the gatehouse tunnel. The fat jailer was not at all the fastest of their number, but once he threw off his mail shirt, he managed to keep up with the pack, following his fellows through the gates and out of view.

Tom poked his head out of the smithy, then darted off the other way, across the open middle of the courtyard. He cast wary looks all about him at the walls, and seeing no one, he doubled his pace toward the foundations of the keep and the postern gate behind it. It was no longer blocked from the other side, as he knew since he had been tasked with carrying loads of refuse through it and down to the river that day. He pulled up the heavy iron bar from its hooks, let it drop in the weeds, and shoved the door wide. Clammy air greeted his face from the narrow, descending tunnel beyond.

“Rahilda?” Tom called out down the steep stone steps. “Rahilda, it's Tom. Are you there?” He waited for as long as he dared, but instead of Rahilda, he heard a very different voice from the other direction.

“All the more reason to do it now, that's what I says.” A voice cut whining through the night, coming back from the walls in
ugly echoes. “I'm telling you, that old goat's holding out, and this is our chance to take what we can get from him. You got the key?”

Tom turned back, his heart in his mouth, and peeked out over the unfinished foundations of the keep. Two figures passed him by on their way toward the tower, one of them holding a lantern whose flame juddered and shook in the swirl of the wind.

“I don't know about this.” The burly, bearded crossbowman passed but a yard from Tom's hiding place. “The boss finds out and we're both cooked.”

“He ain't going to find out—not in time, that is.” Tanchus cackled from behind the light. “You ask me, this whole business is like to go up in smoke, now, so I'm taking what I can and getting clear of it.” He bore a sword in his other hand, a massive, wide-guarded blade he could barely hold up with one arm.

Tom's heart thumped in his chest. He crept out from cover and followed the brigands into the watchtower, his mind wheeling wild and his plan in shattered pieces.

The voice of Tanchus echoed up from the cellar where Tristan sat prisoner: “Here's how it's to go, old man. We've got a crossbow fixed on you. We're going to open your door, you're going to come out, and you're going to show us where your treasure is, or we start killing your villagers, one by one, right here in front of you, and not quickly, if you follow.”

Tom crouched at the top of the cellar stairs. He peered out and caught the glow of the lantern, the only light in the tower. Tanchus held it aloft, while Hamon kept his weapon trained on Tristan.

The pieces of Tom's plan tumbled and fell—and then assembled in a new shape. The danger of it took his breath away, but he could think of nothing better. He tensed to spring, waiting for the sound that would trigger his move and hoping with all he had that Tristan would understand and react in time.

Tanchus moved out of Tom's view, up to the door of the cell. “You'll play nice, then?”

“I have nothing that such men as you would want.” Tristan felt his way to the door of his cell.

Tom stared hard at the lantern. He would only have one chance. He got up onto the balls of his feet and licked the palm of his hand.

“Hah, and I thought folk said old Lord Tristan never lied.” Tanchus leaned on the heavy-bladed sword. “So you're telling me you stomped about up in the Girth thirty years ago, plundering one ruin after the next, and all you got for your trouble was your old sword here and a box full of them Skelly-whatsits? Start talking, or we start killing.”

Tristan's voice lowered in defeat. “I will lead you to everything of value in this vale and can only hope that it will satisfy your greed.”

“Good enough for me,” said Tanchus. “Out you get, then.” There was a snick, then a clank as the lock turned.

Tom pushed off with his right foot, taking the cellar stairs in two strides. His third stride became a lunge, a flying leap down the staircase. “Tristan!” He snatched the lantern from Tanchus's hand and tumbled with it to the floor. “Lights out!” He snuffed the wick and felt the flame burn his palm as it died.

A whiny voice rose in confusion. “What in all—?”

Tanchus had little time to exclaim. Even as Tom squirmed aside on the floor, hoping to get clear of the two Rutters, a large shape moved past him in the dark. The crossbow twanged, then thuds and grunts of pain resounded in the gloom.

“I have them.” Tristan spoke from the floor in front of Tom. “Find the key.”

Tom rolled onto his front and crawled over to the captured men. The one nearest let out a groan—it was Tanchus—then he tried to shift.

Tristan slammed Tanchus back to the floor. “Lie still, and you may yet have the mercy of being tried fairly for your crimes.”

Tom scooped up the key, then reached for the crossbow. He found it broken, the string snapped and the bolt stuck in a bale of straw in the corner of the room.

Tristan kicked his sword out of reach across the floor. “This is indeed fine work, Tom, but you took a terrible risk.”

“You put your trust in me, my lord, and I did the same for you.” Tom tossed the crossbow aside. “With light in the room, you might be just a blind man, but if everyone else is blind, too, then you're the greatest of all warriors again.”

Lord Tristan's milky eyes could still sparkle. “I thank you—but it would seem to me that we are in the deepest danger still. Are there not twenty brigands in the castle upstairs?”

“Not just at the moment, my lord.” Tom reached for a coil of rope along the wall and bent to tie the crossbowman's hands behind his back. “There—we can make use of this one. We can keep the other in the cell for now.”

Tristan stood, turned and heaved Tanchus through the
doorway as though he had weighed no more than an empty shirt and breeches. Tom fumbled down, found the lock and turned the key, then coaxed the flame of the lantern back to life.

“I'll kill you!” Tanchus's voice rose to a scream. He threw himself at the door of the cell. “I'll kill the pair of you! I'll boil you alive! I'll cut you open and pull out your guts!”

Tom felt along the floor and picked up Tristan's sword. “My lord, this is yours.” He turned Tristan's palms upward and placed the sword across them. “Will you come with me? There is much to do, and little time.”

Tristan smiled and gave the sword back to Tom. “I am in your hands.” He took a grip on Hamon Ruddy's back, and another on Tom's shoulder. “Lead on.”

There followed a strange procession, first a man walking with his hands bound behind him, then a blind old nobleman of strikingly muscular frame, and then Tom, arms shaking from the effort of holding up a great sword-of-war. They mounted the circular stairs of the tower, and emerged through the narrow door that led onto the walls. Tom cast a glance over the battlements and spied torches to the south, coming up the road from village to castle.

“You'd best start running now.” Hamon Ruddy had regained some pretense of sneering calm. “If the boss catches you, he'll have you flayed alive.”

“Knave, be silent and walk faster.” Tristan kept a hard grip on the collar of Hamon Ruddy's padded jack and walked him out through the narrow door that led onto the walls. He wore the rest of the rope coiled over his shoulder, keeping the man
on a tight rein. By the time they reached the open door to the guardroom over the gates, the brigands had reached the edge of the castle green, their torches growing ever nearer.

“Inside, hurry.” Tom went in last and shut the door behind him. The guardroom beyond lay still and dark, lit only by the moon through its arrow-slit windows, but that was enough to see that it was furnished with a table, trunks and beds, and hangings on the walls to break the draft. The smell of doused ashes permeated the place. A pair of winches had been mounted by the walls, one east, one west, each connected to one of the gates in the tunnel below. A series of holes pierced the floor in a line, all covered by flaps of leather.

Tristan maneuvered Hamon Ruddy over by the hearth. “Tom, I must warn you that I do not think my former steward will bargain for a hostage.”

“That's not my plan, my lord. Hold him there, for just a moment.” Tom leapt down the set of narrow stairs by the wall and found the door that led out into the entrance tunnel firmly locked and barred.