Through a Dark Mist (39 page)

In the sudden eruption of violence, the sentry who had been their hostage darted ahead into the gloom of the corridor. He did not get very far before an iron bolt from Sparrow’s crossbow thumped his flesh like a hatchet striking into wood and sent him sprawling forward into the wall. He grabbed for a chain hanging nearby and tried to use it to hold himself upright, but it was no use, and he slid slowly down onto his knees, his mouth moving in soundless agony.

Alaric discarded the ropes from around his wrists and bent over to arm himself from one of the dead guards. They were standing at a junction where the corridor branched off in two directions, each hazy and poorly lit. The guard had been running toward the one on the left … because it was the closest? … because he knew there was help within reach? … or because he was hoping to lead them away from their true goal?

“In a week,” De Chesnai remarked dryly, “I’ve not yet met one of De Gournay’s paid louts who can claim a brain bigger than a pea. He would have been after saving his own neck, methinks, by giving M’sieur D’Aeth the pleasure of chewing upon ours.”

“To the left then?”

“Aye. The left.”

They did not waste the time to hide the bodies, but ran swiftly along the low-ceilinged corridor, pausing where lit torches marked the entrance to a storeroom. There were no doors and no guards blocking them, and thus were deemed by Friar to be of no importance. After several more sharp turns along a route that took them deeper and deeper beneath the belly of the keep, they were drawn by the smell, rather than the dull light, emanating from a doorway up ahead.

This one was guarded.

Two arrows released simultaneously from Gil’s bow and Sparrow’s harp-shaped arblaster, struck the men-at-arms posted on either side of the iron-grille door, killing them with only the faintest of thuds to mark their passing.

Gil was the first to sidle up to the entryway and edge an eye around the stone frame. When she saw the vast, sunken maw of a pit that yawned beneath her, she recoiled back against the wall again, needing a moment or two to brace herself for a second look.

“Christ’s mercy,” De Chesnai murmured, the bile thickening in his throat at the sight of the hooks and ropes and chains that dangled over tables, benches, and wooden racks stained dark with blood. Iron tongs, pokers, and pincers were suspended like cooking utensils over the firepit—different sizes for different purposes. Cauldrons of oil and pitch sat cooling beside the grate, steam from the surfaces drifting lazily upward to blend with the sulphurous miasma above.

“I can only see two guards,” Friar said tautly. “But there must be more … listen.”

The sound of voices and the rattle of dice seemed to be coming from around and behind the base of the central column. As much as half of the huge room was effectively cut off from view.

“Alaric!” Gil’s voice, whispered in his ear, urged him to follow her pointed finger to a table almost directly below them. A young boy was stretched out, bound hand and foot in a spread-eagle position. His eyes were open and he was staring directly up at the door, but there was no change in his expression to indicate whether he had seen them or not.

“Eduard,” De Chesnai said unnecessarily. “You were right, Bishop. Tomorrow would have been too late.”

Alaric’s gaze flicked back to the two guards he could see at the bottom of the stairs. They would be easy enough to deal with, but he did not like going in without knowing how many more were inside, out of sight. Nor did he like the size or location of the huge bronze alarm bell. It looked big enough to bring down the walls of Jericho if struck with any force at all. Of equal concern, suddenly, was the chain attached to the bell pull. It climbed all the way up the wall and disappeared into a small, neat hole in the ceiling rafters— undoubtedly connected to another bell located in the soldiers guard station above, and possibly to a third and fourth on storeys higher up.

Alaric stiffened, remembering the guard they had shot back at the junction. He had died reaching for a chain, and the chain had slipped several links before drawing taut in his death grip.

“Christ! The alarm is already given! Gil, Sparrow: the guards!”

The two archers stepped into the doorway and without questioning the order or the unexpected savagery, fired down on the two visible sentries. The arrows both struck the same man an inch apart, and while Sparrow gaped up at Gil and fumbled another bolt from his quiver to rearm his crossbow, Gil swore and nocked another of her longer arrows, catching the second, startled guard squarely in his opened mouth. The cry of warning was strangled short, but given nonetheless and a scramble of heavy boots, chain mail, and the scrape of crossbows being armed reached the top of the stairs.

Alaric and Sir Roger were halfway down the flight of steps when the first guard stepped out from cover and fired his weapon. Sparrow was ready for him, releasing a bolt that pierced De Gournay’s mercenary neatly through the heart. Almost immediately two more guardsmen appeared, one kneeling to shoot, one discriminantly diving behind a table the instant his bolt was loosed. Both shots were wild but Gil’s returned fire sent an arrow furrowing halfway up the length of one man’s arm, expending its force in an eruption of bloody tissue at the elbow. The guard screamed and spun sideways with the agony of his shattered arm, landing close enough to the man crouched behind the table to splatter him with gore. The latter wiped away a hot splash that had landed on his cheek and, with his weapon rearmed, fired triumphantly at a much larger, much broader target who leaped down the stairs two at a time, bellowing Welsh oaths on every step.

Sparrow aimed for the guard, but his bolt struck the wooden face of the overturned table. He slung his bow over his shoulder and with a hop and leap that appeared to take him flying out into empty space, he grabbed hold of a crossbeam and swung himself into the jungle of wooden arches. Several more swinging leaps carried him halfway across the ceiling rafters, and while Gil kept the guard pinned effectively behind the table, the little man unslung his bow, nocked a bolt, and settled the matter with a definitive whoop of satisfaction.

Unfortunately the whoop was followed instantly by a yelp of dismay as he lost his balance and felt his remaining bolts fall out of his quiver and clatter to the floor below.

The last pair of guards rushed Alaric and Sir Roger at the bottom of the stairs, their swords glinting in the murky half-light. Alaric disposed of his adversary with a vehement cut and slash, but De Chesnai wheeled his blade again and again, taking pleasure in driving his opponent into a far corner before delivering the death blow.

Mutter and Stutter ran down the steps and, obeying Alaric’s sharp commands, cut the ropes lashing Eduard to the table. They were helping the boy carefully to his feet even as Alaric was answering a summons from the chained occupant of a nearby cell.

“You took your bloody time getting here,” the Wolf said, grinning through the blood and grime on his face.

“There is gratitude for you,” Friar remarked, cursing fluently over the discovery of locks on each of the fetters chaining the Wolf to the wall. “Keys?”

“You want keys?” asked a coarse, gritty voice from the shadows. “Come. Take them from me.”

Alaric whirled around. The bald and glistening, half-naked monument of sinew and muscle—D’Aeth—stood a few paces away, his one fist closed in a crushing grip around Sir Roger’s throat, his other wrapped around the end of a length of heavy chain. De Chesnai’s sword was gone. His eyes bulged and his lips were turning blue, his face was florid and his fingers were scratching desperately at the five-pronged slab of iron D’Aeth called a hand.

“Throw down your sword or this codpiece dies,” D’Aeth snarled.

Out of the corner of his eye, Alaric could see Gil creeping slowly down the stairs, but it would take her several seconds to reach the floor of the donjon—several seconds longer than De Chesnai’s neck would bear the strain. Mutter and Stutter had laid aside their weapons to help Eduard to his feet, and Sparrow was somewhere up in the vaulted gloom, but without his quiver of arrows his bow arm was useless.

“Let him go,” Alaric said, laying aside his sword with exaggerated care.

D’Aeth grinned, displaying two rows of teeth filed into wickedly sharp points. He gave Sir Roger’s neck an additional squeeze before flinging the knight aside, then with a sneer of malicious delight, he slashed out with the length of chain. The end snaked across the floor and found Alaric’s ankles; a jerk of the trunklike arm pulled the chain taut and swept Alaric’s feet forward, bringing him crashing to the stone floor.

The Wolf strained against his own chains, but they were anchored well and only caused the iron rings to gouge deeper into the flesh of his wrists. Friar’s head had snapped back in the fall, landing hard on the stone and he was momentarily too dazed to defend himself as the chain curled outward again and cut him across the tops of his thighs. His hose was torn as the links bit into his flesh; blood smeared across the floor as he rolled in agony and tried to avoid the third whiplash of iron.

Mutter and Stutter ran forward, but the direction of the chain was easily changed, slashing them both across the chest and hurling them against the rack that held an assortment of curved pikes, metal starbursts, and clawed pincers. Mutter landed harder than his brother, striking the side of his head against a protruding iron bolt.

Gil rounded the base of the pillar but was so shocked by the sight of Alaric crawling through his own blood, that she released the arrow without allowing for D’Aeth’s reflexes. She saw the shaft streak past his head, killing nothing but a block of wood, and with a cry, she turned the bow in her hands, intending to use it like a club. Once again the chain lashed out and gleefully tore it out of her grasp, the force spinning her brutally into the wall.

Screaming, Alaric dove for his sword the same instant a small shrieking form came sailing down out of nowhere, arms and legs splayed wide to break his fall as he swiped across the path of the charging D’Aeth. Sparrow landed hard, plastered flat against the bulwark of chest muscles, knocking more air out of himself than out of D’Aeth, but before he was swatted aside like an annoying insect, he managed to plant his stingers—two glittering knives—one in each side of D’Aeth’s massive neck.

Alaric was on his feet, the sword gripped in both hands as D’Aeth lunged forward. The first cut barely creased the rock-hard mountain of flesh, the second carved a deep welt of gore from shoulder to ribs, and still he came on. Alaric backed up, hacking and slashing at the grinning monster. He was pressed into the corner, his sword red the full length, and D’Aeth was there in front of him, the chain raised in one hand, a leather-shanked battle-ax in the other. The first swipe of the axe broke Alaric’s sword in half, the second would have sheared his head from his shoulders if both the axe and arm were not halted midstroke by the arcing fury of a steel morning star. The rounded, spiked club tore a swath through flesh and muscle, bone and sinew, opening a raw gash from the top of D’Aeth’s skull to the base of his spine.

D’Aeth’s ugly face registered surprise, then shock, then an incredulous horror as his legs folded beneath him and he pitched forward like a felled tree. He was dead before he struck the ground, a torrent of blood gushing out of the hideous wound, some of it spattering a wall ten feet away.

The morning star was clotted with shreds of flesh and bone right up to the handgrip as Gil sank onto her knees beside Alaric. They were both winded and badly shaken, but there was no time to do more than exchange wry grimaces of pain to assure each other they were not mortally injured. After a moment, Alaric groped at the fallen behemoth’s waist for the ring of iron keys, while Gil went to extricate Sparrow from the tangle of hooks and barbs he had been flung into.

The right key was found and fitted into the padlocks at the Wolf’s wrists and ankles. The two men helped one another to their feet and took toll of the wreckage surrounding them.

De Chesnai was alive, but breathing with difficulty through a partially crushed windpipe. Sparrow was complaining—a good sign that the blood leaking from his arm was not critical. Mutter was dead, the spike still jutting from a small, bloodless hole in his temple. Gil was unharmed but for a few bad bruises and scrapes. Robert the Welshman, forgotten in the general melee, was the second unexpected casualty, a man whose courage and fighting strength they could ill afford to lose. He had been struck in the chest by one of the guards’ bolts, and while not quite dead of his wound, would most certainly be if he tried to move.

Together, Gil and Sparrow propped him more comfortably against the stone cistern, then turned to their leader for guidance.

“We are almost certain an alarm has been sounded,” Alaric advised. He hurriedly explained about the guard and the chain, and added unnecessarily, “Our men will put up a good fight and delay them as long as possible, but they are sure to break through.”

Lucien clenched his fists, still numb from having watched his friends fight and die for him. “The price of vengeance … was too steep this time, I fear.”

“Tell that to your son … and to the Lady Servanne, if and when we find her.”

The burning gray eyes moved slowly to Friar. “What did you say?”

“Lengthy explanations and formal introductions will have to wait for a more prudent moment, but for now—” Alaric nodded toward the trembling but steadfastly upright young squire. “Here is your son: Eduard. Nicolaa de la Haye birthed him, but I trust you will not hold it against him. It seems he gave a good account of himself trying to step between the Dragon and Lady Servanne.”

The Wolf’s eyes flicked up from the wound on Eduard’s thigh and turned to Alaric. “Servanne … you know where she is?”

Friar glanced up at the arched doorway, his neck prickling with an unmistakable warning. “We were, ah, hoping you could tell us.”

“What?”

“According to Biddy, she was taken to something called the
eagle’s eyrie.
Do you know what it is, or where it is?”