He had to be.
“Footprints…” Karl ran a hand along the crypt’s wall. “Some old. Some new.”
“Some borrowed, some blue.”
“Hrrmm?”
“A bloody fucking mess,” I said. But no bodies. The footprints were a jumbled scrawl of days or weeks or even months’ worth of trekking. Not to mention our recent festivities. “Over there.” Something caught my eye. “That.” Across the left wall was what looked like a slash of black. “Blood?”
It looked like blood, but old blood. Not fresh, at any rate. I sniffed at it, almost gagging from the stifling corpse-stench, but could just make out the sliver of copper tang beneath the brazen beast. “Smells like it.”
Karl stalked over, scratched a fingernail through the stain, dabbed it to his tongue. “Yar. It’s blood.”
“Just what the hell’s wrong with you?”
“You gonna swoon?” Karl stalked off.
Wasn’t much to the chamber. Maybe twenty by forty. Well-built, except for the collapsed wall section at the far end. Karl stared at it, gripping his beard.
“Hey, old man,” I called up. “Why’d they leave here?”
“Didn’t want to be squatting in no dank cellar, I’d hazard.”
“No. The keep. Set atop this hill? And with that wall? More defensible if shit ever goes sideways. Which is what it inevitably does. Buildings are overgrown as Wenelda’s legs, but the bones beneath are strong. Hale. Hell, even down here, the stonework’s solid.”
“Yar,” Karl cocked his head at the rubble, “except fer this.”
“Still better than that claptrap Schloss,” I countered.
“Hrrrm…” Karl prodded a crevice with the haft of his axe, “I’d wager it so.”
“Well?” I asked back up.
“King says jump, lad…” Sir Alaric wheezed.
“Yeah.” I stalked through the scrum of collapsed earth and stone that’d washed in like the tide. “This collapsed a while ago. Years maybe.” Smooth stones formed the intact walls. I could barely feel the joints between. “When’d they abandon it?”
Sir Alaric let out a gust. “Near some thirty years, give or take.”
I ran a hand along one of the collapsed stones. A big bastard. “Hmm…” I stopped, feeling a notch, and peered close. Four parallel lines marked the stone. “What’s this look like?”
Karl trudged over.
“Could use a little more light, old man,” I called up.
Sir Alaric still didn’t answer, he just adjusted his lantern, tin scraping on stone, casting a dim glow down our way.
“Thanks.” I pointed at the notched stone. “Here.”
“Hrmm…” Karl squatted.
“A tool-mark? Mason’s sigil?”
“Don’t look it but, yar. Must be. Ain’t Ogham.” Karl hunkered along through the debris, pointing. “Got some more. Here and here. There, too. Looks to be they match up.”
“From the quarry? Construction?”
Karl ran his hand along a set of marks. “Don’t know.”
“If they’re not tool marks, then what?”
“Looks more like…” Karl shook his head. “Nar. Must be tools.”
“Think someone brought it down on purpose?”
“Yar…” Karl grunted absently, feeling along the collapsed wall, ducking his head between massive blocks, checking each crevice. “But there’s got to be…” He stopped next to a broad slash of black and ducked down. “Here. Hold.” He laid his shoulder into a block and grunted as he slid it aside.
“Try not to bring down the rest til I’m gone.” I trudged back up the stairs. Sir Alaric sat atop, head down, breathing. Rasping. “Gonna make it, old-timer?”
“Aye, lad,” the old man thumped his chest, tepidly at best, “I’m right as rain.”
“Well, rain falls and splatters everywhere, making a general nuisance of itself, so…”
“Arrr,” Sir Alaric clutched his ribs, forcing himself slowly to his feet, “don’t make me laugh.”
I helped him up, dusted him off. “Want to tell me what the hell’s going on?”
“By the hound, I wish I knew.” Sir Alaric rubbed his sternum.
“Bullshit.”
“Oy,” Karl called up from below, “got something.”
“We ain’t done,” I said and started back down.
Karl was still in the process of using his thane-axe to lever a block aside. I gave him a hand, dropping my shoulder into it. A monster nigh on three and a half feet tall and twice as wide, it inched, growling across the floor. “Odin’s teeth, it reeks.”
“It’s… Your… Rrrrg… Breath,” I groaned.
But we manhandled it aside. Eventually. I collapsed against the wall, heart pounding in my ears, vision going fuzzy. I felt the side of my head. My fingers came away sticky. Red. Warm.
Karl hunkered on his knees, peered low, head in a crevice. “Here.”
“Here, what?”
“There’s a tunnel back there.” Karl slapped a palm against the old stone. “Look.” A crevice gaped between two fallen stones. Just a sliver of liquid night. “It’s tight. But I’m thinking we can fit.”
“How deep?”
“Gimme a moment to whip out my cock and measure.”
“Not very then?” I asked innocently.
“Heh…” Karl shoved the haft of his thane-axed in with one hand. It kept going, swallowing up to his shoulder. “Goes beyond.” He peered in. “Hrrmmm… Don’t feel no air moving. But there’s space back there.”
“Maybe you should crawl in?”
“Maybe you should go fuck your face?”
“If only God had graced me—”
“Would you two stop clucking like inbred hens,” Sir Alaric groaned from above. “Want me to crawl down there and do it myself?”
“Yeah. Absolutely.” I stepped aside, hand out to guide the way. “You’re skinnier than either of us.”
“And nearer to dead, too,” Karl grumbled.
“Well,” the old man considered for a moment before coming to the conclusion we all knew was foregone, “fuck off, then, the two of you.”
“A tunnel dug in?” I said. “Or out? Any ideas, old man?”
“Fresh out, lad.” Sir Alaric groaned. “Only tunnel I know’s from the old gaol down to the execution chamber. And it’s still locked. Only King Eckhardt’s got the key.”
“Execution chamber?”
“Aye. Part of a move toward civility. Out of sight, out of mind.”
“That’s no fun,” I pouted.
“Hrmm,” Karl pointed with his axe, “the something-dead’s back there.”
“No shit.” I hissed up the stairs, “We calling it a day?”
Sir Alaric called back, “Sun’s still waxing.”
“Right.” I sheathed Yolanda, drew a long dagger, offered Karl a stilted bow. “After you.”
“Nar,” Karl crossed his thick arms, “it’s your turn.”
I laid a hand to my chest. “Yet, t’was I who kicked in the door.”
“Kicking in doors ain’t crawling headfirst into graves.”
I stood with arms akimbo. “Don’t tell me you remember?”
“Siege at Jaarheim,” Karl rumbled instantly.
“Fuck.” We’d been point-men on an anti-sapper crew, digging counter-tunnels against toothsome moles. It’d been close quarters for a long stretch. No light. No space. No air. No nothing but darkness, dirt, and iron. And those were the good parts. I knew he was right, knew it before I even asked, but I’m an optimistic shit sometimes but only to my detriment. “You’re sure?”
“Yar.”
“Fuck.” Snatching the lantern from his open hand, I ducked past, bumping my shoulder into his chest and knocking him back a pace. Peering into the crevice, I slapped the dust off a chunk of overhang. “It gonna collapse when I’m halfway through?”
“With any luck.”
“Right.” The crevice was wide enough but only just so. Tight. Contortingly so. Crus
hingly so. But I made it work. Rock scraping against my cheek, my neck, I slithered through, lantern to the fore, undulating onward, as exposed as a snail outside its shell. “Come on…” I head-butted a sharp stone, swore, forced on through. “You’re right.” The crevice widened after a few feet. “There’s a tunnel.”
Scrabbling free, I stretched out, took a deep breath. “Jesus—” Choking, I covered my nose and mouth and lifted the lantern, squinting through the mirk, and froze. “I found him,” I gasped. “Ahem. Them. I found them.”
It was a dank, earthy tunnel, roots slithering in through the ceiling, and it was littered with corpses. In the wavering lantern-light, the tunnel yawning off into darkness, they sat propped against the wall, splayed out across the floor, folded over in half in ways my eyes fought to conjure sense of. Some’d been here a stretch, bone showing, clothes not more than rotten chaff. Others were more … recent.
“Odin’s teeth—” Karl scrambled like a badger from the crevice, spitting grit and shaking dust from his beard.
“Watch it, would you?”
Karl barreled onward. “How many’d the old man say?”
“He said ‘enough.’”
Karl cocked his head toward the dead. “And how many’s that, you reckon?”
“More than enough.”
* * * *
I leaned Yolanda against the wall as Karl, pulling hand over hand on the rope, yanked a corpse from the crevice. It was Brown Cloak, the last bloke seen alive with Rudiger and the freshest of the pack. “Wait—” He got hung up on something, just his cloaked head poking free.
Karl yanked harder.
“Jesus. Easy.” I scuttled forth, ducking headfirst back into the crevice. “You’re gonna tear his bloody leg off.”
“Think he’ll squawk?”
“Well, no, but—” I hovered precipitously above Brown Cloak’s chest. “Here. Wait. Wait! God damn it. Foot’s hung up under a rock.” I reached in. “Just a moment—” I took a long gander into the darkness beyond. Rubbed my eyes. Blinked.
Had something moved beyond the gloom? Or was it a trick of the eye? Stare long enough at the abyss and your idiot mind’ll start concocting phantoms from sheer boredom. Or terror. I sniffed, swallowed, rubbed my eyes and focused on the grim task at hand. “Just a moment. Foot’s wedged in good and tight.” I pushed the corpse back, tried worrying the foot from beneath the stone, gave up. “Shove him in a little.”
Karl did as I bade and Brown Cloak’s knee bent up.
“Yeah. Now hold him steady.” I stomped on his knee, feeling bone in his kneecap not so much as give as turn aside in a manner not meant to. But his leg straightened and foot rasped free. “Alright. Pull.”
Karl tore him free.
Alone in the tunnel, I glanced up, reaching for the lantern and thought something moved beyond the abattoir grounds, thought I heard something. A giggle. Maybe. Dry-mouthed, I swallowed, swore, grasped the lantern and scrambled out arse-first fast as I could, scraping my shoulders, bumping my head, nearly knocking myself senseless.
“Whoa—” Karl grabbed me. “You alright?”
“Yeah.” I steadied myself against a block. “More or less.”
“Yer bleeding again.” He nodded at the side of my head.
“Yeah. That Rudiger packed a wallop.”
“Yar. Maybe two.”
I raised my hands. “I’m fine.”
Karl frowned.
I clambered up, dusted off, took a gander at our hard-earned prize. Brown Cloak lay curled up in a pugilist’s position, balled fists and knobby knees to his forehead, a sad, wizened thing that somehow gave the impression of a baby bird fallen from its nest. “Not much to him.” I shook my head. “What? Maybe seventy, eighty pounds? Practically just a kid.”
“Eh?” Sir Alaric hobbled down the stairs, using his old sword cane-wise, wincing with each step. “Young Parwicke said he was an older bloke. A taller bloke…”
“He seemed the freshest back there,” I said. “Only one not showing bone. And he’s got the brown cloak.”
Sir Alaric frowned. “Fair commonest of colors, lad.”
“Yeah. Sure. Must be one of the others.” Gripping the corpse by the shoulders, I rolled him over, face-up, pulled back his hood and — “Whoa” — staggered back. Brown Cloak had a beard of stubble, grayed in parts, and he was balding. “Caesar’s ghost…”
“Yar.” Karl scratched fleas from his beard. “Ain’t no kid. We draw him out, hazard he’d be taller than you.”
“Not as handsome, though.”
“Yar,” Karl said, “got ya beat there, too.”
Sir Alaric watched our proceedings with fists on hips and a grim schoolmarm glare in his eye. Tsk. Tsk. Tsk.
“It’s how we do things.” I shrugged in elegant explanation.
Karl snorted.
“Well now, that’s two accounted for,” Sir Alaric said. “You see Young Parwick’s Grey-Lady amongst the dead?”
“No.”
“Think mayhap you missed her?”
“If she’s further down the tunnel? Sure.”
Sir Alaric frowned at the crevice.
“Hmmm, look. There’s something wedged under him.” I grabbed Brown Cloak’s shoulder. “Here. Roll him a bit.” I dug a hand under the small of his back. “A satchel.” I tugged it free then unlooped it from over his head.
“What’s in it?” Grimacing, Sir Alaric eased himself down to one knee by the corpse.
I looked inside, shook my head. “A bottle of wine and two loaves of bread.”
“Would you quit your fooling?” Sir Alaric spat.
“I ain’t.” I brandished the wine bottle. Sloshed it a bit. Pulled the stopper. Took a whiff. “Smells alright.” I wiped the mouth of the bottle and took a swig. “Not bad, considering.”
“What?” Karl patted Brown Cloak down. “That it’s corpse wine?”
“I said considering.” I handed Sir Alaric the bottle. “And you were just licking blood off the wall.”
“Be needing to give him a thorough go-over back on the slab.” Sir Alaric glared with one eye into the bottle then gave it a sniff. “Which means we’ll need to lug him back. The others, too.”
“We?”
“Aye.” Frowning, Sir Alaric took a tentative swig. “Might be we can identify some of ‘em. Can’t have families wondering what became of their loved ones. Believe me, lad, it’s worse not knowing.”
I couldn’t argue with him there, but going back into that bloody crevice…
“Now let’s get to it.” Using his knee for support, Sir Alaric levered himself up, rickety legs shaking, clutching his chest and groaning all the way, letting loose a torrent of breath before finally looking expectantly at the two of us.
Karl and I scowled in unison.
A look of wide-eyed innocence blossomed on Sir Alaric’s crusty mug. “What?”
“Holding your back and groaning?”
“Too much, eh?” Sir Alaric hefted the bottle and took another slug, “Don’t you worry, lads, I’ll bear my fair share.”
…as we approached the farthest valley, this desolate land of monstrous denizens, we thought ourselves well-suited to the task.
We were not…
—War-Journal of Prince Ulrich of Haeskenburg
Chapter 13.
BEARING MY END of Brown Cloak’s burden, I ducked through the doorway, my head brushing the ceiling, which only intensified the cell’s caustic crush of impending doom. Deep breaths. Happy thoughts. A slug of whiskey.
Karl had no such problems. Being a stunted, misshapen troll had its occasional advantages.
The extrication of the corpses had gone about as well as such drudgeries go. We hadn’t found another Brown Cloak down there. And we hadn’t found the Grey-Lady, either, which was confounding, and figured her for a survivor or accomplice. Either way, Sir Alaric had sworn out a warrant.
We laid Brown Cloak unceremoniously across a stone slab a foot shorter than he was tall. Sir Alaric leaned back an
d ran a hand over his balding pate, muttering to himself, chewing his dead pipe, one hand gesticulating as he muttered low to a portrait hanging on the wall. It was of a man maybe my age, imperious of eye, with a slash of red hair atop his head and upper lip.
“Talk to me, old man.”
“Eh, what?” Sir Alaric massaged his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “Apologies.”
“You alright?” I raised an eyebrow toward the portrait.
He waved a hand. “I’m fine, lad, truly and I am.” He patted the portrait frame. “My old man. Sometimes I run ideas by him, see what he has to say…” He snatched a large book stuffed with loose papers and opened it to a blank page. “You’re eyes still sharp?” He dipped a quill pen into ink.
“As my wit.”
“Oh?” Crestfallen, he stepped back, proffering a hand towards the corpse. “Well, even so, go on and tell me what you see.”
“A shit-show?” I commented.
Karl chuckled, but Sir Alaric was busy lighting his pipe, so I got to it.
Above the slab and corpse, three lanterns dangled on lanyards, focusing their concerted light on a polished brass mirror. It worked fair grandly but it would’ve suited me fine to see less. “He’s on the far side of middle-aged. Like Parwicke said.” I cracked my neck and took a deep breath. “Seems far lighter than he should.” I looked to Karl. “Unless I’m a modern-day Herakles?”
“You ain’t.” Karl leaned back against the wall, arms crossed, watching. Dissecting the dead wasn’t his specialty. The living, now…?
I shrugged. “Face is all … Hmm … sunken in.” Suffused by the light, the finer aspects of Brown Cloak’s desiccated corpse lay bare. He was grey. Contorted. Gaunt. “Got some scratches to his forehead and right cheek.” I parted his hair in a few spots. “Abrasions and lacerations along his scalp. Hmm. Right side again.” I worked my way down. “Bits of stone in his beard. Crushed into his flesh. Right side again. Like he had his face cheese-grated across a wall. The floor. Something.”
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