by Dave Duncan
“I was told,” Niall said, “that thirty years ago, Ciarán Pfari seized the castle, but the next year King Ambrose sent an army under the command of your Grandpa Granville, who was later dubbed first Marquis. He started to waste the rest of Wylderland, so Pfari was forced to abandon his prize refuge and go after him. Obviously, he wouldn’t have left the secret tunnel exposed, in case he or one of his successors might want to use it in future, so I must assume that he concealed the Owl Room end behind panelling, and here he chopped this bridge into kindling.”
“You are dangerously clever, Master Cleaver.”
“Call me Niall. That’s my real name.”
The piles of lumber outside the cave had shown that work was underway, and this new stack barring his path confirmed it. A single beam had already been put in place across the torrent, and the freshness of the modern wood contrasted sharply with the rotting remains of the previous generation’s work below it.
Shrill shouts from the sunlight outside the cave made Niall and Fizz whip around to look. Two mid-size boys were dancing on the deck and yelling to someone presently out of sight.
“Footprints!” she said. “They’re shouting that they’ve found our footprints.”
Not hers, perhaps, but certainly Niall’s. He had muddied his boots during his slithering descent into the gully, and the stream had failed to clean them properly when he landed in it. But who were the tattletales shouting to? Not the Marquis’s men, surely, for they were the enemy in Zos’parn. The village men, or Panoleo’s superb archers? And who knew how many other men Panoleo had brought with him to work on the tunnel?
“I do believe, Maid Fizz, that it is time we got ourselves out of here. Come along.” Niall took hold of her wrist and helped her climb over the stack of timber to where a single lonely beam spanned the stream. Then he scooped her up.
“What in—” She began to struggle. “Put me down, you idiot. You can’t carry me over that!”
“I certainly can, if you’ll stop fussing. Keep still, woman, or I’ll drop you.”
He took another step and she froze in his arms. Then he remembered something that Lady Emerald had said about a leopard—and very nearly began to laugh. That would surely have been the end of both of them, for the beam was not firmly fixed in place, and was already starting to twist and shake under their weight. It was no tightrope, but it was only a thumb length wide, so he had no margin for error in where he put his feet.
He concentrated on doing that correctly, trying not to think of leopards or the surging waters below him, full of rocks and ancient timber. Then he was at the far end, but he did not know how the beam was fastened, or what it was fastened to. He could not see his feet, for Fizz was in the way. He eased forward, an inch at a time, wary of tripping over some sort of support.
“Put me down! Now!” Fizz had a better view than he did. He obeyed, but in the process lost his balance. She slid out of his grip, found secure footing, grabbed his arm, and pulled him to safety. The beam fell over, the near end falling into the stream, which swept it sideways, wrenching the other end free. Then it had gone.
He said, “Phew! That’s called drowning your bridges,” and hugged Fizz.
That felt good, so he kissed her. Her hand pulled his head down to increase the pressure of lips against lips, tongue against tongue, while her body squirmed against his. It seemed that she was enjoying it as much as he was. He tightened his embrace.
Chapter 22
Blade odds if you’re lucky
lord hedgebury
Niall was the one who ended the kiss. There was just enough light for him to see that Fizz was blushing madly. So, he suspected, was he.
“Let’s do that again when we have more time,” he said, somewhat hoarsely. More time and a bed. “Meanwhile...”
Meanwhile they were standing in a cavern that was not as huge as the Zarin Fosen, where Tom Twelvish lay, but comparable. The faint light filtering down from a very high roof was diffused and scattered by long icicles of white limestone. It would almost be possible to read in there.
It was a workshop. All reasonably flat patches of floor were stacked high with timber, both raw logs and lumber already sawn into planks and beams. There were sawhorses also, and piles of sawdust. Half a dozen lamps, presently unlit, hung from overhead hooks. Unless they took it into their heads to inspect the source of the village’s water supply, the Marquis’s agents coming to inspect Zos’parn manor on their rounds would find no clue to the war work underway underground.
Hearing voices from the outer cave, Niall led Fizz around a copse of upside-down stone icicles, to a spot where they would not be seen by the pursuers. They could not cross the stream as he had, so he and Fizz were safe for the moment. It might not be a very long moment, though.
“There has to be another entrance,” he whispered. “They didn’t bring all this in through the Owl Room. I’d have noticed.”
She chuckled softly and squeezed his hand. “Lead the way.”
“You’re very brave.”
“I’m not afraid of anything when I’m with you.”
Oh? That answer would require much thought. Maid Fizz, half Wyldish and half Chivian, had repeatedly refused to say which side she supported in what was already looking like the start of a Wyldish War of Independence—or another Wyldish Rebellion, depending on one’s point of view. More and more she seemed to dither back and forth between the opposing forces.
Sir Niall of the Blades was firmly sworn to Queen Malinda’s service. He had no room to negotiate on that. Sooner or later he was going to run into some of Panoleo’s forces, the inhabitants of this astonishing cave system. Fizz would be able to speak to them, but what would she tell them? If they believed he was Master Secretary Cleaver, he might have a chance of surviving. Sir Niall of the Queen’s Blades was sure to die.
“I think that’s the way out,” Fizz said quietly, pointing into the gloom.
Peering in that direction he could just make out what she had seen, a wooden staircase.
“You’re right. I’ll bet it’s labelled, ‘Thencaster One Mile.’ Let’s go.”
Like all the work he had seen in the caves so far, the stairs were superbly and stoutly made, even furnished with smooth handrails. The two trespassers climbed side by side, holding hands, which seemed natural, or even necessary, after that kiss.
“What do you suppose is happening up above, under the sky, Niall?” she asked sweetly.
While trying not to think about the hand-holding, Niall was wondering much the same. “Well, there were least five bowmen—”
“Seven. Five arrows hit us, but I saw two more land in the turf.”
“All right, at least seven.”
“But Daddy brought fifty mounted lancers, and I heard the bugler sounding the charge, so archers will all be dead, won’t they, and if Panoleo himself was there, then he’ll have—”
“I’m ‘fraid not, Fizz. Back at Ironhall, I watched a demonstration of longbow archery. In fact, I saw it twice. Archers facing cavalry take all the shafts out of their quivers and stand them upright in the turf within easy reach. The really good men can loose a dozen arrows in about a minute. With seven archers, that means more than eighty shots before you can do much more than scream. Whether every arrow hits a horse or a rider doesn’t matter against those odds.”
Didn’t matter because White Battalion would have been reduced to a great heap of wounded, writhing, or even already dead, men and horses—a wall of them, which would halt the battalion of pikemen following. By the time Red Battalion had been marched around that gruesome barrier, the seven-or-so archers would have vanished back underground. At any odds, the entrance would be like the Owl Room door—so narrow that only one man at a time could attempt it, and therefore impassible if defended.
Niall had more to worry about than the seven, though. Archery of such skill required years of work a
nd constant practice. They could not be the same people as the carpenters who had built the pier and the underground furnishings. Memo: carpenters can still wield pikes. Panoleo’s engineering contingent must contain a lot more men. How many more? At least one dozen, maybe two. Zos’parn itself couldn’t feed even that many without importing wagon loads of food, and surely someone in one of the Chivian-inhabited manors would have noticed such anomalous behaviour and reported it to the castle?
Neville had brought more than two hundred men to Zos’parn. Even if all of those had died already, Thencaster might be able to muster almost as many more, while screaming for help from Queen Malinda. Except that so many of the castle inhabitants were themselves Wylds and liable to change allegiance without notice.
This Wyldish uprising was the first crisis of her reign, just the sort of unexpected emergency Stalwart had predicted, but it had already wiped out the Marquis as a viable alternative ruler. Even if he still lived, he had been totally outwitted. He had failed in his primary duty of keeping the Wylds under control. Niall’s original mission was now irrelevant, which was a refreshing thought.
It would take Chivial many weeks to raise an army and send it north. Panoleo must have been working on his revolution for years, but he couldn’t have expected this sudden clash of arms. The secret cave been discovered only because Niall had gone looking for a spare blanket two nights ago. This skirmish had begun a war, but both Queen and Ciarán had yet to muster their full armies. So Niall did not have to fight his way out against thousands, just a few dozen maybe.
Child’s play?
The staircase raised them at least a couple of hundred feet. At first it had climbed the side of the workshop cavern, from crag to ledge and back to crag again, over deeper and deeper chasms. After that they found themselves following a made path through a series of passages, sometimes steep, sometimes gentle. In places the tunnel had been widened by hand, with the waste being used to level low spots in the floor. At every bend, a glow lamp attached to the wall provided meagre illumination. The overall lighting was dim, for the lamps were small, but just keeping them supplied with oil must require at least one person in the cave, and probably a team of men and horses out in the daylight world. The Wylds had turned a mountain into a fortress. The air was fairly dry, and the temperature comfortable.
The huge labour required to make just this one path testified that it must lead to somewhere important. But not Thencaster, not yet. Niall could think of several things that Panoleo, and Pfari before him, must have included somewhere in their enormous war burrow, things that he had not seen yet. Like sleeping quarters, for instance.
Another was the higher Zos’parn entrance. Any minute now Niall might run into the archers returning from their victorious massacre of the Chivian cavalry. He tried not to imagine a gang of men carrying flaming torches and singing heigh-ho songs as they marched homeward at the end of a busy day’s slaughter.
His brooding was halted when Fizz suddenly tightened her grip on his hand and whispered, “Look!” There was light ahead, not sunlight, but much brighter lamplight than any they had seen so far. This was certainly not the encounter he had just been worrying about. The light ahead was constant, unwavering. They had likely come to some living quarters.
“Wait here.” He headed forward, moving as quietly as he could. He had blundered into a very dangerous situation. If there were Wylds just ahead, he had no means of escape except flight, all the way back down to the workshop cave, which was itself a dead end until the stream could be properly bridged.
He peered cautiously around a sharp bend... and saw another corner. Two steps took him to that one, and this time he lay down to be less noticeable when he spied around it. Brighter light blinded him for a few moments, but he smelled food odours, heard sounds of pots clattering and women’s voices speaking a language he did not know. Then his eyes adjusted.
He was at the top of another stairway, which led down six or seven feet into a kitchen. The cave was twice the size of the kitchens at Ironhall, with a huge fireplace at one side, its chimney built of fieldstone and mortar. A woman was currently lifting loaves of bread out of the oven on a long-handled shovel and laying them on one of the big timber tables to cool. A gangling adolescent was carving slices from a ham, with three more of them awaiting his attention. Another woman was vigorously stirring something in a basin.
Recalling his long-ago days as the Brat, when he had eaten in the kitchens to be safe from the predatory sopranos, Niall could estimate with some confidence that this team was preparing dinner for at least a hundred people.
“Blade odds if you’re lucky,” Stalwart had promised him. But he had known for hours that this was not one of his luckier days.
Chapter 23
What by Death are you doing here?
sir challenger
Kneeling on rock was not comfortable. Niall stretched out flat on his belly, still watching the cooks’ activities below him. He was not only very weary, he was starving, and the smell of fresh bread had him drooling like the Zos’parn spring.
Suddenly he had company. Fizz had joined him, and was practically lying on top of him to see what was holding his attention.
“I left our invitations on the dressing table,” he whispered.
“Shush!” She was listening to the chatter.
He had no idea how long he had been asleep before she wakened him with a hard jab in the ribs.
“Death! At first I thought you’d died, and then you started to snore.... How can you possibly sleep on solid rock with your sword on your back and me on top of your sword and hundreds of savage Wylds thirsting for your blood?”
“I never have trouble sleeping.” Except on the night he had rescued Cat. He sat up and stretched. “I’ve been known to sleep standing up in a corner. What’s happening?” he added, realizing that they were not whispering. The tumult of scores of people celebrating was coming from somewhere close.
“The Army of Revolution is eating. I’m going to go and get mine. Coming?”
He unfolded to the vertical. “Try and stop me.”
The kitchen was a very irregular shape, with several levels and many shadowy corners. At one side, a natural arch that he had not been able to see until now led down into a larger, brightly lit cavern where at least a hundred people were enjoying a banquet. Men greatly outnumbered women, and there were almost no children or seniors. Without any exceptions that Niall could see, everyone had coal-black hair and very pale skin. They sounded as if the beer had been flowing generously. The cavern was throwing their own echoes back at them.
The kitchen itself was now deserted and dark, for the lamps there had been turned down, but enough light was spilling up from the feasting hall for him to see what he was doing.
What he was doing was following Fizz. She had already worked out where everything she wanted was located. She hung a basket on his arm and loaded it up with loops of sausage, a dozen or so eggs—hard-boiled, she assured him—and a massive hunk of cheese. The loaves, alas, had all been removed to feed their rightful recipients.
Unaware of the two intruders watching them so bitterly from outer darkness and well above normal eye level, the jubilant Wylds were celebrating their victory. But how great was that victory? Had they killed the hated Chivian Marquis? His officers? How many of the Thencaster men-at-arms had escaped back to help man the castle ramparts when the main assault began?
Or, Niall wondered, was this a preliminary feast, a spirits-raising preparation for the assault on Thencaster Castle itself? Even a few dozen determined rebels bursting out of the Owl Room at midnight might very well overwhelm Lords Kranith and Danark and the stunned remnant of their father’s army. All that Niall and Fizz would have to do to find their way out of this underground labyrinth would be to follow the invasion. Of course, they would arrive home to find home in the hands of the enemy.
Fizz clutched his arm and t
ugged. “Let’s see where this way leads.”
The tunnel she indicated was lower and narrower than any they had traversed so far. Niall would have to keep his head down. It was also unlit. Their route from Zos’parn had felt like a highway in comparison; this looked as if it led to nowhere of importance. Or perhaps just to a communal urinal, in which case a hundred beer-guzzling Wylds might come pouring into it at any moment.
“Wait!”
Niall hastened over to a group of lanterns on one of the kitchen shelves, probably brought by the cooks coming to prepare the feast. He chose the heaviest, which must contain the most oil. There was even a convenient candle there to light it. Then he went back to Fizz, and they proceeded into the new passage.
The going was rough and uneven. He hadn’t taken ten steps before he heard an eruption of noise behind him—cheering and wild banging.
“Sounds like he’s arrived,” Fizz said offhandedly.
“Who’s arrived?” Niall demanded.
“Panoleo. While you were asleep the cooks were babbling and clucking about the Ciarán himself coming to lead the battle against Chivian tyranny and oppression.”
“Never saw a Ciarán before.” Niall handed her the lantern, dropped the food hamper, and retraced his steps. The banquet was now in uproar, with everyone upright and yelling their heads off. Panoleo himself was in the centre of it all, standing on a stool or bench to be visible, beaming and waving. Unlike the Marquis, he was simply clad and wore no jewellery. He was big, though, and had the impressive build of a woodcutter. Under the heavy black beard, he seemed younger than Niall had expected, about his own age. He wore no crown or other insignia, except that he bore the only sword in sight.
Life was not unfolding as it should. A rebel leader called from wherever Panoleo might have been or whatever he might have been doing, to take command of an unexpected premature eruption of his own revolution, was not likely to travel without a substantial escort. The underground population had probably just increased considerably, and was likely to continue to increase as more tribes hurried south to join the uprising.