Above the keep, dark birds circled high in the sky, never venturing far from the tower that now rose up, silhouetted against the gloomy clouds. The keep itself was silent, but it wasn’t peaceful, it was more a brooding, menacing kind of quiet.
“I don’t know, Duke,” Lilly said, after we circled the entire building. “I have no idea how we’re going to get in there.”
“Get in there? Why would we want to do that?”
“Because Sarge is in there. And all of my coworkers, and who knows who else. What about all the people in the other buildings? Since there’s no sign of them anywhere, I’m betting that they’re in there.”
“Oh, of course. Yeah, good point. We do need a plan then.”
We were standing there, still staring at the place when a voice came from behind us.
“To do that, you’ll need your magic back, won’t you?”
We spun around, ready to face a new threat, but there was no need.
The women gathered behind us were all dressed in black, each and every one. But the styles differed. Some wore long dresses, with high collars and full sleeves. Others wore much less, revealing a lot of skin, while still others wore what looked like actual shadows. And I recognized the one who had done the talking.
“Minerva!” I said, moving forward. “Or should I say, Exalted One?”
She smiled. “Minerva is fine, Duke. I only got to play the Exalted One. And while it’s good to see you, and see you back to your charming self, it’s really Lilly that we’re here to see.”
Lilly stepped forward and hugged Minerva briefly.
“It’s great that you’re here,” she said. “But why?”
“There’s a great misconception about witchcraft, or at least some of it,” Minerva said. “Most think it’s all black magic, and yowling cats by the light of a full moon. And while all of that is well and good, it’s not our main purpose.”
“It’s not?” I said. “I mean, no, of course not.”
“Nice save. But no, it’s not. Our main purpose is to heal, in one form or another. We may heal a sick child, or the blight affecting a crop in some farmer’s fields. Some of us consider righting a social injustice, or putting a bully in their place, a form of healing, albeit on a wider level. All of it, that’s what witches do the best. The rest is just for fun.”
“Are you saying you can heal me, Minerva?” The hope that I heard in Lilly’s voice nearly broke my heart, and I waited with baited breath for Minerva to answer.
“Perhaps. We will try anyway. We felt it when this abomination rode into the city, and even more when he called his keep into being. We felt it like a hot iron in our brains when he severed your connection to your magic. It burns there still. Even if we didn’t think so highly of you, dear, we would still try to do this.”
“Thank you,” Lilly said. “What do I need to do?”
“Come with me. We’ll need to work away from here, away from this, his focus of power.”
I moved forward, but two witches stepped up and took Lilly gently by the arms. Minerva put her hand lightly on my chest.
“No,” she said. “This is for us only, Duke. Leave her with me. No harm will come to her, I promise. I told you once that it wasn’t a bad thing to have the witches look kindly on you.”
She smiled at me, and although every bone in my body wanted to follow and guard over Lilly, I had no choice but to trust them, and wait to see if they could do what even the Brownies couldn’t.
While I was waiting, I examined the keep more closely. There was no way to easily get into the thing. Maybe we could get over the walls somehow, with the help of the witches, or even a rope…although those black birds spiraling high up in the sky looked like spies. Or maybe guardians, and they were bigger than they looked, being so high up.
Or maybe we could…
I didn’t finish the thought, because the gates started to open. They swung out, making a terrific groaning noise that echoed off the remaining buildings. Buildings that were now mostly abandoned, since people fled the area. I watched carefully, waiting for some sign of the Death Knight to appear, but it never came.
Instead, Sarge came out.
But it wasn’t Sarge either. Not the Sarge that I knew for all these years, and visited at home with his lovely wife. This Sarge was a twisted and corrupted version of the man. His eyes had a red glow to them that pulsed with every step he took. His face was twisted into a leer as he looked at me.
Always a big man, he appeared even more so now, as if his muscles were swollen, causing his Watch uniform to fight too tightly around him, so that it bulged, looking like it would rip any second now. He didn’t have any weapons, but his fists were clenched and the sense of menace which came from him was palpable.
“Sarge?” I said, sure that it was him, but equally sure that something was horribly wrong.
His eyes flashed to me, and he lifted his head and sniffed, like he was testing the air for the scent of prey. Then he lowered his head and a horrible smile came over his face.
“Duuuukkke,” he growled. His voice had changed too, becoming much deeper and more gravely.
“Sarge,” I said, backing up, and putting my hand to my belt. “I don’t want any trouble here. Let’s stay calm and…”
That was as far as I got before he charged me, breaking into a strange loping run, which ate up the distance between us. I pulled my gun from my belt, raised it, and …stopped. What was I doing? This was Sarge, regardless of what the Death Knight did to him. I couldn’t shoot him!
My thoughts were interrupted by him running into me, or more accurately, running over me. He lowered his shoulder and rammed me. I went down immediately, and Sarge kept on going, stepping on my stomach as he ran past. My breath exploded out of me, and I curled up into a ball, just in time to receive a kick to my back.
I actually flew through the air, pain exploding along my spine. It had to be broken. That was my only thought as I hit the ground and rolled. The stars flashed in my vision, white and blood red, and the darkness that I was all too familiar with these days crept in around the edges again. I lay in a heap, waiting for Sarge to finish me off.
But he didn’t. Instead, I heard a guttural laughing noise, and when I raised my head, I saw Sarge, still standing where he knocked me down. He was holding something in his hand and staring at it, laughing. It took me a second to realize what it was. Sarge was holding my gun.
I climbed to my feet, groaning at the sharp pain that went up my back. But I could stand, I could move. I wasn’t broken yet.
“Put it down!” I yelled, the anger at the sight of someone else touching my Ultimate Weapon rising through me, shouldering aside the pain. “Right now, Sarge! Put it down!”
He looked up, pointed the gun at me and said, “Bang!” Then he laughed again, and took off running for the door of the keep.
I ran after him, ignoring the pain that stabbed through me with every step. Before he could reach safety, I tackled him, or at least tried. Sarge was tough as old shoe leather, even before the Death Knight changed him. Now, he had all that old toughness, plus whatever evil sorcery was on him.
But he also had my gun, and that would not do.
I attacked with a strength I didn’t know I possessed. I jumped on his back, wrapped my legs around his and tripped him up. When we went down, I shifted my weight so that I fell directly on him, digging my elbow into his kidney. This time, it was his breath that exploded out of him, and I scrambled up and aimed my own kick at his head.
But he was quick too, and been a feared street fighter in his day. He was ready for it, and rolled to the side, so my boot barely made contact. Surging to his feet, he swung around toward me, growling.
There are times as a Nuisance Man that you need to get to someone, and someone else will be in your way. A relative, or a friend, convinced of the innocence of the person you’re trying to eliminate. A lot of times, that’s this person’s only crime. There are plenty of Nuisance Men who wouldn’t hesitate to remove
them too, but that was never my way. Instead, I used a non-lethal way to get past them.
I still kept it on me, although I didn't use it very much anymore. A stout piece of wood, about ten inches long and an inch around, worn smooth by being carried in my belt for all these years, it had rapped the heads of more than a few. If you were good with it, and I was, a sharp knock was enough to put down most, and they’d wake up with a headache, while I’d be long gone.
I pulled out my head-knocker and held it in my right hand. The trick now was going to be to get close enough to Sarge to use it, without getting mauled by him in the process. I feinted to my left, but he was too experienced to fall for that, and moved slowly toward me instead, his eyes watching the stick of wood in my hand.
His approach was relentless, methodical. My gun was laying in the street, back where I took him down, but it wouldn’t do me any good even if I could reach it. Not unless I was willing to shoot him, which I wasn’t. Not yet.
I let him come in, his hands hanging low, fists opening and closing. I could take a punch and was pretty sure that I could even handle one from Sarge. But Sarge in his present condition? That might be a different story, and I preferred not to find out.
I stepped in, swinging toward his head, but then spinning and lashing out at his knee at the last moment. It took him by surprise and my head-knocker cracked into his leg. He howled and jumped back, and I followed, swinging for all I was worth. I couldn’t keep it up, but he had nothing to block with other than his own arms.
I hit him again and again, fast, without pausing. It was the only way I could think of to stop him from getting to me. Finally, he dropped his arm after I got in a solid blow on his elbow, and I had my opening. I whacked him in the skull, harder than I would have at any other time. There was a hollow sounding clunk noise, and his eyes rolled up into his head, and down he went.
Panting, I bent and put my hands on my knees, sucking in great gasps of air. If it lasted too much longer, I would have been done for, and Sarge would have finished me. Still, as I looked down at the unconscious face of my friend, I was sad that it came to this.
I needed to keep him down, and out of the keep. Now that he was out of there, there was no way I was letting him waltz back in to the Death Knight. Hopefully, when we killed him, Sarge and anyone else in his thrall would return to normal. If not, I was confident that Lilly would find a way to fix them.
Holding onto my back, which was now screaming at me, I limped over and picked up my gun. I closed my eyes and sighed, then tucked it back into my belt. While I did this, the gates to the keep closed of their own accord, but not before I was sure I could hear the Death Knight’s laughter from within.
I found some rope, which seems to be plentiful in Capital City, since the place is almost always under construction, and tied Sarge securely. The area was still deserted so I wasn’t too worried about some do-gooder coming along to free him. I rolled him to the side of the street, into the shade, and sank down, my back against the wall beside him.
I hoped Lilly would be back soon, all charged up and full of her awesome power.
By the time she did come back, Sarge was awake again and raving. He spouted nonsense words in a guttural voice, spitting and slathering the whole time. While I tried to remember that he was under a spell, it still got wearisome.
Lilly arrived in the company of Minerva and a couple of other witches that I didn’t know. She looked better, and happier, than I saw her since the Death Knight arrived at the gates of the city, and I was hopeful that the witches had done it.
“I’m back,” she said to me, and her voice was full of her normal confidence and surety. “And I’m ready to go kick that thing’s behind.”
“Well, good,” I said, climbing slowly to my feet. “And as you can see, I’ve had my hands full here.”
Her face softened as she looked down at the restrained figure.
“Oh, Sarge,” she said. “What did he do to you? Minerva, could you...?”
Minerva moved forward and studied Sarge. Then she did something weird with her hands, which I’ve learned means that some sort of magic is coming, and Sarge’s voice cut off. His mouth continued to move, but only silence came out of him. He continued ranting and raving for a minute, then looked confused, trying to shout, but having nothing emerge. Finally, he glared at Minerva with his red eyes, and settled down.
“That’s the best I can do for now, Lilly,” Minerva said. “But we can bring him back with us, and see what sort of spell is on him. Maybe we can break it. Maybe not. But we’ll try.”
“Thanks, Minerva,” Lilly said, and the two of them embraced. Then the witches moved off, Sarge floating along behind them, twisting and turning in the air as he went.
“Wait,” I said to Lilly. “They’re not coming with us? Why not? They obviously have some power over that thing.”
“No, not really. They’re all about healing, which is the opposite of what the Death Knight does. They were able to reconnect me to the magic, barely. If I wasn’t attuned to it, and could help myself as I got close, it probably wouldn’t have worked. But here, in his focus of power, they’d be no match for him.”
“But you are?” I said.
“Yes,” she said, looking at me with the light of battle in her eyes. “I am. I may not have thought so before, but oh yes, I am.”
I believed her. Lilly never gave me reason to doubt her, and I wasn’t about to start now. But still, when I looked past her, at that dark keep, it was hard to keep the feeling of hopelessness at bay.
“Let’s go,” she said, and marched resolutely to the gates of the keep.
She pounded on them, her fist making a hollow booming sound.
“Open up! I’m not asking three times!”
To my amazement, the doors opened, swinging outward slowly, causing us to step back. I readied myself, trying to ignore the pain in my back, waiting for whatever it was that would come out of there.
But nothing did. Instead, we got a clear view into that desolate courtyard that we saw before. Somewhere, a crow croaked once, and then there was nothing but silence.
We entered, looking around carefully, ready to be ambushed as we came through, but nothing moved other than the wisps of fog crawling along the ground.
“Don’t let it get to you,” Lilly said to me. “He’s trying to scare us.”
I swallowed hard before I replied. “And it’s not working, right?”
“No, it’s not.” Then she turned to me. “Listen, Duke. This is my area. I’m not going to ask you to stay out here, because I know you won’t. But short of killing innocent people, there probably isn’t much you can do. Let me handle it. You can watch my back, but if I need help, I’ll ask for it.”
“You sure about that?” I asked. “That thing seemed awfully powerful.”
“He is, and I’m not saying this is going to be easy. It’s just that…well, I’ll explain more later, but let’s say for now that I see things differently.”
“Lead on. I’ve got your back.”
She leaned in and kissed me, then smiled at me, and on we went.
Across the courtyard was the entrance to the keep itself. Also made of dark stone, it rose up into the sky, a high, square, ugly tower. At the top, a red light pulsed softly into the clouds.
“He’s up there,” Lilly said. “So that’s where we’re going.”
Of course, we were. How hard could it be?
The door to the keep opened without Lilly even having to knock, and we entered. The fog that clung to the ground outside was in here as well, flowing along the floor, and glowing softly in the light of the torches that were hung on the walls every few feet. The corridor led away in front of us, with arched doors leading off to the left and the right about halfway down. At the far end, another arch led to what looked like a staircase heading up.
We walked slowly along, waiting for someone, or something, to come out of those side passages and attack. Nothing did. When we reached them, I looked in, and
wished that I hadn’t.
The chambers within were worse than the nest of gargoyles that we discovered on the second floor of Magnus’ temple. That at least was the work of predators. Evil and vile, yes, but predators nonetheless. What was in these two rooms though, was the work of a sick and demented mind. Now we saw what became of some of the occupants of the buildings that disappeared when the citadel came into being.
Our tempers flared, and we went on, moving more quickly.
“Hold on,” Lilly said, after a moment. “This is what he wants. He put those rooms there on purpose. He wanted to make us mad, so that we’d be less cautious. We can’t play into his hands.”
I nodded, trying to slow my breathing and heartbeat. I agreed with what Lilly was saying, but still, it was hard to not run up the stairs, so we could kill the Death Knight and end this all the more quickly.
The stairs spiraled up, also lit by torches, and also with that strange fog coiling at floor level. We passed a second floor, then a third, and the stair ended at the fourth level. It was identical to the first, including the two arched doorways on each side.
We slowly moved along, looking into those rooms to the same type of scene that we saw downstairs. The damage that was done to those people turned my stomach, and I looked away.
At the end of this hallway, the stairs continued, spiraling up again. We passed another two levels, and then they ended once more. Again, the hallway that led away looked identical, and again, the two doorways opened onto scenes of unspeakable depravity. I wondered how many people the Death Knight tortured, and if he did it all himself, or forced others in his control to do the work.
After we walked by these two rooms, heading for the stairs again, Lilly stopped, a frown creasing her face.
“Wait a second,” she said, and turned back. She drew in a deep breath and looked more closely at one of the rooms. Her face trembled as she took in the details, but after a few seconds, she turned back to me.
“Come on,” and we climbed the next set of stairs, again, stopping three floors above. This time, Lilly stopped fully at the doorways on the sides of the hall, and studied the scenes within.
Duke Grandfather- The Whole Story Page 41