The door to the cell was wrenched open and Cade came in. He came in backwards, fighting for balance. He was trying desperately to draw the sword he wore at his belt, but he wasn’t succeeding. He cannoned into Nathan and knocked him back against the wall, his left hand clutching for Nathan’s clothing as he tried to support himself.
I was frozen stiff with astonishment, but not so the man on the bunk. Pained with withdrawal symptoms or not he was up like a shot. He shoved me down on to the lower bunk of the pair and grabbed Cade with both hands, virtually plucking him from the floor as he spun him around. His fist sank into Cade’s gut, and I heard the air explode from Cade’s lungs in a strangled grunt.
Cade went down, and my erstwhile companion was out the door like a ferret down a rabbit hole. There were still sounds of commotion in the corridor and now there came the sound of a single gunshot.
My instinct should have been to drop down and play dead until it all went quiet, but I was betrayed by my own reflexes. It seemed that I had a wholly unnecessary interest in who might have been shot. I ran to the door. Nathan tried to restrain me, but he tripped over Cade’s prostrate form and fell, swearing loudly.
There were people all over the corridor, jostling furiously. One of the gendarmes was already down and either dead or unconscious. The other had managed to draw his gun, but his wrist was firmly in the grip of two other men, who had forced the pistol way up into the air. The bullet that he’d fired had hit the ceiling, but there was another man reeling from the fight with blood on his fingers as he clutched his left forearm, and I judged that he’d caught the ricochet. The man with the nose joined his friends hustling the gunman, and between the three of them they sent him crashing back against the stone wall with such force that all the wind was knocked out of him. One of the assailants grabbed the gun, the other clasped his hands together and brought them down hard to the side of the gendarme’s neck. He folded up instantly.
In the meantime, the big man turned round and jerked me from the doorway of the cell into the corridor. He kicked the door of the cell shut and shot one of the bolts home. Inside, someone began thumping on the door. It had to be Nathan, unless Cade was a man of supernal powers of recuperation.
“What the hell—?” I began.
“You’re coming,” said the big man. “We need you.” He began dragging me toward the door. Both of his companions were now armed, having dispossessed the officers of the law. Having seen what had happened, I didn’t think it politic to stand up for my rights. They were in a hurry and there seemed to be a strong possibility of provoking further violence. I let myself be dragged.
Outside, the daylight seemed uncommonly bright. I blinked, and tried to shield my eyes, but I was still being hustled along. A third gendarme was propped against the outer wall of the building. He’d been laid out neatly, having presumably been slugged while he wasn’t watching. There were several horses, milling around. They didn’t know or approve of what was going on either.
Apparently, they’d only brought one spare mount, because my ex-cellmate cursed as he tried to push me up into a saddle and them climb up behind me. It was a complex operation, made no easier by the fact that I wasn’t participating wholeheartedly. The others were on their horses and ready to go while he was still threatening me through gritted teeth. Somehow, I managed an appropriate amount of co-operation, and we both ended up on the animal’s back. It wasn’t comfortable for any of us, but I was probably suffering least, to judge by the horse’s protests and the sweat that was pouring off the man behind me. At this proximity I could feel tremors in his body, and as he reached round me to manipulate the reins I could see the unsteadiness and lack of real strength in his grip.
I knew he wasn’t going to make it.
So, perhaps, did he. But he was going to have a damned good try. He was a tough man.
All the horses clattered off down the road, heading inland. There was no immediate indication of pursuit, but I knew that if we didn’t get where we were going in one hell of a hurry there’d be an operation mounted that would make the hunting party of the previous night seem like a very small affair. I didn’t know where we were going—whether they had a hiding place lined up or whether we were going to try and reach a boat waiting at some convenient spot—but there wasn’t a second to be wasted in getting there.
Our horse, being by far the most inconvenienced in terms of load, and by no means the most strongly handled in that the man behind me was getting sicker by the minute, was soon last in the race and falling further behind with every stride. By the time we hit the woods on the east side of the township the others were forty or fifty yards ahead.
I’d had enough of being hustled. I didn’t like it. And in view of the circumstances I didn’t feel much compunction about hitting a sick man. I twisted sideways slightly to make room, and then with all the force I could muster I drove my right elbow backwards into his midriff. Then I knocked away one of his prisoning arms and jumped.
The horse had had enough of the terrible things that were being done to it. It shied, letting out a whinny that was almost a scream.
It spilled us both from its back, but the big man went down like a sack of potatoes, and when he hit the ground flat on his back I could see that I didn’t have to worry about his getting angry with me. I rolled as I hit the ground, having expected to take a tumble anyhow, and came out of it quite well. I was jarred, but I came quickly enough to my feet. Then I had to dive away again as the horse wheeled. There seemed to be flying hooves all over the place, mostly aimed at me. I sprawled in a bush.
Up ahead, they’d heard the horse’s scream and looked back. They were reining in, and I knew I hadn’t got much time. I made an inglorious exit from the far side of the bush and put the finishing touches to my resignation from the revolutionary cause by sprinting like hell for the cover of the trees.
If they’d been in the mood they could have ridden me down, but they had other things on their minds—their leader was stricken and his mount was in a state of high panic. Those were the problems which took priority. They didn’t try to come after me. I zigzagged through the woods for a half mile or so, until I was virtually certain that I couldn’t be found even if they belatedly changed their minds. Then, feeling in desperate need of somewhere to hide out for a while and think things out, I climbed a tree whose branches sprawled close to the ground, and ensconced myself in its crown, out of sight and perfectly safe.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
For the first few minutes I didn’t do anything except sag. My heart seemed to be going so fast that it was ringing rather than beating, like a demented alarm clock. My legs ached and I kept discovering bruises. My right arm, never fully recovered from the injuries sustained on Dendra, was reminding me that it shouldn’t be asked to do too much. But I was still in good working order, and in time I felt a great deal better.
I tried to weigh up the new situation.
Poseidon’s answer to Robin Hood had tried to snatch me so that I could decode his thrice-bedamned secret message for him. Unfortunately, the only one of the witnesses who could actually testify that I’d been taken along against my will was Nathan, and I didn’t really give a lot for his chances of being believed. Which meant that if I’d been classed as an undesirable before I could well be public enemy number one by now. The big search operation wouldn’t just be for the outlaws. They’d be after me, too.
The obvious course of action was to turn myself in. The revolution wasn’t my problem...they could fight it without me. The sensible thing to do was probably to take the obvious course of action. We’d run our course on this world now, and it seemed wisest to accept the decisions of fate.
But there were two reasons why I didn’t altogether fancy being sensible. Firstly, I didn’t want to end up back in a cell waiting for everything to be tidied up. And secondly, I now had more than a hint about where whatever went on here that we weren’t supposed to know about was to be found. I had developed a truly insatiable curiosity about
whatever was lurking in the cellars of James Wildeblood’s mansion. I was damned if I was going to let things take their course in a meek and mild fashion while I had any chance of getting to the bottom of things.
And so I tried to weigh up my chances.
They didn’t look bad. Getting to the house would be risky, but maybe it would be the last place they’d expect me to go. In all likelihood the dogs would be out working instead of patrolling the grounds. The window in the west wing was almost certainly still open—discreetly wedged by the pebble I’d put in to secure my means of re-entry the previous night. And once in the deserted west wing I shouldn’t meet any interference in locating a cellar in the northwest corner.
Once there, the next step might be obvious or undiscoverable. But the way to find out was to go.
By night, naturally.
The hours to nightfall didn’t seem such a bad prospect. Stuck up a tree seemed to be no less attractive than being stuck in a stone cage. The trouble was, however, that there were still a great many hours to go until darkness came again, and the branches of the tree were even less comfortable than the hard straw mattress on the bunk. What was more, if I’d been in the cell I would probably have been fed. There didn’t seem to be any prospect of finding a square meal anywhere in the woods.
After an hour or so, I began to doubt the wisdom of my decision in no uncertain terms. But I knew that I’d never make it back to the ship, which was one place they would be expecting me to go, and my pride kept getting in the way of serious contemplation of the other credible alternative—surrender.
So I stayed put. Now and again, I got down to stretch my legs and look around. I changed trees twice for a bit of variety. I contemplated the local wonders of nature, watching the insects and the worms.
I kept my ears constantly at work listening for the sound of anyone else in the wood. I was afraid that I might have to hide from a dragnet, and I was even more afraid that if they had the dogs out I might not manage it. To be caught up a tree would undoubtedly be even more ignominious than being forced to give myself up.
But this particular fear proved to be unfounded. I could only conjecture that the search was being concentrated in another area. Probably, the fleeing riders had been sighted some way from here and had drawn the search after them. It was, after all, a big island, and last night’s operation had only covered the ground in the locale of the house. Given enough time and horses with enough strength, the rebels could have been thirty miles or more away by noon.
It was a long and tedious day, but it passed at last, and as soon as the twilight grew gray I began making my way toward the great house. I went with all due care and in no particular hurry, glad at last to be doing something positive. It got too dark a little too quickly for my liking, but it was another clear night, and I found myself a solid staff of wood about as long as I was tall, and used that to help me pick my way through the tangles of vegetation. I seemed to make a terrible amount of noise, rustling and rattling my way through thickets and patches of fern—Poseidon’s woods were preternaturally quiet places, without the whistles and croaks and multitudinous whispers that characterize most woodlands—but nobody was there to hear me.
I found the road, eventually, and moved like a shadow along it, until I came to the iron rail that bounded the Wildeblood private estate. It took only a couple of minutes to scale the barrier, and then I ran quickly for the shelter of the coppices of trees that bounded the lawns. After my experience of the night before I decided to risk the open lawns rather than the more inviting but treacherous cover of the rear of the house. I crouched as low as I could while I moved smoothly and quickly across the vast open space to the shadowy walls, and made it unchallenged and unobserved.
I made my way slowly round the inner quadrangle of the house, treading very carefully indeed as I passed by the great doors, and ultimately found the west wing and the window I had conveniently secured as a means of access.
Hastily, I clambered in, and eased the window shut behind me, slipping the pebble into my pocket. I fumbled along the wall for a candle-bracket, and found one. I took out the candles, and then repeated the procedure, until I had a collection of eight. What I didn’t have was a match, but I kept on checking the brackets, sure that there would be a light somewhere. On a small shelf beneath the candleholder nearest to the door I found half a dozen, together with sanded paper on which they could be struck and some tapers. I took the matches and the paper, and didn’t bother with the tapers.
I had to take the risk of lighting a candle and carrying it with me. I couldn’t fumble my way through the corridors as I had the previous night. Then, I had known where I was going. This time, I didn’t. I couldn’t find my way through the maze by touch. If the light were seen as I passed a window, and the person who saw it thought anything of it, that would be too bad.
But, with the candle lighted, it didn’t take me long to find a set of stone steps leading down from the ground floor to the subterranean part of the house. I went swiftly down, away from windows and the danger of curious eyes, feeling a little more confident.
I hadn’t seen a great deal of the house above ground. We had always been discouraged from exploratory wandering. Of its layout below ground I knew nothing at all. I had no way of guessing how extensive the network of cellars and passages might be. The discovery of the word “celare” in the message had not surprised me, and had, in fact, seemed possessed of a certain propriety. It is the sort of thing one expects to find in a cryptogram, once decoded.
But when I reached the bottom of the flight of steps I realized that the cellars of Wildeblood’s mansion were not to be taken for granted.
I found myself in a corridor which extended in two directions, but ran only twelve or fifteen feet either way before bending away at right-angles. There were no doors in the corridor. I took the direction which most closely approximated to northwest. But no sooner had I taken the bend (which pointed me towards the southwest) than I found a junction. I took the arm which headed west. Ten feet further on there was another junction, this time presenting three alternatives. I had still not found a door set in the corridor wall.
There was only one possible conclusion. Underneath his house—this part of it, at least—James Wildeblood had constructed a labyrinth. It was just too much. In one sense, it was worrying...but in another, it was bordering on the comical. I took one of the corridors at random, and moved along it, barely suppressing an urge to laugh out loud.
But then I discovered that it wasn’t funny.
I still had the long stick I’d picked up to assist me in the wood. I’d been carrying it ever since simply because I hadn’t found much of a reason to relinquish it. I’d mounted the candle in a tray that I could carry in my left hand, and had put the rest of the paraphernalia in my pocket. The stick I was carrying in my right hand, slanted from the horizontal so that its front end scraped along the floor. I was doing this almost automatically, with no particular purpose in mind.
And then suddenly, the end was no longer supported and the stick twisted in my hand. Had I let go, it would have slid away over the edge of a hole to whose very edge my feet had brought me.
I stopped dead, and slowly crouched, bringing the candle down. The gaping hole extended all the way across the corridor—and, in fact, it seemed that the passage had been made narrower here so as to accommodate exactly the proportions of the trap.
I fumbled in my pocket, and found the pebble I’d used to jam the window. I dropped it into the hole.
And waited out a long, long silence that ended with a tiny, very distant splash.
If I’d counted the seconds I could have worked a quick equation to find out how far down it was. But I hadn’t, and it didn’t really matter. It was far enough. One more step would have been the fatal one.
“You bastard,” I muttered, addressing the ghost of James Wildeblood. “You could have mentioned it.”
Perhaps he had, of course. I only had the first few words of the mes
sage.
I worked my way back to the junction, and took the next best alternative. This time I went very carefully indeed, using the stick to probe the floor before me.
But the next thing that disappeared wasn’t the floor—it was one of the walls. Suddenly, I was no longer in a tunnel of brick and mortar but one of natural rock, whose walls opened rapidly into an uneven chamber. The floor of the chamber had been worked with tools—as it was gathered up into a blind alley a narrow cranny in the floor had been widened, and steps were cut into its slanting side. This semi-natural staircase looked both narrow and steep. It was about ten inches across—enough to take me if I stood sideways, but not enough to allow me to turn. I’d have to go down like a crab, trying to look over my shoulder all the while to check the depth of the next step. A fat man would not have been able to get down it at all, and I wasn’t sure that it was a particularly inviting prospect so far as I was concerned.
But something told me that this was it. You don’t cut steps in a narrow slit through faces of cold rock unless you have a very good reason for doing so. Building a corridor to lead to a pitfall was relatively easy, if you had the nasty mind to want it done. But this wasn’t just an invitation to disaster. Much pain and effort had gone into preparing this way.
Carefully, left arm and candle leading, I eased myself into the crack. I couldn’t get the end of the staff past me to test the steps, so I held the candle as low as was practicable and did a balancing act on each ledge while I sought the next with the toe of my boot. It wasn’t a nice way to travel, but it got me down...and down....
It was obvious now that Wildeblood had built his house over the entrance to a natural system of caves. Such systems were common enough on Wildeblood, thanks to the geological peculiarities of the upper rock-strata. This one, to judge by the splash at the bottom of the sucker-drop, extended all the way down to sea level and was connected by deep passages to the ocean.
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