In a panic, Megan looked for a place to hide. There were none. Instinctively she flattened herself against the wall and drew her short sword. As she prepared for an inevitable skirmish, she saw who her opponent would be.
Is that a chef?
An orc—very, very fat orc—was lugging a large cast iron pot full of bubbling something out from the kitchen. He was ugly, green, had one eye, and was intently using it to watch the top of his cauldron and make sure nothing spilled out. Megan imagined that it must smell horrible. Thank goodness she was not a dinner guest.
The orc seemed oblivious to pretty much anything, and Megan remained as still as she could. The chef slowly passed right by her and kept on going. Megan couldn’t believe her luck.
Then the chef stopped cold. In what could best be described as a monstrous version of the jitterbug, the orc shuffled his bulk around to face the odd shape on the wall that was holding a sword and seemed so out of place.
Megan sprang into action immediately. With one smooth motion, she dashed towards the chef and jammed her sword as hard as she could between his shoulder blades. The blow instantly severed any cry of alarm that might have been brewing. The boiling cauldron fell with a clang, but amazingly it was muffled immediately by the orc's body as he fell on top of it. Megan scowled as she stepped around the corpse. Darn her luck. Two fights already. She hoped she wasn’t leaving too many signs of her presence.
The passage continued straight until it finally emptied into what must have been the Great Hall. Megan gingerly crept into the larger room with her body pressed as tightly into the shadows as she could manage.
The Great Hall of Lord Hutto’s inner keep was extremely wide and was ribbed with massive buttresses that extended high up into the darkness. Great marble flagstones lined the floor, and tall war banners of red, blue, and gold draped the walls in a display of prestige and pageantry. Megan could see the inside of the gatehouse at the far end, the heavy doors and closed portcullis unmistakable in the finality of the security they provided the main entrance.
At the near end was another set of double doors, just as large, also closed, but not nearly so defensive. The sounds of shouting and laughter wafted through the heavy oak timbers that otherwise allowed only a slim line of light to exit from between where the two edges met one another. It sounded like someone was having a party.
Megan slinked through the shadows past the doors and searched a number of adjacent corridors until she found what she was looking for: a large iron door embedded in the granite wall that was markedly different from the common wooden portals everywhere else. At over eight feet tall, it had an ornate locking mechanism in the shape of a dragon’s head that kept it shut securely against the stone frame. Great bands of black metal wrapped horizontally around it to provide an additional level of stoutness.
This was not a just door. This was a barrier meant to keep anyone and everyone from passing beyond it. It might as well have been a solid stone wall.
It took under twenty seconds for Megan to pick the lock and spring the dragon head open.
But instead of seeing a treasure vault filled with the piles of coin and jewels befitting someone of Lord Hutto’s reputation, all Megan saw was a damp and dusty staircase descending down into the earth.
Oh, great, she thought. One of these.
Megan drew her lips tight. The workmanship of the narrow steps and the lack of hand railing were telltale signs that she knew all too well. The stairs were trapped.
The giveaway was how wide the walls of the passage were. Megan had come across staircases like this before, and each time things would have ended very badly if she had not had the foresight to tie a safety line to her waist.
It was too bad she had left her burglar’s rope tied to the wall outside. She’d have to do this one the hard way.
Tightening her gloves with the climbing claws, Megan grabbed a torch from a nearby wall bracket and gingerly took her first step down the staircase. She proceeded carefully. It took about a minute before she heard the barely audible snap as her only warning. Megan dropped the torch and quickly dug both of her clawed hands into the mortar in the wall. Before she knew it, the stairs flattened into a smooth ramp and the torch shot down like a missile into the depths. Megan watched as the flame got smaller and smaller until it suddenly danced up into the air, then fell back down and disappeared altogether. She knew from past experience that that was now one dead torch.
The stairs remained locked into a great slide and were now otherwise unusable. Gritting her teeth, Megan painstakingly climbed sideways down along the wall, hand over hand, foot over slipping foot. Gradually a distant rumbling became louder as she neared the crushing mechanism at the base of the slide. It was only a few more minutes of climbing before Megan could actually see the mechanism itself in the dim light. Two parallel horizontal drums spun briskly in opposite directions, with only a small gap between the razor-sharp teeth lining their circumferences. The intent was simple: flatten the staircase, let whoever was on it slide to the bottom, then pulverize them into ground beef. Such Grinding Staircase Traps were quite effective, if rather expensive. Hutto had invested heavily in his security systems.
Megan jumped over the drums and found the deactivation lever that popped the steps back into position. After all, if she did indeed partake of Hutto’s vault, Megan would be quite heavier with the treasure in tow. A crazy death slide of a staircase simply wouldn’t do.
Megan proceeded cautiously around various twists and turns until she heard voices further up the corridor. They weren’t human voices. Guttural growls and smacks punctuated the foreign tongue in which the conversation was taking place. She stopped and listened. A guard post?
She peeked around the corner and saw an open door on the right. That was definitely from where the voices were coming. About thirty feet beyond the door was an iron portcullis sealing the corridor, and then a set of giant closed double doors banded in iron beyond that. Something told Megan that those doors were the ones for which she was searching.
But first, the guards.
Megan slinked up to the door and reached into the small sack of thieving tools she kept on her belt. From there she produced a glass vial that had been packed carefully in a wad of paper. As she removed the padding, she studied the fist-sized bottle with no small amount of reluctance. She had paid handsomely for this potion and hated to have to use it. But Megan also knew she was no match for so multiple adversaries in a straight-up fight.
She stepped into the doorway. “Hi there, boys.”
Five orc warriors looked up from their card game. “Oook! An introoo-der!” one of them cried. They stood up menacingly.
“Who, me?” Megan said. She forcefully shattered the glass vial at their feet. The smallish chamber instantly filled up with purple smoke as Megan stepped back and closed the door. There were only a couple scrapes and bangs from the inside before all was quiet.
Megan waited a few moments longer to make sure the Billowing Poison Gas had done all that it was going to do. When she did open the door again, all of the guards lay sprawled out on the floor in varying poses of disarray. A talk-tube hung from the ceiling to alert other guard units of an intruder. Megan stroked her lip in appreciation. Many strongholds just used lots of traps to keep people out. Here, the security was designed around alert and response: one screw-up down here and the entire fortress would be mobilized. She might have to steal that little trick for her own home.
The only remaining conspicuous item was a three-foot-tall lever that extended from the floor near one of the walls.
A guard room, a portcullis, and a lever. Gee, I wonder how those three things could be related? With a heave, Megan pushed the lever over to the other side of its arc and listened as the portcullis rattled open back out in the passageway.
The treasure vault doors were tough to open. Megan had to study them for a good five minutes before she was able to understand how the locking mechanism worked. There were numerous tumblers in an unusua
l sequence that took some trial and error to get in just the right order, and the lock was even trapped with a poison needle that would have popped into her hand if she had not already disarmed it. It took another ten minutes before she finally defeated all of the deterrents and could push the double doors open.
But the actual sight of the treasure vault made Megan gasp in spite of herself.
It was a large, square room, with intricate marble tiles covering the floor and a large mosaic of the Great Seal of Hutto inlaid about five feet in from the door. In each corner was a large statue of some nasty warrior-beast , possibly the ugliest carvings that Megan had ever laid eyes on. But they were inconsequential next to the mounds of gold coins dumped throughout the vault, interspersed with gem-filled chests, silver goblets, fine paintings and tapestries, and boxes of jewelry placed on foot-high pedestals. These were the spoils of war that had made Hutto a powerful and feared lord in these northern lands.
Too bad for him that the spoils weren’t better protected.
Megan snapped out of her gawking and realized that she needed to get to work. The clock was ticking. Pushing her fingertips into the tight folds of her leather vest, Megan drew out a square of shimmering fabric about six inches on a side. With a snap of her wrist she unfurled the fabric into a three foot diameter circle that was jet black in color and packed with magic. A Portable Hole.
A Portable Hole was exceedingly rare and immeasurably valuable in and of itself. It was Megan’s secret, and the reason for much of her success as a thief. The magic cloth could be laid against anything and create a temporary interdimensional hole about ten feet deep, which was very useful for tunneling through impassable walls or hiding from pursuers. In this case, if it was just held in the air rather than being placed against a surface, the interdimensional space remained tied to the Hole itself and could be filled with an incredible amount of loot. Many adventurers had donkey caravans, Bags of Holding, or other containers to transport coins and jewels after raiding a stronghold, but Megan’s Portable Hole could hold a magnitude more of treasure. And it weighed practically nothing, regardless of whether it was full or empty.
Megan worked methodically to sweep armfuls of treasure into the Hole. Fifteen minutes passed before she started to get nervous that she was overstaying her welcome. She had enough. This was going to be a good payday. Megan smiled with satisfaction and began folding up the Portable Hole as she walked back toward the door.
As she stepped across the Great Seal, there was a sharp crack behind her that made her freeze in her tracks.
With the reluctance of denial, Megan turned her head to look over her shoulder. What she saw made her turn white.
The nearest warrior-beast statue, twenty-five feet tall with a hawk’s head, stone armor and spiked hooves... moved. Impossibly, it turned its beak and pupil-free eyes toward the Great Seal and looked at Megan with a stare born of abomination and magic. Megan stood rooted to the floor tile as if her shoes were filled with lead. Then, with a deep groan that made Megan’s stomach climb up into her chest, the beast-statue pulled one of its hands free from the ceiling. It was shaking its head as if it had just awoken from a long slumber. The piercing stone eyes now shone with an unnatural blue light and fixed onto Megan, and the beast let out a low, guttural growl that was full of recognition that an intruder had violated the sanctity of Lord Hutto’s treasure vault.
A golem, very tough and nasty. Of course it made sense that there would be a guardian inside the treasure chamber. Hutto had already proven that he liked to invest money in defenses. And there were four of them here.
Bad, bad, bad.
Megan turned to flee but abruptly skid to a halt. To her horror, the doors had already swung shut and looked to be sealed tight. Her hesitation in gawking at the golem may very well have cost her life.
The stone warrior-beast broke loose, let out an ear-piercing howl, and began walking towards her with long, thundering strides.
6
Megan was frantic. There was no way she could fight this sort of monster, it would tear her apart. She cursed herself for being so foolish in thinking she was through the worst of it. Death had found her and it was smiling.
The golem’s glowing hawk-eyes seemed to bore into Megan as stalked toward her. Megan remained rooted to the spot, waiting for some daring escape plan to hatch, but nothing came. The knot in her stomach had grown much bigger. What a shame! It wasn’t fair for it to end like this. Darn than Hutto. Hadn’t she gotten in here further than anyone else ever had? That should be worth some sort of payout, not a miserable death at the hand of some animated statue. There were enough coins and gemstones in that Portable Hole to fund her next tuition payment plus have some left over to raise her stats and abilities....
The Portable Hole.
Megan felt the slippery cloth of the Portable Hole still folded in her hand. It was her only chance.
The golem had almost reached her.
With a motion borne of instinctual survival, she unfurled the Hole back into a shimmering circle and dashed madly to the sealed double doors. She flung the cloth against the leftmost door. Upon contact with the hard surface the Portable Hole lived up to its namesake and created... a hole, a three-foot diameter opening instantly brought into being that bore through to the other side.
Without breaking stride, Megan dove through the hole and did a forward roll to redirect her momentum back into a standing position.
She was back out in the corridor.
A large stone hawk-head lowered into view and peered at her through the hole in the door. Having seen its prey evade it, the golem let out an ear-piercing shriek that made Megan’s skin crawl. She was sure the golem had just woken up every living being in the entire keep. Megan was vaguely conscious of her lip twisting into a snarl. She might still be dead yet.
The warrior-beast pulled its head back and shoved a giant stone fist through the hole. The claws extended out and the golem started swishing around in an attempt to tear anything within reach.
Megan deftly ran up to the side of the door—closer to the golem’s claw—and slid across the surface until she was near the Portable Hole. Then she grabbed the edge and yanked it off the door.
“I’ll be taking that, thank you,” she said.
All that was visible of the golem was its claws and wrist, now immobilized in the iron door like a giant handcuff. A few individual talons twitched as they blindly tried to grope for their prey. Another roar sounded, this one much more muffled than before, as the warrior-beast tried to free itself from its binding.
Megan did not wait to see who would be investigating the golem’s alarm. She jogged quickly down the corridor. Another muffled golem shriek thundered from behind her, followed by a sound like a battering ram. Megan quickened her pace.
As she approached the guard room again, she saw an orc coughing violently as it stumbled down the hall. So much for all the money spent on her Billowing Poison Gas potion. One of them had survived, and he was going for help.
"Hey!" she cried.
The orc guard turned around. He clearly wasn’t happy. His eyes narrowed as if to growl, you. But he also kept coughing, which explained why he had not used the talk tube.
Then he turned and ran.
Oh, crap.
She sprinted after him as fast as she could, praying that she didn’t stumble into another trap or trip over her own feet. Up ahead, the orc reached the staircase and disappeared. Megan got there a good ten seconds later. The flip-flap of the orc’s bare feet were audible from somewhere up the staircase. Megan was gasping for air and had to rest, even if just for a second.
It was terribly frustrating that the orc was getting away. Once the alarm was sounded, hordes of guards would be descending on her to tear her apart. Megan felt terribly pissed yet again that with all of her skills to overcome things like even this Grinding Staircase Trap here, it still wasn’t going to be enough.
Megan blinked.
The Grinding Staircase Trap.
No... WAY. How lucky can you get?
Frantically, Megan quickly found the deactivation lever and pulled it back into the on position. In an instant, all the steps clacked down into the frictionless slide that had almost gotten her earlier. The base of the stairs disappeared to reveal the savage, twirling grinder drums that chewed against each other like the plaque-filled teeth of a hill troll.
The scream was distant at first. It was perversely satisfying. Louder and louder, the orc guard came flying down the slide yelling his lungs out until he fell into the grinding mechanism. Orc bones, gizzards, and flesh were atomized into a repulsive spray that instantly filled the entire corridor. Megan stepped to the side but still didn’t quite avoid being hit.
No alarm today, pal.
Megan deactivated the trap. Then, wiping the orc aerosol off of her forehead, she began the long climb up to the main level of the stronghold.
She reached the top without further incident. The knowledge that she was so close to escaping with a huge hoard of treasure was all the motivation she needed, and she continued backtracking down the same stone corridor along which she had made her way before. There was still no sign on this floor that she had been discovered. Life was amazing with all its little twists of luck.
The Great Hall was still deserted. For the sake of speed, Megan left the shadows and dashed to the other side. As long as she wasn’t caught in the open, her dark clothing and cat-like stealth ought to be enough to get her through.
On cue, the double doors through which there had been so much laughter and noise flung open with an angry groan.
Behind them was a large banquet hall full of loud, celebrating guests. Tankards of ale were noisily being clanked together, jugglers and fools were doing wild somersaults in the middle of the room, and—of most interest to Megan—a senior servant of the household was trying to get away from some hill giant lord that was pummeling the crap out of him. The servant had just picked himself up off the floor in an effort to get out the door. That’s when he and the abusive lord both saw Megan.
Armchair Safari (A Cybercrime Technothriller) Page 6