The plan, when me and Fael had first made the plan, had been to hightail it over here on our twosome, but it turned out our friends from the army were worth something after all. We ran into trouble twice. The first was with the Slave Corps, but Roven straightened that out. The second was with brigands, who had been having a field day since the Commonweal soldiers gave up these lands without a fight. About a dozen lean, ragged Grasshopper-kinden swept down on us from a tree-clogged ridge, with two Mantis warriors in the vanguard. Roven’s sting picked off one in a flash of golden fire, and Merric killed the other. He killed the Mantis sword to sword, too, with the Mantis blade near twice as long as his, and that gave me and Fael plenty to think about. The Grasshoppers had leapt and flown and run as soon as their leaders were down.
Still, the plan didn’t call to split the loot five ways, and on the journey me and Fael had been given plenty of chance to talk about just what to do about that. “High stakes, high risk,” Fael had said, but it turned out it was just one of our usual stock in trade scams after all, only played taut as a bowstring, and for real.
So that, and two tendays’ sullen travel through the cold crisp air and the occasional flurry of early snow, put us here, looking at the castle. This was an old one, and like a lot of them it had been left to rot a long time ago. No Wasp army had been forced to besiege this place. The walls were crumbling, their tops gappy and uneven like broken teeth. One face had come down entirely, leaving three tottering sides of uneven stones, internal architecture laid out in sheared floors, traceries of fallen walls, windows and doorways gaping like dead eyes.
“Don’t know why you people bothered with these things,” Roven spat, jabbing Fael. “Half-dozen trebuchet and a leadshotter, and they come down a treat.”
How strange a thought, I remember thinking, having one of my philosophical fits on me, that sufficient Wasp artillery can do the work of centuries. Is there a precise exchange rate, a year-value one can assign to a catapult? How many decades wear is a solid ball from a leadshotter worth?
“We didn’t build them,” Fael said, which prompted a reflective pause. It was news to me too. The Commonweal was dotted with these castles, tall stone keeps and towers, inward-leaning at the top to defend against aerial attackers. The Dragonflies had made much use of them as strong-points during the war, although Roven’s assessment of their longevity was a fair one. Everyone knew that the structures were very old, and these days the Dragonflies built flimsy stuff out of wood and screens that looked like a strong wind would blow it away. This was the first suggestion I’d heard that the castles were not originally theirs though.
“Grew like mushrooms, did they?” Skessi jeered, winging close for a moment. Fly-kinden flew, it was true, but Skessi seemed to have unlimited reserves of Art to call on. He was in the air almost every waking moment.
“We were not the first,” Fael said airily, “to call these places home. Especially here near the mountains. There were ancient powers who taught us our ways and blessed the first Monarch and bade us found the Commonweal, but they were not our kinden. They were great masters, whose magic could reshape the world, command the skies. They had the castles built, for while they lived amongst us, they loved to dwell in cold stone.” By now I’d figured what he was doing, and just nodded along.
“Right, whatever,” said Roven, but uneasily. The great broken edifice before us had a forlorn, tragic feel to it. Evening had fallen by that point, and Merric chose that moment to start setting up camp. Nobody suggested plumbing the place at night.
“Where’s this loot of yours?” Roven would ask, though, by moonlight. “Can’t see there’s much left of any treasury.”
“Crypts,” I explained blithely. “It’s the loot of the dead. The family that ruled here in yesteryear laid out its dead in state, and in gold and jewels.”
“And maybe those from before are laid out here as well,” Fael muttered in dark tones. “The ancient nameless ones. They can lie in the earth forever, they say, and yet wake again, if they must.”
“Enough of that talk. We’re not superstitious savages like your lot,” Roven growled. Merric’s fire shadowed his face, but the corner of Skessi’s mouth was twitching, and Merric himself had his sword held close, as if for comfort. The gutted castle loomed impartial over all, black against a darkening sky.
We went in next morning, once dawn and a bottle of war-loot wine had emboldened the Wasps. Fael would go first, with Skessi hovering at his shoulder, and then the Wasps with me in arm’s reach, in case of funny business. The Imperials had a couple of hissing gas lanterns, one of which was forced on me. If it had been just the two of them, matters would have been easier, but Skessi’s eyes were as good in the dark as mine.
Still, after some searching and shifting, the plan proved its worth by providing a passage into the earth that was only partially choked with fallen stones. It was a sheer drop, but Fael’s wings carried him down there easily enough. Skessi didn’t look keen to follow, but a dirty look from Roven convinced him, and he fluttered down after.
“Where’d you and he hear about this place?” Roven growled, one ear cocked for a report.
“We turned over a castle crypt where your lot had been. Good business: Empire doesn’t know that’s where the good stuff is, half the time. Only we found clues, there. The nobles had a branch lived over here, ‘til they died out. Rich as rich, Fael reckoned, and who’s been here to dig it up, but us?”
“Local boys didn’t seem so shy,” Roven pointed out. “How’d you know they’ve not had it all?”
“Oh, you won’t find any locals willing to go into a noble family’s crypts,” I told him lightly. “Not with the curses.”
“You don’t believe that,” nothing but a growl deep in Roven’s throat.
“Oh we’re all civilised sorts from the Spiderlands,” I said. “Still, makes you think, doesn’t it?”
“Come on down,” came Skessi’s distant call, and we did so, the Wasps lowered on spread wings, and me hand over hand down the wall. The gaslamps threw guttering shadows across walls made of irregular stones that still fit into each other so tight you’d not get a blade in.
“This is never just for the dead,” Roven spat. “Too much work. Burn ’em or bury ’em, but not all this digging and masonry.”
“Reckon they took their dead seriously, back then,” I put in. Fael and Skessi were already ahead, but it was so pitchy down there that even they had so stay in the edge of the lantern light. I wasn’t sure then that this wasn’t just some kind of grain store. Fael was leading strong, but it wouldn’t have done to show we weren’t sure. I was as much in the dark as Roven right then.
I’d have been able to pacify the Wasps, I think, had we turned up nothing but a few jars of rice that first day, but some kind of luck was with us - good or bad, your call - because Fael found some gold.
It was in some niches in the wall, and there wasn’t much, but it was enough to make us look good. No bodies, mind, just a little trinketry: broaches, rings. I caught Fael’s eye, because of the two plans we were running right then, the first one - the get rich one - had turned out sunny. That stuff we’d read in that other old castle looked to have been true after all, just like I told Roven. Of course, the second plan, the new one, would need a bit of work.
Roven and Merric confiscated all that glittered, although I’d bet Skessi pocketed a handful as well, and then there was nothing for it but for Fael to press on. Every so often there was a niche, and sometimes there was a piece of loot there, and sometimes there wasn’t. Then Fael had yelled out, his wings taking him up so fast he bounced off the ceiling and ended up scrabbling away on his backside as something reared up over him. The Wasps’ stings flashed, blinding bright down here, and then things went quiet. I helped Fael get to his feet, and he looked shaken. It had been a centipede, and living proof of how well you can live eating roaches and pillbugs and silverfish: ten feet long if it was an inch. Not a man-eater, but the poison in those fangs would have finished
Fael for sure, and, anyway, centipedes are bad luck in the Commonweal, because of old history.
We went on a bit slower after that. The roof was lower, for a start, and the walls had become oddly slick and nasty to touch. The floor was slippery, and sloping too, and the lanterns didn’t seem to be giving out enough light even for me. I could hear the two Wasps breathing harsh and hoarse in my ear, and a lot of other little scuttlings and scrabblings as well. Nobody was much looking forward to stepping on the next centipede, or whatever other venomous residents we might disturb. You didn’t get scorpions so much, not in the Commonweal, but my little spider brothers certainly put in an appearance and I didn’t have the Art to warn them off. Skessi was sticking close to the light, now. He might not have the fear of the dark that the Wasps had, but he was somewhere he couldn’t make much use of his wings. In the Lowlands the Fly-kinden love little tunnels. Their warrens are mazes of chambers and narrow vertical drops and the like that make it impossible for any bigger kinden to get around. I think Imperial Fly-kinden don’t like being enclosed so much. Certainly Skessi wasn’t at all fond of the experience.
Then came the bad news. The whole thing led to a wall: a dead end.
We argued then, or at least the Wasps threw accusations and we tried to defend ourselves. The loot we’d found already might as well not have been there. They wanted the big haul, worth absconding from the army for. Harsh words were spoken, a free and frank exchange of views, until Merric got free and frank enough to shoot at Fael. His sting went wide, from poor light and Fael throwing himself flat, but it knocked a chunk out of that wall, a chunk the size of your hand.
I won’t swear something moved, past that gap, but Skessi was shouting that it had, and then a great deal was moving all at once because the tunnel saw fit to collapse.
Not all of it, and not all at once, but Fael just pitched forwards into what was suddenly quite a big hole, too many stones and stuff in the air to use his wings. I felt the earth beneath me shift and I scrabbled back and back, Art-clinging from stone to stone and feeling each one move as I trusted it. One of the lanterns smashed and the other one went out, and it was all suddenly very black and everyone was shouting.
We got to a stage when the only noise was us, though, and all the stone that was going anywhere had gone. Roven had somehow shielded his dead lantern with his body to save the glass, and now he coaxed a little light from it. The place had undergone severe redecoration. We counted the two Wasps and me, and Skessi had got clear of course because his kind always do.
“Fael?” I called. I had no idea what shape the plan was in, just then. The plan needed Fael, for starters.
“Here,” came a weak voice, and then, “Down here, quick!” with extreme urgency.
I started forwards and Roven came with me, lantern out. The first thing we saw was that the place was crawling with critters. There were little centipedes, finger-length, and worms and slugs and some kind of palm-wide albino cricket that just looked bad to touch. The tunnel we were in had just gone, a few feet ahead, but it had gone into a lower level that none of us had guessed at. Roven tried to get some light down there, and the first thing we saw were the bodies.
I hadn’t thought Fael was telling the truth, perhaps he hadn’t either. There hadn’t been bodies in the other place, just a little loot and the writing that put us onto this one. There were bodies here though. Before the stones had fallen on them they had been standing up in armour, and one of them was still on its feet, propped up in an alcove with its bony hands about a sword-hilt. The rest were in pieces, and the dried skulls seemed to leer and scream out at us when the lantern-light hit them. There was plenty else to catch the light, though, and it was mostly gold. Fael was lying there surrounded by a Monarch’s ransom. The armour the corpses had been wearing was all precious metals and enamel and gems, and there were other pieces: jewellery, masks, inscribed tablets, and all of it enough for any two of us to live on till the end of our days. No coins, of course, because even these days the Commonweal runs off barter and goodwill, but there were lots of these little ingots of gold, all the same, that I’d never seen before. There were weapons, too, fine ones, and some pieces of gilded armour that were big enough for one of the giant Mole Cricket-kinden to wear, and were surely just for show. There were spread quivers of white-shafted arrows with elegant, pearl-hafted bows and dragon-swords with inscribed blades.
“Start passing it up,” Roven snapped, a barbarian at heart, and he signalled for Merric to go down to help. Merric was having none of it, though. He was staying well back from the edge. Something had spooked him. I thought it was just the danger of another collapse, at the time.
“I don’t think I can fly, not with any weight,” Fael said. He was sitting up, and I couldn’t see any obvious hurt. I got it: this was part of the plan.
“I’ll go down and help,” I said, but Roven pushed me back, grabbing Skessi by the collar before the fly could scoot away.
“Starting shifting it up here,” he said, virtually throwing the Fly down the pit. Fael was already kneeling by then, gathering stuff up into a sack. The Fly ended up hovering above the room’s centre, and in a rasping voice asking, “What’s through there?”
There was an archway, you see. The pit Fael had fallen into wasn’t just on its own. It must connect to some other set of tunnels. The archway was big, ten feet at the keystone. The whole chamber was big for that matter. It dwarfed the dead guardsmen someone had set down there.
“Forget through there,” Roven snapped. “Just bring up the treasure.”
Skessi grabbed the first sack, and very nearly couldn’t get it airborne. With a supreme flurry of wings he lifted it to where Roven could snag it, and then Roven would have tilted head-forwards into the pit if Merric hadn’t grabbed him. By that time Fael had a second sack of loot just about ready, but he was doing a lot of looking about and twitching, and I took that as plan two, part two.
“Did you hear that?” he called out abruptly. Skessi dropped the sack he’d just been passed and vaulted into the air again.
“There was nothing!” Roven bawled. “Bring the loot up you little pin-sucking bastard!”
“I heard it!” Skessi squeaked. “Something’s coming.” He was fumbling for the sack.
“Nothing’s coming!” Roven shouted back. I thought he was shouting so loud to block out anything that he might hear. Merric had retreated a good ten feet back down the tunnel, eyes wide. He’d have run, I think, if the lantern hadn’t still been by Roven’s feet.
Skessi got airborne again, straining furiously to lift the sack up to us. Behind him, Fael gave out a dreadful shriek.
“Avaris!” he cried. “Run! Just run! Leave the loot and run!”
That was my cue. I followed his exclamation with a blood-curdling wail and just bolted, and to my glee Merric was already outpacing me to the exit. It was pitch dark, but there was only one way to go, and we went. Skessi overtook me before I hit daylight, keening like a madman. I heard Roven behind, lumbering and cursing and bouncing off the walls. The last we heard from Fael was a high, rending scream, wordless and filled with horror. I could barely stop grinning.
It was still daylight outside, of course, and that put a little bravery back into them. We rendezvoused at the camp, where the hobbled horses were skittish and the beetle was practically dancing with anxiety, and I saw that the plan hadn’t quite worked.
I had to hand it to Roven for utter single-mindedness. He had fled just as we had fled, but he’d had both the self-possession and the sheer Art-fired strength to drag both sacks of treasure along with him. We were out and we were rich, which was all good for the Wasps, and not much fun for me. I had no illusions that they’d give me any kind of share.
We stayed and watched the opening for some time, but there was no sign of Fael of course. The other two looked to Roven for ideas, and they were relieved as anything when he said, “We move out. We’ve got what we came for.” Merric broke camp, and we loaded up the beetle. It was a plod
ding old thing, that beetle. It could keep up with the horses walking but not at a gallop. There was no chance of using it as a quick getaway, not laden like that.
However, Fael and I, we’d talked about this. The plan could survive a few knocks. It just meant it was going to be difficult, and we’d have to do some things we might regret, but I was ready for that. I’d regretted most of my life so far, save hitching up with Gatre Fael, so why should this caper be any different? Skessi was already doing my work for me, as though he was in on it. “I saw them,” he was insisting, mostly because it meant he was getting out of doing any work. “I saw them coming for us. The white shapes. White shapes with grey wings.”
“You saw nothing,” Roven told him disgustedly. When Skessi went to say more, Roven put an open palm his way, and the Fly shut up. The Wasp looked at me next. “You see anything, Spider-born?”
“I see the weather’s turned,” I told him mildly, and it had. The sky was scudding white clouds, not the white of light weather but heavy with snow. I thought of the path back to Roven’s army, twenty days of hills and forests and solitude. We might pull it off yet.
We mounted up. Skessi preferred to stay airborne, letting Fael’s horse trudge behind mine as mute testimony to our losses. We made poor time that day. The wind was against us, cutting coldly and keenly enough that the horses didn’t want to walk straight into it and would veer off every time they could. The snow came shortly after midday, first a light feathering of big, slow flakes, then flurrying and blowing into our faces until we could see nothing of the road, barely anything of our horses’ heads. The beetle was leashed to Roven’s horse, and a dozen times I thought of trying to cut the traces, to lead the thing off into the snow. It was going slower than ever in the colder weather, though, and I was too worried about getting lost myself. I could freeze to death as easily as the next man, and the Wasps were better equipped to get a fire going.
Spoils of War (Tales of the Apt Book 1) Page 14