by Kirk Dougal
The sun was diving back toward the other side of the city when we entered the keep walls through a small gate.
“Let's cut through here,” Saleene said. “It will save us covering ground we've already been over.”
“I think we should search the lower levels of the keep,” I said, remembering Spoon's advice from earlier in the day. “You never know what we might find down there.”
For the first time all day, Saleene smiled. “Finally getting into the spirit of the gold? I don't know how DeBrest will feel about us looting his family castle.” She headed toward an entrance, most of a door still standing in its frame. “Not that I really care.”
We all took turns pushing at the door, but it would not budge. I was ready to give up and find another way inside when Bree leaned over and peeked through a split in the wood.
“I think there's a bar in place,” she said. “If we can widen this crack enough to get a knife through, we might be able to lift it out of the way.” She pulled her short sword and began chipping at the wood.
“You'll ruin your sword. Wait a minute,” I said. I trotted to where a section of the wall had fallen. Mixed in with the stone were slats of iron that had once been part of a weapons stand. I grabbed one that was about three feet long with a jagged end. I carried it back to the other two. “Try this.”
Bree stabbed at the door and a large splinter pulled away from the crack. “This'll work,” she said.
The three of us took turns attacking the door. We were lucky. It had taken quite a bit of damage from fire during the fighting and there were more than a few heavy blade marks marring the surface. Although it had held back the Farwolaethans, the decades since the Long Night had continued the assault. The sun had dried the wood out, and the rain and freezing winters had worked on the grains from the inside. Only the last inch or so of the door was still solid, with the surface having degraded into a pock-scarred covering of punk wood. Within a few minutes, we had enough removed to jam the rod inside and with Saleene and I working together, we pried loose the bar and heard it clamor on the floor inside.
The door swung free, and we stepped inside.
“They never made it in here,” Saleene said. “At least not from this way.”
She was right. Everywhere we had been in Breton, scenes of destruction still remained. But not here. If a servant walked into this room and offered us something to drink, I would not have been surprised. Except for a thick layer of dust and the lingering taste of ash in the air, this area could still have been in use.
“I wonder if anybody made it here to safety,” I said.
“Somebody had to be alive to bar the door.” Saleene shrugged as she spoke.
“Maybe, but it could have been shut early in the battle.”
“There's an opening.” Bree gestured at the shadows along the far wall.
We started toward the doorway before Saleene stopped. “We won't be able to see. There aren't any windows like in the great hall.”
Bree walked to a desk and cupboard along one wall and reached inside. She turned with a handful of candles. “Can we get them lit?”
Saleene dug through the rest of the room while I pulled out my flint and went to work. Within a few minutes, I had the candles lit, and she found several holders with windscreens. With the lighting problem solved, we moved back to the inner doorway. Before she went through, I noticed Saleene pull the dagger from her belt and let the blade lead her into the dark beyond.
Our breathing and our footsteps were the only sounds we heard. The next room was larger than the first, widening into an area that held a couple dozen beds. On one of them lie the remains of a skeleton, face down and still partially clad in armor. Cloth clung to some of the bones but it was ragged and scorched as if most of it had burned away.
“I think this was a barracks for the duke's guards.” I said. I pointed to where a buckler had fallen to the floor. The paint on the outer face was faded and covered in dried blood, but I could still make out the snout and some of the face of a snarling bear. “I don't think that would have come from a Farwolaethan soldier.”
“I don't know if we should go any farther,” Saleene said. She glanced from side to side as she spoke. I listened for a few seconds, wondering if she heard something I had not noticed.
“We have to go on,” I said. “We might find something important to DeBrest in here.”
Bree walked to her friend and placed a hand on her arm. For the first time, I noticed she was wearing the flat-sided ring she had found in the healer's house a few days earlier. She nodded, and Saleene sighed in response before leading the way through the next doorway.
Stairs traveled down into darkness, and we followed them. The walls narrowed as we went until they almost touched both my shoulders.
“Shhh! What is that?” I cocked my head to the side, trying to figure out what was coming from below me.
It took only a few seconds for me to realize it was Saleene. She was breathing so hard she gulped at the air, blowing out hard before sucking in another breath.
The half-heard conversation when I woke up made sense now. Saleene was claustrophobic. Game or no game, her ingrained fear from the real world had followed her inside and was just as crippling.
“It's only a choke point,” I said. “If enemy troops made it inside the side door, this would be easier to defend with only a few guardsmen. I'm sure it will open up as soon as we reach the bottom of the stairs.”
“He's right, Saleene,” Bree said. “You can do this.”
I saw her silver hair bob up and down, the candlelight reflecting pale yellow in its fall. Saleene stepped down again, her hand trailing over the wall for support. After a few more strides, she pulled her hand back, rubbing her fingertips together and moving the candle closer.
“I think this is dried blood on the wall,” she said. “Whoever barred the door made it at least this far.”
A few steps later and the floor leveled out on a landing. Another doorway crept out of the darkness, lightening with each step. The hand thick oak would have caused us more problems than the one at the side of the keep, but this one was only half-closed and swung free to Saleene's touch.
Bree's gasp was the first thing to warn me about what I might find.
I followed the two women into a large room, big enough that the candlelight did not reach the wall to my left. Along the right wall, and on rows of racks in the center, however, I saw various weapons and armor, all painted with the bear's head we had seen earlier.
“DeBrest will want to know about this,” Saleene said. “He has enough weapons to outfit an army.” She glanced back at me. “If you want to upgrade that scale shirt, now would be the time to do it.”
I moved down one of the rows full of swords and shields. My sword was still in good shape, and I liked my scale shirt despite its weight, but a shield or large buckler would be helpful. I was almost to the end of the row when my candle reflected off a shield lying on the floor. Beside it was the remains of a boot, burned down to only a few fingers above the ankle.
An ankle that was still inside.
Bone was visible through holes in a pair of pants as I moved forward, and then the rest of the body loomed into view. This man had definitely been one of the duke's guards, but if his clothing was any indication, he had suffered horribly before he died. Most of his breastplate was covered with soot, and every bit of cloth on his body showed some fire damage. I shuddered when I thought about the amount of pain a player would have endured under those circumstances.
“Saleene, you need to see this,” I said. “I found who barred the door.”
I continued forward even as I listened to Saleene and Bree trot down the row behind me. Another guardsman’s body came into view, and then a third and fourth. They looked much like the first man, except for one who appeared to have the lower couple of feet of a spear still in what was left of his body, piercing in between two ribs and scraping the floor beneath him.
By then, I had alr
eady lost interest in the dead guardsmen. Light was glittering from an object near the base of the wall that had just come into view.
A woman's body was stretched out, face down on the stone floor. Long hair covered most of the skull beneath but one jaw was visible and told me she had been dead since the Long Night. Her dark blue dress had not been touched by flames, but two arrows were still sitting through the back, fallen down after the flesh underneath had given up. One hand stretched forward and rested on the leg of a fully armored man who sat against the wall. I was struck by how much the gesture reminded me of Bree reaching out to Saleene when they left the game the night before.
Just as I was certain the other men were all part of old Duke DeBrest's guard, I was just as sure this dead warrior was the duke, the Bear Killer himself. Intricate scrolling covered every piece of armor, and although the bear's head on his breastplate was also painted, the paint filled in a carving of the beast. The final clue was the great double-headed ax by his side. The helm he once wore had fallen to the ground, and I stared at the eyeless skull which had been burned so badly on one side, the bone was scorched black from the fire that had poured down on his head, obliterating his skin even as he drew breath. I could not imagine how he had made his way this far from the battle at the keep gates.
“Is it the duke?” Bree asked.
“Yes.” I gestured toward the woman. “And the duchess.” I stepped forward and grabbed the glittering mass that had originally caught my eye. “Here is her crown.” I held up a jewel-encrusted coronet.
“That'd fetch a pretty coin on the market,” Saleene said. She shook her head when she noticed me glance up. “No, just a thought. We'll need to take it to DeBrest, along with his father's sword and shield.” She turned to the side and stared at a door in the wall. “I wonder why they stopped here.”
She reached out and lifted the wooden bar holding the door closed. The door screeched as I pulled it open, the hinges protesting every inch.
In addition to the horrific injuries everyone in the group had suffered, the reason for the end of their flight was immediately obvious. A massive pile of stones and half-burned beams blocked the door. The duke and duchess had died, trapped and bleeding in their own castle.
Saleene nodded, and I swung the door shut.
“Let's go find DeBrest,” she said. “If he wants his family's bones, he can walk down that damn stairway himself.”
Chapter 16
Finding DeBrest was the easiest thing we did the whole day.
When Saleene, Bree, and I emerged into the fading sunlight, we walked around the keep to the front gate. We were still a good ways from the opening when the sounds of many voices echoed down the ruined streets, startling Saleene and Bree into pulling their bows and skittering sideways into the deepening shadows of the wall. That left me standing alone when a large group of men rounded a curve, voices raised in song and making no secret of their presence. At their head was DeBrest and another man in a haphazard array of armor, followed closely by Pagul and Trellac. Without thinking about it, my hand dropped to my sword.
“Ah, my loyal friend, Wolf,” DeBrest said, a grin spreading over his face as he stopped. “Ready to take on this company of warriors by himself. To what? Save me?”
Pagul stepped around the men in front and moved toward me. “It's okay. These are the men I told you about before. We adventured together when Duke DeBrest and I met. He's hired them for the fight against Farwolaeth.”
I let my hand drop away from my sword hilt. “Can't argue with larger numbers.” I turned to DeBrest. “We've got something to show you, Duke.”
“I'm sure it can wait,” DeBrest said with a laugh. “Come let's feast tonight before we start for Farwolaeth in the morning.”
“I think you should see this now.”
The smile faded from his face and for a second anger lit his eyes, but the flash faded and his forehead wrinkled. “What is it, Wolf? What did you find?”
“Your parents.” Saleene said as she stepped into the open. She still had her bow in her hands, arrow nocked but pointed toward the ground. “We found the Bear Killer and your mother.”
Bree walked forward and raised her hands, the last shaft of the dying sun sparkling in the jeweled crown.
DeBrest fell to his knees.
*****
I led DeBrest and Pagul to where we found the old duke's body. Saleene and Bree disappeared somewhere along the route, melting back into the shadows. We also brought along several of the new company and DeBrest sent Pagul for Spoon, although I did not know why.
In short order, the men had refashioned two of the barrack's beds into carrying platforms and the duke and duchess were placed on board for their last journey above ground. By the time we all walked back out into the night, torches lighting the ground in front of us, Spoon had arrived. Pagul must have warned him about what we had found because he silently moved to the front of the procession, leading us toward a series of small hills on the opposite side of the city, away from the river.
It was not strange to see no buildings standing on the hill after being surrounded by all the devastation from the Long Night. However, it appeared to me that no structures had ever stood there. Only bare ground capped the rises without even the memory of grass or trees.
Spoon led the way to the far side where stone doors were set down in the earth. All except the last one. There, an old ironwood door, its outer skin pitted from fire and age, stood guard over the opening beneath.
“These are the tombs of my fathers,” DeBrest said, his voice rising into the night. “As they guard my line back to the beginning of time, so shall they watch over all who will come after me. I give my father, Duke Bartholomew DeBrest, the Bear Killer, and my mother, Duchess Eileen, to the gods of our people.” He walked to the bodies and took the sword and shield from his father's bier, and then grabbed the coronet from his mother's. He left behind the two-headed ax. With that, Spoon pulled open the door, and the men took the corpses inside.
We were nearly back to our campsite in front of the keep when Pagul fell into step beside me.
“Quite the find you had today, Wolf. More than enough of the survivor's share to go around on that one.”
I grunted. “You know I don't care about that.”
“Maybe you should, Wolf. There's always a way to earn some gold.” He slapped me on the shoulder. “At the very least, the duke is going to owe you and the silver-haired archers a reward.”
I looked at him for a few steps before shaking my head. “So how did the others know how to find us?”
“The Horde? They always know when there's gold to be won.” Pagul laughed and the chuckle echoed back from the ruined walls.
“Is that h-o-a-r-d or h-o-r-d-e?” I asked.
“Depends on the day of the week. And the pay.” This time Pagul was joined in the laughter by several of the closer men. “Duke DeBrest had me send word to them when we made our plans. That was why he hasn't been in a hurry up until now. We knew they wouldn't be here until today at the earliest. He'll want to move faster now. I get the feeling you'll like that.”
I glanced over what I could see of the Horde in the dark. “It's a pretty big group to move quickly.”
“You'd be surprised how fast they can travel if there's gold at the end of the journey. Besides, they're really a lot like you. They're Searchers, too. The only difference is that you're searching for answers and they're searching for loot. You should get along fine.” He glanced around and moved closer, his voice dropping. “All the same, you'd better keep your head up and ears open.” Pagul moved into the surge of men, disappearing among their ranks within a few strides.
I stopped and watched the Horde move by. Something about them made me uneasy although I could not put my finger on the reason why. When the last of the men had passed, I fell in behind them, just wanting for them to leave the game for the night so I could have time to think alone.
That was when the flash of silver caught my eye, and I s
topped short, moonlight shining off Saleene and Bree's hair. They stood on a section of the wall that was untouched, the stones still solid footing and giving them the high ground. A shadow moved beneath them, and Trellac's dark face appeared for a second before sliding back into the shadows.
I wondered if they also felt the danger tickling the back of my neck.
Chapter 17
If DeBrest felt any gratitude toward me for helping to find his parents' bodies, he did not say anything about it the next morning.
The Horde raided the armory while the sun was still climbing above the far horizon. But true to Pagul's word, they were ready to travel by the time camp was struck and set a faster pace than we had managed to this point. For my part, I had managed to find a small circular shield that still allowed me plenty of movement and gave me some protection.
We headed southeast for the next week, mostly following the flow of the river, which I had learned was called the Big Bend. I learned how it get its name on the third day when we kept to our same course and it meandered away to the south in a large semicircle. It rushed back two days later with a roar, cascading down through a gorge with rock walls rising on both sides. Pagul explained that our trail had saved us an extra day of travel. The rapids also explained why we did not try to float down on rafts and save our horses.
We settled into a routine after leaving Breton. DeBrest had us up before dawn and on the road as soon as the sun peeked over the horizon. Most days we ate cold in the saddle at noon, taking turns riding close to Spoon's wagon so his helpers could pass out bread, biscuits, cheese and sometimes meat—whatever we could shove into our mouths while still moving forward. We kept up our speed all day, traveling until dusk before stopping to make camp. On two separate occasions, we outpaced Spoon and the other wheeled vehicles, leaving them to rumble to a stop after dark with the old cook shouting instructions before his horses slowed to a weary stop.