by Max Anthony
“Won’t the flames pour through the gap?” asked Viddo, casually lopping off the second set of fingers. Jera was wise enough that she was standing to one side, thereby avoiding a nasty surprise when the severed digits plopped onto the ground next to her.
“You’ll have to pull the staff out quickly,” said Rasmus. “Ready now!”
Without further ado, Rasmus pressed his face close to the gap. He could just about see many clustered shapes that might have been arms, legs, or other parts of zombie anatomy. He didn’t especially want his fireball to detonate against something two feet away, since that would make it hard for Viddo to pull the staff away in time.
“Three, two, one,” said Rasmus, making an arcane sign with his fingers. He pushed his own fingertips through the gap and a fist-sized orange globe appeared there, before racing off. Quick as a flash, the wizard removed his fingertips, and Viddo dragged the staff out from the gap, allowing the metal plate to drop back into place. There was a muffled sound from above, that could have easily been mistaken for a room full of zombies being torn apart in a fiery explosion.
“That should have done it,” said Rasmus, nodding in satisfaction.
“Let’s have a look then,” Viddo replied.
“How are you getting along up there?” called Jera, a slight concern evident in her voice. “I’ve just seen something brown float by.”
“We’re almost done,” said Viddo, pushing against the metal above him. There was a brief resistance and he intensified his efforts. The metal plate tilted and he was able to tip it over and to one side. He quickly scanned the room for movement – there was none, though there was an entirely disgusting odour of barbecued rotten flesh and there were many blackened shapes scattered haphazardly around. Without further ado, Viddo completed his ascent into the room, where he stood with his hands on his hips. “Come on up,” he said in a voice somewhere between a whisper and a shout. Moments later, the three of them were standing together, surveying the damage.
“There must have been at least forty of the poor bastards in here,” Viddo speculated. The bodies of the zombies had been thrown to all corners of the room and many still smouldered. The scent was really quite appalling.
“Sometimes you just can’t beat a fireball,” said Rasmus. “It’s the only efficient way to sweep a room clear of low-level opponents when you don’t wish to get your hands dirty by hitting them with metal objects.”
The wizard’s spell of light cast its glow about the room, creating shadows aplenty and revealing the messy aftermath of his spell. The walls were twenty feet to a side and made of well-cut stone blocks, properly laid. The hole through which they’d emerged was exactly in the middle of the floor and on three of the walls there were metal bunk beds, firmly enough fixed that the years had not corroded their fastenings, nor yet weakened them sufficiently that the bodies of flying undead might break them free. A stout-looking wooden door was the only means to get in and out.
“Looks like a cell to me,” said Jera. She was an upstanding lady and had never actually seen the inside of a cell – unlike her companions – but she’d read the stories and this chamber ticked all of the boxes.
“It would make sense to have the castle dungeons at the lowest level. By my reckoning, we’re still far below the top of the hill. Either we’ll have a lot of steps to climb or there are other levels above us,” Viddo guessed.
“Why would you keep zombies in your dungeon?” asked Jera. “Assuming these were once prisoners who died, why bother to bring them back as undead?”
“To keep people like us out, I should imagine,” said Rasmus. “Though I must warn you – if you spend too long pondering the logic of evil behaviour, you may find it drives you to madness. Far better to take each thing as it comes and try to unravel the overall mystery instead of focusing on the contents of each individual room.”
“Unless that room happens to contain a locked chest, of course,” said Viddo. “Then you must give it your utmost attention.”
Jera felt her head swimming. She was never quite certain if it was her inexperience that made her struggle with their advice, of if it was because she was more normal owing to her lack of time trawling through undead-infested dungeons. She was almost convinced it was the latter.
“Let us be on our way,” she said, using her hammer to indicate the exit door.
Viddo was there in a moment. “Damnit, I forgot to steal a couple of spoons from The Grumpy Wizard. I’ll have to use my standard tools.”
Within moments, he had the door unlocked, without giving away a hint of noise. Viddo pressed his ear to the wood and listened for any movement on the other side. There was none, though the undead tended to remain stock still until they had reason to do something. The explosion on this side of the door would have probably suggested that there was an unwanted intrusion. Even so, he didn’t want to second-guess the thought processes of minor undead and waved Jera forward to open the door.
The door creaked softly as she swung it open. The room beyond was not a pleasant one to behold, packed as it was with the implements necessary for torture. There was a rack, three cages with spikes pointing inwards, a row of curved metal objects hanging from one wall and four wooden tables with iron rings at the corners, to which prisoners were tied. They knew this for a fact, since there were bodies tied to three of the tables already. Jera looked at the naked, emaciated figures, bound to the table at the wrist and ankle with straps of brown leather. The flesh of the bodies looked parchment thin and tight, giving no indication as to how long ago the victims had died. She didn’t wish to find them waking up and giving her a start, so she prodded the first one with her hammer. It didn’t move.
“These bodies look strangely shrunken,” she said. “As if they’d been sucked dry before death.”
Rasmus was next to her. “I have many times seen the effects that death can have on once-living flesh. It never seems to be quite the same for every corpse. Still, these do look unusually shrivelled. The most important thing is that they are dead and suffer no longer.”
“I wonder what was tied to this last table,” said Viddo, a few feet away from them. “It’s much bigger and wider than the other tables.”
“Ten feet long and seven wide – perhaps they manacled bears to it, or other creatures from the forest,” suggested Rasmus.
“Why on earth would they want to torture a bear?” asked Viddo in response. He gave his head a scratch – no better idea came to him.
“It looks like they brought all of the prisoners from that previous room through this torture chamber, as if to give them a sight of what lay in store. And to torment them with the screams of the dying,” said Jera. She was looking at a sturdy wooden shelf upon which was an array of barbed metal sticks, which were doubtless intended to be inserted into those parts of the human body where they would cause the most discomfort.
She saw something, curled up and forgotten at the back of the shelf. It was a small square of paper, folded twice to make it even less conspicuous. Jera picked it up – it was yellow with age and crinkled softly when she unfolded it. There were words written in an old dialect of central Frodgia which she didn’t understand.
“Can either of you read this?” she asked.
Rasmus got there first and had a look – he recognized the script and read the words aloud. “The subjects of my testing are proving to be much weaker than I’d hoped and they are dying much too easily. The Baron will not be pleased if I have to kill all of the villagers, since he has a certain fondness for their wine.”
“It doesn’t sound like this baron was a very pleasant fellow,” said Viddo. “I wonder what he’d been testing on his subjects.”
“Another parochial madman from the sounds of it,” Rasmus replied. He’d studied history and knew these things. “Out here in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do but practise his cruel predilections and indulge in a penchant for murder.”
“That’s common, is it?” asked Jera.
“Oh yes.
Throughout history there have been examples of such behaviour. I’m not at all shocked to learn that we are in the castle of such a man.”
“All the more reason to burgle the place?” asked Jera. She was learning fast.
“Quite correct. Who knows what items a man versed in cruelty may have stolen from others. It is our job to liberate them and use them in honour of the rightful owners!”
With the room searched, the only option was to leave it through the single exit door. It was locked, if not for very long. There was a corridor outside, which was wide, tall and went off to the left and right. The grey walls were damp and the way was unlit apart from by the light of the wizard’s spell. There was the skeleton of a man or woman slumped against one of the walls. It was wrapped in faded rags and a cheap-looking short sword was on the ground nearby.
“I wonder what happened here,” whispered Viddo. He pushed at the skeleton with his foot, causing it to topple over. He glanced at the short sword – even a low-level adventurer would have immediately known it to be worthless.
They chose their direction at random and followed the straight corridor for a few dozen yards. They came across another of the stout wooden doors in the right-hand wall, this one slightly open and prevented from closing further by a skeletal arm protruding through the gap. Rasmus pushed the door further open, disturbing the skeleton and causing it to settle with a mournful rattle.
“Another one of the torture chambers,” said Jera. “And I can hear groaning.”
Sure enough, this chamber was almost exactly the same as the previous one, barring a paucity of metal torture tools. There was a single exit door opposite, though the groaning did not come from there.
“Look – tied to the ceiling!” whispered Viddo. There was a metal frame dangling from the ceiling above, fixed by a short chain. There was a body tied to this frame by hands and feet, leaving it suspended face-down. It was another of the undead, and when it heard the approaching adventurers it groaned again and struggled against its bonds.
“That poor man – how long must he have been tied here?” asked Jera. She looked at the fellow’s face – his eyes were empty and his skin pallid and swollen.
“An unpleasant fate indeed,” said Rasmus, peering under one of the tables. “Whoever made these torture benches knew what he was doing.”
“You often find master craftsmen out in the back of beyond,” said Viddo. “Their work doomed to remain undiscovered.”
“I must say I appreciate how he’s joined these legs to the side braces,” said Rasmus.
“What about this undead?” demanded Jera.
“Leave him be – he feels no pain and suffers no longer.”
“Hit him with your hammer if you want to quiet him down a little.”
Jera was uncertain. Hitting evil creatures in the face was exciting – fun, almost. Putting a trapped zombie out of some guessed-at misery felt different. Tentatively, she took out her hammer, looking into the creature’s face for some sign of humanity – a connection she could make with it. Whatever burned within the creature, there was nothing left of the person it once was and it hissed as she raised the hammer to strike it. There was a whispering, crunching sound and the creature abruptly slumped, falling against the weight of its bindings. Viddo pulled his sword out of the zombie’s skull and re-sheathed it.
“Look – it’s wearing a necklace,” he said, reaching up and tugging the item free. He looked at it for a split second. “Bah, worthless,” said the thief, throwing it carelessly into a corner. Jera didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Give sympathy only where it’s due,” advised Rasmus, catching her expression. “You cannot carry the burdens of everyone who suffers, let alone take upon yourself the imagined burdens of those who no longer suffer.”
“I suppose,” said Jera. “Is everywhere like this?”
“Not everywhere,” replied Viddo, with his ear pressed to the far door. “However, an adventurer will come across many similar places on his or her travels. You must never lose sight of your goals and get side-tracked. There are more zombies behind this door as well. I can hear them shuffling around.”
“Best leave it alone,” said Rasmus. “Killing them won’t further our aims and I’ll likely have to expend another fireball spell or an acid ball.”
“If you thought a fire-burned zombie smelled bad, just wait until you find out what their corroding flesh smells like,” Viddo advised Jera. “It’s enough to make your eyes water.”
“Do we even know what our goals are?” asked Jera, bringing the conversation back on course.
“Sort of,” said Rasmus cagily. “There’s clearly something wrong – torture rooms, zombies, werewolves, an empty village and a mysteriously disappearing cruel baron. It all stinks if you ask me.”
“If we keep an eye out, there’ll be clues to be found. If not, we’ll just keep hitting whatever turns up and eventually we’ll get to the bottom of things,” added Viddo helpfully.
“Not the most sophisticated of plans, admittedly,” said Rasmus. “The alternative is that we could spend weeks touring the local villages, speaking to the local boors and trying to eke out all of the rumours and gossip surrounding this castle.”
“Of course, no one will simply volunteer the information,” Viddo added. “They’ll want us to carry a package from one village to another in order to earn their favour, or chop some wood. We might need to complete countless other minor tasks before anyone will speak to us.”
“Instead, we chose to cut out the middle-man and came straight here, in order to find the details for ourselves.”
Jera stifled a sigh. She knew there was nothing wrong with the logic. It was just that she’d never directly experienced these things herself – she’d gone straight from the training ground and into high-danger situations, completely bypassing the leg work that beginner adventurers usually had to involve themselves in. She knew if she insisted that Rasmus and Viddo would indulge her wishes, but she also knew it would be unfair for her to do so. I don’t fancy chopping wood anyway, she told herself.
They exited this second torture chamber through the same door by which they’d entered it and followed the corridor once more.
7
Something was clearly not right in the Baron’s dungeons. It was usual in such places to find the bodies of the dead behind locked doors, perished in their cells. Here, there were skeletons lying around randomly in their ones, twos and occasional threes. Many of them had bones which had not only been broken, but smashed quite utterly, with shattered ribcages and skulls. There were a few weapons of a motley sort lying around, suggesting that these men had been armed at the point of death.
“They aren’t wearing armour or uniform,” said Viddo, crouched over a group of three. “And their weapons are all shoddy.”
“They were not guards,” Rasmus said.
“Meaning that they must have been prisoners,” said Jera. “Could they have escaped from their cells and found themselves chopped to pieces by the guards?”
“That would be a plausible suggestion, were it not for the fact that these injuries were not inflicted by swords or any normal weapon that one might expect to find in the hands of a castle guard.”
The corridor was long – giving a clue as to the extent of this prison – and not all of the doors were locked. Those which were unlocked were for the most part empty of skeletons or other items of interest. It was well-known amongst those of the adventuring persuasion that prisons were not the best places in which to seek treasure. The occupants rarely managed to smuggle anything worthwhile inside and valuables were usually confiscated by the guards.
“We should try and find the steps leading upwards,” said Viddo. They hadn’t explored even a quarter of this area yet and he was already certain that there’d be little worth finding.
“The steps upwards are usually somewhere in the middle,” Rasmus added. “Perhaps we should move inward from the perimeter at the next available opportunity.”
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br /> That chance came soon enough. The passage they were following split into two – one way going straight ahead, with another heading to the left. This left-hand corridor took them on to another grim discovery. After passing three of the normal wooden doors, they found an iron door, solid and firm in its metal frame. Viddo hardly had the time to open his mouth before he found his tools in his hand.
“Do you need to listen for what’s behind it first?” asked Jera, not wishing to seem like she was treading on his professional toes in her search for learning.
Viddo wasn’t perturbed. “It doesn’t matter what’s behind it,” he advised. “It’s a door that is different to the others, therefore we are going to look behind it in any case and deal with whatever consequences might arise.”
Jera understood from his words that she should ready her weapon and this she did, pulling the hammer from her belt and raising her shield. Rasmus was eating a sausage.
The door had no built-in traps, but it did have a reasonably sophisticated lock that took Viddo twenty seconds to defeat. He rose to his feet and tucked his lock picks out of sight. He did not contemplate the door further, nor the possible threats which lay beyond. Instead, he turned the handle and pushed the door inwards.
“A workshop and charnel house all in one,” said Rasmus, looking within.
The room was large, at forty feet to a side and with a ten feet high ceiling. Brackets were set around the walls and there were charred stumps of burnt-out torches to indicate that the place had once been illuminated by this crudest of methods. Adjacent to the torch brackets on three of the walls were sets of manacles, fastened to the walls by chains at head and ankle height. There was a wooden bucket on the floor next to each set of chains. The centre of the room had four rows, each row containing four torture tables. A pair of sturdy desks was against the furthest wall, upon which were items of an indistinct nature. There was a padded chair in front of one.