by Max Anthony
“No!” she said.
With the look of two badly-scolded schoolchildren, Rasmus and Viddo left the room. Viddo had sneakily palmed three or four of the strips, but Jera didn’t have the heart to tell him to put them back. The corridor turned right onto another one almost identical, with forgotten crates, doors and oil lamps. They followed along until it turned right again. By now, the contents of the rooms were no longer of interest. There might have been something that was both valuable and transportable but the effort involved in locating it seemed like a chore not worth undertaking.
“If we keep going, we’ll have soon come in a complete square,” said Viddo. “I would like to climb upwards again, since I feel as if we have languished below ground for too long already.”
“The stairs upwards must be somewhere in the middle,” said Jera. “We’ll need to open every one of the doors on the inner wall in order to find a passage there.” As if determined to demonstrate her method, Jera strode over to the closest door and pushed it open. “A passage like this one,” she said, trying not to look pleased.
As soon as the door was opened, Viddo cocked his head, as if he were listening for something. “Can you hear that?” he asked.
“You’re the one with the excellent hearing,” said Rasmus. “What is it you can hear?”
“It sounds a bit like singing. Only it’s very faint.”
“I can’t hear anything,” said Jera. “If it’s coming from along this passage, we should take extra care.”
There was nothing that appeared immediately threatening – the corridor was narrower than the outer passage and lacking in boxes, yet in no other respects was it remarkable. There were more oil lamps and a door was visible some way ahead.
“Off we go then!” said Jera, stepping confidently forward.
“Wait!” said Viddo, his thief’s senses howling a sudden message of alarm.
He was too late. There was a click and the faintest of whirring sounds. At first, it looked as if nothing had happened, but then Jera turned to face them, her face as white as a sheet.
“Oh,” she said.
Protruding from her breastplate was the end of a steel crossbow bolt. It had punctured through the low-grade magical protection of her armour, right above where her heart was. Before the wizard or thief could reach her, Jera had dropped to one knee.
9
“Quick, fetch a healing potion!” said Rasmus, fluttering about anxiously.
Viddo reached Jera and put an arm around her shoulder to stop her from falling over. Unable to prevent himself from asking the question, and fearing the worst he said. “Are you hurt?”
“Of course I’m hurt you silly man,” gasped Jera. “It feels like I’ve been kicked in the chest! Give me a moment to catch my breath.”
Confused, Viddo looked at the site of the injury. The bolt was sticking out much further than he’d have expected and there was no sign of blood. Even so, he didn’t wish to touch it immediately, in case he ended up causing pain. He needn’t have worried. With clenched teeth, Jera grabbed the end of the bolt and tore it free with a wrench, dropping it to the floor with a ting. She pushed herself to her feet again.
“Oooh that’ll be sore in the morning,” she said.
“How come you’re not slightly more…dead?” asked Rasmus, beginning to recover some of his composure.
“What do you mean?” Jera asked.
“The bolt went through your armour – it could have killed you.”
Jera looked at the round puncture mark and the accompanying dent which the journey of the missile had left behind. “I didn’t think it had penetrated,” she said in puzzlement. “Yet here is a wide hole in my breastplate.” She wriggled, as if something were bothering her and then reached behind her, undoing the leather fastening straps with practised dexterity. She lowered the breastplate to the floor. There was something inside it.
“What is that?” Jera asked, with the look of a woman who has just found a nest of spiders in her underwear drawer.
Viddo stooped to pick it up. The item was thick and gnarly, vaguely round in shape and about the size of a very large coin. There were ragged bits hanging from it and there was a fresh scratch on its surface, almost exactly in the middle.
“I think it’s the gargantuan’s big toe nail,” he said. “How did it get in your armour?”
“I wondered what it was that was making me uncomfortable,” replied Jera. “I thought it was a strap that had got twisted underneath the breastplate. I must have knocked that creature’s nail off when it kicked at me. I have no idea how it managed to find its way under my plate.”
“It’s a good thing that it did,” Viddo told her. “It seems to have been stronger than this poor-grade armour that Rasmus’ friend sold us.”
“Rubbish armour is rubbish armour no matter who sells it,” said the wizard, unwilling to be found guilty by association.
“If the gargantuan’s toenails are stronger than magical steel, albeit poorly enchanted magical steel, perhaps we should return and harvest the rest of the crop,” mused Viddo. “Whilst there won’t be enough of this material to construct a shield, a skilled armourer or dentist could likely make you an impervious gum shield, so that you never lose your teeth.”
Jera had pristine white teeth, but had no intention of putting an undead toenail in her mouth, under any circumstances whatsoever. “I shall not be wearing a toenail gum shield, thank you very much for your consideration,” she said primly.
“I’m sure they’d trim these bits of skin off for you,” said Viddo, quickly realising that his bright idea wasn’t being quite as well-received as he’d anticipated. “Fine, I’ll throw it away,” he said, dropping the toenail onto the floor.
With Jera back on her feet and with only her pride suffering serious harm, she waited for Viddo to complete his search for traps.
“There’s a hole in the wall here, through which the magically-propelled bolt was ejected. There’s a pressure plate on the floor here. The light is bad, so it’s easy to miss it.”
“No need to make excuses for me, Viddo,” Jera said. “Rest assured that I have learned my lesson.”
“That makes two of us,” the thief replied. “I should have been warier for traps than I have been. I had been lulled by the lack of them up till this point. The rest of this corridor is safe and we should proceed, though I can still hear singing.”
They reached the far door in a matter of a few moments. It was made of wood and had been painted blue, though the colour had faded badly. There was a number 5 carved into the surface and there was a rectangular slot at waist level, which was covered with a flap.
“That can’t be a letterbox, can it?” asked Viddo, hoping that someone would tell him to stop being stupid.
“It can’t be anything else,” said Rasmus. “Why don’t you have a look through it?”
Viddo couldn’t resist an invitation like that and he knelt down so that the slot was at eye level. The flap opened inwards and he looked through.
“Someone’s put a draft-excluder on the other side,” he said, carefully pushing his fingers inside in order to move aside a series of fine bristles which blocked his view as well as any unwanted gusts of cold air.
“Hello, what’s this?” he asked, drawing his hand out. He held a small object of wood and metal. “Look at that! The cheeky bastards have left a mousetrap inside their letterbox.”
“Want me to send a fireball through?” asked Rasmus. “That’ll be a delivery they aren’t expecting.” He chuckled at his own joke.
“I don’t think so,” said Viddo. “The singing is louder now. Whoever is singing, they have a wonderful voice.”
“I think I caught a hint of it when you had the letterbox open,” Rasmus told him. “It does sound very sweet.”
“Let’s have this door open and we’ll see what’s beyond. Whoever lives here does not appear to be very welcoming to visitors,” Jera said. She’d caught hints of a sound, but it didn’t sound at all sweet. M
aybe it was down to perception, she thought.
Viddo had the lock sprung in a few seconds and opened the door to the room that lay beyond. The first impression was that they’d entered the house of someone’s very elderly relative, who had decorated the place many decades before and then forgotten all about it. There was ample light from oil lamps, which allowed the trio to see a room which may have been cosy if it wasn’t so shabby. There was a tall shelf unit, upon which were rather too many dusty glass ornaments. A picture hung from the wall, showing some variety of domesticated dog. There was a tatty rug with a spiral woven into it and there were two rocking chairs, set to either side of a low, round table, upon which was a tea pot and two chipped cups. There were two exit doorways. The adventurers looked at each other in puzzlement at this strange scene.
“The singing seems to have stopped,” whispered Viddo.
“A shame,” said Rasmus. “I would have enjoyed hearing more of it.”
Viddo looked around for more traps and then motioned them towards one of the exit doorways. The door sealing it was not locked and it led directly through the thick stone of the walls and into another room, this one clearly a kitchen. Or at least, it had once been a kitchen and would need several hours of cleaning in order to bring back to a state where one would willingly consume food prepared within. There was a fireplace, a stove, a sink and a table. Dirt caked everything, as if decades of grime had been left uncleaned until it coated all the surfaces.
“I wonder who keeps this so beautifully polished,” said Rasmus incongruously.
“They must be exceptionally house-proud,” said Viddo.
Jera didn’t immediately realise that anything was wrong, thinking that the pair were making their usual dry jokes. She kept quiet, even when Rasmus ran his fingers through a thick fur of mould that had been left around the rim of the sink.
“Spotless,” he announced.
They all heard a sound through a doorway to their left and before Jera could advise caution, Rasmus and Viddo had gone through into a sparsely-decorated room that seemingly had no specific purpose and which had two further exits. The sound was louder here and to Jera it sounded like a song sung in a language she’d never heard, by the worst, tone-deaf singer she could possibly imagine.
“Wait,” she cautioned to the wizard and thief, who had picked up their pace and had already crossed to the door through which the noise was coming. Without hesitating, Viddo wrenched the door open and went through, with Rasmus following. Rightly convinced that something was amiss, Jera fairly dashed across the room in pursuit.
Through the doorway there was a large chamber which was clearly a bedroom. The far wall and a quantity of the floor was dominated by the presence of a huge bed, dressed in rotting velvet sheets. There were mounds of pillows - yellow, greasy and stained by many years of concentrated drooling, or possibly other fluids. There was a cadaver on the bed, shrunken, naked and grey. There was a dresser to each side of the bed, upon which were small objects that could have been books.
Sitting at the bottom of the bed, ten feet away from the door, were two old crones. In appearance, they were similar, dressed in filthy grey nighties that exposed rather too much of their wrinkled legs and their sagging décolletages. Their hair was long and grey, tangled and matted as if they’d been dragged backwards through a blackberry bush. The first one had a hooked nose and a hairy chin, whilst the second was made even more beautiful by the shrunken socket of her one missing eye - a socket which the old crone currently had a finger in and was scratching at most vigorously.
Jera took in all of these details as soon as she arrived, additionally noticing the looks of confusion upon the faces of her companions, as if their eyes were telling them one thing, while their brains were interpreting the information as something completely different.
“My, look at these two fine specimens, Frilka!” cackled the first crone.
“A pair of randy studs come to play with us and no doubt, Roodis.”
“What are you standing and staring at? Get out of your clothes and share us on this bed,” said Roodis, winking lasciviously.
“I don’t think I want to,” said Rasmus, looking even more confused.
“You are vilely ugly old harpies,” said Viddo, scratching his head.
Suddenly, the first withered bat opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice was as unpleasant and grating as one might have expected from the appearance of the singer. As the witch opened her mouth, Jera noted that the old woman had incredibly straight and white teeth. It appeared that Rasmus and Viddo heard the tune differently and their faces become distant and mesmerised.
“They are so beautiful,” said Rasmus.
“Such pert bosoms,” added Viddo, staring at Roodis.
“Don’t stand there staring,” instructed Frilka, addressing Jera. “While we have grown tired of our last guest, you may see if there is anything else you can wring from him. What are you waiting for, dear? Climb on top of the lucky gentleman!”
Jera had seen enough. In fact, it was only morbid curiosity that had kept her from acting sooner. When the witch called Roodis stood upright, dropped her nightie to the floor and advanced on Viddo with her long, pink tongue out, Jera was oh so tempted to watch for a little while longer, but she doubted the thief would ever forgive her.
Let’s see how well she sings without her teeth, Jera thought to herself, simultaneously throwing her hammer into the face of the singing witch. There was a sound not entirely dissimilar to that of glass breaking when the magical hammer cracked the old shrew in the mouth. A split-second later, the weapon reappeared in Jera’s hand.
“My dentures!” lisped the witch, spitting cracked shards of porcelain from her mouth. Though her singing had stopped, Rasmus and Viddo showed no sign of rousing themselves from the stupor they’d been put into.
With this demonstration of violence, Jera had let the two witches know that she wasn’t going to fall for their tricks, though even years later she was never quite able to fathom how they thought they’d be able to tempt her with the embrace of a rotting corpse. Frilka launched herself across the intervening space, flying parallel to the floor with her hands extended, in an attack that betrayed her to be much more than an old woman. Jera stepped aside and smashed her shield into the crone’s face with a clang. The witch’s hands appeared to have suddenly sprouted three-inch long talons that screeched across the surface of Jera’s pauldrons on the way by.
The second witch was in the process of shoving her hand down Viddo’s trousers, while her tongue came ever closer to the thief’s mouth.
“I think this one’s been eating fish, Frilka,” said the hairy-chinned crone.
Jera was certain that Viddo did not wish to be deprived of his genitalia by razor-sharp claws, so she took one quick step towards the would-be lovers and cracked her hammer onto the witch’s wrist. It was a sound blow and the hag screeched loudly in pain and anger. Still there was no sign of recognition from either wizard or thief.
Worse news was to come. Whilst doing her best to fend off another attack from Roodis, Jera saw the body on the bed sit bolt upright. It groaned and clear, white eyes opened, fixing on Jera. Like a jilted suitor, it rolled clumsily onto the floor and then stood up, ready to defend the besmirched honour of the witches who had killed it.
“Is he not a fine figure of a man?” cackled Frilka, slashing at Jera with her claws. The witches were faster than they looked and possessed of a wiry strength.
“Just piss off, will you?” said Jera. She swayed away from a vicious attempt to slice her throat open, then spun and delivered a crunching headbutt onto the bridge of Roodis’ nose. Jera had been taught the ways of the brawler as well as the ways of defence and the witch stumbled away, her nose spread across her face.
“Alas for my ruined beauty!” she howled. “No man will look at me now!” Hardly were these words spoken when the business end of a hammer crashed into her face, breaking all of her teeth apart from one.
Getting
into her stride, Jera’s sixth sense hinted at danger and she was just in time to leap away from an attempt by Frilka to slice open her back. As she jumped, Jera slammed a gauntleted fist into Roodis’ temple and followed it up with a reverse strike from her hammer. With a truncated screech, the witch slumped face-first to the floor with her sagging buttocks pointing at the ceiling.
“My sister!” cried Frilka, forgetting all about Jera and dropping to tend to the fallen Roodis. Jera hesitated at the sight. A few weeks ago, she might have balked, but now she knew better and took advantage by thumping Frilka with a heavy strike to the skull. The wizened old bat fell atop her sister, their days of free love finished.
There was another groan, reminding Jera that a third opponent remained. This undead fellow appeared to have been so utterly exhausted by his time in the bedroom that it was all he could do to shuffle his forehead slowly onto Jera’s hammer and he was added to the heap, where he was once more engaged in an unholy ménage-a-trois with the witches.
With the dirty work done, Jera turned her attention to her companions. Their looks of confusion remained, but they seemed to be rousing themselves. Rasmus came out of his fugue first.
“I say, what are these two old harpies doing with that corpse?” were the only words he could manage to utter.
“They thought they’d caught themselves a pair of adventurers. In fact, they spent some time arguing over which was the most handsome,” said Jera, smiling sweetly.
“Horrendous as they were, I have no doubt they’d have chosen a man of learning if they’d been given the luxury of time,” said Rasmus, puffing out his chest.
“It’s well-known amongst ladies that wizards are clumsy and inexperienced. Naturally these vile shrews would have chosen a thief over a pointy-hatted mage.”
Soon, Rasmus and Viddo were arguing heatedly over which of them was the greatest prize for the two dead witches. It was a while until they noticed Jera was hugely amused by the whole affair and was laughing openly at their expense.