The fat shadow advanced on him, moving into the light of a torch on the wall, and Gautier recognized the face before him. Though the sallow, sunken cheeks lacked their rosy color, and the eyes were dead and blackened by dark magic, the pale, unmoving lips completely devoid of life, he still put a name to the attack.
“Christophe?”
No response came, no acknowledgment of its own identity. The fat shadow, Christophe, stepped in closer, swinging at Gautier, trying to get at him, and Gautier had to retreat again and lunge at him with the sword. Christophe grunted and groaned with each step, and from somewhere within the folds of his long coat and grungy shirt front, Gautier thought he heard a faint tick-tick-tick sound, keeping a rhythm that didn’t quite match Christophe’s footsteps, but didn’t speed up or slow down.
The fat man swung. Gautier dodged it. Christophe swung again, and Gautier sidestepped him. Christophe turned to face Gautier a third time, but Gautier rammed the sword home into Christophe’s neck, and the fat man went down silently, first to his knees, then slumping sideways. For the moment, Gautier left the sword embedded in him and went to check on his friend.
“Ack!” Leroux cried, his eyes squeezed tightly shut as he gripped his left thigh in both hands. “The bone! Mon Dieu et bon sang, he broke my bone! Je veux mourir, how it hurts!”
“Keep quiet!” Gautier hissed.
Leroux spat through gritted teeth, rocking from side to side as he tried not to whimper. Gautier unbuckled Leroux’s belt, ripped it loose from its loops and then surveyed the room for things he could use as splints.
“You think there are more of those things?” Leroux whimpered.
“No,” Gautier said flatly.
“He came out of nowhere! They could be hiding in the blasted walls for all we know!”
“All of the other ones we encountered have been alive, though. Charles, Lucian, the footmen. And nobody in town said that the other metal men were corpses,” Gautier said. “This man, however, was Prince Aubrey’s personal steward.”
“And?” Leroux asked, puzzled.
“And he died six months ago. Tick bite, it got infected. As you can see, he didn’t tend very well to his health. I suspect he’s the source of the rotten smell up here.” Gautier took two planks of wood from the broken armoire and set about positioning them on either side of Leroux’s leg. His friend cried out again as he braced for what had to come next.
“Hopefully the others finish soon,” Gautier went on. “The longer we’re here, the more we lose our advantage. We need to—”
“Shhh,” Leroux said. Gautier instantly went silent. He counted off the seconds in his head. Leroux stared off into nothing, listening hard instead. He nodded, slightly at first, then with emphasis, bobbing his head in time with a slight ticking sound coming from behind Gautier.
Coming from Christophe.
Gautier held up one finger, went over to Christophe, and brutally yanked his sword free. Then, using the tip of it, he popped the buttons off of Christophe’s overpriced shirt front and parted the fabric underneath. Where there should have been flesh, there was a crisscrossed mesh of fine wires and wood, protecting a host of mechanical gears that were inlaid where a man’s organs might be. One of the gears still ticked, sputtering slightly as it tried to turn a gear that was slightly larger than itself.
“Must there be something new around every corner of this accursed place?” muttered Gautier. He snorted as he walked back to Leroux, accidentally bumping the tip of his sword against the larger gear, which then clicked into motion, setting the rest of the mechanism into march.
Christophe, the fat steward who had already died twice, got back up.
“Gautier, look out!” Leroux shouted. Gautier spun just as Christophe wordlessly lunged at him, one massive fist narrowly missing Gautier’s side. Gautier, by reflex, plunged his sword into Christophe’s mechanical guts, cracking one of the thinner gears and jamming several others, but the damage was already done: Christophe had deployed a previously concealed weapon, in the form of a telescoping spear that extended from a cradle in his sleeve, running the length of his forearm. He fell forward and landed on Leroux.
Gautier shouted and hefted the fat man off of Leroux. The end of the spear was buried in Leroux’s chest, slightly to the left of the sternum. Gautier’s lifelong friend, ever full of color and life, suddenly had neither. With a cough that said nothing, Leroux slumped, and was no more.
Gautier screamed, instantly falling victim to a rage he would never have expected. Nobody had been there at his side longer than Leroux, dating all the way back to their childhood. Ever the willing accomplice in Gautier’s schemes and designs, an enabler of pranks, a squire of the woods, a voice of encouragement in the rare event that Gautier needed it—and of late, a voice of reason, when Gautier didn’t know he needed it…for the first time in his life, Gautier understood what other people felt when they described shame.
Shame, for waiting until the sudden, unexpected, undeserved death of his best friend, before Gautier would realize the value that Leroux had, the value of his companionship, his loyalty.
Gone. All gone. Forever. He hadn’t thought of it until now, but so much of who he was, was dependant on the contrast that Leroux provided. His instantaneous death ripped a hole in Gautier’s spirit. Pure rage flowed out.
That was it. There would be death tonight. A lot of it. And Gautier would cause as much of it as possible. No quarter. No survivors. He was the rogue wolf now. None of the castle’s freaks had a big enough rock to stop him.
Though the stone walls and wooden furniture of the castle were a poor substitute for the forest, Gautier closed his eyes and listened to the sounds of a dozen battles and scuffles playing out on both floors. The west wing—which housed Aubrey’s quarters—was off to his left, so he needed to find the nearest connecting hallway. He’d never been to this part of the castle, so he hurriedly checked every route he found, stopping to help wounded villagers slay errant castle staff, until finally he came upon a large cluster of them fighting to gain entry to a wide corridor that could only lead to the west wing.
It was a scene fit for a cathedral fresco. Bodies lay everywhere, villagers and staff alike among the dead and injured. Gautier felt a mixture of pride and pity for his men, who had defended their town well, but had also suffered as never before, sitting or lying amidst the fallen footmen and chambermaids and noble stooges that populated Aubrey’s inner circle.
And then, impossibly, up against one wall, he saw Danielle and Jean-Claude. The older man clutched his left thigh in both hands, and the younger woman wrapped Jean-Claude’s own belt around a ghastly wound to stop the bleeding. Gautier couldn’t see it well enough to know whether it was mortal.
“What happened here?” he demanded. There were bodies all down the hallway, including six more villagers, some still moving.
Jean-Claude and Danielle both met his gaze at the same time, with the same look in their eyes. There was anger there, and devastation, but most disturbing of all, they seemed…cracked. The first step toward being broken. It was a look Gautier frequently saw in injured prey.
“Him,” Danielle muttered. “The monster. He’s here.”
Jean-Claude coughed into his sleeve, a sick, wet sound, and when he came away his mouth was red. “I do not think even you can kill this beast, woodsman,” he growled.
Now that was just preposterous.
“Are you done with that?” Gautier gestured with the tip of his rifle to Jean-Claude’s bandaged leg.
Danielle grimaced and nodded. “Best I can do.”
“Go help them,” Jean-Claude grunted. “Merci, Danielle.” He slumped back against the wall, panting.
Gautier dashed down the hallway with Danielle right on his heels, wielding a fresh pistol in one hand while she used the other hand to keep her satchel from bouncing too hard against her hip. They rounded a corner where they saw two separate fights going at the same time, though one of them was about to finish.
O
n the left side of the hallway, a chambermaid had been modified with brooms and feather dusters, and all other manner of cleaning implements, and was using these to fend off an attack from Jules and Edmond, who were fighting back with a pitchfork and a spear from one of the animated suits of armor. The maid’s blackened eyes flared as she fought, drawing on whatever demonic well had powered her thus far. Gautier knew those boys, though. They would win.
On the right side was the much more concerning prospect, a tall woman—Gautier remembered her as the royal tailor’s wife—who was the most grotesque abomination he had seen yet. She had somehow been permanently built into a wardrobe with a dozen drawers, and these kept popping out and retracting, punching farmers in the face, parrying blows from weapons like a dozen extra hands, and deflecting poorly-loaded shots from hastily-charged rifles. Though chunks and splinters of wood were missing from her fine, cream-colored finish, he could see where she had walked down the hall like a stampeding bull, knocking aside anyone who stood in her way, screaming with the primal rage of her magic.
Gautier took aim with his rifle and fired. She hadn’t even been looking at him, yet she ducked at the last possible second, raising a mirror from some unseen compartment in the wardrobe, which blocked her face. The mirror shattered and bent inward, but didn’t land a critical shot. Snarling, Gautier dropped that rifle and drew the flared blunderbuss, but then immediately discarded that too, as there were four of his fellow townsfolk grappling with the woman up close, and he desired not to harm them. The sword, then. He charged.
With a mighty backhand, the woman clubbed Laurent in the side of the head and sent him reeling before Gautier could land a strike on her. A man named Henri was trying to wrestle her to the ground by her other arm, wrapped in the thick sleeve of an elegant dress that proved too difficult for him to hold, as the woman was impossibly strong. Henri gasped and grunted as he chopped at her chattering drawers with an axe, unable to do any real damage.
Gautier, much to his chagrin, didn’t add much to their efforts, as she was perhaps the best-armored combatant they had yet seen. At least the knights could be knocked over, but this? He tried to work on her with the edge of his sword, sweat running into his eyes as he hacked again and again, tried to jab and thrust, tried to get at her neck, only to see her advance another foot down the hallway.
Ignoring Gautier and Henri, the tailor’s wife swiveled the armoire to her right and took three big steps toward the wall, shoving an alarmed Laurent up against it and punching him with all twelve drawers at once. He crumbled, and she spun back to face Gautier and Henri, spitting out fabric and thread in a whirlwind of textiles. Neither of them had expected that, and suddenly found themselves entangled and tripping over satin and silk that bound them tighter than it had a right to. As Gautier and Henri stumbled to their knees, the wardrobe woman grabbed Henri’s axe and raised it high overhead with an operatic howl.
And then the world exploded.
BOOM!
Gautier jumped at the sound, at the pressure, at the sensation of the whole castle coming apart right on top of him, but then a second ticked by, and then another, and no, the castle wasn’t coming down, but the wardrobe was, and as he cut himself free from the fabric with his hunting knife, he noticed a huge, gaping hole in the wardrobe’s front, all splintered wood and blood, and the wardrobe woman bore a look of shock and dismay on her face as she collapsed backward, unable to rise again.
Acrid, stinking smoke filled the hallway, like a storm cloud that dimmed the candlelit walls to either side of them. His eyes followed the trail of smoke to a little alcove behind him where Danielle stood, eyes narrowed, face beaming, and in her hands was the biggest damnedpepperbox gun he had ever seen. It bore the stock of a rifle, which she gripped with her right hand at the height of her hip, the butt of it resting against the hand-carved wooden panel on the wall, which was now cracking from having absorbed the recoil of such a weapon. Atop the cluster of no less then eighteen barrels in the center, a band of steel supported a finely crafted wooden handle which she used to keep the business end of the thing upright. A shoulder strap allowed her to bear its weight, which she now tugged over her head so she could set the weapon on the ground. It landed with a heavy thud that Gautier felt but didn’t hear.
“Compliments of my brother and I. We made this one together,” she said, breathing heavily as she waved the black powder smoke out of her face. She had a pair of earmuffs on, and these she removed and dropped onto the weapon. Gautier noticed her satchel was now empty, though she still had a pistol in her cloak.
Henri stared at her in slack-jawed awe.
“What are you doing?” Gautier said, looking back and forth between her and the weapon. “We can use that on the beast!”
Danielle shook her head. “Too hot, it takes an hour to cool down and reload. I’m afraid this is all we get for now.” She gestured to the dead wardrobe woman. “Just don’t get yourself tied up again. Come on!”
She ran down the hallway. Gautier and Henri ran after her.
“I know not whether she is angel or demon, Gautier. I really don’t,” said Henri.
Gautier silently agreed.
~5~
Gautier found himself wishing he had a means to contact the remaining villagers who were fighting elsewhere in the castle—he estimated them to be thirty in number—but he only had this handful for what was sure to be a grueling match against the prince, or his beast, or both. On a gamble, he pitted his own confidence against the frightful description of the monster. Gautier was the greatest hunter in all of France. This thing would just have to be another trophy.
Outside the master’s chambers in the west wing, Gautier and Danielle noticed a pair of open double doors to their right, leading into a drawing room that had been full of musical instruments on Gautier’s last visit.
“Hold on,” Danielle said. “Why are there so many more bodies outside this room?”
Down the hallway, Gautier heard a sound that was a cross between a bear’s growl and the mating call of a mature stag. Henri looked in that direction as well.
“Does it matter? Your monster is this way!” Henri jerked a thumb after the noise.
To Gautier’s dismay, Danielle darted into the open room. Of course, he thought. Without knowing why, he followed her, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light of the chamber.
He made out the shapes of a dozen beds lined up in two rows, with the heads of the rows against the walls to either side of him. Each bed held an occupant. Upon close inspection, Gautier noticed that the beds had mechanical restraints made of iron, engraved with strange sigils that made him uncomfortable to look at them.
“Their eyes,” Danielle breathed. “This is where they do it to them.”
Gautier took one of the candlesticks and brought it close to the head of the nearest bed. The occupant’s eyes were held open by some apparatus with thin metal pincers, and though the skin around his eyes hadn’t yet turned that sandy black, the pupils had grown past the color around them, and the whites of his eyes were so bloodshot as to look red. Hovering in the air just above the man’s face was a small puff of black dust that swirled incessantly, floating and twisting of its own accord, and Gautier got the impression that it was working on turning the man into a thrall of dark magic.
“We have to get them out of here,” Gautier said. “Or we’ll be facing more of them soon.”
Danielle had been examining their faces, and when she saw the patient lying before Gautier, she gasped. “Philippe! That’s my brother!” She pawed at the various springs and latches on the bed’s contraptions until one of them clicked open and she was able to release her brother’s restraints. A small whimper escaped her full lips as she pulled the device away from his eyes, and the small black cloud extinguished straightaway.
“Ungh,” Philippe moaned, blinking rapidly. “Danielle…”
“I’m here, Philippe!” She helped him up into a sitting position and threw her arms around his neck. He didn’t immedia
tely register that she was there; he had the air of a man waking up from a tavern bender.
Footsteps came down the hall behind them. Some two dozen villagers had arrived, each of them covered in blood, soot, scorch marks, or all three. Most of them were winded. A few of them were even grinning.
“Good timing,” Henri said with a grunt. “You all look refreshed.”
“That we are. Fresh as a spring thaw,” said Léopold, the man at the head of the group. “Castle’s clear, Gau. Bon sang, what’s in this room?”
“Survivors,” Gautier said. “Help them out.”
“There are more of us,” Philippe coughed.
“What? Philippe!” Danielle tried to get him to make eye contact, but he was still palming his stinging eyelids.
“They…when they capture us, they take us to the dungeons, or to the holding cells at the top of the east tower. There are others there who were taken like I was. Please, you’ve got to help them,” Philippe pleaded.
Gautier turned back to Léopold. “I don’t care who goes, but split up and free the others. Now!” He exited the room and headed for the royal bedchamber.
“Where are you going, Gau?” asked Henri.
“To finish this.”
He faced no opposition on that final charge down the hallway. His men had cleared Prince Aubrey’s twisted magical troops, and he was proud of them. Now it was his turn to do what only he could do. He would find Prince Aubrey, find his monster, and put them both down.
With one kick from his massive hobnail boot, Gautier opened the door to the royal bedchamber. The wood splintered a little around the bolt mechanism, as if it had already been stressed, and he had merely finished it off. A sudden gust of wind hit him that he hadn’t been expecting, and it was at first pleasing against his brow, then immediately turned too-cold, and as his eyes adjusted to the dark room, he saw why.
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