Demontech: Onslaught

by David Sherman

  “They do make them live in their slops!” Haft said. “It smells like the slops are never removed.” He was very angry, and his voice showed it.

  “Maybe there’s a slops pit just on the other side of this wall,” Spinner said, but he didn’t believe it. He understood how Haft felt; he wanted to strike out at someone himself. He thought of the Golden Girl being held there when she was first brought to The Burnt Man.

  From inside the building they heard the low keening of someone trying desperately not to cry. Several other voices failed in an attempt not to cry. Someone else moaned, yet another wailed.

  Haft raised a fist to pound on the wall to get the attention of the imprisoned people inside; he wanted to tell them they would be free before morning. Spinner saw the motion, grabbed Haft’s wrist and held his hand back.

  “Don’t,” he said. “There may be guards inside.”

  “Then let’s go inside now and kill them,” Haft whispered harshly.

  “We can’t do anything here until we’ve dealt with those inside the inn,” Spinner said.

  Haft jerked his wrist from Spinner’s grip but made no further attempt to strike the wall.

  “Now let’s examine the front,” Spinner said. The sky was almost as dark as night, and the moon was several hours from rising, so the darkness they crept through along the side of the building was almost complete. Ahead of them, glowing windows showed where the inn was. In the lead, Spinner saw someone, probably Master Yoel, peering intently out a window that looked like it was in the kitchen. The innkeeper turned to say something to someone out of sight, then peered out again; he seemed to be searching both the glade and the ridge to the west.

  It was fortunate that he paused to look at the innkeeper for a cold light flooded the front of the slave barn then. Spinner instinctively stepped back into Haft before he froze in place. Haft froze as well when the front of the barn lit up—except for his eyes, which darted everywhere looking for danger, and his hand, which adjusted its grip on the axe. But where they were the side of the slave barn remained in darkness, so no one ran at them with weapons raised, no cry of alarm sounded.

  “What is that awful light?” Haft asked with a tremor in his voice.

  “Wait here,” Spinner replied. He lowered himself to his belly and slithered to the corner of the slave barn. He lay his head on its side in the dirt at the corner of the barn and inched far enough forward that he could see the front. Hanging on a wrought-iron arm above the barn door was a globe that hadn’t been visible from their hiding place on the ridge. The globe glared with an internal light so bright it illuminated the front of the barn almost like day.

  Still, no one ran toward him with weapons raised, no one cried an alarm. Spinner took another moment to observe what he could of the door. It didn’t appear to have a lock on it, merely a heavy bar holding it closed. If that was all that secured the door, it would be an easy matter to open it when the time came. He slithered backward until Haft tapped him on the feet.

  Spinner described the unexpected troll-light above the door while they made their way back to the observation post, where they’d left the horses.

  “Why didn’t we see it last night?” Haft demanded. “Did you do or say something this morning to make them suspicious? Do they expect something to happen tonight?”

  “Last night I didn’t look out any windows in the direction of that barn so I wouldn’t have seen the troll-light,” Spinner replied. “Did you look out there?”

  Haft didn’t answer. He didn’t remember looking out a window last night either.

  The mare seemed glad to have Haft return to her—that’s how he chose to interpret the nip she gave him: a love bite. He didn’t want to think she bit him because she was angry about being left alone, hobbled, and tethered to a tree; he wasn’t comfortable enough with horses to be around one that was mad at him.

  “It is many hours yet before we go into the inn,” Spinner said, “and we’ll have to travel many hours beyond that before we can rest. So we better get some sleep.”

  Haft grunted. He didn’t want to wait many hours before they entered the inn. But he understood why they had to. He said, “I’ll take first watch.”

  Spinner lay down against the tree trunk and was asleep in moments.

  Haft sat on the tree trunk and watched the inn. The first thing he saw was something else he hadn’t noticed the night before: twin lamps flanked the sign board above the inn’s door. The lamps weren’t a flickering orange like every other lamp he’d ever seen illuminating an inn sign at night. These lamps gave out a steady bluish light. Maybe Spinner was right, he thought, and the lamp had been lit over the slave barn door last night and they didn’t see it simply because they hadn’t looked outside.

  He looked at the lighted windows and tried to recall what rooms in the inn they opened onto. Serving maids rushing about with trays, and cooks sweating over caldrons and spits told him which set of windows opened into the kitchen. A corner window showed the counting room; though he didn’t see anyone there, he made out a clerk’s high desk and a scribe’s low one. The windows of the common room were closed and shuttered. Haft had never thought about it before, but he realized now that every inn he’d ever seen that offered entertainment kept its common room windows closed and shuttered during the entertainment, or at least shuttered if not closed. He realized it must be to prevent passersby from standing outside a window and watching and listening to the entertainment without having to pay for food or drink. That was a wise move on the part of innkeepers, he thought.

  Only a couple of windows were lit on the third floor, and those glowed with the warm, flickering light of oil lamps. Haft recalled there weren’t any troll-lights in the room he and Spinner had rented the night before—a room in which he spent the night alone. He didn’t see any movement through the third story windows. There were more bright windows on the second floor. In most of them he could make out men dressing or doing other things that looked like preparations for going out. Most likely they were getting ready to go down to the common room for the entertainment. These were probably men who’d been to the inn before and knew the best was kept for last.

  He didn’t have to decide which lighted window on the second floor belonged to the slavemaster’s room—only one window glowed with the cold blue of troll-light. He fixed that window’s location in his mind and tried to visualize the layout of the second floor. Though he didn’t think he’d been in that part of the inn, he assumed the second floor was laid out in a simple manner. After a moment’s thought he was sure he could find the room without hesitation. If only he could find out where the men-at-arms spent their nights. He kept watching, but none of the windows gave any hint of that.

  A steady trickle of men trooped to the inn door even after the entertainment had begun. Every time one of them arrived and opened the door, a spurt of raucous laughter came to Haft’s ears, often accompanied by a few notes of music. Nobody left.

  In time, Haft’s eyelids began to sag. He woke Spinner to take the watch so he could sleep. Before he lay down he briefed Spinner on what he’d seen, neglecting to mention only that he thought he knew the way to the slavemaster’s room.

  Spinner whiled away his watch the same way Haft had his. A part of his mind noted the same things about the same windows, and that troll-lights were unseen above the ground floor except in the slavemaster’s room. He didn’t put much thought into how to quickly find that room once they were inside the inn. He was more concerned with where the slavemaster’s men-at-arms would be once the inn had gone to sleep. He also wondered how the slave traders would react if there was enough noise to wake them. He thought it likely that most of the men spending the night in the inn were slavers or in their employ.

  He sent his mind back to the night before and how the innkeeper acted oddly in the corridor to the hidden stairs: Master Yoel must have been sending signals of some sort, or deactivating warding spells, to make opening the hidden door safe. The first three would be easy to
duplicate, he thought. There must be a lever or a trip of some sort on the column and the frieze and inside the hole in the wall. But which tassel did he tug, and did it make a difference if a different one was tugged first? He moved his hands about in the dark, trying to remember the pattern the innkeeper used on the false wall.

  The easiest thing would be to force the innkeeper to open the door to the hidden entrance to the cellar. He was sure that any other possible entrances to the cellar were locked or warded. Unfortunately, trying to get the innkeeper to open the way might also be the most dangerous thing to do. Was there another way to gain entrance?

  Men started drifting out of the inn, singly and in groups—the evening’s entertainment was over. When the door opened to let customers out, Spinner saw that the lights were up in the common room. Revelers went by foot and by horse, in both directions on the road; some went straight into the forest to the north. Spinner didn’t see any go south across the glade to the hidden wagon park, nor did any go to the southwest, as had the magician’s apprentice after he put the troll to sleep. More windows flickered to light in the upper floors of the inn, and through them he saw men preparing for bed. The windows Spinner was most interested in, though, were those near the slavemaster’s room. The bluish light in that room had gone out some time earlier.

  Lamps were lit in the rooms on both sides of the slavemaster’s quarters. Two men entered each of those rooms, wearing the uniforms of the slavemaster’s men-at-arms. One man in each room undressed for bed, while the other busied himself with other matters. Then the lamps went out and the doors opened while the men who hadn’t prepared for bed left.

  Spinner was certain there were at least five men-at-arms. The Golden Girl said there might be a dozen or more. Two were accounted for, asleep in the rooms flanking their master’s. Where were the others? Spinner had a feeling they wouldn’t be hard to find—but he had a very uncomfortable feeling they might find him and Haft first.

  Maybe what they should do first was go to the stable and free the handymen and laborers, the male slaves who were quartered there, and arm them. Then it wouldn’t only be two Marines against an unknown number of men-at-arms. No, it was likely the handymen wouldn’t believe they were truly being freed or that they could take on the slavemaster’s men and win. If they helped and the rescue failed, their lives—if they were allowed to live—would be even worse than they were already. Spinner knew that he and Haft would have to deal with the men-at-arms and get the key to the slaves’ anklets from the slavemaster. That had to be the first step. Only when they had it and began unlocking the anklets would any of the slaves believe them.

  They were going to need a diversion to ensure that the men-at-arms wouldn’t organize themselves and attack them. In the confusion caused by the diversion, they could get into the slavemaster’s room, somehow bypass warding demons, slay him, and take his key. Then they could freely move through the inn and get into the cellar to free the Golden Girl and the other women slaves.

  In his mind, Spinner rehearsed going along that short corridor behind the stage, fingering the trips on the column, the frieze, the hole in the wall, tugging the tassel, moving his hands on the false wall, going down those stairs, opening the door to that candled room with the drapes and cushions. He tried not to think about finding another man with the Golden Girl.

  A flicker of movement near the troll hut caught his eye. Enough light from the globe above the slave barn’s door reached the troll hut for him to see the apprentice opening the door. Light that seemed to emanate from the apprentice’s hand flicked on inside the hut and was visible for a second before the apprentice closed the door, but not long enough for Spinner to see anything inside it. In a moment the troll’s rumbling stopped and all the remaining bluish light in and around the inn went out. The apprentice came back out. A cold light he held in his hand blinked out as he stepped through the door.

  The glade was dark except for a few oil lamps flickering in some of the upper floor rooms of the inn and lamps in the kitchen, where Spinner could see the serving maids and cooks completing their night’s cleaning. A short while after that, the innkeeper inspected the kitchen. Then three men-at-arms appeared to escort the serving maids out. Spinner assumed they were taking them to the cellar. He wondered if a guard was kept in the cellar corridor overnight. He hadn’t seen one the night before, but maybe one was posted only after any men who paid for the night with one of the women were locked into the rooms with them; he had gone down while the kitchen was still being cleaned. It might be that other men were led into the cellar afterward. Well, that was a problem he and Haft would have to deal with when and if they encountered it.

  The innkeeper sent the cooks out of the kitchen, then went around himself to put out the lamps and candles. He carried the one remaining lighted lamp when he left the kitchen and closed the door behind him.

  A moment later the door to the counting room opened and the innkeeper entered it with the lamp in his hand. He went through the room and into the next, where he looked out the window as though searching the glade and ridge side for intruders. Then he pulled the shutters closed and Spinner could see no more. But he knew where to find the innkeeper now—either to kill him or to get his assistance in opening the hidden door to the cellar. At no time did he see the innkeeper or anyone else place a ward on the kitchen door. Maybe, he thought, the reputation of the inn was such that Master Yoel and the slavemaster were confident that no one would enter unbidden during the night.

  The time for observation was over. It was time for action. Spinner woke Haft and they briefly discussed what they were going to do. Haft particularly liked the diversion Spinner came up with.

  CHAPTER

  FOURTEEN

  Spinner and Haft assumed there were no watch-sprites hidden about watching the glade. They made that assumption partly because too many people had walked freely about the glade during the day; if guardian watch-sprites were present, how could they tell the difference between those who were allowed freedom of passage in the open valley and those whom they were supposed to report? The sprites would be crying false alarms constantly, unless—and this was something neither man wanted to think about—dryads were on watch, who only watched at night. So they simply gave the slave barn’s guards a wide berth while they walked across the dark glade to the back of the inn.

  To satisfy their curiosity, they did pass close to the troll hut.

  “Pffew,” Haft snorted when they were a few feet away. “Why didn’t you tell me they stink like that?” He cupped a hand over his mouth and nose to block the acrid, oily smell emanating from the small building.

  Spinner coughed softly and covered his own nose and mouth. “Because I didn’t know,” he whispered.

  The air around the troll hut felt like it would be visible if there were light to see by. They hurried past, trying not to breathe.

  “They even make the troll live in its own slops!” Haft said. “I wonder why it doesn’t break free when the magician’s apprentice comes to feed it?”

  Spinner shook his head. He knew nothing about trolls’ living habits. “Maybe trolls like living in their own slops,” he said. “Or maybe it’s chained so it can’t break free.”

  The kitchen door was sturdy wood on its lower half, but its upper half was set with a grid of small glass panes. Haft tested the door. It was barred from the inside. Without hesitation he drew his knife and sharply smacked the hilt against a bottom corner glass pane. Large shards fell to the floor inside the door and shattered, making more noise than either of them wanted. They froze for a moment, listening, but heard no sound, not even a halloo from the guards outside the slave barn.

  Haft used his knife to pry out the remaining shards of glass and carefully set them down, then he stuck his hand inside and felt around. The bar was too big for him to lift out one-handed without dropping it, and the noise of the bar falling on the floor would surely excite some interest inside. He withdrew his hand and broke the other bottom corner pane.
Again they froze and listened for any sign that someone had heard the breaking glass, and detected no sound or movement.

  Together, Haft reaching in from one side and Spinner from the other, they lifted the bar and turned it around so it stood on one end, leaning against the wall next to the door. Haft quietly swung the door open. They slipped inside and eased it closed. Then they stood for several moments, again waiting to see if someone would come to investigate the noises and letting their eyes adjust to the greater darkness inside the inn.

  No one came, and in a few moments they could make out the vague forms of the stoves, ovens, and counters that filled the kitchen. They didn’t bar the door behind them; they didn’t want to leave any secured doors between themselves and their exit in case they had to retreat in a hurry. Weapons held ready, they padded softly, cautiously, to the door to the common room. Haft opened it just far enough to squeeze through. He stepped to one side, and Spinner slipped through and closed the door behind him.

  The common room was even darker than the kitchen had been, and at first they could make out nothing except a faint sliver of warm light where the stairway to the upper floors was. They held still and listened. All they could hear were the sounds of a sleeping building: somewhere someone coughed; someone else snored loudly; someone cried out during a nightmare. Haft tapped Spinner’s arm, and they crept toward the faint light at the stairwell. When they reached the stairway, they climbed along one side of the stairs to reduce the chances of a loose tread squealing underfoot.

  The stairway went up several steps, then turned right at a small landing. A few more steps and it made another right turn, so when they reached the second floor, they were facing back, over the common room. At the top of the stairway a corridor went perpendicular to the head of the stairs. At each end and in the middle, another corridor branched off from it, leading toward the front of the inn. A low-lit lamp was at each intersection. The lamps gave just enough light to guide a night-waker who had to find his way to the privy closet. The walls of the corridors were white, and on both sides every few paces along them were the dark rectangles of doors. The two men looked for the glowing red-eyes of watch-sprites but didn’t see any.