by T. C. Rypel
“All right, now angle that thing in on the wards,” Monetto directed. “If those things get in here, we want to be ready.”
The brigands-for-hire studied them narrowly, saw for the first time that their longbows were not the weapons of Llorm troops, nor were their light armor, under the cloaks.
“You’re no Llorm!” one of the mercenaries growled, moving away from the mortar. Eddings shot him, high in the chest.
“Gracias and good night,” Aldo said, pushing two drunks off the allure at once, drawing and slashing his way through the stunned men with his short, vicious axe. Eddings emptied another pistol into the sudden carnage and eruptions of blood and mortal screaming. Two survivors broke away from them, shouting for help.
Seizing a torch, Monetto began to crank the ratchet that set the mortar’s trajectory. Eddings helped him turn it. With the first reports of gunfire, chaos had broken out below, men sobering immediately. Llorm troopers tried to restore order, to make sense of the scene on the middle bailey wall. Panic gripped the ward when they saw the mortar angling to fire within the castle fastness.
And then Monetto touched it off—
Soldiers had begun streaming up the stairs at the tower corners. At the armory tower, Gonji and Wilf had emerged from one portal, Garth and Arvin from another—
The mortar blasted with a thunderous explosion, the cast-iron ball whistling high above Castle Lenska, its return spine-chilling to see.
Gonji and Wilf rained shafts into the mounting troops, pitching them backward into their fellows. Arvin’s pistols barked from the roof of the great hall, to which he and Garth had dropped. The smith was a frightening apparition, axe and broadsword readied for a plunge into their midst.
On the middle bailey wall, Monetto and Eddings jumped for joy to see the great iron ball scatter a dozen troops and steeds with its shattering impact, fragments felling a few. Eddings’ eyes gleamed with battle frenzy as he became caught up in the madness of retribution.
“Look out there!” Eddings cried.
They picked off two creeping men along the allure, near the prison tower, with shaft and pistol, but crossbow quarrels began to hiss by and shatter around them now.
“Did you see how they did this? Do you think you can help me do it again?” Monetto indicated the mortar, and Eddings bobbed his head readily, rose and squeezed off his last pistol shot. Using the mortar barrel for cover, they began clearing and reloading. Monetto pointed at the powder magazine abandoned in the ward below. “I used to be pretty good at aiming this thing....”
“Monetto—get out of here!” Gonji was shouting, halfway along the allure to them. “You’re through.”
“Not yet—just let me try something. Distract them for me, then get along before they pinpoint you—”
Gonji cast about, grabbed a torch. He glanced at the gatehouse. The Llorm had turned to direct their fire southward, clustering at the front of the battlements, for some reason. Gonji looked down at the gate as the great blast of wind ruffled his clothing and flared the torch. The mercenaries in the ward, running for their confiscated guns when they had come under fire, were turning back inside again, empty-handed. And out in the forest, something moved. Smoke. And sudden outbursts of flame—a flash fire! The drawbridge was being raised.
The samurai heard the howl of the werewolf—and Tumo tumbled into the middle ward, with Simon on his back, the great axe buried between the giant’s shoulder blades. Tumo shrieked piercingly and beat at the back of his head.
“Simon—it’s Simon!” Wilf cried needlessly in glee. Gonji only nodded in awe.
The soldiers attempting to scale to the allure froze now, indecisive. Wilf resumed his arrow attack.
“Get out of here, Monetto,” Gonji yelled over his shoulder, flinging the torch down the stairwell of the armorer’s tower.
“You just get Mord!” The mortar boomed and sizzled the air to crash its ball into the southwest corner of the ward, nearer still to the powder kegs. The crazed mercenaries on the opposite wall took up the insane idea and hurried to angle their weaker bombards toward the bushi, filling the barrels with stone shot.
Gonji’s torch caught in the tower powder magazine—
The resounding explosion cast heavy stone clear across the ward, felling men, shattering the kitchens and ripping the foundation from the tower. It sank ten feet and began to totter on its uneven mooring. Black smoke fumed for fifty yards across the open ward. Wilf was knocked flat on the allure, and the concussion dumped Arvin and Garth down from the roof and onto the veranda of the long hall. They shook it off, grinning at each other with streaked, sooty faces, and dropped to the street amongst their bedazzled enemies. Gonji and Wilf anchored their weapons and bolted the fulminating tower area.
“It was that damned Monetto’s idea,” Gonji called out, shaking a fist at the biller before he and Wilf sprang down to the still intact bakehouse roof. Flames spread rapidly to the crumbling kitchens, and servants ran everywhere, screaming.
Wilf and Gonji slashed their way through the fleeing soldiers who recognized them, quickly skittering toward the hall, where another of Arvin’s pistols blared in the vestibule.
Out in the ward, unimpeded by the fire and thunder and pounding of feet and panicked steeds, Simon dug fore and hind talons into Tumo’s pulpy flesh. He clung like some huge, raging parasitic thing, and when he found space between the great flailing arms that beat at what Tumo could no longer see, he clamped powerful canine jaws down on the windpipe. The werewolf ripped out a ragged chunk of pulpy flesh, blood spouting as if from a ghastly fountain.
All along the southern ramparts, wide-eyed sentries were pointing.
Below—frantic mercenaries, fighting with gate guards over illicit firearms and the manning of the capstans. The drawbridge, portcullis, and gates were finally shut, in the hopes of barring entry.
At the edge of the burning forest—the shapeless black mass that began to take form as it neared its quarry; the wailing and writhing of tormented shades out of perdition; the black-fire tracery, darker than the night, of unearthly claws; and the gaping maw that seemed capable of swallowing sanity itself.
The Hell-Hound approached, scorching the forest slopes with its touch from another world. And nothing fashioned of man could keep it out.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
“It’s just the bombards, sire, that’s all,” the Llorm officer assured. “The adventurers are still—you know—frenzied from battle. They’re undisciplined; it takes them days sometimes to—”
“I tell you I heard pistols,” Klann argued from where he stood on the dais, striving to listen, “here in the castle walls, where I’ve forbidden it.”
General Gorkin hurried up to him, a questioning look on his face. He began to urge the soldiers in the hall to rouse themselves from their stupor; some had already fallen asleep and were kicked awake, murky-eyed and heads spinning.
Klann unsheathed his long blade and waved for his personal Llorm guards to accompany him out into the halls.
The explosion of the armorer’s tower knocked them off their feet, the parquet floor splitting in places. Women screamed in the hall as they tumbled; some of the roisterers began to heave.
Bewildered by it all, King Klann shuffled out to see the scramble of men through the halls. A trio of Llorm spotted him and dashed toward him. “Your Majesty—werewolves without! They’ve killed Tumo! And we’re under attack by bandits—”
“They’ve seen the samurai among them—”
“And something else,” another man added breathlessly. “Some monstrous thing glowing in the forest—it’s set the woods ablaze—it’s coming here!”
“The drawbridge is raised,” his commander growled. “Nothing can get in here now.”
And then Mord was rushing up to them, panic-stricken, blaring something about a Hell-spawned beast and railing at them to take defensive measures. He darted past them, shouting all the while.
There were more gunshots—this time unmistakable—just ou
tside the great hall’s vaulted foyer.
“Get the king back inside the banquet hall!” Gorkin was ordering.
The Llorm flourished their weapons now in all directions, and they pressed unwilling mercenaries back toward the hall to defend the king. Officers began shouted arguments concerning the wisdom of trying to move King Klann to the safety of the central keep. And then Klann allowed himself to be swept along by a tide of elite guards, as even horsemen clattered sharply over the stone floor of the corridors, now, and steel clashed amid shouts and mortal cries.
* * * *
Mord knew his peril. Before anyone had reported them, he sensed the approach of predator and prey—Wolverangue, the Hell-Spawn, whom he had invoked; and the bestial captive spirit that roamed in protection of the territory, the massive golden werewolf, that creature of conflicting forces Mord had never come to understand.
He swept through the middle bailey tunnels until he reached a narrow corridor to the great hall. Pushing past frightened, scurrying troops, he spotted Klann amidst a press of protective bodies.
“Milord! Milord king!” he bellowed in his thunderous voice. “Wolverangue has come—the Hell-Hound! It must not enter these walls, lest it destroy us all. They must stop it.”
The sorcerer rushed on, sensing the anointed girl’s presence near the chapel at the northwest drum tower. His evil soul roiled in panic. There must be a way to control the Hell-Hound. He simply could not think of it in his weakened state. Perhaps if he had even a small influx of life energy, a single sacrifice—the girl he had chosen for the Dark Master. His Master must he angry with him that he had not completed the sacrifice. That was it, that was it....
And then he located her—the servant Genya—
Mord dragged her out from under the pew where she had been cringing, pulled her along by her long, dark hair. She fought like a wildcat, beating and clawing at him. He caught the hand that held the dagger and twisted the weapon out of her grasp. She kicked and snarled.
The sorcerer slapped her soundly with the back of a gloved hand, knocking her senseless. Then he bore her along over a shoulder, taking the long way around the middle bailey hall, descending as soon as he could to the cellar level, then the sub-cellar, and downward into the dungeons beneath his own tower.
There would be no one to stop him, and he would soon have the power he needed. When he neared the foundation of the central keep gatehouse, he narrowly missed being crushed by the collapse of a mountain of stone. A searing blast of heat flashed at his face. He would have to cut across a ward to reach the prison tower.
The Hell-Hound was at the gatehouse, burning its way through! Nothing could stop it. It would move over the earth, impervious to harm, until it destroyed the one it had come for.
And with an uncommon onset of fear, for the first time Mord realized why its prey, the werewolf, had led it here.
* * * *
Garth and Arvin ran inside the great hall, which gave them access to Castle Lenska’s maze of inner corridors. They turned right, mingling with baffled mercenaries and Llorm alike, who stumbled to and fro, frantically inquiring into the nature and number of the enemy, reluctant to find out for themselves.
“Iorgens!” a voice called ahead of them. Three Llorm charged them, swords and bucklers upraised in combative postures.
Arvin pulled free Gonji’s bow and fumbled out a shaft. “Why didn’t you wear a damned close-helmet, monsieur?” the Frenchman grumbled at Garth. He dropped the arrow.
Garth tore into them with sword and axe, downing a soldier with the first wicked pass and driving the other two back along the corridor.
“Why do you do this, Iorgens?” one oppressed Llorm cried in bewilderment. Arvin’s shaft knocked him backward with a grunt and a clatter. The last man was disarmed by the collapsing X-blow of Garth’s twin arms. The smith leveled his broadsword, breathing hard, and wincing a bit to see the arm wound he had dealt a former comrade. “Now...forgive me...but why don’t you tell me...where I can find...that blasted sorcerer....”
The Llorm trembled a bit in his pain. “If I knew that, I’d go after him myself,” the injured man asserted.
Garth lowered his guard and turned away. Arvin’s shout came a second too late. The bleeding Llorm trooper lunged for his blade and brought it up from the floor while on one knee. Garth whirled—their blade points plunged home simultaneously—
Garth’s lower left side began leaking blood through his pierced breastplate. But the Llorm yelled out a cry of mortal agony.
“Oh, Garth...,” Arvin whined to see the spurting, lapping blood.
“Never mind...let’s move on....” The smith’s eyes shut in sorrowful regret.
They turned a corner and ran nearly head-on into two mercenaries. Arvin clawed out his last pistol. The brigands halted and held up warding hands.
“The sorcerer—where is he?” Arvin snarled.
“Probably with the king—in the banquet hall.” They backed away anxiously. One of them recognized Garth from the battle for Vedun. His eyes widened. “They’re here!” They turned and sprinted off when they saw Arvin waver and draw back the weapon’s muzzle. He re-engaged his bead on their backs, but Garth stayed his arm and directed him back the way they had come.
* * * *
Cutting through the helter-skelter dash of panicked troops, Wilf and Gonji used the fuming smoke and dust to conceal their run for the great hall. They gained two loose steeds and clattered up the portico steps. A press of Llorm emerged to block the archway.
Gonji nocked a clothyard shaft and drew back on Gerhard’s mighty bow. Grunting with the searing pain in his ribs, he fired. The armor-piercer arrow tore clean through a hauberk of one man and broke skin on the midsection of the soldier behind him.
Kicking his mount’s flanks, the samurai trampled through the falling bodies, catching a fleeting glimpse of Wilf’s pained outcry. The hook of a pikeman’s ranseur sliced open the young smith’s side.
They charged through the vestibule corridor, slashing at the confused men who raised steel more in self-defense than attack. A well-aimed halberd, deflected by Gonji’s katana, dug into his horse’s shoulder. The shrieking steed tumbled, tossing Gonji to the stone floor. Rolling with the fall, he scurried after his lost weapons, retrieving the Sagami in time to parry a blow and slash down a saber-wielding mercenary in a fanning of blood droplets.
Wilf clattered about, swinging and stamping, still astride his mount, clinging close to the withers. “Genya!” he roared. “Where is Genya?” His side leaked dark blood, though the wound had not been deep.
The samurai disarmed a mercenary and caught him up at the throat with a ridge hand. He held him against a wall, eyes glinting with savage determination, blade point at the brigand’s belly.
“The sorcerer, mercenary,” he grated in Spanish. “Where is Mord?”
“I—I don’t know—I swear,” the man choked out. Gonji increased the pressure.
“And Klann?”
“The hall—the banquet hall—” The man pointed weakly.
Gonji kicked his downed blade along the corridor, and the bandit started off without retrieving it. But Wilf halted him from horseback, freezing the man with a pistol. The free companion’s face was a mask of terror.
“Do you know the servant Genya?” Wilf demanded.
“I don’t know any servants,” the man cried, easing away, eyes intent on the wheel-lock.
“Come on, Wilf!” Gonji slung the longbow and quiver. Wilf’s captive ran.
The young smith swung down from the horse, sheathed Spine-cleaver and brought his bow, the pistol still at the ready. Two Llorm recognized them and came on. The first raised his arbalest, and Wilf’s echoing pistol bowled him over. Gonji took the other man down with two efficient sword cuts.
Then they saw Arvin and Garth running toward them, and the four were reunited with cries of gleeful relief.
“The hall,” Arvin shouted.
“We know.” Gonji turned them down the corridor to
ward the struggling band of Llorm and mercenaries outside the doors of the banquet hall.
Wilf saw his father’s wounded state. “Look, Papa,” he breathed, showing his own bleeding ribs. “Matching wounds, nicht wahr?” Garth shook his head in disapproval.
In the banquet hall, King Klann took up a defensive posture behind an overturned table. Others were similarly upset for cover. Llorm officers barked out orders of deployment, but the mercenaries had demurred, many of them attempting to quit the place, while faithful troops fought to herd them back to defend the king. Several men were killed and wounded in the in-fighting. Bodies blocked the arched doors agape.
“Shut those damned doors!” the castellan, Gorkin, bellowed.
The werewolf howled in the vestibule of the great hall, and the fleeing mercenaries performed a swift about-face, dragging and pushing the dead and injured and jamming inside the doors.
Unnoticed in the shouting and din and jostling bodies, the four bushi slipped into the hall, fanning out quickly. Wilf and Arvin ascended the stairs on two sides of the gallery; Gonji and Garth hunkered low to avoid recognition, helms tipped away from the pitched defenders around Klann, pushing close behind stumbling mercenaries.
The doors were shut and barred from within.
* * * *
The bombards on the far wall roared and tossed stone shot high into the air to sail over the walls at Monetto and Eddings’ left. The shooting mercenaries hooted and hastily reloaded, for they were finding the range; it had become a doomsday game to them, as madness swept the walls.
Somewhere below, the great golden werewolf, Simon Sardonis, snarled among screaming men and roiling smoke and dust.
Monetto touched off their own mortar again, the deadlier cast-iron shot lobbing among the stars. As it descended, another bombard on the west wall, overcharged by its bandit crew, exploded, dislodging chunks of ashlar and strewing lifeless bodies in all directions.
Then the bushi’s mortar round fell and struck among the powder magazines below—The ward went up in thunder and flash-fire!