Gardan said, “Each has been instructed. At first hint of trouble, no one is allowed to leave that building unless he wears your tabard and is known by sight. I have thirty archers in place on the rooftops on all sides to discourage any seeking quick exit. A herald with a trumpet will sound alarm and two companies of horsemen will exit the palace at the bugle. They will reach us within five minutes. Any in the streets not of our company will be ridden down, that is the order.”
Arutha quickly put on a tabard and tossed one each to Jimmy and Laurie. When all were wearing the Prince’s purple and black, Arutha said, “It is time.” The Pathfinders led the first two groups into the cellar below the inn. Then it was time for Jimmy to lead the Prince’s group. He took them to the slip-me-out behind a false cask in the wall and led them down the narrow stairs to the sewers. The stench caused a few soldiers to gasp and utter soft oaths, but a single word from Gardan restored order to the ranks. Several shuttered lanterns were lit. Jimmy motioned for a single line to be formed, and led the Prince’s raiders off toward the Merchants’ Quarter of the city.
After nearly a half hour walking, past slowly moving channels carrying waste and garbage toward the harbor, they found themselves approaching the large landing. Arutha ordered the lanterns shuttered. Jimmy went forward. Arutha tried to follow his movements but was astonished as the darkness seemed to swallow him up. Arutha strained to hear him, but Jimmy was noiseless. For the waiting soldiers, the strangest thing about the sewers was the stillness, broken only by the sound of slow water lapping. Each soldier had taken care to muffle all armor and weapons, so should there be a Nighthawk lookout he wouldn’t be alerted.
Jimmy returned after a moment and signaled that a single guard stood at the bottom of the stairs to the building. With his mouth near Arutha’s ear he whispered, “You’ll never get one of your men close enough before the guard gives alarm. I’m the only one who stands a chance. Just come running when you hear the scuffle begin.”
Jimmy pulled his dirk out of his boot and slipped away. Suddenly there was a painful grunt and Arutha and his men were off, all thoughts of silence discarded. The Prince was the first to reach the boy, who struggled with a powerful guard. The youth had come up behind the man and had leaped and grabbed him around the throat, but had only wounded him with the dirk, which now lay upon the stones. The man was nearly blue from being choked, but had tried to smash Jimmy against the wall. Arutha ended the struggle with a single thrust of his blade and the man slipped silently to the stones. Jimmy let go and smiled weakly. He had taken a terrible battering. Arutha whispered, “Stay here,” to him, then signaled his men to follow.
Ignoring his promise to Volney to wait behind while Gardan led the assault, Arutha silently hurried up the stairs. He halted before a wooden door with a single sliding latch, placed his ear next to it, and listened. Muffled voices from the other side caused him to raise his hand in warning. Gardan and the others slowed their approach.
Arutha quietly moved the door’s latch and pushed gently. He peeked into a large, well-lit basement. Sitting around three tables were about a dozen armed men. Several were tending weapons and armor. The scene was more reminiscent of a soldiers’ commons than a basement. What Arutha found more incredible was that this basement was located below the most richly appointed and successful brothel in the city, the House of Willows, one frequented by most of the rich merchants and no small portion of the minor nobility of Krondor. Arutha could well understand how the Nighthawks could gain access to so much information about the palace and his own comings and goings. Many a courtier would boast of his knowledge of some “secret” or other to impress his whore. It would not have taken more than a chance mention from someone in the palace that Gardan had planned to ride out to the east gate to meet the Prince for the assassin to know Arutha’s route that night earlier in the week.
Abruptly a figure entered Arutha’s view that made the Prince catch his breath. A moredhel warrior approached a man who sat oiling a broadsword and spoke quietly to him. The man nodded while the Dark Brother continued his discourse. Then suddenly he spun. He pointed directly toward the door and opened his mouth to speak. Arutha didn’t hesitate. He shouted, “Now!” and charged into the room.
The basement erupted into a riot of action. Those who had moments before been sitting idly by now grabbed up weapons and answered the assault. Others bolted out doors leading up to the brothel or down to other parts of the sewers. From above, screams and shouts told of customers alarmed by the fleeing assassins. Those who attempted to leave via the exits to the sewers were quickly pushed back up the stairs into the cellar by the other units of Arutha’s invading force.
Arutha ducked a blow by the moredhel warrior and leaped to the left as soldiers fought their way into the center of the room, separating the Prince from the Dark Brother. The few assassins who stood their ground charged into Arutha’s men with complete disregard for their own lives, forcing the soldiers to kill them. The sole exception was the moredhel, who seemed to be in a frenzy trying to reach Arutha. Arutha shouted, “Take him alive!”
The moredhel was soon the only Nighthawk standing in the room, and he was forced back to the wall and held. Arutha came up to him. The dark elf locked gazes with the Prince, naked hatred upon his face. He allowed himself to be disarmed as Arutha put up his own sword. Arutha had never been this close to a living moredhel before. There was no doubt they were elven kin, though elves tended to be fairer of hair and eyes. As Martin had remarked more than once, the moredhel were a handsome race, if one dark of soul. Then, as one soldier bent to examine the moredhel’s boot top for weapons, the creature kneed the guard in the face, pushed away the other, and leaped at Arutha. Arutha had barely an instant to duck away from hands outstretched for his face. He moved to his left and saw the moredhel stiffen as Laurie’s blade took him in the chest. The moredhel collapsed to the floor, but with a final spasm tried to reach out and claw at Arutha’s leg. Laurie kicked the creature’s hands, deflecting the weak clawing motion. “Look well at the nails. I saw them gleam as he let himself be disarmed,” said the singer.
Arutha grabbed a wrist and inspected the moredhel’s hand closely. “Careful how you handle it,” warned Laurie. Arutha saw tiny needles embedded in the Dark Brother’s nails, each with a dark stain at the end. Laurie said, “It’s an old whore’s trick, though only those with some gold and a friendly chirurgeon can get it done. If a man tries to leave without paying or is given to beating his whores, a simple scratch and the man is no longer a problem.”
Arutha looked at the singer. “You have my debt.”
“Banath preserve us!”
Arutha and Gardan turned to see that Jimmy had crossed to a fallen man, fair and well dressed. He was staring at the dead assassin. “Golden,” he said softly.
“You knew this man?” asked Arutha.
“He was a Mocker,” said Jimmy. “In my life I would not have suspected him.”
“Is there not a one left alive?” demanded the Prince. He was in a fury, for his orders had been to capture as many as possible.
Gardan, who had been taking reports from his men, said, “Highness, there were full thirty and five assassins in this basement and the rooms above. All either fought so our men had no choice but to kill or turned and slew one another, then threw themselves upon their own weapons.” Gardan held out something to the Prince. “They all wore these, Highness.” In his hand was an ebony hawk on a gold chain.
Then there was an abrupt silence, not as if the men had stopped their movements, but rather as if something had been heard and all had instantly halted to listen, yet there was no sound. An odd dampening of sound occurred, as if a heavy, oppressive presence had entered the room, and an eerieness descended upon Arutha and his men for a brief moment. Then a chill fell over the room. Arutha felt his neck hair rise, as some primordial dread filled him. Something alien had entered the room, an unseen but palpable evil. As Arutha turned to say something to Gardan and the others, a soldier sho
uted, “Highness, I think this one is alive. He moved!” He sounded eager to please his Prince. Then a second soldier said, “This one, too!” Arutha saw the two soldiers lean over the fallen assassins.
All in the basement gasped in horror as one of the corpses moved, his hand shooting upward to seize the kneeling soldier by the throat. The corpse sat up, forcing the soldier upward. The terrible wet cracking sound of the soldier’s throat being crushed echoed in the room. The other corpse sprang upward, sinking his teeth in the neck of the second guard, ripping open his throat while Arutha and his men were rooted in shocked silence. The first dead assassin tossed away the choking soldier and turned. Fixing milk-white eyes upon the Prince, the dead man smiled. As if from a great distance, a voice sounded from the grinning maw. “Again we meet, Lord of the West. Now shall my servants have you, for you have not brought your meddling priests. Rise! Rise, O my children! Rise, and kill!”
Around the room the corpses began to twitch and move and soldiers gasped and offered prayers to Tith, the soldiers’ god. One, thinking quickly, hacked the head off the second corpse as it started to rise. The headless corpse shuddered and fell, but began to rise once more while the rolling head mouthed silent curses. Like grotesque marionettes manipulated by a demented puppeteer, the bodies rose, in jerks and spasms. Jimmy, his voice almost quavering, said, “I think we should have waited on the temples’ pleasure.”
Gardan shouted, “Protect the Prince!” and men leaped at the animated corpses. Like crazed butchers in a cattle pen, soldiers began madly chopping in all directions. Gore spattered the walls and all who stood in the room, but the bodies continued to rise.
Soldiers slipped in the blood and found themselves overwhelmed by cold, slimy hands that gripped arms and legs. Some managed throttled cries as dead fingers closed around their throats or teeth bit hard into their flesh.
Soldiers of the Prince of Krondor hacked and slashed, sending limbs flying through the air, but the hands and arms only flopped madly about the floor like bleeding fish out of water. Arutha felt a tugging at his leg and looked down to see a severed hand gripping at his ankle. A frantic kick sent the hand flying across the room to strike the opposite wall.
Arutha shouted, “Get out and hold closed those doors!” Soldiers swore as they cut and kicked their way through the blood and pulped flesh before them. Many of the soldiers, hardened veterans, were coming close to panic. Nothing in their experience had prepared them for the horror they faced in that basement. Each time a body was knocked down, it would but try to rise once more. And each time a comrade fell, he stayed down.
Arutha led the way toward the door leading upstairs, the closest exit. Jimmy and Laurie followed. Arutha paused to cut apart another rising corpse and Jimmy dashed past the Prince. Jimmy reached the door first and swore as he looked up. Stumbling down the stairs toward them came the corpse of a beautiful woman, wearing a diaphanous gown, torn half way, with a spreading bloodstain at the waist. Her blank white eyes fastened on Arutha at the bottom of the stairs and she shrieked in delight. Jimmy ducked under a clumsy slash and drove his shoulder into her bloody stomach, shouting, “ ’Ware the stairs!” They both went down and he was first to his feet, scrambling past her.
Arutha looked back into the basement and saw his men being pulled down. Gardan and several other soldiers had reached the safety of the far doors and were attempting to close them, while stragglers who were frantically attempting to reach them were being pulled down. A few valiant men were pulling closed the doors from inside, ignoring a sure sentence of death. The floor was a sea of gore, wet and treacherous, and many soldiers slipped and fell, never to rise again. Detached body parts seemed somehow to gather together and corpses would stand once more. Remembering the creature in the palace and how it had gained in strength as time passed, Arutha shouted, “Bar the doors!”
Laurie leaped up the stairs and struck at the grinning whore, once more on her feet. Her blond head rolled past Arutha as he raced up the stairs after Jimmy and the singer.
Reaching the ground floor of the House of Willows, Arutha and his companions were greeted with the sight of soldiers struggling with more animated corpses. The horse companies had arrived, cleared the streets, and entered the building. But they, like those below, were unprepared to fight dead opponents. Outside the main door several bodies, impaled with dozens of arrows, were trying to rise. Each time one would gain its feet, a flight of bowshafts would strike it from the dark, knocking it over again.
Jimmy glanced around the room and made a leap atop a table. With an acrobat’s spring, he jumped high over a guard being strangled by a dead Nighthawk and grabbed at a wall covering. The tapestry held his weight for a moment, then the room filled with a loud tearing sound as it ripped free of its fastenings high overhead. Yards of fine cloth fell about Jimmy, and he quickly disentangled himself. He grabbed up as much cloth as he could and dragged the tapestry to the large fireplace in the main room of the brothel. He dumped it in the fireplace and then started overturning anything that would burn onto it. Within minutes flames were spreading out into the room.
Arutha shoved away a corpse and yanked down another tapestry, which he tossed to Laurie. The singer ducked as a dead assassin lunged at him, and tangled the corpse in the fabric. Quickly spinning the dead creature, Laurie wrapped it in cloth and with a kick sent it stumbling toward Jimmy. Jimmy leaped aside and let the cloth-bound thing stumble into the rapidly spreading flames, tripping it as it went past. The dead man fell into the flames and began shrieking in rage.
The heat in the room was becoming unbearable, as was the choking smoke. Laurie ran to the door and halted just before the threshold. “The Prince!” he shouted to the bowmen atop the surrounding buildings. “The Prince is coming through!”
“Hurry!” came the answering shout as an arrow knocked down a rising corpse a few feet away from Laurie.
Arutha and Jimmy came out of the firelit door, followed by a few coughing soldiers. Arutha shouted, “To me!”
At once a dozen guards were dashing across the street, past grooms brought along to hold the cavalry mounts. The stench of blood and burning bodies and the heat from the fire were causing the horses to nicker and tug at their reins as the grooms led them away.
When the guards reached Arutha, several picked up arrow-studded bodies and tossed them through the windows into the fire. The shrieks of the burning corpses filled the night.
A dead Nighthawk stumbled out the door, its left side ablaze, its arms outstretched as if to embrace Arutha. Two soldiers caught at it and hurled it back through the door into the fire, disregarding the burns they suffered as a consequence. Arutha moved from the door while soldiers denied exit to those corpses seeking to flee the inferno. He crossed the street as the most exclusive brothel in the city went up in flames. To a soldier he said, “Send word to those in the sewers to make sure nothing gets out of the basement.” The soldier saluted and ran off.
In short order the house was a tower of fire, the surrounding area lit like day. Neighboring buildings spilled their inhabitants into the street as the heat threatened to ignite the block. Arutha called for the soldiers to form bucket lines and douse buildings on both sides of the House of Willows.
Less than a half hour after the blaze began, there came a loud crash and a billowing explosion of smoke as the main floor caved in and the building collapsed. Laurie said, “So much for those things in the basement.”
Arutha’s face was set in a grim expression as he said, “Some good men remained down there.”
Jimmy had stood transfixed by the sight, his face smudged with soot and blood. Arutha placed his hand upon the boy’s shoulder. “Again, you did well.”
Jimmy could only nod. Laurie said, “I need strong drink. Gods, I’ll never get that stench out of my nose.”
Arutha said, “Let’s return to the palace. This night’s work is done.”
SIX
RECEPTION
Jimmy tugged at his collar.
&nbs
p; Master of Ceremonies Brian deLacy struck the floor of the audience hall with his staff and the boy snapped eyes forward. Ranging from fourteen to eighteen years of age, the squires of Arutha’s court were being instructed upon the duties they would be performing during the upcoming celebration of Anita and Arutha’s wedding. The old Master, a slow-speaking, impeccably attired man, said, “Squire James, if you can’t remain still, we shall have to find something of an active duty for you, say, running messages between the palace and the outer billets?” There was a barely audible groan, for the visiting nobles were forever sending inconsequential notes back and forth, and the outer billets, where many of them were to be housed, were as far away as three-quarters of a mile from the palace proper. Such duty was mainly nonstop running to and fro for ten hours a day. Master deLacy turned to the author of the groan and said, “Squire Paul, perhaps you would care to join Squire James?”
When no answer was forthcoming, he continued. “Very well. Those of you who are expecting relatives to attend should know that all of you will be required to serve such duties in turn.” With that announcement, all the boys groaned, swore, and shuffled. Again the staff struck the wooden floor loudly. “You’re not dukes, earls, and barons yet! One or two days’ duty will not cause your death. There will simply be too many in the palace for the servants, porters, and pages to meet every demand.”
Another of the new boys, Squire Locklear, the youngest son of the Baron of Land’s End, said, “Sir, which of us will be at the wedding?”
“In time, boy, in time. All of you will be escorting guests to their places in the great hall and in the banquet hall. During the ceremony you’ll all stand respectfully at the rear of the great hall, so you’ll all get to see the wedding.”
A page ran into the room and handed the Master a note, then dashed off without awaiting a reply. Master deLacy read the note, then said, “I must make ready for the reception for the King. All of you know where you must be today. Meet here again once the King and His Highness are closeted in council this afternoon. And anyone who is late will have an extra day of running messages to the outer billets. That is all for now.” As he walked off, he could be heard to mutter, “So much to do and so little time.”
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