Forsaken

by Jon Kiln

: Where Darkness Rules

  The ledge had breaks that left dangerous drops to the deadly salt lake below. Captain Berengar made the leaps and held on to keep from plummeting down to become like the petrified crane. He turned and steadied the lieutenant after his jump. As they followed the rock wall up to the ruined castle, Berengar came to believe that this was not the original approach. The primary back entrance must have collapsed along with the floor of the forest, in whatever had changed this land into a poisoned trap.

  They came up on the plateau by the back of the dark wall. The ground crumbled and fell away from one of the captain’s boots. He hugged the wall and they worked their way around to the massive break they had seen from across the expanse.

  Berengar took hold of the sharp edge where the wall ended. He looked up over the pile of separated block at the dark manor above. He looked back at Nisero who continued to stare up at the structure. He nodded without looking away, and the captain nodded back despite the fact that Nisero wasn’t looking at him.

  The captain climbed up the block and over into the patches of tall weeds. The ruins of a smith’s shed hung heavy in the sagging middle. A building near the interior of the protective wall was burned to its shell. Trees grew tall out of the gutted center. Berengar stared hard at it as he thought about the fate of his own home and family. He imagined the burned and aged structure before him had been an armory. Such a thing was fit for attack by an invading force. Berengar saw no honor in burning homes and families.

  He looked away and approached the great castle. The door and archway were collapsed as well. Splintered and worn beams stuck up in broken pieces from the rubble. He considered circling around to the front of the lord’s castle to check the main entrance, but the captain’s attention went to the lower windows.

  He left the rubble and found one set of bars rusted and broken away from the frame. Without conversation, the two men lifted the disconnected bars and moved them down the wall. They did not discuss staying quiet, but they did their best to do so, and the metal scraped faintly against the stone.

  The stained glass that the captain had only previously seen in grand cathedrals was shattered. Berengar could not identify the picture the glass had once formed. He supposed it served them right for creating windows that low in what was meant to be a fortress. He considered that in the end it may not have mattered at all.

  Berengar swept the shards off the sill with his hand and climbed up. Nisero helped him from behind. The captain reached back and took Nisero’s hand. They climbed through and dropped down in the passage.

  The interior was dark. Torch fasteners along the walls stood empty. Scorch marks blasted the walls at intervals along the way, past the rubble in one direction and beyond a low rise of stone stairs in the other. Leaves bunched in corners where wind and rain pushed them together in large clumps. He heard water dripping somewhere within the halls.

  Berengar did not bear much hope they were going to find anything useful or informative inside. He had been wrong before about a great many things, so he led them up the short stairs and around the corner where the feeling of dread hung heaviest upon him. Nisero followed without comment.

  As they drew deeper into the twists and turns of the old fortress, the ceilings became higher and the shadows deeper. The darkness became more dense as they progressed through the belly of the castle.

  They passed chamber doors burned and chopped inward. Some led into shallow rooms from which furniture and possessions had long ago been extracted. Others led down stairs in spirals, which disappeared into pitch blackness. Neither of them made a motion to explore those dark reaches.

  Berengar bowed his head and thought that if Solag were hiding Arianne here, then those dark pits would be a likely place. He imagined her lost and afraid, chained down in those forgotten dungeons somewhere. The thought made him want to light a torch and plow headlong into the depths to get lost himself. Every bit of his restraint went into making himself search the rest of the castle, before considering what might lie below, and what to do about that.

  As he stared at the floor, milling through his thoughts, Berengar saw old, colorless stains that he thought might be blood.

  A voice traveled down to them, echoing off the dark stone. “It took you long enough to come to me.”

  Both men turned to the open stairs leading up to higher levels above their heads. Like many in these dead halls before them, they were in a poor position for defense. Berengar seized the hilt of his sword and prepared to draw.

  A figure moved in the shadows along the wall. He was ahead of them and beyond the end of the stairs. The figure spoke as it drifted out of Berengar’s line of sight, and the captain realized it was a different man from a different direction than before. “My apologies, Master. We drove them almost the entire distance here, but somehow lost them before we reached the bridge.”

  The dry voice from above resumed, as steps scraped down the stairs, still out of Berengar’s sight. “You announce your great failure as if it is new knowledge for me – maybe even something you are proud of.”

  “No, Master. We have men doubling back. Wherever they have lost themselves or hidden, they will not slip through. We will bring them as you desire.”

  “They slipped right in and out of the Way of Blood as if they were making passionate love to my army. Did you enjoy what they did to you? You enjoyed letting them murder again at their pleasure?”

  “No, sir. We will punish them without mercy.”

  “I would be happy, if you could merely follow my orders.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  Berengar realized they had yet been undiscovered. He wondered if Solag was the dry speaker above him. It took everything in him to not draw his blade and swing madly while there were only two men with whom to deal.

  To his credit, Nisero had the wisdom to hold his hand without drawing his blade and announcing their position. Berengar thought again what a great captain he would make, if Berengar managed to get him out of this castle and back to the kingdom in one piece.

  “I expect to be informed of progress shortly.”

  “Yes, Master. I understand and I shall strive to right my mistakes.”

  “I hope you do so, against my great doubts.”

  Steps retreated. Berengar stayed close to the wall below the stairs. He turned his head from side to side, attempting to trace the sound of the movement. He thought at first one was exiting toward the front of the castle, while the other went back up the stairs. The captain greatly desired to follow the unseen master upward in hopes to find him to be Solag, and alone.

  As the footsteps drew farther away, he placed that both were moving toward the front of the castle.

  Berengar stepped out slowly and looked up the stairs at an angle. They looked just as abandoned as the rest of the castle had appeared moments before. He considered going up. If the master was Solag and he had come down from a higher level, then his daughter might be held up there. Or she could be at the front entrance, where the master was heading now. They could be moving on from this temporary encampment among the ruins and be gone as the two men searched a castle that was now as empty as they first thought.

  The captain looked back and forth.

  Nisero whispered close to Berengar’s ear. “Where next, sir?”

  “I don’t know,” Berengar whispered back. “Forward.”

  He kept his hand on his sheathed sword and left the stairs behind. They stalked through the passages toward the front, and heard more voices. Berengar stopped and listened, but heard nothing useful. He thought they might be coming in from outside, but he couldn’t tell. He did not know if it were the same voices as before.

  Berengar resumed sneaking through the castle. Greater light poured in from an open gate. The spikes from the foot of the gate hung high in the air and askew over the opening. He couldn’t decide if the gate was raised or permanently jammed open. He did not want to be under those spikes once they did finally fall.

  To remain
in the shadows, they moved toward the wall within the portico. They only progressed three more steps before Berengar saw the entire front grounds between the castle and the outer wall were occupied by an encampment. The same fires with the same dark figures lacking any uniform or unifying crest.

  The drawbridge was down and splintered. The moat was dry and the way across was packed with broken block and sand to create a path.

  The bandit overlords in their horned helmets gathered together on one side of the grounds. Berengar could not tell from the distance or angle if one of them was Solag himself.

  The helmeted leaders turned away from their conversation. They walked back between the gatherings of bandits toward the open face of the castle and the raised, spiked gate.

  Berengar walked backward into Nisero. “They’re coming. Fall back.”

  Nisero pulled the captain sideways. They ended up in a shallow chamber at the foot of narrow stairs.

  “Why did you bring us in here, Nisero?”

  “I thought it was larger.”

  Voices echoed into the castle from the entrance. The light was stunted by the shadows of men.

  “Up,” Berengar whispered.

  They took to the stairs and held their sheathed swords against their legs to avoid scraping the walls. The men came out on a raised platform, looking through the crooked bars of the raised gate onto the encampment outside. They stood next to an empty cauldron hanging from a bolted hinge. The cauldron could be turned to spill out its contents through slits in the platform under them. Missing was the fire pan that would be used to heat the oil before it was poured on invaders. Berengar wondered why the cauldron itself and the gate had not been taken for their metal as well.

  They held still as the bandit lords passed under them. If they moved, the sounds of their feet would give them away. If the bandits looked up, they would be spotted for sure.

  The captain concentrated on breathing slowly, and remaining still.

  The lieutenant tapped Berengar’s shoulder. The captain shook his head as he watched the bandits retreat away through the slits. He angled his head to try to see if they were going up the stairs to the higher levels. Berengar wanted to discover what was up there.

  Nisero tapped him again. Berengar sighed. Nisero had been a worthy companion on this quest, but in the last few minutes he had trapped them in a dead end and was apparently refusing to remain still, to boot.

  Berengar turned his head to give the lieutenant the attention he was demanding.

  Nisero pointed up toward the roof of the oil chamber. Berengar looked above through a break in the ceiling. The slats of the ceiling were rotten and shingles were fallen away, exposing the sky above. Berengar’s eyes focused beyond the opening. He saw a cage hanging from a chain, suspended near the highest level of the castle. He narrowed his eyes and saw blond hair hanging down over the edge of the cage’s floor, where the body was laying. A small hand with slender fingers dangled over the side as well.

  Berengar felt the blood rush into his head, and then drain out of him cold as he grew dizzy staring straight up. He recognized the material of the sleeve. It was re-purposed from a dress of Ari’s and passed down to a remade dress for Arianne. It was one of Captain Berengar’s favorites on both his late wife and his daughter.

  The fingers of the hand moved and then went still again.

  Berengar opened his mouth and sucked in air. Even as he felt the energy of his voice rising to scream out, he knew it was a mistake.

  Nisero’s hand clapped over Berengar’s mouth and muffled the cry before it escaped.

  Chapter 13

  : For the Sake of Daughters

  Nisero stared up at the cage through the broken roof, trying to make sense of what he saw. The captive inside was alive, at least. It could be Arianne. It likely was, but he had no way of telling from a spill of hair and a view of one hand. They needed to get to the top level. Regardless of whether it was actually Berengar’s daughter or someone else’s, they had to free her.

  He heard the bandit handlers pass underneath them, their conversation crossing over one another in an unintelligible swirl.

  Nisero took a deep breath and tapped the captain’s shoulder.

  Berengar shook him off and ducked to watch the bandit overlords pass. Nisero couldn’t tell if Solag was among them. Rescuing Arianne was the top priority in his mind, but he feared that the captain might insist upon exacting revenge against the bandit king, even to the risk of all else.

  Nisero tapped the captain’s shoulder again.

  Berengar sighed and finally turned his attention back on the lieutenant. Nisero read the irritation in the captain’s face. He wanted to speak to tell Berengar to brace himself, but there was no way to speak in that moment without alerting the enemies that crept all around them.

  So, Nisero just pointed upward and waited for what was to come.

  Berengar looked up and gave no reaction at first. Nisero watched him and nearly pointed again. Then, he saw the captain’s color change three times. Nisero wasn’t sure if the captain recognized his daughter in some way, or if he just assumed.

  The captain opened his mouth and drew in air. This was going to end badly.

  Nisero heard the noise building as the captain began to exhale and he reacted in the only way he knew how. Nisero closed his hand over the captain’s mouth as if the man were a screaming child. The noise still came. Nisero wrapped Berengar up and pressed harder to capture the sounds before they escaped and gave their position away.

  It seemed to go on forever, but Berengar finally stilled and Nisero removed his wet hand from the captain’s mouth. Berengar leaned back against the lieutenant and continued to stare up at the cage as he heaved for breath. Nisero thought the man might shout again, and he prepared to clamp down once more if needed.

  Berengar managed to regain himself enough to speak in a whisper, close to the lieutenant’s ear. “We need to free her. Now.”

  “We have to proceed with caution,” Nisero whispered back. “We do not know exactly what we have stumbled upon. That could be a trap rigged to drop her. We must avoid discovery as we strive to reach her.”

  Berengar pulled away from Nisero. Nisero looked down through the oil slits and the arrow murder holes that looked out onto the grounds. He did not believe anyone had yet been alerted to their position.

  “They do not know we are here,” the captain said, “and they are preparing to go search again. They may be moving camps soon for all we know. We must act quickly.”

  “We should not give up our position in our haste,” Nisero warned. “Once they know we are here, all advantage is gone and we are back to playing their game, which is meant to cost all our lives.”

  “What do you suggest, lieutenant?”

  “Wait until nightfall, and see if we can reach her then.”

  Berengar looked away. He stood and proceeded down the steps out of the chamber. “I disagree.”

  Nisero’s eyes widened and he checked the grounds again. One of the bandits approached the entrance on foot. “Captain, wait.”

  Nisero took the stairs and tried to reach the captain before he stepped out into discovery. Nisero reached the last turn on the narrow steps and stared out onto an empty chamber. Berengar had already stepped out. Nisero moved his hand from holding the sheath aside to gripping the hilt to draw the blade for battle. At the very least, the bandits would be surprised to find the duo hacking away in their midst again. The thought gave some joy in the midst of his fear.

  The shadow of the bandit passed without reaction through the portico. Nisero listened, but heard nothing except for the retreating footsteps of a single person. Berengar, wherever he had gone, had evaded discovery.

  Nisero listened, but only heard wind whistling through the stone edges of the drafty castle. He took the rest of the steps down and put his back to the wall of the open chamber. He leaned out far enough into the light to see that no one else approached from outside. He took a step and peered around the corne
r into the darkness of the interior. The bandit’s feet just vanished up the stairs leading to higher levels. Nisero looked back outside one more time and retreated back into the chamber.

  “Berengar?” Nisero breathed. He spoke a bit louder. “Captain, are you near?”

  Nisero looked both directions again before crossing over in the light, to the shadow on the other side of the passage. He waited a couple beats of silence and followed along the wall to the stairs. He peered up through the floors, but saw nothing from his limited perspective.

  “Captain?”

  “Who is there?”

  Nisero did not recognize the voice. He slipped around the stairs and slid close to the wall under the stairs, where they had first heard the voices together.

  Another voice said, “The other companies are passing those positions now. That only leaves the low lands, sir.”

  “No one can cross the sea of dead wood. They must be hiding.”

  “They seemed intent on finding her. I expect they are approaching. There are ledges that lead up, if not good ones. If we don’t want them falling to a salty death, then we should at the very least post guards that might find them, and bring them in that way.”

  “If you can spare them, post away. It will be an easy, quiet duty, indeed.”

  Nisero heard several sets of feet descending the stairs. He continued along the wall and ducked into the first doorway, walking down a set of pitch black steps. Sound broke off in the dark reaches. He smelled wet rot wafting up from underneath the castle. Nisero had to lean back out to hear the voices retreating.

  He heard breathing.

  Nisero swallowed and faced the darkness. It could have been wind, but he smelled the stink of a monster’s cold breath.

  Nisero whispered. “Hello?”

  The movement of air continued.

  “Captain?”

  He got no response and shook his head. It had to be wind. Nisero felt foolish. He stepped out of the darkness, but still thought he could smell the damp decay on his clothes.