The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8)

by William Dietrich

  “Papa?”

  “Harry! Here!” And then: “Be careful.”

  I crawled on my hands and knees, feeling for holes. It was a long way, but I didn’t want to fall like Decebal. Finally I came to iron bars. On the other side were Papa and Uncle Caleb and the prince.

  “Harry, thank God! You’re bleeding. Damnation—no, don’t listen to that word, but by Jupiter—Harry, we can’t open this gate. Is your mother alive?”

  “She fainted. On purpose.”

  “Do you see any tools on your side to break down the bars?”

  I looked. “No, Papa. Maybe you can go another way.”

  “A gate closed in back of us. We’re trapped.”

  “The Pig Man said it’s a bear’s mouth.”

  “Can you fetch Mama?”

  “She told me to bite a bad soldier. He fell in a hole. The Pig Man wants to make her join the dead ladies. He was yelling. I ran away.”

  Papa picked up his gun. “Are there other bad men?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Harry, look carefully. Is there a pry bar, or a pick, or a shovel, or a saw?” Papa had his funny hammer out but it didn’t seem to help.

  I looked and felt in the dark. “No.”

  “Harry, we need something to get us out.” Papa’s voice was tight.

  “I’m sorry.” I began to cry again.

  “Don’t cry. It’s not your fault, son.”

  “We’ll get to you somehow, lad,” Uncle Caleb promised.

  Now I bawled. I was so tired and afraid. I felt bad because I couldn’t find the tools Papa wanted. I tried to talk but it was hard because I choked and hiccupped. I just wanted him to hug me.

  “I’m so sorry, Papa!” I hiccupped and hiccupped. “All there is are rusty old keys!”

  CHAPTER 24

  So my son was once again a hero. The fact that he was wet and sniveling didn’t concern me, given that I’ve been that way myself more than once. Besides, there’s no courage is being too dense to understand danger. My boy is smart enough to know he has to be brave, and resourceful as a mouse in a beggar’s bowl. “There’s a big hole,” he warned after freeing us. So I snuffed out my candle and we crept instead of charged, and thus heard a snarl of voices ahead before they heard us. We made ready.

  Sure enough there was a flare of torchlight on the further side of a pit that seemed to plummet to Hades. The illumination silhouetted Dalca Cezar’s henchmen as they crowded the far side of the cavity. A narrow log crossed the void and my amazement at my son’s grit grew. I swear my boy would dance across the yard of a topgallant to fetch his wayward Papa.

  I crawled to the edge of the well. The chasm was absolutely black and seemingly bottomless. Then I heard a groan of despair from its depths. I backed up to the others.

  “Someone’s down there,” I murmured.

  “The bad soldier,” Harry said. “He made a big splash.”

  I remembered my own desperation in the moon well of the Russian ship in St. Petersburg. “He’s got a long climb or a slow death.” And then a thump echoed up to us, followed by a splash and scream. Then silence.

  “Not so slow,” Caleb whispered. “There is some thing as well as some one in that perfidious hole. Suddenly that log looks skinny as a wire.”

  Dalca’s men looked nervously down into the chasm, arguing nervously in a guttural language and pointing at the narrow log. Dark still hid us.

  “The beam is our only path to Astiza, and my child has already crossed it.” I turned to my imperfect partners. “A volley and we’ll dash across. Sword and pick to finish off any survivors.” My patience was gone and I felt cruel as a Turk. “Harry, get behind. You two, ready?”

  Caleb and Dolgoruki leveled their muskets.

  “Ready. Aim. Fire!”

  Our shots flashed like a lightning bolt. Three of Dalca’s bastards dropped, one toppling with a howl of despair into the cavity. I rose, gunsmoke in my nostrils, in order to press our attack.

  “Look out!” Caleb jerked me down, slamming my son to the cave floor as well. An answering volley punched through our smoke and bullets combed our hair. There was a bigger company of louts across the chasm than I thought. My brother had saved my life.

  “See? I’m not entirely bad, Ethan.”

  “Let’s reload. Stay prone.”

  Guessing that we were momentarily without powder, some of Dalca’s brutes risked rushing to the lip of the pit and inserting an iron bar in a fitting on the far side of the cavity. As they levered back and forth, the log bridge popped from its socket on our side of the chasm and began to recede like a worm into its burrow. A chain rattled as it wound back into the earth.

  “We’ll be trapped again,” Caleb hissed, scraping his ramrod out of his musket barrel and priming his pan.

  “By the Icon of Kazan, we most certainly will not,” growled Dolgoruki. Without asking he crawled over and past us, snatched my horse pick, rose up, brandished his sword with his other hand, gave a mighty Russian oath, and sprang into the void.

  It was an impossible jump toward the receding log, the well far wider than he could ever cross. Yet the prince flew just far enough to swing my pick like a grapnel. It bit the logwood as he fell so he swung, clinging like a monkey while still clutching the golden sword awarded by Tsar Alexander. Then with a kick and heave, he boosted himself by the pick handle and got an arm around the log.

  Russians don’t lack courage.

  Dalca’s preoccupied henchmen were still frantically hauling the log in, inadvertently drawing Dolgoruki to their side of the pit. Perhaps he’d take them unawares. But no, another Szekler, this one taller and thick as a bull, had seen the daring leap and ran up with a pike to stab. The prince peered up, helpless where he hung. The scoundrel lifted his weapon, ready to impale.

  Caleb fired. The warrior gave a great cry and pitched over the prince’s head and down into the pit, his pike clanging against the well’s sides as he plunged. A distant splash was followed almost immediately by a bigger one, and another terrified scream.

  “What in hell is down there?” my brother asked.

  “Hell indeed. Don’t slip.”

  Our Russian used the reprieve to clamber over the lip of the pit to attack with saber, pick, and hammer. One man cranking the lever took the blade through his heart, and another staggered away with my pick impaled in his back. A third pulled his own scimitar to foolishly fence. It was no contest for a noble taught swordplay since infancy. The ruffian quickly fell. Their blood looked black in the dimness.

  That would have ended it except that a fourth charged Dolgoruki from his blind side, hurtling out of the dark. I killed that one with my own rifle, and then the Russian chased down the wounded man and thrust deep to finish him. He jerked out my horse pick and tossed it back where I’d retrieve it, once across. We’d now accounted for eight or nine of the demons, a satisfying slaughter on the pit’s far side. Other shadows ran away to get reinforcements.

  Dolgoruki came back and hauled on the chain as hard as a sailor, the log bridge surging back across the well to slam into its socket again. Emboldened by the Russian’s example we danced across, Caleb carrying Dolgoruki’s musket and me carrying Harry. Then everyone reloaded.

  “Bold work, my Russian friend,” I congratulated.

  “Ha. I’m your friend now?”

  “I don’t want you as my enemy.” His beautiful inlaid sword was slick with gore. “Let’s go get my wife.”

  We proceeded cautiously, wary of ambush. Our opponents were noisy so twice we did the ambushing ourselves, seeing torchlight approaching and lying prone until we had a clear shot at their silhouettes. Both times we killed three. No general alarm had been raised, meaning the deep tunnels must be swallowing the sound of gunfire. We probed through a labyrinth. Harry, who’d seen enough mayhem in his young life to be untroubled by the dispatch of �
��bad men,” was an able guide. He pointed to this stair and that corridor as the way he’d come, content that I’d finally arrived and perfectly confident we’d rescue his mother. He hesitated only at one door.

  “We have to go past the dead ladies.”

  Beyond was the most bizarre and hideous tableaux I’d ever seen. In the bowels of the castle was a banquet room filled with the desiccated corpses of two-dozen young women around a long heavy table. Their features were waxen, their color false, and I sensed they’d somehow been drained dry and re-stuffed. Yet there was no rot, only some gruesome kind of pickling.

  “What in God’s name would draw a woman to a place like this?” Dolgoruki wondered.

  “Not God. The devil. So where’s Mama, Harry?”

  “That door wasn’t open before.” He pointed.

  At the far end of the room a tapestry had been pulled aside to reveal another exit from the banquet room. Stairs led down toward an odd chemical smell.

  “Some kind of laboratory,” I guessed. “Harry, stay here to stand watch. Yell if anyone comes.”

  “I’m afraid of the dead ladies.”

  “They’re just dead, like the bad men. I’m going to bring Mama to you here.” If she hasn’t already been transformed into a mummified trophy, I thought. If she wasn’t already a wax corpse. “These ladies don’t like the bad men. They’ll help you keep watch.”

  “Hurry.”

  I began to creep down the stairs, rifle primed and ready. Caleb excitedly caught my arm.

  “Now comes reward, Ethan!”

  “If your palladium exists.”

  We advanced. Two sentries jumped in surprise, drew scimitars, and were killed. We reloaded and kept going.

  And found something even more bizarre than the banquet room.

  We entered a barrel-roofed chamber lit by a hundred candles. In the center was a bubbling pool of mud-thick liquid, fumes wafting, that producing a noxious and cloying haze that stung. Shelves held vats, vials, and bones—lots of bones. Skulls were lined like apothecary jars. Leg and arm bones were stacked like firewood. Tendrils of leathery flesh still clung, and some of the skulls had wisps of hair and scraps of scalp. There were rust-colored stains on floor and walls, and brown spots spattered the ceiling. Was Dalca a cannibal?

  “This is an evil place,” Dolgoruki muttered, crossing himself.

  “So you’ve come to watch,” a deep voice rumbled.

  The monster was at the far end of the pool. He was a sickeningly obese creature in dressing gown, leather apron, and leather boots that reached to fat thighs, his body slumped in a wicker wheelchair. He had the bushy beard and wild hair of a Russian hermit, and sunken, nearly hidden eyes that nonetheless seemed to probe with pitiless scrutiny. Pig Man, Harry had called him.

  “Or we can bargain,” he continued in a voice as heavy as a millstone.

  No more servants were present, but Dalca wasn’t alone.

  We froze at the sight of Astiza. My wife was embarrassingly nude and strapped to a table that tilted over the foul pool, her feet aimed at its contents. Next to her was a second table, horizontal and sturdy, that held a demon’s collection of surgical instruments. There were scalpels, glass suction cups, coiled tubes, needles, and clamps. Her mouth was gagged, and her eyes wide with fear and fury that seemed even more naked than her body, a look as wrenching as that of the insane. Astiza, usually so serene, so philosophic, had been stripped bare in more ways than one. There was nothing erotic about her humiliation, and nothing beautiful in her exposure. It was a betrayal of all that was decent and proper.

  “That’s my wife.” My voice rasped like a bayonet lifted from its scabbard, and the muzzle of my rifle pointed at Cezar Dalca.

  He lifted one lazy hand in his defense. His fist held a rope, leading through a pulley in the ceiling down to the tilted table. The meaning was clear enough. If he yanked, or I shot, Astiza would slide into his tank.

  “Sorcery,” Dolgoruki said with the gagged contempt only the noble can fully express. “Witchcraft. This man is an upyr.”

  “Utter blasphemy,” agreed Caleb, his voice breaking. “Ethan, I never suspected, never dreamed. Astiza, I thought him only a crank—”

  “What your wife is, my new friends, is my contribution for admission to your fellowship,” Dalca rumbled. Even as he spoke I began to mentally measure distances. “I’d dearly love to add Astiza to my immortal banquet but she informs me you’re after a higher prize. Is that not true, my dear?”

  A leather strap on her forehead prevented her from nodding or shaking her head.

  “You’re an instant from death, Dalca.” I was squinting down my barrel.

  “My hand can twitch as fast as your finger can pull, Monsieur Gage, and then your wife will join my banquet. I prefer to empty my guests first, eliminating any pain from the bathing, but your intrusion has robbed me of time to drink. If you prefer to make a fight of it you can watch her boil alive. Her screams would be one of the last things you hear, because there are a hundred Szeklers between you and any exit from Balbec Castle. But why dwell on such terrible contingencies? I want to be your partner, not your executioner.”

  “Partner in what?”

  “The Trojan Icon.” He nodded. “Yes, Astiza and I have discussed your quest at some length. Unfortunately I don’t have it. You can search my home but you’ll find that I keep my belongings in more secret places than this, and don’t have the palladium of Pallas Athena at all. Your entire quest, and all the risk to wife and son, was in vain.” He coughed what might have been a laugh. “But I think I could lead you to the palladium, if you could contrive to carry me there.”

  “Where?”

  “Constantinople. The Ottomans call it Istanbul, I believe.”

  Their capital was hundreds of miles away. “Where in Constantinople?”

  “That’s part of our bargain, is it not? Your derring-do, my research. I’m a rather conspicuous treasure hunter, unable to travel unnoticed, but you have a knack for worming where you don’t belong. We’d be superb collaborators.”

  “Would we?” I began to move toward him.

  “Ah! Not with your rifle, please. Firearms disturb me. But yes, a brilliant fellowship. None of us are hobbled by morals, are we? A society of thieves.”

  Another step. “Release my wife first.”

  “Now the prince’s sword, that I can appreciate. Russian, I assume? A pretty prick. Is that sweet blood on the blade?”

  Another step.

  “Gage! Lower the guns while we come to understanding.”

  “Not before you get your hand off that rope.”

  He considered, eyeing us, and then slowly released his grip and dropped his hand to his fat belly. “Done. See? I’m a man of compromise. Like you. Now. Lower your gun.”

  I did so.

  “All the way, where it can’t harm me.”

  Reluctantly, I laid my rifle on the floor.

  “Ethan!” Caleb protested.

  “He’s insane. Don’t startle him.” Then I spoke to Dalca. “Move away from the rope.” I slowly edged closer.

  “Alas, that defeats my bargaining position, which is this. I’ll trade Astiza to you for a half-share of the palladium. We’ll find it together, sell it together, and split the profits. Half for me, and half for the rest of you.”

  Another step. “Shares equally.”

  “No. Your beauty of a wife is worth a full half-share. It’s true you’ve penetrated my castle and fought past my sentries. But it’s equally true that I could add Astiza to my banquet and swarm you with the remainder of my garrison. I’d rather given up on the palladium, but your arrival reassures me of its existence. So exciting to imagine possessing it.”

  So Dalca’s interest was our proof, while our interest was his. Rumor feeding rumor. “Harm her and you get nothing.” Another step.

  “H
arm me and all of you die as well.”

  “What chance do we have of finding the palladium and stealing it from the Turks?” Closer.

  “I’m a scholar, much like your wife. I know things. You’re a thief, much like your brother. A partnership, I said.” His fingers were still clasped, his gaze fixed on me instead of Astiza. My wife was squirming in her bonds, her eyes pleading. Were they warning?

  “You bully a woman?”

  “To persuade her man.”

  I was close. I lunged.

  “Misjudged, Ethan Gage.” His hands remained clasped, but one booted foot shot up and out. Attached was a cord tied to a support under the tilted table. In an instant of horrified regret I realized that the rope to the ceiling had been a ruse, and it was this other prop that had kept my wife from the boiling mud and wax. The tilted table began to slide toward the pool.

  “And you, Dalca.” Because the monster had also miscalculated: I wasn’t diving for him but for Astiza. The horse pick came out from its loop at my back and its point punctured Astiza’s table, braking its slide. I kicked the surgical instrument table into the bubbling pool, its instruments flying, and its edged jammed the lower edge of my wife’s platform.

  Ooze lapped inches from Astiza’s toes. Our eyes locked for the briefest of moments, mine sympathetic, hers despairing and half-mad.

  Dalca howled in frustration and fury.

  Caleb fired. My brother was a crack shot but the duke didn’t even twitch. How could my brother miss? Was Cezar truly immortal?

  I hauled at Astiza’s bizarre bed with my pick. Caleb moved toward my rifle. And Dolgoruki charged with his golden sword, crying to the saints.

  Dalca snarled, and I got a glimpse of teeth more animal than human. The creature’s instincts were lightning fast despite his bulk, and somehow he caught the edge of the prince’s sword with a hand even as the saber cut toward the villain’s head. The blade stopped as if it had hit stone. Dalca bent, and bit.

  Dolgoruki shrieked.

  The prince’s sword fell with a clang and a sizzle, as if suddenly hot, and I saw to my amazement that its fine steel had bent. I heaved again and managed to twist Astiza’s table off its precarious balancing point, toppling her away from the pool. Now she was face down, still strapped, but the table was a crude shield between her and Dalca.