The Skeleth Page 12

  Tom poked his head out of the smithy, then darted off the other way, across the open middle of the courtyard. He cast wary looks all about him at the walls, and seeing no one, he doubled his pace toward the foundations of the keep and the postern gate behind it. It was no longer blocked from the other side, as he knew since he had been tasked with carrying loads of refuse through it and down to the river that day. He pulled up the heavy iron bar from its hooks, let it drop in the weeds, and shoved the door wide. Clammy air greeted his face from the narrow, descending tunnel beyond.

  “Rahilda?” Tom called out down the steep stone steps. “Rahilda, it’s Tom. Are you there?” He waited for as long as he dared, but instead of Rahilda, he heard a very different voice from the other direction.

  “All the more reason to do it now, that’s what I says.” A voice cut whining through the night, coming back from the walls in ugly echoes. “I’m telling you, that old goat’s holding out, and this is our chance to take what we can get from him. You got the key?”

  Tom turned back, his heart in his mouth, and peeked out over the unfinished foundations of the keep. Two figures passed him by on their way toward the tower, one of them holding a lantern whose flame juddered and shook in the swirl of the wind.

  “I don’t know about this.” The burly, bearded crossbowman passed but a yard from Tom’s hiding place. “The boss finds out and we’re both cooked.”

  “He ain’t going to find out—not in time, that is.” Tanchus cackled from behind the light. “You ask me, this whole business is like to go up in smoke, now, so I’m taking what I can and getting clear of it.” He bore a sword in his other hand, a massive, wide-guarded blade he could barely hold up with one arm.

  Tom’s heart thumped in his chest. He crept out from cover and followed the brigands into the watchtower, his mind wheeling wild and his plan in shattered pieces.

  The voice of Tanchus echoed up from the cellar where Tristan sat prisoner: “Here’s how it’s to go, old man. We’ve got a crossbow fixed on you. We’re going to open your door, you’re going to come out, and you’re going to show us where your treasure is, or we start killing your villagers, one by one, right here in front of you, and not quickly, if you follow.”

  Tom crouched at the top of the cellar stairs. He peered out and caught the glow of the lantern, the only light in the tower. Tanchus held it aloft, while Hamon kept his weapon trained on Tristan.

  The pieces of Tom’s plan tumbled and fell—and then assembled in a new shape. The danger of it took his breath away, but he could think of nothing better. He tensed to spring, waiting for the sound that would trigger his move and hoping with all he had that Tristan would understand and react in time.

  Tanchus moved out of Tom’s view, up to the door of the cell. “You’ll play nice, then?”

  “I have nothing that such men as you would want.” Tristan felt his way to the door of his cell.

  Tom stared hard at the lantern. He would only have one chance. He got up onto the balls of his feet and licked the palm of his hand.

  “Hah, and I thought folk said old Lord Tristan never lied.” Tanchus leaned on the heavy-bladed sword. “So you’re telling me you stomped about up in the Girth thirty years ago, plundering one ruin after the next, and all you got for your trouble was your old sword here and a box full of them Skelly-whatsits? Start talking, or we start killing.”

  Tristan’s voice lowered in defeat. “I will lead you to everything of value in this vale and can only hope that it will satisfy your greed.”

  “Good enough for me,” said Tanchus. “Out you get, then.” There was a snick, then a clank as the lock turned.

  Tom pushed off with his right foot, taking the cellar stairs in two strides. His third stride became a lunge, a flying leap down the staircase. “Tristan!” He snatched the lantern from Tanchus’s hand and tumbled with it to the floor. “Lights out!” He snuffed the wick and felt the flame burn his palm as it died.

  A whiny voice rose in confusion. “What in all—?”

  Tanchus had little time to exclaim. Even as Tom squirmed aside on the floor, hoping to get clear of the two Rutters, a large shape moved past him in the dark. The crossbow twanged, then thuds and grunts of pain resounded in the gloom.

  “I have them.” Tristan spoke from the floor in front of Tom. “Find the key.”

  Tom rolled onto his front and crawled over to the captured men. The one nearest let out a groan—it was Tanchus—then he tried to shift.

  Tristan slammed Tanchus back to the floor. “Lie still, and you may yet have the mercy of being tried fairly for your crimes.”

  Tom scooped up the key, then reached for the crossbow. He found it broken, the string snapped and the bolt stuck in a bale of straw in the corner of the room.

  Tristan kicked his sword out of reach across the floor. “This is indeed fine work, Tom, but you took a terrible risk.”

  “You put your trust in me, my lord, and I did the same for you.” Tom tossed the crossbow aside. “With light in the room, you might be just a blind man, but if everyone else is blind, too, then you’re the greatest of all warriors again.”

  Lord Tristan’s milky eyes could still sparkle. “I thank you—but it would seem to me that we are in the deepest danger still. Are there not twenty brigands in the castle upstairs?”

  “Not just at the moment, my lord.” Tom reached for a coil of rope along the wall and bent to tie the crossbowman’s hands behind his back. “There—we can make use of this one. We can keep the other in the cell for now.”

  Tristan stood, turned and heaved Tanchus through the doorway as though he had weighed no more than an empty shirt and breeches. Tom fumbled down, found the lock and turned the key, then coaxed the flame of the lantern back to life.

  “I’ll kill you!” Tanchus’s voice rose to a scream. He threw himself at the door of the cell. “I’ll kill the pair of you! I’ll boil you alive! I’ll cut you open and pull out your guts!”

  Tom felt along the floor and picked up Tristan’s sword. “My lord, this is yours.” He turned Tristan’s palms upward and placed the sword across them. “Will you come with me? There is much to do, and little time.”

  Tristan smiled and gave the sword back to Tom. “I am in your hands.” He took a grip on Hamon Ruddy’s back, and another on Tom’s shoulder. “Lead on.”

  There followed a strange procession, first a man walking with his hands bound behind him, then a blind old nobleman of strikingly muscular frame, and then Tom, arms shaking from the effort of holding up a great sword-of-war. They mounted the circular stairs of the tower, and emerged through the narrow door that led onto the walls. Tom cast a glance over the battlements and spied torches to the south, coming up the road from village to castle.

  “You’d best start running now.” Hamon Ruddy had regained some pretense of sneering calm. “If the boss catches you, he’ll have you flayed alive.”

  “Knave, be silent and walk faster.” Tristan kept a hard grip on the collar of Hamon Ruddy’s padded jack and walked him out through the narrow door that led onto the walls. He wore the rest of the rope coiled over his shoulder, keeping the man on a tight rein. By the time they reached the open door to the guardroom over the gates, the brigands had reached the edge of the castle green, their torches growing ever nearer.

  “Inside, hurry.” Tom went in last and shut the door behind him. The guardroom beyond lay still and dark, lit only by the moon through its arrow-slit windows, but that was enough to see that it was furnished with a table, trunks and beds, and hangings on the walls to break the draft. The smell of doused ashes permeated the place. A pair of winches had been mounted by the walls, one east, one west, each connected to one of the gates in the tunnel below. A series of holes pierced the floor in a line, all covered by flaps of leather.

  Tristan maneuvered Hamon Ruddy over by the hearth. “Tom, I must warn you that I do not think my former s
teward will bargain for a hostage.”

  “That’s not my plan, my lord. Hold him there, for just a moment.” Tom leapt down the set of narrow stairs by the wall and found the door that led out into the entrance tunnel firmly locked and barred.

  He raced back up to the gatehouse. “My lord, will you please raise the inner gate?” He put the sword to the brigand’s back. “You, go up to the arrow slit. Say exactly the words I give you, and nothing else.”

  Lord Tristan’s bushy brows rose with his smile. “Aha! I think I understand.” He pushed the crossbowman across the room. “The stories speak truth—I do indeed keep my word. Hear me now. You will have my mercy if you obey this boy in all he says, but that is your only hope for clemency. I trust you understand me.” He turned without help and stepped over to the inner winch.

  Hamon Ruddy shot Tristan and Tom a look of venomous hate. Tom felt some surprise that it did not make him flinch. Perhaps it was because he knew that too many people would die if he failed in his plan. Perhaps he was simply too angry to be afraid.

  He tapped Hamon with the flat of the sword. “Move.” He nudged him over to the nearest arrow slit.

  Tristan heaved at the winch, doing the work of two men with ease. The rope drew taut, the drum turned, and the inner portcullis rose up. He set the ratchet in the winch so that it would not fall, then felt his way back to rejoin Tom by the windows that overlooked the approach to the castle.

  Tom peered out through the arrow slit and spied the party on the road coming to a halt in front of the lowered drawbridge. They were roughly twenty in number, the same size as the party that had left the castle not long before. From the sacks on their shoulders, most looked to have partaken in some hasty plundering, and at least three of them dragged stolen horses along on rope leads. Torchlight glinted on the points of their spears and on the blades of their naked swords.

  Aldred Shakesby stepped out in front. “Those accursed harpies tricked us! They’ve emptied the food stores, set their grain shed afire and run off into the woods somewhere!”

  Hamon Ruddy turned to stare at Tom—under his rage there was just a hint of admiration. Tom leaned in to Hamon’s ear and whispered.

  “About time you got here!” Hamon shouted it through the arrow slit. “That boy sprang the old man from his cell! They’ve killed Tanchus, and now they’re running riot in the courtyard!”

  “Well, we’ll fix that right enough!” Aldred threw down his plunder. “Raise the gates!”

  Tom turned to Tristan. “Outer gate, my lord. Raise it, but don’t lock it.”

  Tristan hauled on the winch connected to the outer portcullis. From outside came the sound of men forming up and getting a fighting hold on their weapons.

  Aldred leaned back to shout. “Where are they now?”

  “By the stables,” said Hamon at Tom’s prompting. The outer portcullis cranked up, just over the height of a man.

  The steward’s voice rose to a shout. “Kill the boy. Leave the old man alive if you can, but don’t try too hard.” He raised his sword. “Right, ready, boys? Charge!”

  The men gave forth a vicious cheer and rushed the gatehouse. Tom pushed Hamon aside and looked down as the last man passed out of view below. “Now, my lord! Let go!”

  Tristan took his hands from the winch, and the outer portcullis slammed to the ground. Tom leapt across the room to the inner winch and yanked the ratchet free. The wheel spun, the chain clanked faster and faster—and then it stopped with a crash that resounded from below.

  “What in all thunder?” The gates rattled in their tracks. Tom grabbed the wedge of wood beside the winch and jammed it over the portcullis to prevent it from being raised. Tristan did the same on his side.

  A chorus of shouts rose up from the tunnel—confused, then enraged, then fearful. Tom peered down through one of the holes in the floor to find Aldred Shakesby staring up at him from twenty feet below, surrounded by his men, all of them trapped between the gates.

  “We got them all.” Tom stood and bowed to Tristan. “Your castle, my lord.”

  Tristan broke into a belly laugh, so loud and so cheery that it silenced the brigands below. “Oho! Oh, ho-ho-ho! My dear boy, my dear boy, this is a feat worthy of every bard and minstrel from here to the golden domes of Üvhakkat! Come, let us see what we have caught in our nets!”

  Chapter 14

  Edmund rolled over, seething in pain. He had landed hard, but on something soft. “Geoffrey?” Fear flared in him. “Geoffrey, where are you?” He heard no answer. The trapdoor through which he had fallen levered back into place above him, sealing him in darkness.

  “Geoffrey!” Edmund heaved himself up, felt frantically beneath him, then breathed in relief. He had fallen on a pile of heavy earth from above, and not on his brother, as he had feared.

  A groan rose from a few feet away. “You donkey-brains.” Geoffrey coughed. “You dunderhead! Why don’t you ever think?”

  “You’re all right, then?” Edmund reached out blind. “Nothing broken?”

  “Get off me.” Geoffrey stiff-armed him. “You could have gotten us both killed!”

  Edmund sat back again; his brother sounded well enough to be his usual irritating self. “Find the torches, then, and strike a light.”

  Geoffrey rummaged, then scraped, causing sparks to spit lurid trails through the darkness. Edmund retrieved the Paelandabok and found it not much more damaged than it had been already. He gathered up the arrows that had spilled from Geoffrey’s quiver and found the bow lying beside him in the dirt.

  Geoffrey lit a torch and held it out. “Now what?”

  “Now we see what we can find.” Edmund offered the bow and arrows in exchange. “Follow me.”

  The low, rough tunnel might have been an ancient ruin, like the ruins Edmund had seen up in the Girth, but there all similarity ended. The stones looked uneven, set with thick, crumbling mortar, quite unlike the grand blocky dwellings of the folk who had once lived around the mountain of the Nethergrim. The faded paintings that covered them spoke of warrior kings with swords and lances held aloft in defiance against ranks of twisted creatures, creatures that Edmund would not have believed existed, had he not already seen a few with his own eyes.

  “Just think.” Edmund tapped the ceiling. “Folk have been climbing and playing about in the old broken keep for years and years, never knowing this was right below their feet.”

  “I liked the world better when old castles were just old castles.” Geoffrey lit a second torch for himself and drew his shiny new fighting dagger in his other hand.

  Edmund knelt beside a scene that showed two women standing with joined hands above an ornately decorated box. “Look at this.” He burned away some cobwebs, then translated what he found written below: “The Skeleth are seen and yet unseen. Trust your thoughts, not your eyes.”

  “That’s like what we just did up in the courtyard,” said Geoffrey. “We put an arrow through that brick because of what we knew, not because of what we saw.”

  The passage turned at the footings of the tower to meet a set of spiral stairs around a massive central pillar. Little remained within the circular chamber beyond to tell of its former use. An age-squashed litter of leaves, mud and twigs choked the landing. Edmund guessed that the rain must come pouring through from the broken roof of the tower far above and found himself amazed that the structure had remained standing for so long.

  “Look—flowers.” Geoffrey stepped into the room and felt out the round wall in the torchlight, tracing the twining designs painted there. “Lilies, I think.”

  Edmund opened the Paelandabok and checked to make sure. “The flower of death. One of their symbols for the Nethergrim. And there, a pair of raised hands, just like we saw beneath the mountain.”

  “And look at this.” Geoffrey scratched away some ancient mud to show a pattern that ran at the height of his knee, an undulating band
that might once have been painted green, from the few flecks remaining.

  “Follow that all the way around the room.” Edmund pointed. “See? It’s a snake, eating its own tail. The Nethergrim again.”

  “Ugh.” Geoffrey stood up. “Did these people serve it, too?”

  “I think they fought against her, as best they could.” Edmund paused before the painted design of an inward-turning spiral. “The Nethergrim has come back into the world many times, and in many different shapes. She has used both men and monsters to serve her ends, but in every age of the world there have been folk who have stood in her way.”

  He followed the images in a slow circle around the chamber. “Every time we destroy one of the Nethergrim’s forms, we send her out of the world, and she has to convince someone to let her back in again.”

  Geoffrey peered over Edmund’s shoulder. “Why would someone do that?”

  Edmund glanced at him. “Ask Vithric.”

  Geoffrey turned in disgust from the wall and nearly tripped over the remains of a table that had lost a leg and spilled its collection of jugs and vials to the floor in centuries long past. Edmund followed him up around the circular stairs, to find another round room on the floor above.

  “This one looks just like the one below.” Geoffrey took a brief glance into the room, then continued upward. “I doubt we could learn much in there.”

  Edmund held his torch out into the room that Geoffrey had just passed. Prickles ran up the back of his neck.

  Geoffrey stopped on the stairs above him, peering into the room on the next floor farther up. “Edmund.” His voice came out breathless. “What is happening?”