Updated_PerilInTheOldCountry_SamHooker_EbookFormatting_Nook

by Peril in the Old Country (retail) (epub)

All of a sudden, Sloot could hear a high-pitched ringing in his ears that blocked out everything else in the room. Everything, that is, except for the beating of his own heart, which seemed to have moved into the space normally occupied by his brain for a spot of thunderous pounding.

  Yep, he thought, I know what this is. This is panic.

  How did he know that Roman was indeed in Carpathian Intelligence? He trusted his mother, sure, but Roman had never shown him papers, or a badge, or anything. What if he was just some old lunatic who’d decided to involve Sloot in his ridiculous fantasy?

  His heart was beating faster, faster. His chest went tight. He breathed in frenzied gulps, and stars began flooding his vision.

  Wait, no, he thought, he had the key! He knew how to get into the city through the catacombs. How could he have faked that? His heartbeat felt like it was starting to slow down a bit. The tightness in his chest subsided. That’s better. I’m sure the panic will pass back into the usual fretting in a moment, and I’ll be able to hear Willie’s sobbing again.

  While a regular person would take no comfort in that, Sloot was a worrier. To a worrier, fretting is a tame, even desirable state of affairs. It’s the teacher’s equivalent of students quietly passing notes during a lesson, but at least they’re trying to hide it.

  “On your feet, foreign devils!” shouted a misshapen hunchback. He was dragging a bad leg as he limped along, and was accompanied by two of the ghostly suits of armor that had caused Sloot to faint before.

  The hunchback carried a large ring of keys. Sloot had to help Nan drag Willie to his feet while the guard tried several of them in the lock without success.

  “We demand a trial!” shouted Greta. “You can’t just keep us here like this!”

  “You don’t make demands! I dunno how they do things down in Salzstadt, but you’re in Carpathia now. The only person here doing any demanding is Vlad the Invader, and I wouldn’t talk to her like that if I were you!”

  “Oh my stars,” said Nan, pulling Willie closer to her bosom. “Did he say Vlad the Invader?”

  “That’s right.” The hunchback finally found the right key, and after a few creaking twists, the bolt clanked open. “I hope you’ve made your peace with whatever heathen gods you southerners pray to, because Vlad wants to see you.”

  Court of the Invader

  The Carpathians didn’t stop at terrifying surnames when it came to striking fear into the hearts of their enemies. Or their friends, for that matter, or casual acquaintances, or people delivering packages. Everything in the castle, as far as Sloot had seen, was engineered specially to culminate in a heart attack.

  All of the walls in the castle proper were constructed of red stone. It wasn’t the same reddish-brown of the clay bricks that one would see used for building houses in the countryside in the Old Country, these were blood red.

  Carpathians were renowned hunters, and the walls were festooned with the heads and skins of horrible beasts, the likes of which Sloot had never seen, even in books. Many of the grisly trophies had weapons mounted alongside them, perhaps the swords and lances that had felled the wicked monsters, or maybe they felt the presence of deadly steel simply helped to inflate the general threat level of the place.

  And fire! Everything was on fire! Not just torches here and there, but great roaring braziers made of spiky steel, hearths with more animal heads mounted all over them, and chandeliers so overloaded with candles that Sloot didn’t imagine there was a living fire marshal anywhere near the castle. Or if there was, his corruption knew no bounds. Columns of black smoke roiled up from the multitude of flames, blackening the vaulted ceilings above.

  They came at last into a vast chamber that the Great Cathedral of Salzstadt would have fit into, with room for an art gallery besides. Torches and braziers burned, wicked-looking animal heads sneered, and pairs of crossed axes looked very cross indeed. Red and black stained glass windows cast a bloody pallor over the fifty-or-so soldiers standing before a dais, their little horde split down the middle by an aisle. Upon the dais was a throne of red marble, carved to look like a pair of dragons fighting each other.

  Upon the throne, resplendent in a wickedly spiked and fluted suit of steel armor, was Vlad the Invader.

  She’s pretty, thought Sloot. The thought surprised him. There he was, scared out of his mind, and the first observation to strike him was how beautiful the steel-clad tyrant was, with her cold, black embers of hate where a normal person might have eyes. She sat there on her throne, waiting to drain them of blood, perhaps.

  He stood by it, though. Strip away the armor, the hateful eyes, the predatory posturing, the sword resting across her lap that seemed to be permanently stained with blood, the hordes of faceless soldiers before her, the fact that their lives were dependent on her whim, the malevolent scowl, and the bubbling fonts behind her that could have been blood (hard to tell with all the red light), and she was very pretty indeed.

  The horde of soldiers were more of the Lebendervlad. There was smoke all around them, as though they’d just finished stamping out a campfire, and it was still smoldering at their feet.

  If only that had been the case; alas, there was no fire. They were actually a bunch of soldiers in wicked-looking armor made of smoke. The ghastly things turned to look at them as they passed, and Sloot confirmed that there was nothing human about them. Where their eyes should be were a pair of dim red embers, which flared at a tempo not unlike a beating heart.

  “Kneel,” Vlad’s voice rumbled. It wasn’t a request. The laws of probability did not bother calculating odds on what might have happened had they refused. Inevitability came to pass.

  “All hail General Vladimyra Defenestratia,” shouted a cleric in red robes with the hood drawn up, “Commander of the Armies of Carpathia, Conqueror of the Eastern Marches, and Thirty-Seventh of her Name!”

  “Hail!” cried all of the soldiers in unison, their voices somehow declining to echo in the great hall. “Hail, Hail!”

  “You snuck into my city,” said Vlad. “Why?”

  “Mighty Vlad,” Roman began, kneeling as lowly as possible and spreading his arms out before him, “we sought only to―”

  “Hold your tongue, wretched cur! Generals do not parlay with your filth. I will hear the words of your lord.”

  “I don’t want to,” said Willie. He started crying again.

  “You what?”

  “He said he doesn’t want to talk to you!” Nan snapped, rising to her feet.

  “On your knees, hag!” Vlad lifted the wicked sword from her lap, reversed the grip, and buried the tip in the stone at her feet. “One more word, and I’ll have your head.”

  “You’ll not harm a hair on―”

  The ease and fluid grace of the stroke had come from practicing it hundreds of thousands of times. Vlad’s face was placid, her form was perfect. Nan’s head stayed where it had always been for just a moment before gravity pulled it to a place it felt would be more sensible. A torrent of blood began to gush from her neck, and her body slumped in the direction of her head.

  Willie’s mouth dropped open. Sloot vomited. Greta blinked.

  Before they’d even come up from the dungeon, Sloot had been fairly certain that death was imminent. He’d already more or less made peace with it, and that was the only reason he hadn’t fainted.

  Nan’s eyes were still open. She stared lifelessly at Sloot, her face frozen in the scowl she used for telling people off. She’d often told Sloot that she would die for Willie, and now it appeared that she had been right.

  Vlad moved to stand in front of Greta, staring down at her. Greta stared back, but not in fear as Sloot was sure he’d have done. Sloot didn’t recognize the expression, but it was something like wonderment.

  “Do you have a name?”

  “I do.”

  “I had heard that they do not give names to women in the Old Count
ry.”

  “They do.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Greta.”

  “You’re not afraid of me, I think.”

  Greta blushed. Vlad’s lip twitched as though it would sneer, but it wasn’t that. It may have been the Carpathian equivalent of a smile.

  “You do not look like thieves to me,” said Vlad. She strolled over to Roman and looked down at him. Roman averted his gaze toward the commingling pools of Nan’s blood and Sloot’s sick.

  “Yet you are thieves,” she continued. “You trespass where you have no right. What have you come here to steal?”

  “Nothing, Your Dominance,” answered Roman.

  “I’m told your lord had a bag with a lot of shoes in it. A suspicious number of shoes. You came to Ulfhaven to steal shoes?”

  “Certainly not,” said Willie. “Those are mine! My spare skulking shoes, some dancing heels in case there was a party―”

  “Silence!”

  Willie, probably for the first time in his life, hushed himself when he was told. If Sloot was granted a dying wish, he resolved to ask Vlad how she’d managed that.

  “Not thieves then,” said Vlad. “Not only thieves. In Carpathia, a person is all of the things that they are.”

  Isn’t that true everywhere? Sloot wondered.

  “You,” said Vlad to Roman. “What else are you, that is not a thief?”

  “I’m a valet, Your Dominance. A servant to that man there.” He nodded to Willie, who seemed to forget what was happening for a moment and puffed up his chest.

  “So I was right,” Vlad looked at Willie, “you’re a lord as well as a thief.”

  “Right you are,” said Willie, flashing what must have been intended as a charming smile. “Although I’m not a thief, I have far too much money for that to be worth my while.”

  Oh dear, thought Sloot.

  Vlad snorted in disdain. “Lords are the greatest thieves of them all. The greatest fools as well, incapable of knowing when to hold their tongues.”

  “Now see here―” Willie started. He was interrupted by what must have been laughter coming from the platoon of spectral soldiers, though it was a chilling, uneasy laughter that made Sloot’s blood run cold.

  “You prove me right,” said Vlad. Her face made another of those bemused sneers, though rather more sneery than the one Greta had received. “You’re a hostage, then. That’s what your wealth affords you here.”

  She nodded toward the ghostly soldiers. Two of them lifted Willie to his feet and started leading him away.

  “Wait,” said Willie, “where are we going? Is Mister Roman coming, too? Someone has to run my bath. Is Nan going to be okay?” He kept talking but was soon too far away to be understood.

  “And you, valet. I suppose that you’ll want to look after your master now that his wet nurse understands the price of defiance?”

  “As it pleases Your Dominance,” Roman replied, still staring at the floor. Another nod, and Roman was led away as well.

  “You’ve been quiet, thief.” Sloot’s heart started beating a lot faster as Vlad moved to stand in front of him. What should he say? He couldn’t reveal that he was an Intelligencier, not with Greta still there. Was he allowed to talk about it in front of the ghost soldiers?

  “You’re still quiet, I see. Aside from that whining noise.” Sloot hadn’t noticed that the back of his throat was giving a pained little howl. He stopped immediately. “What else are you?”

  “I’m an accountant,” Sloot squeaked. “A financier, actually.”

  “I see,” said Vlad. “Here to tell your lord what’s worth stealing, are you?” Her blade was inches from his face, still dripping with Nan’s blood. As though this state of affairs wasn’t terrifying enough, Sloot noticed that the drips of blood never made it to the floor; instead, they floated up and away like horrible little birds.

  “N-no, Your Dominance,” said Sloot. “I just― I was―”

  “Out with it!”

  “I don’t know! It doesn’t make any sense to bring your accountant along on this sort of mission! I just want to go home!”

  Sloot lost what remained of his composure and was wracked with sobs that would not be silent. Vlad only had herself to blame, really. Proper heroes would have had trouble remaining calm in his place, and they learn that sort of thing in school. School had taught Sloot nothing that he could use in situations like this. Sure, he could have taken elective courses in Remaining Calm in the Face of Certain Death, but what were the odds that they’d ever come in handy?

  He’d taken statistics instead. That’s how he knew that this eventuality was referred to as an “outlier.” He shut his eyes and braced himself for the stroke of Vlad’s sword.

  “There may be penance for you, thief.” Vlad did another sort of sneer that went with a roll of her eyes. Sloot’s bawling probably had something to do with that.

  Sloot flinched when he felt hands grabbing him roughly, and opened his eyes when he realized he’d not been cut down. He was being led away by a pair of spectral warriors. The pool of blood surrounding Nan’s corpse had started to float upward in tiny drops, like a gentle rain in a nightmare that Sloot kept having. At least he had clothes on this time. A couple of the red-robed clerics that flanked Vlad’s throne had noticed as well, and looked as though they were trying to follow it. Studying the migratory pattern of blood would be a terrifying field, though rife with grants if the phenomenon became more frequent.

  “So,” Sloot heard Vlad saying when he was nearly out of earshot, “what will we do with Greta the thief?”

  He didn’t hear the response. The specters took him back into the dungeon and pushed him into a small cell, nearly long enough in one direction for him to lie down, but not quite. He might have managed it by sticking his legs out through the bars, but he feared for his ankles. Inadequate lighting in the dungeon, and his captors didn’t seem as though they’d be courteous enough to look where they were stomping about.

  That’s statistics. He settled for slumping into the corner that had the fewest skulls in it and curling into a ball.

  ***

  “On your feet, Mister Peril.”

  When had he fallen asleep? Such a feat was difficult at best on a damp stone floor, but it seemed he’d managed it. He was so stiff and cramped that he couldn’t decide whether moving or staying still was a greater source of agony. Doing as he was told was historically least likely to result in a beating, so the choice wasn’t that hard.

  “Good morning,” said Sloot.

  “It’s nearly suppertime,” said the young woman before him. She was apparently some sort of wizard, or at least very fond of dressing like one; or rather, dressing like a wizard who thought that standard wizard attire was far too drab, and had applied a garish array of multicolored stars to her robes and pointy hat.

  “You’re young for a wizard,” Sloot said, much louder than he’d intended. Trying to shout over her outfit, he supposed. He tried not to stare at the cacophony of stars on her robes, which were shooting around quickly enough to tickle his motion sickness.

  “And you’re filthy for an Intelligencier.”

  “You know who I am! Can you get me out of here?”

  She nodded. “As soon as you to stand up. The door opens inward.”

  Sloot stood and moved into the corner. Half an hour later he’d washed and changed into a suit that had fallen out of fashion in Salzstadt when he was a boy. It fit him well though, and was more formal than anything he’d ever owned before. He waited in the little changing room, wondering what was coming next and trying not to roll into a little ball and hyperventilate.

  “Come out when you’re ready,” came the voice of the woman who’d opened his cell earlier.

  Sloot took a breath and opened the door. There she was again, nauseating stars and all.

  “Not bad,�
�� she said. “A little drab, but you wear it well.”

  “Thanks,” said Sloot. “Er, could you tell me your name, please?”

  “Nicoleta Goremonger,” said Nicoleta. “I’m Her Dominance’s court wizard.”

  “Pleased to meet you, Nicoleta. Is this— I’m sorry, but are you rescuing me?”

  She laughed with her mouth open.

  “From the dungeon, I suppose. Wow, you’ve lived your entire life in the Old Country! Tell me, what’s it like? Do you really have to take turns feeding the Domnitor? Does he really weigh a thousand pounds?”

  “What? No!”

  “Oh. The feeding or the weight?”

  “Neither!”

  “Huh. I’ve always heard he was a glutton and a tyrant, that you’re not free like we are here.”

  “We’ve got freedom,” said Sloot with a shrug. “Maybe not as much as some. As long as we follow all of the rules and don’t forget to say the Loyalist Oath at least once a day, we do more or less as we please.”

  “Loyalist Oath?”

  “Yeah,” said Sloot, suddenly remembering that it had been a while since he’d recited it. Perhaps later, he thought, might be bad form in front of the Carpathians. “It’s basically allegiance to the Domnitor—long may he reign—the Old Country, good hygiene, that sort of thing.”

  “That’s funny.” Nicoleta laughed aloud again.

  Sloot wondered what it would be like to enjoy things that much, but reasoned that he’d have to break several dozen rules of etiquette in the process. He resolved to avoid it.

  “If you’re not rescuing me, what happens next?”

  “We’re going to dinner.” Nicoleta’s eyes narrowed, and she studied him with disbelief. “Do you think you’re a prisoner?”

  “Well, the cell …”

  “That was to protect your cover! Did Roman fill you in on the plan at all?”

  “Well no,” said Sloot. “He said it was above my pay grade, even after I was raised to Agent Ninth Class.”

  Nicoleta doubled over laughing, going red in the face.

  “You … he said … ninth class!” She was gasping for breath.