"You say your ooncle acts wi' oot the baron's consent?" asked Gorham skeptically.
"Well, you know, the old pater doesn't seem to be in much shape to consent to anything. That is, the old We is more than a little au fouillis. Ding dong, nobody home, if you follow my drift."
"Then," said Gorham slowly, "the right tee rule descends on the shouders oof the heir. So it is oop tee ye tee determine whether Sir Brodick acts legarry oor nar."
"Well, Uncle Brod does seem rather to have taken advantage of the situation, what? All these taxes and such; heaven only knows where the money is going. And to kill Sir Benton-I mean, going a bit far, I thought. The old relative has overstayed his welcome, if you ask me. A bit. He needs a firm talking to, I believe."
"Do ye suppoort Lady Be in her reberrion against Sir Brodick, then, Bertram, our baron-to-be?" shouted Mistress Entright.
"Err, well, perhaps," said Bertram. Timaeus gave him a poke. "That is to say, I suppose so." Beatrice turned toward him, fire in her eyes. "Yes, definitely," Bertram added hurriedly. "Unquestionably. We must rise and march on Biddleburg Castle! All hail the revolution! One for all and all for one! Down with the usurper! Bainbridge, arise! Fight, Durfalus, fight! And, er ... so forth."
"Hurrah!" shouted Mistress Entright. "Hurrah foor Beatrice and Sir Bertram!"
Suddenly, there were caps in the air; everyone was leaping about like mad and shouting and hugging each other. Madam Helsing and a few of the others seemed unconvinced still, but Master Gorham, at least, was soberly nodding. Though he was not as exuberant in his support as many others, it was clear that the crowd was on Beatrice's side. The townsfolk were in and among Beatrice's men, now, slapping them on the back, the hostility between town and forester forgotten. "Donec ero felix, " someone shouted, the motto of the House of Biddleburg, and soon the crowd took it up as a chant. Beatrice was flushed with righteous fire, while Bertram looked surprised and rather pleased with the dramatic effects of his words. "Donec ero felix, " they shouted, the words resounding across the valley, echoing from the mountains.
"Yes," said Timaeus to Jasper, "only let us hope we are."
As dungeons went, reflected Sidney, the one below Biddleburg Castle was far from the worst. Not that Sidney was a great connoisseur of dungeons; the only one she had ever visited, before now, was the one in Urf Durfal, where she had briefly been interred on a petty larceny charge, and while that had been dank and gloomy, it had been no worse accommodation than the cheaper sort of rented flat in the dingier slums of the city. Her cellmates had complained of the rats, but the rodents had merely served as between-meals snacks for Sidney—and not for long, as the bars of the cell had been wide enough for a cat to squeeze between them. She had left before the charge against her had been brought before a grand jury; she imagined it was still outstanding.
Still, even if Sidney's personal experience with dungeons was limited, she had heard the usual tales, of ratinfested filth, dark tortures by the light of fires in which red-hot irons lay, and so forth. This sort of thing was a staple of popular fiction, though the role of the dungeon in such works varied, depending on whether the story was intended to be edifying, entertaining, or prurient. Neither the dungeon of Urf Durfal nor this one lived up to the standards of fiction: no despairing graffiti, no distant screams, no aged lunatics capering in nearby cells, no hooded torturers considering their tools.
The dungeon of Biddleburg Castle, unlike that of Urf Durfal, was not dank. There were a mere four cells—no doubt crime was not a particular problem in so small a realm—and while they evidently hadn't been dusted in some time, neither could they quite be described as filthy. Their guard, far from being a sadistic, hunchbacked maniac, was a fat little man named Lem, who sat in a room down the corridor, playing endless games of solitaire and munching on apples. The closest Biddleburg Castle came to torture, apparently, was the impossibility of avoiding the noises Lem made in the course of these activities: "Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. Crunch, munch, munch. Flip, flip, flip, flip, flip. Crunch, munch, munch, munch." Sidney could have done without it, although, to be sure, it was greatly preferable to a red-hot poker in the eye.
Indeed, not only was the dungeon less than horrific, some attention had actually been paid to the comfort of its occupants; Sidney's cell held both a chamber pot and an upholstered, if rather lumpy, sofa, which had served quite well as her bed for the night. Sidney wondered at the intelligence of whatever servant had placed the sofa here; it was old and worn, and no doubt the thought had been that use in the dungeon was preferable to throwing it out, yet ... She could feel springs through the bottom of the couch. Its presence reassured her that Biddleburg had scant acquaintance with hardened malefactors.
Well, thought Sidney, if they're so unworldly as to put the thing here, I'd be remiss if I didn't take advantage of it.
There were two cells across the way, but both were vacant. "My Lord Barthold," Sidney said. "Can you hear me?"
"Yes, my dear," came a voice from the cell next door. Lem wandered into the corridor, blinking at its dimness; his candlelit room was rather brighter. "Sorry, milord," he said apologetically, "but Sir Broderick has ordered that there be no conversation between you."
"He has, has he, the insolent pup!" shouted Barthold. "And how d'ye propose to stop us, tell me that, me lad!"
Lem's jaw worked weakly, perhaps on a bit of apple lodged in his teeth. "Uh—I don't ... I'll have to—"
"Look," said Sidney. "Let's not make trouble. We won't talk, if that's the rule."
"The devil you say!" said Barthold. "I'm damned if I—"
"My lord," Sidney interrupted. "If you hope to get out of here, the last thing you want is Broderick to storm down here."
"And why is that?" demanded Barthold.
Because any fool could escape from this setup in six seconds flat, Sidney thought to herself. "Please take my word for it," said Sidney a little sharply. "Give me a little credit, please; if it weren't for me, your vocabulary would still be limited to the letter N."
Barthold muttered something under his breath, and then reluctantly said, "Very well, I shan't utter a peep. Go back to your damned apples, you cretin."
"Thank you, miss," said Lem in relief. "If there's anything I can get to make you more comfortable, you let me know, you hear?"
"The keys to this cell, my sword, and a dozen cubits of rope would be nice," said Sidney.
Lem chuckled. "Sorry, miss," he said. "But really, you let me know if you'd like something special from Cook, or a book, or something."
"Thank you, Lem," said Sidney. "But nothing for now."
Lem touched his brow, and went back to his cards and his apples.
And now, thought Sidney, for the sofa She lay on the floor on her back and slid under the couch. She ripped open the ancient, fragile cloth at its underside, pulled away handfuls of cotton ticking, and yanked at a spring. On the third try, it parted with a sproing, and came out the bottom of the sofa.
She considered it for a moment, then took it over to the wall, where a single tiny window admitted a little light. The end of the spring was quite dull. The wall was uneven, chisel-cut rock, but someone had taken the bother to saw-cut the granite slab that served as the windowsill, meaning it was smooth enough to use as a whetstone. Sidney began to scrape at it with the spring.
Scritch, scritch, scritch. She worried about the noise, but Lem apparently heard nothing over the sounds of his own mastications. It took Sidney ten minutes before she was satisfied with the sharpness of her spring.
She laid it by the door to her cell, took on cat form, and stepped daintily through the bars. Outside the cell, she transformed again, reached into the cell for the spring, and considered it for a moment.
There was movement from the cell next to hers; Barthold peered out at her, with interest. Sidney was, of course, naked; therianthropy was no gentleman's. magic, designed to include such niceties as the need to clothe one's nakedness, but a disease, a condition, a curse. Her clothes were back in
her cell. She put a finger to her lips to enjoin the baron to silence, then placed the spring just outside the vacant cell directly across the hall from her own.
"Oh, Lem," she said. "Could you come here for a moment? I've thought of something."
Lem's chair scraped in the other room. Sidney became a cat, and went to sit inside the vacant cell.
Lem came blinking down the corridor and looked into Sidney's now-unoccupied cell. "Yes, miss?" he said. His eyes had not yet adjusted, and it took him a moment to realize that no one was there.
By then, the cat had stepped back out of the vacant cell. Sidney resumed her human form, bent swiftly down for the spring, and leapt for Lem's back, wrapping her left arm around his waist and holding the sharp end of the spring to his jugular. "Move or talk, and you're a dead man," she said urgently.
Lem froze. With her left hand, Sidney drew his sword. She stepped back, tossed the spring into Barthold's cell just in case—and switched the sword to her right hand.Then she rested the point of the sword against Lem's kidney and took the ring of keys from his belt.
"Take off your shirt," she said.
"Please, miss," Lem whined. "I got a wife and—"
"I'm not going to kill you," she snapped. "Not if you keep your voice down, and take off your damned shirt."
"What do I do with this?" Barthold asked with interest, holding up the spring. Lem began to shuck his shirt.
"I don't care," said Sidney. "Better than no weapon."
When Lem had his shirt off, she handed the keys around to his front and said, "Open the baron's door." He swallowed, but did so. Baron Barthold came out to join her.
"Now unlock mine," Sidney ordered.
"Well done, my dear," said Barthold. "Kill this fellow, and let's be on, shall we?"
"No no, please, I don't—" babbled Lem. He almost turned around, but the pressure of the sword at his back dissuaded him.
"I promised I wouldn't," said Sidney with irritation. "Open the door to my cell!" Fearfully, Lem fumbled at the keys. He finally found the right one, and unlocked Sidney's cell.
"Very noble," said Barthold, "but if we leave him here, he'll be screaming bloody murder in nothing flat."
"True," said Sidney. "Pick up the shirt."
"What?" said the baron, studying the garment in question, now lying on the floor, with some distaste.
"Pick it up!" said Sidney. Grimacing, the baron did so.
"Now rip off the sleeves."
The baron gave them an experimental tug. "You know," he said, "I'm not precisely the fine figure of a man I was in my salad days. And my skills as a seamstress are noticeably nonexistent. I don't believe I—"
"Here, take this," Sidney snarled, giving Barthold the sword. "Kill him if he so much as peeps."
"Gladly," said Barthold. Sidney reached for the shirt, nipped at the cloth with her canines, and ripped off the sleeves. Turning about, she noticed that Barthold was swinging the sword experimentally, clearly contemplating a thrust through Lem's back.
"Don't do that if you want my help," she said.
"Oh, very well," said Barthold.
Sidney took back the sword and pushed Lem into the cell. "Turn around," she said. He did. His eyes grew large as he realized her state of dishabille. "Stand behind the door, and put your arms through the bars," she said. He did so with alacrity. She tied his wrists securely with one sleeve.
While she had been doing this, Barthold had wandered into the guardroom and had returned with an apple, which he was about to bite into. "Give me that," said Sidney.
"What?" said the baron.
"The apple," said Sidney. Barthold passed it over. She inserted it into Lem's mouth, pushing it in till his jaws creaked. And then she tied it into place with the second sleeve, knotting it behind his head.
"Walk forward," she told Lem. He did, until the cell door clanged shut. She locked him into what had been Barthold's cell.
And then she entered her own cell, and put her clothes back on.
"Very neat," said Barthold, surveying her work. "I believe I'll get another apple. Would you like one?"
VIII
"When I get my hands on young Bertram's scrawny neck," said Broderick, "I'll ... Blentz! Wake up, man!"
Captain Blentz awoke with a start and peered, blearyeyed, around at the study. "Just as you say," he said thickly, having no idea what Broderick had been yammering about. Why had he ever taken this damnable job? It was full morning now, sun shining horribly bright through those glassed windows; his eyes ached abominably. Broderick had kept him awake all night, fulminating and scheming and getting precisely nowhere. Blentz yearned for a less hyperactive employer.
Marek came running into the study. "My lord," he gasped. "There's an army coming up the Hamsterburg road!"
"An army?" scoffed Broderick. "Idiot! There's no army—Duke Schofeld is a dotard, he's not going to invade, and the orcs have got to get through Hamsterburg before they get anywhere near these mountains. There can't possibly be an army out there."
"B-b-but my lord," sputtered Marek. "I've seen it with my own eyes. Hordes of them! Thousands! Serried ranks of soldiery, great siege machines, magical wards and flying demons—"
"We must flee!" gasped Blentz.
"Oh, do calm down, you two," said Broderick. "Let's go have a look."
So they climbed up to the watchtower. Broderick leaned out a window and peered down the road, shading his eyes. He pulled back in and studied an inscription on the wall. Broderick was no great collegiate mage, but he was not wholly unacquainted with the practice of magic. This castle had been built with a number of useful enchantments, not least of which was the scrying magic of the watchtower. The runes, carved into the stone walls, declared the necessary spell for those who had forgotten it; " 'Epekt glamor tsuganish, ' " read Broderick slowly.
The view out the window changed; suddenly, from Broderick's standpoint, it displayed a cardinal, sitting on the branch of a chestnut, at remarkably close quarters. Broderick cursed and moved his head; the view swept across space at amazing speed, small changes in viewing angle and distance causing different portions of the world outside the tower to come into focus. It was several moments before Broderick was able to find precisely the right spot from which to see the approaching "army."
"Serried ranks of soldiery," he said. "Great siege machines. You imbecile! It's a rabble, is what it is. The townsfolk of Bainbridge, waving pitchforks and kitchen knives. Come to complain about the taxes again, I imagine. I wonder at their temerity; a quick cavalry charge should scatter ... Good heavens."
"What is it?" asked Blentz.
"Timaeus is with them," said Broderick. "And-yes, there's the barbarian."
"I don't fancy a cavalry charge against fireballs," said Blentz worriedly.
Suddenly, Broderick started. "And that bitch Beatrice too!" he said, turning wide-eyed to Blentz. "By all the gods, they're conspiring against me! The townsfolk, the rebels, Timaeus and that lot-Oh, gods; Miss Stollitt is one of them; they must know we've got Barthold in the dungeon."
Blentz was looking more and more alarmed. "We must flee!" he said.
Broderick turned red. "Is that your invariable response, Blentz? Flight? Turn tail at the slightest opposition? No wonder you're a blithering blunderer as a soldier, you flibbertigibbet. Here we sit in the finest natural fortress this side of Miller's Seat, and you want to flee at the approach of a batch of housewives and lumberjacks? Raise the drawbridge, lower the portcullis, man the damned ramparts, and heat up the boiling oil. We'll teach the fools what it is to tangle with Broderick de Biddleburg!"
"What—what about Bertram?" said Blentz worriedly. "If he's with them, the town below will rise, and—"
Broderick checked, the idea occurring to him only now. Could the young idiot be quite such a fool? Well, yes, as it happened, he could.
"Go prepare the men, Blentz," said Broderick. "I must think."
Damnation, but it was all falling apart. Barthold compos mentis, Beatrice in leag
ue with d'Asperge and the Bainbridgers, Bertram gods knew where ... Biddleburg Castle could withstand a siege from that ill-armed rabble for an eternity, if need be, but spending the next seven years holed up in this damned drafty pile of stones was not what he'd had in mind when he'd launched this fool scheme.
"Screw your courage to the sticking place," he told himself. He would do the necessary, whatever it might be.
Now, thought Broderick, suppose Baron Barthold were to appear on the ramparts of Biddleburg Castle, in full control of his faculties, and tell the crowd to disperse, that his brother Broderick had his every confidence .. . That would do the trick, wouldn't it?
Barthold would never do it, of course. He'd spit defiance even with a blade at his back. Torture wouldn't sway him, nor threat of death—
One Quest, Hold the Dragons Page 11
