Down Among the Dead Men (Forest Kingdom Novels)

by Green, Simon R.

  The Dancer wasn’t like other people. Half the time he was off in a world of his own. Flint never doubted that he loved her, but he wasn’t an easy man to get to know. He didn’t say much, and for a long time now had been content to let Flint do the talking for both of them. He wasn’t slow-witted, or even shy; he just didn’t have much to say. If he wanted to make a point, he usually made it with his sword.

  “Dancer …”

  “Yes?”

  “Do you really think they’re going to be able to kill the Beast?”

  The Dancer shrugged. “Maybe. Hammer’s got the Infernal Device. Those swords are pretty damned powerful.”

  “But … if it isn’t powerful enough, what are our chances of killing the Beast?”

  “Pretty bad, I should think. But we have to try. A lot of people are depending on us.”

  “They usually are. But this time we could very easily get killed.”

  “Comes with the job.”

  “Are you afraid, Giles?”

  “No. Fear just gets in the way. Are you worried?”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be. I’m here with you. I won’t let anything happen to you, Jessica.”

  She held his hand tightly. They looked at each other for a long moment, and then a shrill neighing scream forced its way past the closed trapdoor and filled the cellar. The ice on the floor and walls cracked and shattered, and icicles fell from the ceiling. Flint and the Dancer leapt to their feet, swords at the ready. Constance and Wilde looked quickly about them, searching for a foe they could face. The scream went on and on, deafeningly loud and piercing, and then cut off suddenly.

  “They’ve found the Beast,” said Wilde.

  “Or it’s found them,” said Constance. She raised her head sharply and listened, sensing something moving not far away. “Listen, can you hear anything?”

  They all stood very still, straining their ears against the silence. From far off in the distance, somewhere above the cellar, there came a series of faint, uneven sounds. Flint and the Dancer exchanged a glance and hefted their swords. Wilde got to his feet and nocked an arrow to his bow. Flint looked at him and shook her head.

  “No, Edmond. You and the witch stay here and guard the trapdoor, while Giles and I take a look at what’s happening upstairs.”

  For a moment she thought Wilde might argue, but the moment passed, and he just shrugged and sat down again. Flint hesitated, wanting to explain that it wasn’t that she didn’t trust him, but in the end she said nothing. He wouldn’t have believed her anyway. She strode over to the cellar door and swung it open. The sounds seemed to have stopped for the moment. The Dancer came up behind her and offered her one of the torches from the wall brackets. She took it and started up the steps that led back to the ground floor. The Dancer stayed close behind her, sword at the ready. Constance shut the door behind them.

  Flint and the Dancer made their way up the stairs, moved cautiously out into the narrow passageway at the top, and looked about them, listening carefully. The torch light seemed to carry a lot farther now that it was out of the cellar, and the flickering flame showed an empty corridor stretching away before them. Flint frowned unhappily. The sounds were louder and closer now, but she still couldn’t work out what they were or where they were coming from. They were mostly soft scuffing noises, and they came from everywhere and nowhere, from ahead of them and behind them. The only thing Flint was sure of was that they weren’t natural sounds.

  “Could be rats,” said the Dancer quietly. “Rats in the walls.”

  “I’ve heard rats before,” said Flint. “This is different. Can you tell where the sounds are coming from?”

  “No.” The Dancer hefted his sword once. “But whatever it is, it’s getting closer.”

  Flint scowled and started down the passage. Shadows swayed around her, lunging menacingly forward when she shifted her hold on the torch. At first it hadn’t seemed as cold in the corridor as it had in the cellar, but that was beginning to change. The temperature was dropping rapidly. The whorls of hoarfrost patterning the walls were growing discernibly thicker, and a pale mist was forming on the still air. Flint stopped dead, and the Dancer stopped beside her. He looked at her inquiringly, but her mind was working furiously. Mist? Inside the fort? That wasn’t possible. That just wasn’t possible. Not this deep in the fort, so far away from the outside air… .

  The Beast is dreaming … dreaming about how the world was when it last walked the earth.

  Flint thought about what the witch had said and shuddered suddenly. How long had the Beast slept, if all it remembered of the world was fog and ice and cold? Flint clutched her sword and shook her head determinedly She’d worry about the why of things later, when she had the time. Right now, all that mattered was finding out what was making the damned noises, and how dangerous it was. She gestured for the Dancer to stay put, and then walked slowly down the passage, listening carefully between each step. The noises were becoming clearer and louder, as though drawing steadily closer from somewhere indescribably faraway. There were sounds that might have been snarls or hisses or growls. They seemed to be coming from all around her, from the floor and the ceiling as much as the walls. Long strands of mist curled and twisted on the corridor air, growing thicker as they blended into a pearly haze. Flint realized she was getting too separated from the Dancer, and stopped where she was. She looked back and saw that the mist had thickened into fog behind her. The Dancer was only a dark shadow in the grayness, and the cellar door was lost to sight. Flint moved quickly back down the corridor to join the Dancer, and without exchanging a word they stood back to back, swords at the ready.

  “Those noises are getting louder,” said the Dancer evenly.

  “Yeah,” said Flint. “I don’t like this, Giles. It’s too … planned.”

  “So what do you think? A cautious retreat back to the cellar?”

  “Yeah. We’re too cut off here. And they’re too cut off down there. Let’s go.”

  They moved cautiously back down the corridor, searching the thickening gray haze for any sign of attack. The noises were becoming louder and more openly menacing, as though they didn’t need to hide their true nature anymore. Flint began to think she saw something moving in the mists. The Dancer stayed close to her as they drew near the cellar door. Whatever was in the corridor with them, neither of them wanted to turn their backs on it. Flint was glad the Dancer was there with her. His quiet presence was infinitely comforting. The mist suddenly thickened into an enveloping fog: a great milky white mass that seemed to glow with its own eerie light. Shadows moved in the fog, tall and thin and only vaguely human in shape. They faded in and out of visibility as they moved, and Flint couldn’t even be sure how many there were. She glanced at the Dancer, to make sure he saw them, too, and drew confidence from his grim smile and ready sword.

  The shadows were drawing steadily closer, but Flint didn’t dare back away any faster. They might think she was running from them. One of the shadows stepped suddenly out of the mists to face her, and Flint stared at it in shocked silence. The creature was easily eight feet tall, bent and hunched over in the low-roofed passageway. It was a dirty white in color and horribly thin, so that it looked more like a collection of bones than a living being. Its narrow frame was held together by long, ropy muscles that stirred and writhed like restless worms under the coarse skin. Its arms were almost four feet long, the bony hands dangling well past its knees, and the twig-like fingers ended in long, curving claws. The elongated head ended in a ferociously grinning mouth with dozens of dagger-like teeth. Its eyes were scarlet slits, without pupil or retina. The bony feet clacked loudly on the stone floor as the creature advanced slowly on the two Rangers. Its horrid grin widened slightly as it snorted hungrily.

  “What the hell is that?” whispered the Dancer. “Some kind of demon?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Flint, fighting to regain her composure. “I think it lived at the same time as the Beast. I once saw pictures of so
mething like this in a book that came from the Northern Ice Steppes. They called such creatures trolls. They’re supposed to be extinct.”

  “Then what are they doing here?”

  “The Beast is … remembering them.”

  “It’s got too good a memory for my liking. What do we do, Jessica?”

  “Get ready. On the count of three, I’m going to turn and run for the cellar door. You hold them off until I’ve got the door open, and then get the hell away from those things and join me. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Watch your back, Giles.”

  “Count on it.”

  Flint flashed him a quick grin, counted three under her breath, and then turned and ran down the corridor. The troll started to go after her, and the Dancer moved quickly forward to block its way. The creature lifted its clawed hands to strike him, and the Dancer’s sword flashed through a short, vicious arc. The troll tried to throw itself backward, but couldn’t react quickly enough. The sword slammed into its prominent rib cage, punched through the sternum and out again in a flurry of blood. The troll screamed and sank to its knees, clutching the gaping wound with both hands. Blood ran between its fingers in a steady stream, and collected in a steaming pool on the cold stone floor. More trolls suddenly appeared out of the mists and moved toward the Dancer with murder in their crimson eyes. Behind them, more shadows stirred in the fog, waiting to be born again into the world of men. Smiling, the Dancer swept his sword back and forth before him.

  Flint ran for the door at the end of the corridor. The sounds of battle came clearly from behind her; the roaring and screaming of the trolls, and the flat chopping sound of the Dancer’s sword cutting through flesh. The cellar door loomed up out of the fog before her, and she had to skid to a halt to avoid crashing into it. She slammed her sword into its scabbard, and fumbled at the doorknob with cold-numbed fingers. She could barely feel it. She cursed desperately and held her hand close to the dancing flame of her torch. Feeling slowly returned to her fingers, and she grimaced at the stabbing pain. She tried the doorknob again, and finally succeeded in opening the door. She yelled for the Dancer to join her, and the sounds of battle broke off, replaced by the sound of running feet and the cheated howls of the trolls as they gave chase. The Dancer came flying out of the fog toward her with the trolls close behind. There were too many of them to count, and their rage echoed deafeningly in the narrow corridor. The Dancer shot through the open doorway, and Flint followed him. She spun around, slammed the door shut in the trolls’ grinning faces, and looked frantically for the bolts. There was only one, and she pushed it home. Something slammed into the door on the other side, and Flint and the Dancer fell back a step as the door shuddered in its frame. They leaned against the cold stone wall a moment as they got their breath back, while on the other side of the door the trolls howled and shrieked and pounded on the solid oak.

  “That bolt isn’t going to hold for long,” said Flint. “We’d be better off in the cellar. We can barricade that door.”

  “Right,” said the Dancer.

  “How many of those things are there altogether?”

  “Too many.”

  Flint decided not to think about that for the moment, and hurried down the steps toward the relative safety of the cellar. The Dancer took one last look at the shuddering door, and hurried after her. Narrow wisps of mist had already begun to trickle past the closed door. Flint threw open the door at the bottom, charged through, and waited impatiently for the Dancer to join her. The moment he did, she thrust her torch into his hand, slammed the door shut, locked it, and pushed home both the bolts. She then leaned back against the door and let out her breath in a long, slow sigh. The Dancer calmly slipped the flaring torch into the nearest wall holder. Constance and Wilde looked at them blankly.

  “What the hell is going on?” said the bowman. “What did you run into up there?”

  “Creatures that were supposed to have become extinct centuries ago,” said the Dancer. “Tall bony things with teeth and claws. Trolls.”

  “They’re only legends,” said Constance.

  “Will you all shut the hell up and help me barricade this door!” snapped Flint. “There are at least a dozen of those legends on their way down here right now, and this door isn’t going to keep them out for long.”

  Together the four of them dragged some of the heavier rubbish over against the door and heaved it into position. The slippery ice on the floor helped. They were just manhandling the last of the junk into place when they heard muffled footsteps on the other side of the door. The Rangers and the outlaw backed quickly away and braced themselves. Something hammered on the door, and something else joined it. The sound rose and rose until it sounded like thunder in the enclosed space. Unseen claws dug into the wood, rending and tearing, and the bolts rattled ominously in their sockets. Flint looked at Constance.

  “Can’t your magic do anything to keep them out?”

  The witch shrugged unhappily. “I don’t have much magic left, but I can try.” She raised her left hand and a soft blue flame formed around her fingers, jumping and spitting. The witch muttered something under her breath, and the sputtering flame flew away from her hand to sink into the wood of the door. The banging and clawing stopped immediately, and the trolls raised their voices in cries of pain and anguish. For a few seconds there was silence. A frown burrowed between Constance’s eyebrows, and then the hammering suddenly started again. Constance shook her head.

  “They’re too strong for me. I’m a witch, not a sorceress. They’ll be through that door in a matter of minutes, and what magic I have left isn’t going to stop them.”

  “Isn’t there anything you can do?” said Flint.

  “Well, perhaps a little something to make life easier for us,” said the witch. She glared at the thick layer of ice covering the floor, and it cracked and shattered and fell apart into tiny pieces. Constance smiled slightly. “That should help our footing when we have to face the creatures.”

  Wilde looked at her. “What makes you so sure we’ll have to face them? The door’s solid oak, and that barricade looks pretty good to me.”

  “It won’t even slow them down,” said the witch quietly. “These trolls aren’t real, so they can be as strong as they need to be. The Beast is very near to waking now, and it senses we are a danger to it.”

  The hammering grew louder, and the door began to shake. The barricade shuddered in sympathy, and then toppled away from the door as it split suddenly from top to bottom. The four defenders backed quickly away. The jagged crack in the wood grew wider as they watched, and then the two halves of the door were torn away, and the doorway was full of grinning trolls. The defenders stood their ground, and the trolls hissed and growled, snapping their huge teeth in anticipation. Their bony hands twitched constantly, and the lantern light shone dully on the long claws.

  Flint and the Dancer stepped forward to put themselves between the trolls and the witch. Wilde nocked an arrow to his bow. The trolls surged forward into the cellar. Wilde’s bow thrummed, and the first troll was thrown back by an arrow jutting from its eye. Two more of the creatures fell to Wilde’s bow, and then he had to fall back as the first rush of trolls broke against Flint and the Dancer. The two Rangers stood unflinchingly together, their swords flashing brightly in the dim light. They cut through the massed trolls with deceptive ease, as though the bony creatures were no more substantial than the mists they came from. The trolls’ blood flew through the air like a ghastly rain, smoking and sizzling where it collected on the broken ice covering the floor.

  The Dancer swore calmly when some of the blood splashed his wrist and burned the bare skin, but he didn’t let it distract him from his work. The trolls could only get through the doorway a few at a time, and despite their frenzied attack, the Dancer wouldn’t retreat a step. He was a Bladesmaster, and now he had a chance to show what that really meant. His sword swept back and forth faster than the eye could follow, leaving a trail of blood in its w
ake. He lunged and recovered and swung again, all in a single breath, his blade scything through the howling trolls. Their clawed hands reached for him with an unrelenting fury, their great jaws snapping at his unprotected face, but always he was that extra inch out of reach, and the dying trolls fell before him to scream and writhe on the gore-soaked floor.

  Flint fought at his side, grinning fiercely as she swung her blood-soaked blade. Trolls lay dead and dying to either side of her, cluttering up the doorway. She might not be as fast or as skillful as the Dancer, but she’d been a guard all her adult life, and she knew more about swordsmanship than most men ever would. She had fought in the last great battle of the Demon War in ill-fitting chain mail with a borrowed sword, and after that there wasn’t much that could daunt her. She cut and hacked at the grinning bony faces before her, and refused to feel the growing ache in her arms and back. She was a Ranger, and she would fight till she fell.

  Wilde fired arrow after arrow past the two Rangers, striking down the trolls as they tried to claw their way past Flint and the Dancer by sheer force of numbers. He lost track of how many of the creatures he’d killed, and still they came surging through the narrow doorway. And all too soon Wilde ran out of arrows. He placed his longbow and his empty quiver carefully to one side, out of the way, and drew his sword. He hefted it once and then looked at the two Rangers, struggling against the endless tide of inhuman creatures.

  Just like old times, eh, Jess?

  He looked quickly about him, just in case there was another exit he hadn’t noticed before, but there was only the trapdoor, and Wilde had decided very early on that wild horses weren’t going to drag him down there. No, bad as it was, his only hope lay with the Rangers. He shrugged and, choosing his moment carefully, slipped in beside Flint and added his sword to hers. The trolls roared and screamed as they fell before him, and their death cries were a comfort to him. It had been a long time since he’d fought in a situation where the odds weren’t stacked heavily in his favor, and it only took him a few seconds to remember why. A man could get killed sticking his neck out like this… . But still he fought on, because there was no other choice open to him. After a while, some of his old skills came back to him, and his sword sliced through the air in shining, deadly arcs. If Flint could have found the time to look at him, she might have seen echoes in the bowman’s face of the Edmond Wilde she had once known so many years ago.