by Max Anthony
“We should find a way upstairs,” said Viddo, setting off ahead.
Impetus was added to the leisurely pace he had intended to set when the sound of activity reached them from the foyer. The thief looked out and saw that a number of werewolves had started to arrive through the various entrances. They were mostly in their wolf forms and they were quite clearly looking for interlopers. Rasmus assisted in their search by casting a fireball spell in their vicinity. The explosion was almost lost in the expanse of the room, though it still caught five or six of the werewolves unawares, whilst at the same time giving away the precise location of the adventurers.
“Onwards, I can’t easily get them all,” instructed the wizard.
Viddo did not hesitate and ran along the narrow passage. Jera was behind, metal bar in hand. At the rear was Rasmus. The corridor had likely been intended for the use of servants or other members of the castle staff whom the seneschal would have preferred to remain unseen. It turned left and then right. After that, they passed two small storerooms, which Viddo looked into as he dashed by. Neither room contained anything of value and led nowhere.
The castle was large, though still limited by the confines of its walls. With growls and snarls to their rear, the trio entered a much wider corridor, along which were heavy wooden doors. Viddo turned to the right. Ahead, a werewolf bounded into sight, running on all fours in a manner that looked jerky, yet was also much too fast for comfort. Viddo put a crossbow bolt through its eye and the creature’s momentum carried it headlong into a stone wall. A second werewolf joined it, springing from the same intersection twenty feet away. Without warning, the creature became a white-feathered chicken, which emitted a pleasant clucking sound. Viddo ran in that direction, reaching down and wringing the chicken’s neck without breaking stride.
“Where did that chicken come from?” panted Jera as they darted along the intersection from which the two werewolves had just come. Behind, a group of several more had just entered the wide corridor.
“This wand,” said Rasmus, waving it theatrically. Wizards couldn’t help it. Whenever they had a wand in their hand, they had to wave it around as if they were conducting an imperial orchestra.
It was not the most appropriate time for conversation – the werewolves behind were fast. Their claws scrabbled at the stone surface and their powerful legs pushed them at a speed much greater than that which a wizard or warrior could attain. There might have been a dozen in pursuit and Rasmus judged them closely enough knit for another fireball – the last of those he’d memorised. With the same regret he always felt when he cast the final such spell, he sent one along the corridor and into the eager arms of the werewolves. The familiar boom was a comfort to them all, speaking as it did of dead lycanthropes. With a limited space for outward expansion, the blast sped along the corridor towards the fleeing trio, the extremes of the flames licking at the backs of Rasmus’ legs.
“Did you get them all?” asked Jera, not slowing her pace.
The werewolves behind were no more, though two were waiting just ahead, in the darkness of a side passage. Viddo saw them as the first launched itself at him. The thief rolled, just too late to avoid the impact of a heavy shape, which sent him into the wall with a thumping crash. With his brain rattling in his skull, Viddo struggled to bring his eyes into focus. Dark shapes moved across his vision and he heard another clucking sound, followed by an indignant squawk. There was a roaring snarl, first of anger, then uncertainty, finally becoming a gurgling choke.
When Viddo’s mildly concussed brain finally got its act together, he saw a sight he’d never forget. To his left was Rasmus, his hands clenched around the neck of a dead chicken, which the wizard continued to choke long past its death. To the right, was Jera. She had her metal bar around the neck of the second werewolf and her knees in its spine. The lithe muscles of her arms were tensed as she put all of her efforts into completing the strangulation of the werewolf. It stopped gurgling and lay still.
“It’s not as easy to throttle a chicken as people make it seem,” said Rasmus, dropping the bird to the floor.
“Practise is all it takes,” grunted Jera, giving the werewolf’s neck one final twist. She stood up and demonstrated a two-handed twisting motion for Rasmus’ education. “Just like that. It shouldn’t take much pressure.”
“How’d you manage that?” asked Viddo, impressed.
“I simply used the last charge of the wand and when our opponent became a chicken I ran after it and strangled it. It landed a nasty peck on my wrist, too.”
“Not the chicken. The werewolf,” said Viddo, pointing at the hairy corpse. It wasn’t exactly a stunted example of its type, with biceps the size of watermelons.
“Goosty always said I was pretty good with my hands,” said Jera, wiping her palms together. “I do like a nice axe, though.”
“We must make greater efforts to procure you one,” Viddo told her with an admiring shake of his head.
There were no further attackers within sight or hearing, so they took a brief pause to take stock of their options. Viddo believed that they had reached the rear of the castle and called upon his endless experience to decide upon their next move.
“We must find a kitchen,” he declared.
“I was thinking that we should look for an armoury, myself,” replied Rasmus. “Or some stairs.”
“Two excellent suggestions. However, I suspect that we could be near to the castle kitchens, whilst the main stairs could be a long way distant. There is always a set of steps leading upwards from a kitchen, in order that food can be delivered upstairs before it has gone completely cold.”
“That would make sense,” said Jera, pretending she was fully convinced. “Since we are lacking in weaponry, we should take the route which is closest and least likely to bring us into contact with anything hostile.”
They set off, with Viddo once more leading the way. He was correct in that the kitchens were nearby. There was an unassuming wooden door across the entrance. It was not locked and the thief cautiously pushed his head inside. There was a smell he didn’t like, but no sights or sounds to alarm him. He entered, beckoning the others to follow.
The castle kitchen might once have been a place of comforting smells and cheery good humour. A place of refuge for servants to talk amongst themselves while pilfering forbidden morsels of the Baron’s dinner. When Rasmus’ magical light filled the room, they could tell that the room was no longer a place of happiness. Two of the walls had long food-preparation benches attached to them. At least half of the floor space was taken up with other fixed benches and a table or two. A third wall had four huge fireplaces set into it, dirty and cold. The smell which Viddo had noticed came from the dead bodies – perhaps twenty of them in all and freshly killed.
“The baron’s servants have been busy hunting,” said Rasmus, with no trace of jocularity in his voice. The wizard ventured over to the first corpse, which had been dumped without ceremony upon a bench. It was the body of a teenage girl and her throat had been cut. There were bite marks on her shoulder, as if her killer had been unable to prevent itself from tasting her flesh.
“Why have they only just started now?” asked Jera. “The Baron has been gone for decades, hasn’t he?”
“I don’t know the answer,” said Rasmus. “It is true that werewolves will die from hunger, though I am not sure if they die from old age. They tend to get hunted down and slaughtered before one can find out how long-lived they might be.”
They did not wish to stay in the kitchen for long. Viddo had a look through a few cupboards and found several jars of dried herbs, along with a sealed stone urn that was filled with flour. He doubted that the werewolves had purchased them and shipped them here, so assumed that these products were decades old. Regardless, they were still quite fresh in appearance. Viddo didn’t like to leave a place without stealing at least something, so he filled a small pouch with some salt, pepper and mixed herbs, and placed it into his pack.
The
re were two exits. Jera had already looked into the first one and found a storeroom stacked with more flour and some glass containers of dried yeast, which she didn’t open. In one corner were three large rounds of cheese, covered in a thick fur of mould. Rasmus looked over her shoulder.
“That cheese will still be good underneath the mould,” he said.
“A shame we don’t even have a knife to cut it,” she replied.
“One little disappointment won’t kill me,” he told her with a smile.
Nearby, Viddo was waving from the second exit doorway and they went over to see what he’d found.
“I was sure there’d be stairs,” he said. “Except there are not. This doorway only leads to another passage, no doubt intended for servants and the like.”
“I don’t want to go back the way we came,” said Jera. “There could be werewolves still searching.”
“If they are still searching they are particularly inept, since we have left a trail of their dead in our wake.”
“And a couple of chickens,” said Rasmus proudly.
“Nevertheless, onwards is better than backwards, whatever the result of that choice may be.”
Viddo led them into the tunnel, guided by the spell of light. There was dampness to the stone and moss grew in parts, suggesting that they were very close to the outer walls. It was not quite wide enough for two abreast, which reduced the opportunity for conversation. They went down three steps, continued and then went up four steps. Rasmus could imagine Viddo’s irritation at this inexplicably inefficient deviation.
After what seemed a very long time, they came to a door in one wall. Ahead, the passage continued its journey onwards. Unable to resist the lure of a door, particularly when it broke the monotony of a grey-stoned passageway, Viddo stopped. The door was made of thick planks, held together by metal-studded bands of steel. It looked pristine and solid.
“Why would such a fine-quality door be here?” he asked out loud. He checked the lock and saw that it was passably sophisticated, and reinforced to prevent anyone shoving a metal bar inside and ripping it open.
“I’ll bet you can’t get it open with a sausage,” said Rasmus provocatively.
“Or a rasher of bacon,” added Jera, to get in on the act.
Soon, Jera and Rasmus were chewing contentedly on cold sausages and bacon, while the hard-working thief set to the task of opening the lock. There were no traps and he knew it would only take a few moments to spring it open, except the sounds of chewing made him realise how hungry he was. This distraction extended the time it took him by a good twelve seconds. Neither of his companions appeared to be especially grateful for his efforts, and continued to root in their packs for second helpings. Viddo joined them and the trio enjoyed a few minutes’ respite from the hard work that was adventuring. Having polished off five sausages and two hunks from his bread, Rasmus was first to his feet.
“Get a move on, will you?” he asked, directing his question specifically at Viddo. “Time is passing and you can’t sit around here all day stuffing your face.”
Ignoring this blatant enticement, Viddo finished off the last of his meal and slowly took a drink from his water skin. “What’s wrong with your hands? Have you forgotten how to turn a door handle?” he asked.
Half a sausage bounced off Rasmus’ chest and the second half struck Viddo amidships. “Oi, watch me bits,” the thief protested.
The thrower of the sausage, that being Jera, laughed mellifluously and raised herself to her feet. “You two are silly sometimes,” she said. “Now which of you is going to open that door for a lady?”
With a mock bow, Rasmus turned the handle and pushed the door open. In spite of his gallant act, he was careful to watch out for inbound undead or werewolves. Nothing unwanted came and they entered the room.
“The guards’ quarters!” said Viddo. “No wonder that door was so heavily defended. If they’d put a normal door in its place, the guards would be raiding the kitchen five times a night!”
“Why not instil some proper discipline?” said Jera, giving voice to a sensible question. “Punish anyone they caught or sack them? Maybe even brick up the doorway.”
“You’re overthinking things,” Rasmus told her. “Far better for us to take a small pleasure in the frustrations of thwarted guards whom we will never meet, rather than ponder the minutiae of the castle’s interior design.”
Jera didn’t reply. She was a sensible woman by nature and though she’d been trying to cultivate a more carefree approach to her life and her adventuring, she couldn’t escape the notion that there needed to be at least one person in the group who thought things through before running in with a sword drawn and a wand of chickens pointing at the enemy. She cut her internal monologue short and determined to have the conversation with herself once they escaped.
The room they’d entered was forty or fifty feet long and almost twenty wide. Two more doors led away – one in each of the shorter walls, while they’d entered at one end of a long wall. There were rows of beds along both long walls. They still had prickly-looking brown sheets on them, with rumpled pillows, as if they’d been slept in yesterday. This was only a façade and there was an air of neglect that made it entirely obvious that no one had slept in here for a long time. At the end of each bed was a shabby wooden chest – twenty in all.
“Come on, get them open!” said Viddo. He quickly threw the nearest two chests open and emptied out their contents of minor bric-a-brac.
“Will there be traps?” Jera opened her mouth to ask. She stifled the question and flipped open a third lid with her boot. Inside was a neatly-folded blanket, a pair of leather shoes and a couple of daggers. “Here,” she said, flipping the weapons in turn to Viddo. He caught each without effort and concealed them about his person.
Searching the chests was strangely soothing, like opening random presents and hoping that one might contain something unexpected and exciting. They didn’t have much luck – none of the erstwhile occupants of the room had been stupid enough to stash anything valuable in the presence of their colleagues. There were plenty of spare blankets, a couple of hats, three more daggers, one badly-painted portrait with the word ‘mother’ written on the back, more shoes, a winter jacket and the biggest prize – a scroll, which Rasmus found.
“An identify spell!” he said.
“Didn’t you memorise any at Stinky Wadslow’s shop?”
Rasmus didn’t bother to correct the deliberate misremembering of his university associate’s name. “I memorised some,” he said. “A stolen spell is generally more exciting.”
“Why didn’t you say you’d got some?” asked Viddo, reaching into a pouch at his belt. “We’ve still got this unidentified ring that we acquired in the process of helping that poor, trapped mummy.” He was referring to one of their recent encounters on their last adventure.
“You didn’t ask,” said Rasmus.
Nothing further was said, since it was abundantly clear that all parties were equally culpable in forgetting the presence of the unidentified ring. Rasmus cast his spell.
“It’s a good one,” he said. “Very valuable and extremely useful in the right circumstances.”
Viddo knew his friend well and could often read the wizard’s expression with remarkable accuracy. “It’s a ring of protection from demons, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” said Rasmus, handing back the ring. The three of them were silent. Jera didn’t know precisely what protection the ring would have offered but she was left with the impression that her companions would have much rather known they had it before their earlier encounter with the demon lord. Viddo put the ring on since he had nowhere better to put it. He was convinced that he’d not likely see another demon for a long time.
The mood was not dampened for long. With two exits to pick, Viddo chose one randomly, having first listened out for activity on the other side. The door was not locked and when opened, it revealed a small armoury, with wooden racks along the walls.
&nbs
p; “The guards must have stashed their weapons in here when off-duty,” said Jera. The room was only large enough for two to enter, so Rasmus milled around outside, listening to the scraping and rattling sounds of weapons being picked up and examined.
Viddo came out first. He had a pair of shortswords at his belt and was carrying a stubby, brutal-looking mace. “Here,” he said, offering it to Rasmus.
“Thank you,” said the wizard, taking the weapon. It was a foot-and-a-half long and knobbled at the end, all the better to inflict devastating injuries where it landed. “I shan’t be needing this anymore,” he continued. Rasmus shook his sleeve and a round length of wood fell out.
“A rolling pin?” asked Viddo.
“I stole it from the kitchen,” said Rasmus with undisguised pride.
With nothing better to do, Viddo picked the rolling pin up. “It’s got a low-grade magical enchantment on it,” he said.
“I am curious,” said Rasmus. “Not sufficiently curious to identify the qualities of the item, but curious nonetheless.”
With the two men speculating about the possible magical qualities of a rolling pin, Jera emerged from the arms room. She had a hand axe dangling from each hip, whilst in her hands was a rather more impressive example of an axe, this one being over four feet in length and with an oversized double-bladed head. She held it comfortably, as if it weighed next to nothing.
