Jimmy nodded.
“As I said, in my sleep.” He peered into the cellar beyond. “Dark down there, isn’t it?”
“Yep,” said Obegarde.
“Don’t suppose you thought to bring a lantern or anything?”
“Nope. Sometimes I can see in the dark; but it depends whether my eyes are playing up …”
“Terrific,” Jimmy muttered. “Comforting to know that I’m working with the best …”
He inched a foot down onto the top of what looked to be a dangerously fractured staircase and slowly began to descend. Obegarde followed, thinking twice about shutting the hatch behind him.
At length, they emerged into a large and extremely spacious cellar lit with wall-torches. The room was featureless apart from two empty barrels, a stout door and a floor-to-ceiling tapestry depicting some ancient battle between the mage lords of Illmoor.
Jimmy turned to Obegarde in the half dark, and grinned.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he whispered.
“Depends,” whispered Obegarde, still looking around him. “Are you thinking that they don’t stock up much on ale?”
Jimmy shook his head, nodding toward the near wall. “I’m thinking that there’s a tunnel behind that tapestry.”
Obegarde moved over to it.
“Hmm … why do you say that?”
“Well, don’t you feel the breeze?”
“Yes, but I thought it was probably coming from the hatch behind us.”
Jimmy grinned.
“Trust me; it isn’t.”
Five
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING?” Dwellings exclaimed, almost dropping his drink on the bar top.
The innkeeper turned around, slowly.
“Eh?”
“I … um … I’d like another drink, please,” the detective managed, sweat beading on his brow.
The innkeeper folded his arms.
“You ain’t finished the one you got,” he snapped, nodding at the ale in Dwellings’ hand.
“Yes, but I will shortly … so can I have another one standing by?”
The innkeeper muttered something under his breath and lumbered back to the bar, where he pulled Dwellings another ale.
“Satisfied?”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And you?” he asked, glaring at Wheredad.
“Oh yes. Quite satisfied, thank you.”
“Good.”
The big man turned, and headed toward the door he’d been making for earlier.
“Um …”
He spun around, but the movement was quicker this time … and he had a very disgruntled look on his face.
“WHAT NOW?”
Dwellings glanced briefly at Wheredad, thought for a moment and then said: “How much, please?”
“You what?”
“How much for the ales?”
“You can pay when you’ve finished drinkin’ …”
He turned once again, but didn’t get more than a few centimeters this time.
“But we have finished.”
“What you on about?” the innkeeper growled, spitting on the floor as he headed back to the duo. “He’s got half a tankard left and you’ve got a full tankard and one waitin’. What exac’ly you tryin’ to pull here, fella?”
“Trying to pull?” Dwellings gave the man a blank expression. “We’re not trying to pull anything; we’re just trying to have a nice, quiet drink in the country.”
“Yeah, well, why don’t you jus’ shut the hell up an’ get on with it, then?”
“That’s not very hospitable,” Dwellings retorted, pushing his luck to see how far it would take him.
“No,” Wheredad agreed, ignoring his master’s gesture to keep out of the argument. “We could report you to the owner.”
The innkeeper stopped dead, and a terrible scowl took over his face.
“What do you know about the owner?” he asked accusingly, and Dwellings noticed that he was beginning to edge around the bar toward them.
The detective took a step back and held up his hand.
“My friend was merely pointing out that manners cost nothing,” he said. “I assure you, we have absolutely no intention of complaining to the … er … proprietor of your establishment.”
“You couldn’t anyway,” said the innkeeper, suddenly rushing to the door and throwing the bolt across it. He turned with a terrible smile on his lips. “Owner’s lyin’ in the basement with ’is throat cut.”
Dwellings emptied the contents of his tankard onto the floor and waved it threateningly in the air.
“Interesting,” he said, cautiously approaching the brute as Wheredad picked up a heavy bar stool and bumbled up alongside him. “Have you got Viscount Curfew down there, too?”
The innkeeper’s face became a mask of horror.
“Spoin!” he screamed, drawing a long dagger from his apron. “Davenpaw! Rhark! We got big trouble up here, boys!”
The innkeeper’s booming voice echoed through the inn.
“Back!” Jimmy warned, hurrying into a dark corner of the cellar and hunkering down in the shadows.
Obegarde folded his black coat about him and dropped to the floor, just as the tapestry flew aside to admit two rushing figures. Obegarde immediately recognized one as the shapeshifter from the cellar; the other was a giant of a man with broad shoulders and a thick mane of hair. They hurried past, flung open the cellar’s only door and took the stairs beyond it two at a time.
Jimmy sneaked up to where Obegarde was crouched.
“I knew Dwellings would blow it,” he whispered. “Do you think we should go up and help?”
“Probably,” Obegarde admitted. “But we’ve got problems of our own to deal with …”
“What?”
“There’s somebody else coming up the tunnel …”
Jimmy and Obegarde stayed hidden in their dark corner as an arm brushed the tapestry aside and stepped into the sewer. The man was of medium height, slightly built and armed with a long, thin sword which he carried in a way that made both Jimmy and the vampire feel distinctly uneasy. He made straight for the door to the stairs, but before he could reach it, Obegarde steeled himself and rushed forward …
“Here, have a drink!”
Enoch Dwellings swung out with the other tankard, but his arm was blocked in mid-arc by the innkeeper, who then fastened a thick hand around his neck and lifted him bodily from the ground.
“Whereg-gad! Hlp me!” he managed, struggling for breath.
Wheredad crossed the room in two leaps and smashed his bar stool across the innkeeper’s back, causing the man to stagger and drop his victim. Enraged by the assault, the innkeeper spun around to land a blow of his own, but Wheredad caught him squarely on the jaw and knocked him over a table stacked with empty tankards.
“Good man, Wheredad! Jolly well do —”
Dwellings’ words died in the air as the door at the back of the bar flew open and two men burst into the room.
The larger of the two leaped into the air, and a strange glow encircled his body. When he landed, he had changed into the biggest lion Dwellings had ever seen in his life. He stood, transfixed, as the beast advanced on him. There was no sign of the second man, who’d dropped behind the bar and disappeared.
Wheredad took one look at the prowling lion and quickly made for the door, wrenching at the bar with all his might and flinging the portal wide.
“C’mon, Enoch! Get out!”
Wheredad dashed outside, but the detective wasn’t with him. Glancing back, he saw that Dwellings was still standing in the center of the inn, his gaze fixed firmly on the approaching lion.
“Enoch! ENOCH!”
From their vantage point at the edge of the wood, Lusa and Daily watched in horror as the detective’s assistant rushed from the inn, screaming his master’s name.
“They need help!” she said, rolling up her sleeves.
“Nah, they’ll be all right,” said Daily, scratching his earlobe.
“They’re a tough bunch, that lot.”
“Wheredad is screaming!”
Parsnip shrugged.
“Yeah, well, he’s probably just excited.”
“I’m going in.”
“Are you? Brave girl.”
Lusa rolled her eyes, and looked around for a weapon. Unfortunately there was nothing but trees in every direction, so she grabbed a hefty branch instead, and ran for the inn …
… where Dwellings had finally snapped out of his reverie and was beginning to back away: fast.
Wheredad, who’d never been great at thinking on his feet, snatched up a fistful of stones from the road and bombed back into the inn. Ducking under a low beam, he leaped onto the table nearest the door and hailed his missiles down upon the lion, which roared with unspeakable fury at the assault.
Meanwhile, Dwellings had reached the front of the inn and was inching very carefully toward the entrance. He didn’t notice the snake that was winding its way across the floor toward him.
Six
OBEGARDE FLEW INTO THE swordsman and the two of them cannoned through the door and onto the stairs. Seizing the opportunity this afforded, Jimmy ran for the tapestry, pushed it aside and squeezed himself into the gap beyond, just as Obegarde’s prey kicked him off.
Jimmy cupped a hand over his eyes, squinted.
The tunnel beyond was flickering with intermittent torchlight, and echoing with random screams. As tunnels went, it wasn’t exactly a welcoming prospect, but, thankfully, Jimmy had seen a lot worse.
He grabbed one of the torches and crept forward.
As a half-vampire, Obegarde’s superior strength gave him the edge over most normal men, but he was having extreme difficulty getting close to the swordfighter, who moved across the room like an eel and dodged blows like a mongoose.
Summoning a colossal burst of energy, he took a run up and leaped into the air, claws elongating in mid-flight.
Rhark slipped aside as if he was dodging a bull, and watched with amusement as Obegarde collided with the cellar wall.
“A pity, loftwing,” he said, readying his sword. “Good run-up; poor landing.”
He darted forward and slashed Obegarde across the face with his blade. The vampire made an attempt to fight back, but the swordsman had cut him three times before he could even raise a hand.
“Interesting,” he said, stepping back to admire his handiwork. “I thought loftwings were supposed to have lightning reflexes.”
“Oh no,” said Obegarde, using the wall to keep himself on his feet. “That’s a common misconception; we’re actually quite slow. Of course, we can’t be killed either, so it all evens out.”
Rhark smiled.
“Hmm … can’t be killed, eh? It’ll be fun to put that to the test, won’t it?”
He drove the sword forward; it sliced through Obegarde’s chest and the vampire fell to his knees.
Lusa arrived at the inn just as Dwellings emerged from the door with a giant snake wrapped around him. The thing was so large that it actually covered most of his body, and Lusa could only tell that it was Dwellings from the man’s atrocious choice of shoes. She jumped back, too horrified to move, but her mind was working frantically.
Fire, she thought, we need fire.
As Dwellings staggered around with the constricting mass engulfing him, Lusa looked down at the branch in her hand … and a thought struck her. She hurried toward the door of the inn, just as Wheredad flew out, backward, underneath the biggest lion she had ever seen. The beast had already ripped a bloody chunk from Wheredad’s shoulder, and was greedily snapping at his neck despite the flurry of powerful blows the big man was managing to muster.
Lusa glanced from Dwellings to Wheredad and back again. She didn’t have time to help them both. Nevertheless, she moved fast: darting through the door of the inn and quickly scouring the room for a torch or a tinderbox. Instead, she found a lantern hanging above the bar and a handful of oil-soaked rags behind it. Counting every second, she set to work, wrapping the rags around the branch and using the lantern to tease a considerable flame from it. This done, she hurried outside and drove the makeshift torch into the lion’s face, forcing it to retreat a little way and enabling Wheredad to scramble back across the gravel path. Spinning around, she then hurried across the path and lunged at the snake around Dwellings’ neck.
The creature let out several long spits and started a hissing fit. Then it released its grip on the detective and began to retreat, sliding stealthily through the grass. Lusa bore down on it like a crossbow bolt, stamping a foot onto the tail of the reptile and flinging the burning torch at its head.
The snake let out another lengthy hiss, and began very slowly to change shape …
From his vantage point a good distance away, Daily cursed himself for his cowardice: the lion had leaped atop Wheredad once again, and if he didn’t lend a hand right now, the detective’s big friend would be history …
Daily swore under his breath, then began hunting around the base of the tree for a good-sized rock.
Being a rogue and an eternal optimist, Jimmy held out secret hopes not only that Viscount Curfew was alive and well, but that he’d find the noble, rescue him and be proclaimed the ultimate hero of the hour. He didn’t expect it to be quite so easy, though.
“Lord Curfew?” he gasped, stepping back in the corridor and holding the torch aloft. “Is that you?”
There was a pause, then the viscount spoke.
“Yes, yes it is. Who are you?”
“Jimmy Quickstint, Lordship. We’ve met a few times, remember? I’m one of your loyal citizens.”
“Oh, yes … Jimmy. Er … I thank the gods you found me!”
Jimmy nodded, and moved forward to see if the viscount was wounded.
“How did you escape, Lordship? Didn’t they tie you up?”
The viscount appeared to think for a moment, and then rubbed his wrists as if they’d been on fire.
“I managed to wriggle free, Johnny.”
“Jimmy, Lordship. It’s Jimmy.”
“Yes yes, of course. I’m in a lot of pain, you understand.”
Jimmy whistled between his teeth.
“Did they torture you?”
“Indeed they did. Several times, in fact; with … er … cheese wire.”
“Oh, the devils! Never mind, Lordship, the rescue party’s arrived.”
The viscount nodded.
“How did you find me?”
“I’ll tell you later, Lordship.”
“No; tell me NOW.”
“No time, Lordship: really. The important thing is that we’re HERE!”
“You are indeed,” said the viscount, “and I’m very grateful for it; how many of you are there, exactly?”
“Er … five of us, sir.”
The viscount’s expression changed from one of concern to one of glee.
“Oh, is that all? Ha! In that case, I don’t know why I’m bothering with this charade …”
He drew a sword with lightning speed and drove it into Jimmy’s stomach. The gravedigger looked down, aghast at the strike, before dropping onto the floor like a bag of potatoes.
“No hard feelings, you understand,” said the royal impostor, peering down at Jimmy with mock sympathy. “But sometimes, people just don’t want to be rescued.”
He stepped over the prone figure and headed up the corridor.
Spoin, the shapeshifter, was trying desperately not to change back into human form. He concentrated with all his might, but the burns on his skin were becoming more painful, and he was losing the will to sssstay a snake …
Lusa, horrified at the sight of the half-man, half-reptile writhing on the grass before her, summoned all of her courage. Then she hurried forward, snatched the burning torch from the ground and waved it threateningly in the creature’s face.
Spoin recoiled, his forked tongue darting between his lips.
A couple of meters away, Enoch Dwellings was attending to Wheredad, who’d managed
to wriggle out from beneath the giant paws of the lion when Daily had arrived with a well-aimed rock, and was now on his knees, blood pouring from a terrible wound in his shoulder.
The lion, meanwhile, had turned his attention to the tracker and pursued him to the edge of the wood, where Daily was climbing an ancient oak tree like a spider monkey.
To make matters worse for the rescue party, night was beginning to fall across the land …
“Jimmy! Jimmy Quickstint; can you hear me?”
The gravedigger tried to see through the tears in his eyes, but he could only make out vague shadows.
“Help!” he cried. “I’ve been stabbed; somebody help me!”
“I will help you,” said the voice from the end of the corridor. “But you have to get me out of this cell; I can’t do much from in here, can I?”
Jimmy made a gargantuan effort to lift his head.
“Who — who are you?” he managed, between sobs.
“Lord Curfew, of Dullitch,” said the imprisoned viscount. “I believe we met during the Yowler incident …”
“We’ve m-met since then!” Jimmy screamed down the corridor.
“We have?”
“Yeah — you stabbed me in the stomach about six minutes ago!”
“Not me,” Curfew shouted through the bars of his prison. “An impostor; one who will not rest until he has the entire capital crushed in his palm.”
Jimmy groaned from the pain of his wound, curled up in a tight ball.
“Can you make it over here?” Curfew called, hope creeping into his voice. “There’s a bar on the outside of the door that slides into the wall; if you can reach it and get me out, I’m sure I can help you.”
Jimmy pushed his head away from the floor once more, but the cell and its talking occupant suddenly seemed a very long way away …
The lion was roaring and clawing at the base of the oak like a thing possessed. Daily reached the uppermost branches of the tree and then realized that although he himself was safe, his position rendered him totally useless to the group. Oh well, he reflected, at least he could use his voice.
“HELP!” came the cry that echoed through the treetops. “SOMEBODY HELP US! HEEELLLLLPPPP!”
Seven
Dwellings Debacle Page 14
