They entered through the gate, swept the courtyard and walked through the unlocked doors to the dark inner foyer, all the while keeping their weapons in hand, jumping at every small noise or flickering shadow.
The foyer itself was spacious and round, with high walls lined with huge stained-glass windows spreading colored moonlight onto the marble floor. Twin crescent staircases worked their way up either side of the foyer to a balcony above, and to Gautier’s recollection, the castle’s various chambers and quarters were up there, while the rooms on the lower floor were for storage, dining, dancing, and whatever else the royalty did while the peasantry toiled.
Gautier took a few paces into the room and stopped, letting the others file in behind and around him. Something in the room wasn’t sitting right with him. The place was more open and exposed than the inner courtyard had been, and the dark covered everything almost like a tangible blanket.
“Anyone have a light?” asked a villager dryly.
“There should be brackets on the wall, for torches,” Gautier said.
A single lantern light moved out of the crowd and over to the wall so that the men could light the torches. Leroux started to say something, but Gautier didn’t hear it, as something else triggered his senses. He’d been in the woods too long, had come across too many predators, to be able to escape the sensation of eyes on him, territorial eyes that belonged to an alpha male who was angry at his intrusion.
“Be ready, men! We’re not alone!” he barked.
At almost the same time, a voice in the darkness snapped out an order, and six fireballs suddenly ignited up on the balcony, bathing half the foyer in an orange-yellow glow.
Gautier’s men gasped. Weapons rattled and swished through the air, aiming for a foe, which they found at the top of the balcony. The fireballs illuminated seven of Prince Aubrey’s footmen, standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder, unmistakable in their uniforms and matching coiffeurs. Only the man in the middle carried no flame of his own. Firelight danced in his eyes, and although Gautier couldn’t see the man’s face in detail, he could sense the smug leer on his lips.
“Lucian,” Gautier hissed.
“Gautier! What a pleasant surprise to see you! I lie, of course. About the surprise part, I mean. I could smell you a mile away, and we’re upwind of you. But I’m also not lying about it being pleasant! We wanted you to come here, so you could fall into our trap. Which you have! And here we are, talking to each other. Such pleasantry! What fun!”
As the villagers looked to Gautier in confusion, he just rolled his eyes. “Lucian, you clown. I see you still don’t know when to end a sentence.”
Lucian, who was Prince Aubrey’s “head footman”—a title which Gautier had mocked and ridiculed at every chance—was perhaps the only man in the castle who could be a bigger fop than the prince himself. Ever flamboyant, dressed in elegant and expensive clothing that hugged his skinny body, the would-be womanizer’s profile was thin and sharp, and Gautier suspected that the man was addicted to opiates.
“Oh come now, woodsman, you know I just love the sound of my own voice. It’s delightful, don’t you think?” Lucian snapped his fingers. His six footmen raised their arms and, as one, hurled fireballs down.
Gautier’s men screamed and took cover, only to realize that the fireballs had been aimed at the torches on the walls, and had hit their targets with incredible precision. The rest of the wide room lit up bright, illuminating Lucian’s once-sharp and boyish features from the front. The head footman smiled an evil smile.
But it was his eyes that drew Gautier’s attention. They were blackened, just like Charles’s.
“Of course,” Gautier muttered coolly.
“Feast your eyes on the future, mes amis!” Lucian grinned and gestured broadly to his fellow footmen. “We could have sent our copper men out to grab you too, but that’s a lot of work. Much simpler to grab the weakest of you, for-to lure in the strong. Twice the payload with half the effort. Oh, how efficient our master is!”
Gautier frowned. “Twice the result, half the effort? That doesn’t…”
“Yeah, that’s wrong,” said Leroux. He counted some figures aloud, but kept starting over at zero.
Lucian paused his grandiose speech and looked down at Leroux, perplexed. “Excuse you, you rusty-hair twit?”
“You are getting twice the yield, but with the same amount of effort, not half. Your math doesn’t check out,” Leroux said. He turned to Gautier, grinning as he tapped the side of his head. “See? Told you. Sharp as a nail.”
“Good, good,” Lucian purred. “The Master will put your sharp mind to good use, then. Granted, he won’t be thrilled that you made it past the watcher in the moat without taking any casualties. That was supposed to thin the herd a bit, you see. Our numbers are somewhat evenly matched right now. But! I do think we have the advantage of familiarity with the field of combat, as well as knowing what defensive mechanisms we have in the castle, so—”
The footman to his right leaned in and elbowed him gently, but with a look of consternation on his face. He whispered something inaudible to Lucian, whose eyes widened as though he’d just realized he’d said something offensive in the middle of Easter mass.
“Hey, that was starting to get good,” said Leroux. “Tells us more about your numbers, and your defenses in here?”
“This is part of the trap,” Gautier whispered to Leroux. “They’re stalling.”
“Are you sure? I thought Lucian was just that dumb.”
“He is, but remember that the black marks on his eyes mean that someone else is controlling him. We need to find our captured townsfolk. Next time Lucian gets deep into a ramble, I’ll shoot him. Tell everyone to kill the others,” Gautier said.
Lucian started up again. “Silly me! Ever the chatterbox. As a roundabout way of saying it, you won’t make it past this foyer. My footmen and I are too much of a match for you. Doubtless you’re comparing your own number to ours, but we have certain talents that you don’t know how to counter! That being the case, we are, after all, French gentlemen, and as such it behooves us to give you a choice in the matter. Will you surrender to us now? Or will you—”
Gautier jerked his hand toward his belt to grab the pistol there, in a move he’d performed a thousand times. Yet he missed, because just as he reached for it, Danielle darted past and bumped his arm out of the way, fouling his motion. She held the gun she’d stolen from him earlier, and pointed it up at Lucian with the hammer fully cocked.
“Enough talk! Where’s my brother? The one you assaulted on the road!” she demanded.
“Gah! A pox on you, woman! Get out of the way!” Gautier shoved her aside and drew the pistol, the element of surprise completely gone. “Lucian! We’re not surrendering. You lightweights can try your hand against a bunch of hardened mountain farmers and see who gets butchered. Give us our women and children, and we’ll make it quick for you.”
Danielle glared at Gautier. Lucian kept smiling that stupid plastered smile, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. The villagers looked back and forth between the woodsman and the footman, their weapons twitchy in their hands.
“If you are so adamant about losing your lives to us in mortal combat, well then, be our guests. Men?” Lucian said, to his comrades. As one, they raised their hands over their heads. In the light from the torches, Gautier saw what he couldn’t before, that they each had some kind of apparatus affixed to their forearms, bolted into the bones beneath their flesh. With a snap of their fingers, the apparatus clicked and clacked and sprang forward, extending down the length of the arm to wrap some new piece of equipment around the hand, the ends of which were lit and flickering like candles. Whatever the devices were, they dealt fire.
This would not end well.
The footmen sprang into action. They must have had similar metallic contraptions affixed to their legs, invisible under their snug trousers, for they leapt high into the air, over the banisters and above the villagers, blastin
g balls of fire into the thick of them. Strategically Gautier thought it was a brilliant move, forcing the villagers to scatter like ants, to thin them out, and to throw fire at a part of the castle that wouldn’t burn: the stone floor.
Four of the footman landed amidst the villagers and began punching or kicking with their spring-enhanced limbs. As Gautier charged forward and took the stairs to the right, anxious to get to Lucian and put him down, he heard his fellow villagers cry out in pain as bones snapped and blows landed hard. He had to shut that out when he reached the top of the stairs and charged at the still-smiling Lucian, flame-hands at the ready.
“Dance with me, Gautier!” Lucian laughed.
Gautier aimed the flintlock pistol dead-center on Lucian’s chest and pulled the trigger. Lucian grunted and took a step back, but didn’t falter. His shirt didn’t immediately stain red, either; he was wearing armor underneath, strong enough to stop a musket ball. Bellowing with fury, Gautier closed in on Lucian and swung at his head with the butt of the pistol.
A jet of flame spewed forth from Lucian’s hand, not a fireball this time, but a full stream of liquid fire, as though it were a geyser. The fire ignited the wood handle of Gautier’s gun, caused his glove to stink and smoke, and made him yelp in alarm. He dropped the gun and immediately ducked to the right, rolling out of the way just as a second jet of flame torched the carpet where he’d been standing.
Lucian cackled as he struck out with his left hand, then his right, then his left again, each time dropping fire where Gautier’s feet had been. “Oh, and what a fine dancer you are! Ever so light on your toes. We ought to write you a prancing ballad, my good man!”
He hated himself for it, but Gautier had to turn his back on Lucian so he could run down the hall and find a stronger position from which to fight. How could he ever have expected Lucian to throw fire from his hands? What trickery did Prince Aubrey have in place here?
Gautier found himself in a corridor lined with suits of armor on pedestals, each one clutching a spear in its gauntlet like an ever-vigilant sentinel. Lucian sang after him from around the corner, getting close. Gautier was about to grab another gun from his belt—this time he’d shoot Lucian in the head—except a metal gauntlet reached down and clutched his arm, preventing him from doing so.
He looked up. He was staring right into the eyeless visor of the suit of armor, which had bent down from its standing position to seize him. Suddenly he was wrestling with the thing, which moved completely on its own, its inner workings click-click-clacking as it dealt with the intruder. Thus entangled, Gautier found himself exposed at his rear as Lucian turned down the hallway, his flame-throwing hands aimed straight at Gautier’s back.
More screams and thumps and cries of pain sounded through the corridor, echoing from the foyer. His people were suffering, dying, burning at the hands of these abominations, and he couldn’t save them. That broke him inside, just a little, to find himself so completely out of his depth in a situation that, five minutes prior, he had under control. They called him their hero, and where was he? Wrestling with a pile of metal, about to be torched by a man who wouldn’t survive one night in the woods.
“Oh Gautier, mon ami Gautier! Is it warm in here, or is it just me?” Lucian cackled.
“AAAAAAARGH!” Gautier wrapped both of his massive arms around the armor’s torso, ignoring its attempts to pummel or strangle him. He spun around and put the armor between himself and Lucian, and for the briefest of moments, fear flickered in the footman’s magical black eyes.
“You’ve got jokes, you soggy twit? I’ve got one for you. What looks like a man, burns like a candle, and melts like both?” Gautier shot.
Lucian ignited both of his torches, but Gautier shifted his grip on the suit, hefting it up under the armpits so as to put as much of the metal as possible in front of him. The suit consciously dug its heels into the rug, making Gautier lift it higher, allowing the heat to reach his body, but he stomped onward even as Lucian intensified the blasts from his torches.
Then his fuel ran out.
Gautier didn’t know what the source of the fire was, but clearly Lucian had expended all of his, and as he stood there dumbfounded, Gautier dropped the now-red hot armor on him with a mighty roar. Lucian screamed, thrashing about under the immense weight even as the hot metal set fire to his clothes, his words twisting into an agonized howl.
As Lucian screamed, Gautier could’ve sworn he heard a deeper, rumbling voice shouting words in a language he didn’t know, one that he heard less with his ears and more with his soul. The black magic leaked out of Lucian’s eyes and swirled like clouds of oily dust around his face, then his body tried to heal the damage done to him, but it wasn’t working. Gautier drew a pistol and put a bullet in Lucian’s head to stop the noise, and then it was over.
At least in this room.
Gautier grunted as he rose to his feet, stuffed the pistol back into his belt, and pulled the shorter of the two rifles off of his back. It was time to hit these misshapen monsters with some real stopping power.
Back in the foyer, the villagers had cornered the footmen, most of whom had run out of fuel like Lucian had. Some of the men lay prostrate and unmoving, while others nursed horrible burn wounds through gritted teeth. The air stank of burning flesh, a smell Gautier had not known he hated until then.
“Leroux!” He found his friend at the edge of the room, cradling one arm and repeatedly flexing the fingers of one hand, which was covered in blood. “What happened?”
“This one had a knife,” Leroux said, kicking the dead footman nearest to him. “I had one of your double-barrels. Couldn’t put him away before he got me, though.”
“Hand still works. We’ve got to sweep the castle, hit them first,” Gautier said.
Danielle appeared at his side, took one look at Leroux, and tore a strip of fabric from the hem of her shirt to bind his wound. “You don’t look any worse for the wear, woodsman,” she said, giving Gautier a quick once-over.
He had no reply to that. Danielle still had her satchel with her, and a second pistol stuffed in the sash around her traveling cloak, different from the one she’d stolen from him. So, she’d stopped to get armaments from her wagon when they were still in the woods. The satchel looked large enough to carry a dozen pistols loaded and primed. Yes, she was definitely not to be trifled with.
“Gautier! What next?” asked Jean-Claude.
“Get the wounded out into the courtyard in case anyone else comes through the room. Yes, it’s cold, but it’s safer out there in the shadows. They can return once we’ve swept the place. Everyone else go in pairs or in threes, check every room, kill every unnatural thing you see and claim whatever spoils you want. If you find our kin, whistle like a Milan bird. If you find the massive beast that attacked the travelers, well, that one’s mine. Clear?”
They were clear.
Danielle went off with Jean-Claude and Jules. Most everyone else went in threes, but Gautier would only move about with Leroux, and they soon left the others behind as they traveled deeper into the second floor. Gautier didn’t know where Prince Aubrey’s room was, but he knew it was up here somewhere.
“What are we after, in particular?” Leroux asked, falling into step with Gautier the way they did when they hunted together.
“Robinette,” Gautier said with a grunt.
Leroux swore, but if he had much more to say in response to that, he must have bitten his tongue. “Why?”
“Because I have to be sure, Leroux. I think she behaved the way she did because she was under duress. I give her more credit than to willingly take up with the devil’s minions.” Gautier noticed a slightly rotten smell in the corridor, like an old kill that hadn’t been picked at by the scavengers just yet.
Leroux groaned louder than was prudent as they cleared one empty room and moved on to the next. “When will you let that ship sail away?”
“You keep your voice down,” Gautier grunted.
“No, not this time. This
has to be said! You have made her your sole focus, your core purpose, for an entire year. And you know what? You’re not hooked on anything that makes her unique in her heart or soul. You are smitten with her for nothing more than her beauty, which, I admit, is worthy of any poet’s best efforts. But you’re not a poet and you don’t put any effort into seeing what she really is! You wouldn’t give her a second thought if she were plain.
“Her head is full of fantastic ideas from all those books she reads, to the point that she’s gotten caught up with monsters and metal men because it fits her fantasies. But you have seen these things up close! Fought them! Killed them! You know of their evil, and anyone loyal to them could only be evil themselves.”
“You’re wrong there,” Gautier said. “She’s only here because Prince Aubrey has a curse on her. A hex, or whatever they call them. That’s the only explanation.”
Leroux grabbed a handful of Gautier’s cloak and pulled him to stop. “Then tell me this, woodsman! Why aren’t her eyes blacked out with the magic?”
Gautier opened his mouth. He said nothing.
Why hadn’t she had the blackened eyes?
He didn’t like to contemplate that very much.
“See? There is an ugly truth beneath her physical beauty, and whether we want it to or not, such truths have a way of burying us like an avalanche if we’re not careful,” said Leroux.
A sound of splintering wood overhead announced the arrival of a new foe, so suddenly that neither Leroux nor Gautier could respond before it was upon them. In the darkness Gautier only saw the robust shadow of a portly man as it exploded through a panel in the wall above a door beside them. The man knocked Gautier aside and used Leroux to break his fall. Gautier heard the sickening crack of bones snapping, and Leroux screamed like a child.
“Leroux!” Gautier brought his rifle up to bear. The fat shadow spun on him with a sort of slow but powerful grace, catching Gautier off-guard with a lazy backhand that knocked the rifle out of his hands. Surprised but not stunned, Gautier deftly retreated a step and seized the hilt of a sword at his hip, pulling it free with a mighty tug.
Kill The Beast Page 5
