by John Daulton
They bent over, hands on their knees, regaining their breath, all except for Jasper, who collapsed to the ground. Meggins recovered quickly enough, however, and with an unspoken exchange, Ilbei sent him back down the tunnel, just far enough for him to see if there was anyone behind. Meggins returned minutes later and indicated that there was not.
“Good,” Ilbei said. “Then let’s be on with it.” With a glimpse down into the water to be sure of the direction of the current, Ilbei made to follow it out, but then came a scream of anguish such as he’d never heard, echoing up at them from behind.
“By the gods,” Ilbei said. “What was that?”
Whatever it was, it was frightening enough to get Jasper to his feet with an effort nearly like a leap. Once again Ilbei could see the white all the way around the wizard’s eyes. Poor Jasper had gotten himself a fearful dose of reality on his first foray out into the field these last few days.
The scream came again, a piercing shriek, someone in unfettered agony.
“We have to go,” Jasper said. His face had gone ghostly pale, visible even in the light of the single torch. “We have to go now. Let’s go.” He took Ilbei by the arm, pulling him downstream. He even reached for the torch, willing to lead. “Come on,” he pleaded.
Once more the scream sounded, rising up through the passage they’d climbed, a long and labored wail of excruciating pain.
“By the heavens.” A shudder ran down Ilbei’s spine.
“Sergeant, please,” Jasper said, yanking on Ilbei’s arm, leaning back and hauling with the weight of his body behind it.
“I ain’t never heard anythin like that,” Ilbei said, unmoved by Jasper’s attempts to drag him along. “And I’m afeared to even speak what it sounds.”
“I’ll speak it,” Meggins said. “I got a silver piece says that’s that Gangue character working at the grill.”
“You don’t suppose they found Sett already?” Mags asked. Her expression was one of horror and of guilt.
“Or he did like I said he would and ran straight to his boss, hoping a confession would spare him the misery.” Meggins looked smug. “I told you. And look what it got him.”
“Damn the tides, I knew it,” Ilbei spat.
The shriek came again, high and miserable. Whatever they were doing to him had him screeching with such energy it might have been a woman’s wail, which had Ilbei grumbling profanities. “Well, damn it, we can’t just leave him like that.” He cursed himself for his own sloppiness. He should have just broken the man’s neck.
Mags and Meggins were nodding that they agreed. Jasper gaped in horror at them. He put his whole body once more into the work of tugging Ilbei toward the promised exit. “We just came up here. We can’t go back now. We have to go.”
“Jasper, if’n that was you down there sizzlin on that rack, some conjurin bastard fillin ya with lightnin, how’d ya feel if’n ya knew we was here but done run off and left ya to it?” A quick upward jerk of his arm yanked Jasper upright. Ilbei stared the slender mage down, burrowing into him with the ferocity of his truth. Jasper didn’t reply right away, so Ilbei asked again. “I asked ya a question, son. How would ya feel if’n that was you?”
“Well, I’d be … well ….” The mage tried to maintain eye contact, but he couldn’t. He struggled to find the right words to get out of what he already knew was an impossible dilemma. But that still didn’t mean he wanted to go down, made evident by the way he began to pout.
“Stay up here if’n ya’d rather, but we’re takin the light,” Ilbei said. With that, the rest of them turned back and went down again. Jasper managed to wait until the glow of the torch had completely disappeared before imagined terrors sent him running after them, willing to face audible ones in the company of his companions and the light.
Back down at the intersection where the baskets were, they waited for the screams to resume. They didn’t have to wait long, and again the awful cries echoed throughout the tunnels. Determining that the sound came from directly ahead, they passed by the baskets and crept warily onward. When the cries died down, there followed a brief silence, heavy and absolute, as if the ropes they’d heard earlier dared not creak and the block and tackle dared not squeak for fear of being treated the same.
The passage led to a door made of heavy iron, which stood ajar, swung halfway into a wide, low-ceilinged chamber. The chamber was roughly circular and well lit by lamps mounted on its curving walls and placed, here and there, upon long tables. The lamplight glittered and gleamed all around, for the tables were heaped with gold. Mounds and mounds of it. At the center of the room was a large hole, three spans across and looking rather like a well, cut right into the floor. Above it was a pair of whim mechanisms, the hoists that Ilbei had heard before. Unlike the traditional varieties he’d seen before, however, these were counterbalanced boom cranes, each with a short boom end that reached out over the hole and a long, weighted end that stretched all the way to the arced walls several paces away. The shorter end of each had block and tackle affixed, through which ran ropes as thick as Ilbei’s wrists. One end of each rope dropped like a plumb line into the hole, while the other ran back along the arm to the center post, over an angled pulley and down to a large cylinder that turned by the workings of wooden gears and a crank. From the longer end of the arm, near the walls, short platforms dangled, held in place by chains. Upon these platforms, and arrayed around them, on and under a nearby table, were iron cylinders of varying size, some as small as the tip of Ilbei’s thumb, some as large as an ale keg. There were numerals cast into the sides of the larger ones, and likely the smaller ones as well, though Ilbei couldn’t verify that from a distance. He didn’t have time to contemplate it much, the whole of it taken in at a glance, but it seemed obvious to him that both whims also served as giant scales.
And there was a lot to weigh. Around each of the center posts were baskets filled with gold. Basket upon basket upon basket of it. The more Ilbei looked, the more he saw, and while he couldn’t see the left side of the room, he supposed, given how many baskets were lined up along the far wall, there were more out of his sight. A king’s ransom to be sure, gathered and stored in baskets like picked fruit, with still more baskets sitting empty and waiting to be filled.
Ilbei also saw that the chamber was occupied. He could see six men working inside, four at the nearest of the cranes and two at the one across the hole, the lot of them hauling up gold in an obviously long-practiced routine. Two of the closer men had just cranked up a basket of gold, and another man, standing near the center post, threw a lever that allowed him to swing the short arm of the boom over the edge of the floor with surprising ease. A fourth worker disconnected the hooks as the two fellows from the crank joined him, and together they dragged the basket out of sight somewhere left of the door. The man at the center post went to help his two comrades on the other crane. They had also just cranked up a basket full of gold. The three that had hauled away the first basket reappeared, and two of them went to help with the other load, while the third set himself to attaching an empty basket to the hooks, preparing it to be swung out over the hole again.
It was a busy and rapid sequence, the men’s movements quick and sure. They worked in rhythm with one another, grunting occasionally but otherwise at their ease in the way of draft horses drawing a loaded wagon along a good road. They must have been at it a long time, for they were all huge, each of them shirtless, revealing heavily muscled frames that gleamed golden with sweat in the lamplight, the play of light and shadow emphasizing the brawn acquired by lifting baskets of heavy metal, day after day. Brawny as Ilbei was, even as Kaige was, neither soldier could claim the nearly inhuman bulk of those six men.
Once again, a shriek of agony issued forth, and it came from inside the room, to the left, somewhere behind the open door and out of sight. None of the laborers looked up as they heard it, which Ilbei saw as evidence of their long conditioning in this chamber. Despite the racket, they simply worked together in perfect u
nison, as if the screams were but wind in the trees or the crackle of a hearth fire.
Ilbei shook his head. There wasn’t going to be any way to deal with those screams that didn’t take them straight through those brutes inside. Everyone with him saw it the same. He set his jaw and nodded to Meggins and Kaige. To Mags and Jasper he said, “Stay back. These boys ain’t fer ya, not unless ya got somethin ya can spell fer us, Jasper.” Both nodded that they understood.
Whoever it was being tortured continued to wail; it went on until breath failed and silence came at the end of misery’s fading rasp. It occurred to Ilbei once more that it sounded like a woman in there.
“Come on, then,” he said in low tones. “Let’s have at it.”
Meggins nocked an arrow and put another in his teeth. Kaige drew his sword off his back, and Ilbei was glad that at least the big man would have room to wield it. He kicked the door open the rest of the way, and together they ran in.
There were eight of the big fellows, not six. Two more were sitting in chairs near a closed iron door, apparently taking a breather while the other six worked. It was the seated pair that spotted them first, and one of them called out, “Oy, who’s that lot?”
“Stand aside,” Ilbei said. “Ya don’t have to die.”
One of the six near the baskets lobbed a chunk of gold at Meggins the size of a Winterfest ham. Meggins, ever agile, leaned sideways enough to avoid being smashed by the glimmering meteor, which instead slammed into the wall several paces behind him. Meggins’ bowstring thrummed right after, and his missile did much the same, though it passed first through the big fellow’s head and then hammered into the stone wall beyond, creating a scatter of gravel, which clattered to the floor. Meggins grinned as he snatched his next arrow from his teeth.
The other five near the hole reacted less quickly than their comrade, and they watched his throw and subsequent death with surprise. Surprise turned to rage, and plucking up their own hunks of gold, together they charged at Meggins, two of them hurling theirs and the other three simply intent on pulping him directly. Meggins had to dart to his right to avoid the flung gold and couldn’t get off his shot. Kaige ran forward to intercept them before they could get to his friend. Ilbei might have as well, but the two that had been seated took up their chairs, wielding them as weapons, and lumbered toward Ilbei, their footsteps heavy and thudding upon the floor.
The nearest to Ilbei flung his chair when he was barely two steps across the room. Ilbei ducked and rolled sideways. There came another crash as a hunk of gold smashed into the wall behind Meggins. Right after, Ilbei heard the hiss of Meggins’ second arrow whizzing overhead. Another of the men who’d been working the baskets went down. Meggins’ bow clattered to the floor, tossed aside for now. Ilbei heard his companion’s axe and dagger sliding free as the soldier drew them and ran to Kaige, ready for close-quarters combat beside his friend.
Back on his feet, Ilbei had to raise the torch, using it to block a gold-fisted punch directed at his head by one of the men who’d apparently been discouraged by Kaige’s enormous sword. The torch burst into splinters, but it wasn’t enough to stop the blow, leaving Ilbei to deal with the remaining energy, of which there was a lot. It spun him all the way around, forcing him to scramble to keep his feet, which in turn nearly sent him into the hole. He teetered at the edge of it, swinging his pickaxe backward, using its weight to hold his balance. Even so, he was only prevented from falling in by the fact that the man with the other chair hit him. The blow struck him in the ribs as he tipped into the opening, painfully but also hard enough to give him lateral momentum, which he used to dance around the rim of the hole like a tightrope walker. Three steps, and then he was out of it on the other side. He couldn’t help noting as he skirted the rim how small the tiny spot of light was down at the bottom of that hole—such a fall would have lasted a long time, long enough to think about the nature of it on the way down. He shuddered even as he dove clear and rolled toward the far wall. He was just about to regain his feet when all three men were on him. The nearest of them leapt upon him and pinned him to the floor with a knee to his chest that landed like a hammer blow, and the one that had thrown his chair kicked him.
Another hammer blow, this time in the form of a huge hunk of gold, plunged toward his face, courtesy of the man pinning Ilbei to the floor. Ilbei raised his pickaxe to ward it off, just as the man with the chair brought his makeshift weapon down. He managed to stave off both attacks, through luck, mainly, but bad luck followed right after as the chair broke over the head of his weapon and nearly cost him his grip. He had to catch at it, and in doing so, he lowered it. The remnants of the chair were brought to bear against him in that opening, and had he not rolled his head to the side, the point of a broken spindle would have impaled him straight through the mouth and out the back of his neck. A kick to his ribs from the third attacker knocked his breath out, and the big man on top of him held his chunk of gold in two hands, raised on high to finish Ilbei off. Ilbei was done for this time, he knew.
He heard the thwack of wood on bone. He thought it was one of his ribs being kicked in, but it wasn’t. Mags had swung her quarterstaff full and flat, and nearly caved in the skull of the brute wielding the chair. His eyes rolled up into his head, and he pitched face forward, stiff as a felled tree. The remnants of the chair clattered and broke apart, rolling on the stone around Ilbei’s head. Ilbei managed to get his pickaxe up to block the two-handed smash that would have brained him, but his attacker let go of the gold with one hand and used it to grab Ilbei’s wrist. The man’s strength was astonishing, and he applied it well, moving his grip up enough to force Ilbei’s hand backwards, clearly intent on breaking his wrist or, at very least, making him drop his pickaxe.
With his free hand, Ilbei punched him in the chest, then twice in the stomach, all three blows in rapid fire. He might as well have punched the wall. The brute tried to smash Ilbei again with the gold in his other hand. Ilbei twisted enough to avoid it. Twice more he narrowly rolled his head aside from similar blows. When the man tried a fourth smash, Ilbei blocked it with his forearm, rolled his wrist over and on top of his assailant’s, and then drove the man’s hand down hard, using the energy of the swing to slam both the hunk of gold and the man’s fingers against the stone floor. Ilbei’s attacker yelped. The gold rolled away, but the brute punched Ilbei in the side of the head anyway. Ilbei tried to turn away from the mammoth-sized fist plummeting toward him, but no such luck this time. He took the shot full, the power of it driving the opposite side of his face hard against the unrelenting stone—which finally made Ilbei mad.
He twisted his right arm, still holding his pickaxe, against the force of the man’s left hand, in particular against his thumb. Strong as his attacker was, he couldn’t prevent Ilbei from getting his hand, and his weapon, free. Ilbei swung it sidewise right after, a rotation of the wrist, and pounded two quick hammer strikes against the man’s temple, stunning him just enough for Ilbei to shove him off and clamber to his feet.
He scrambled back, getting his bearings, and felt the hot spray of blood splash against the side of his face, a lot of it, wet and warm. He blinked it out of his eyes, looking through the haze, dreading that it might be Mags paying the price for saving him. It wasn’t. Kaige had just cleaved the man he’d been fighting in two. The upper portion of the body, cut clean through just below the ribs, had fallen into a basket. It landed at an angle that allowed the still-beating heart to jet blood in a long arc that spurted across the hole and, by random chance, hit Ilbei in the face.
Ilbei saw, however, that Mags was busy. Her intervention had drawn off the man who’d been kicking Ilbei in the ribs, and he was onto her in earnest now. It was all she could do to hold off the pounding onslaught of his attacks, but she worked that quarterstaff better than Ilbei would have thought—the Sisters of Mercy clearly were not the pacifists he’d always assumed they were if they’d taught her all that. The ends of her staff blurred as she whack-whacked at her attacker with f
urious speed. The hardwood rapped the tempo of her fury as it struck the bones of the man’s forearms, raised up as they were in his own defense. Ilbei might not have worried about her if she weren’t steadily backing away. Despite her efforts, the brute pressed her methodically, moving like a trained pugilist. When he got her backed up to the wall, she was going to be in trouble. He didn’t think she could hit him hard enough to knock him out without a full, flat swing like she’d gotten earlier. He hoped he was wrong. But he couldn’t get to her to help her yet, for he still had his own adversary to contend with. The man he’d stunned was already back on his feet and reclaiming his chunk of gold.
A glance Jasper’s way showed that the wizard had fumbled a scroll out of his satchel, which gave Ilbei some hope. But he couldn’t watch, as his opponent was moving in on him, the gold in his hand gripped firmly and ready to smash Ilbei’s head.
A lightning bolt flashed, and for an instant Ilbei was filled with relief, thinking Jasper had finally gotten the spell off and struck down an enemy. But when his vision recovered from the flash, he saw that quite the opposite had occurred, for Jasper now lay on the ground, the brown length of his scroll limply rolling itself back up on the floor where it had fallen from his hands.
But Jasper’s spell hadn’t backfired. Another magician had come into the room, through the iron door near where the two burly fellows had been on their break. The magician was a well-groomed man in a long gray tunic. He wore a close-cut beard that was nearly as black and lustrous as his belt and high boots. Though Ilbei didn’t recognize him from two nights before in the tavern at Fall Pools, he knew instinctively that the spell caster had to be the honorless rogue Ivan Gangue. Right behind Gangue, stepping around him to join the fight with his silver-hilted sword already sliding from its sheath, came the man who called himself Major Cavendis. Ilbei might have cursed him for the liar he was, but he barely had time to call out, “Watch out behind!” before he was back to fending off a furious rain of blows from his more immediate, gold-wielding adversary.
