A Whisper in the Dark

by TD Bauer

  Chapter III

  Navarr rushed back into the passageway that led back to the first chamber with Gaston just a few steps behind. Halfway down the narrow passage he paused and Gaston bumped into the back of him. Navarr raised his hand holding his pistol in what he hoped would be taken as a sign for silence, and cocked his head slightly as if trying to listen to a faint sound. After just a few moments he heard voices echoing through the burial chambers and passageways. They were hard to understand, but it sounded like at least three different voices. And they were coming closer with each passing second.

  “What do we do?” Gaston whispered. There was fear in his voice and it was plainly evident on his face. He wasn’t used to such things like his life being in mortal danger.

  “We try and find a place to quietly observe whomever it is that’s coming.”

  “Observe? If they intend us harm wouldn’t it be better to attack them first?’

  “Possibly. No time to chat about it right now, let’s go.”

  Navarr moved as quickly as he could while trying to still be somewhat quiet. He led Gaston back to the first chamber and then into the other unexplored passageway. The passage was much shorter than the first, and soon they found themselves in another burial chamber much like the others, however this one had a large stone sarcophagus covered in dust and spider webs sitting in the middle. There were three new passageways at the center of each of the room’s other walls that led to other parts of the catacombs.

  Navarr and Gaston stood quietly for a moment to listen. The voices they had heard seemed much fainter than before. It was hard to tell from which of the three new passageways they were coming from, which led Navarr to believe the catacombs were possibly quite large and mazelike.

  Navarr decided to go through the passageway directly opposite the one they came in. This new passageway was narrower than the others and had a lower ceiling. It ran straight for nearly a dozen paces before it came to another chamber. The new chamber was slightly larger than all the others and had two stone sarcophaguses in the center several feet apart. Off to the left side there was a small ante-chamber with smaller niches cut into the stone where scores of urns sat covered by centuries of dust. Two more passages located in the corners of the chamber opposite from where the two men came in could be seen curving away into the darkness.

  Again both men stood silent for a moment as they tried to listen for voices. At first they heard nothing, but then suddenly they heard what sounded like a hard cough.

  “That sounded close,” Gaston whispered.

  Navarr nodded in agreement. Then there were more coughing sounds and Navarr pointed to the passageway across the room on the right. “It’s coming from there.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Quickly, this way.” Navarr made for the other passageway on the left.

  If the ghostly voice they had been hearing could be trusted, Navarr was certain whoever was coming was going to be headed in the direction he and Gaston had come from. From the passageway they now stood in, they could see the rest of the burial chamber and would be out of sight. Navarr hoped to observe the would-be murderers as they made their way through the chamber.

  Navarr blew out his candle and tucked it into his vest. “Close the shutters on that lantern,” Navarr ordered Gaston, “but be ready to open them quickly if need be.”

  Gaston did as ordered and immediately the catacombs went dark. He felt his heart race faster as his fear began to rise. He didn’t like the darkness. It was the blackest darkness he had ever experienced, and he couldn’t stop thinking that he was in catacombs surrounded by dusty corpses. Furthermore, he didn’t understand how Navarr could be so driven and calm under the current circumstances, and couldn’t decide if he should feel dismayed or amazed by the younger man.

  Navarr and Gaston were not standing in the dark for long before the faint glow of light began to softly illuminate the chamber before them. As the next few moments passed the burial chamber got brighter and brighter, and then suddenly it was filled with flickering torchlight as four men entered the chamber. Navarr and Gaston never saw their faces, as the four men mostly had their backs to them as they walked to the passageway across the chamber. All four men appeared to be dressed in similar dark robes, but not at all like priests or monks would wear. Two of them carried torches. All of them were armed with short heavy clubs and rapiers.

  Just as they were about to enter the far passageway all four of the men stopped and exchanged looks with each other, then in unison they all started looking about the chamber. Navarr wasn’t sure what had tipped the men off, but something must have alerted them to his and Gaston’s presence.

  “What do we have here?” one of the men holding a torch said. He was looking directly at Navarr and Gaston, who stood quietly in their passageway across the room.

  Navarr stepped into the chamber and Gaston did likewise, though slightly behind Navarr and to his right side.

  “I was going to ask you the same,” Navarr replied. He stood about fifteen feet away from the closest of the four men with his pistol leveled and its hammer cocked and ready to fire. Navarr noted that the four all looked similar, with short dark brown hair, small black eyes, and faces that appeared narrow with wide mouths and long noses. He couldn’t help but find it oddly peculiar.

  The man who had been leading the four others through the chamber stepped forward. His hand was resting on the hilt of his sheathed rapier, and he had a cunning looking smile upon his face as he spoke. “You shouldn’t be down here,” he said.

  “Should we be sleeping soundly in our beds at the Blue Sparrow Inn?” Gaston asked. He opened wide the shutters on his lantern and flooded the chamber with additional light. In his left hand he held his pistol pointed at the man who had stepped forward. He was more nervous than ever, and it showed.

  Immediately after Gaston spoke, Navarr noticed the two men standing in the back share knowing glances at each other. Upon seeing the exchange of looks, there was little doubt in his mind that these men where exactly whom the ghostly voice meant to warn he and Gaston about.

  “You obviously know what we’re about,” said the man with the smile. “Did somebody warn you of our coming? Don't lie and tell me it was the innkeeper, because I know better than to believe that.”

  Navarr shook his head. “It was a whisper in the dark.”

  “Care to elaborate?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Really, and why not?”

  “What will it matter when one soon finds himself dead?”

  “Good, then you understand your fate.”

  It was Navarr’s turn to smile, and it showed upon his face ever so slightly. “I wasn’t talking about me, monsieur.”

  Then Navarr fired his pistol. The roar of the gun was deafening within the chamber, and the visual affect from the black powder discharge filled the immediate area with thick sulfurous smoke. Navarr had his pistol pointed at one of the men holding a torch when he fired, and he had no doubt that the shot was true. He tucked his pistol into his belt with his left hand while at the same time he drew his rapier with his right.

  Through the quickly dissipating smoke, the man who had been doing most of the talking came rushing forward with rapier in hand. Though once he was through the cloud of smoke he looked less like an actual man and more like a cross between a man and a giant walking rat. His head and torso were very much like that of a rat and he had a long wiry looking tail. His limbs looked like that of a man, though covered in short hair, and his hands had long narrow fingers with black claws.

  Gaston stood there stunned as he watched Navarr and the wererat exchange attacks and parries with one another. Not even in his darkest dreams had he ever imagined such terror as ratmen, but to see one before him now was almost beyond reason. With a few rapid blinks and a strong shake if his head, Gaston managed to clear his thoughts enough to act, and he did so by firing his pistol nearly pointblank at the were
rat.

  The second gun blast was just as deafening as the first, and the same acrid cloud of smoke filled the immediate area, but it was close proximity to the end of the barrel and heavy percussion that sent Navarr reeling away to his left and from Gaston. At the same time the wererat was struck in his left arm with the heavy round bullet and thrown backwards into one of the sarcophagi.

  Navarr stumbled away from the heavy percussion and managed to turn around in time to see the wounded wererat rush between himself and Gaston. The wererat headed into the right side passageway and out of the chamber before Navarr could stop him. Back across the room, through the clearing smoke, the other two men had also changed their form and appeared as ratmen. Both held rapiers in their long clawed fingers, and one of them continued to carry a torch in his other hand.

  Gaston threw his empty pistol across the room at the wererats but it missed completely. He drew his decorative rapier and moved closer to Navarr as the wererats slowly advanced closer.

  Navarr drew his parrying dagger and held it before him in his left hand while he positioned his rapier in a low guard. Stepping in front of Gaston, he advanced forward between the two sarcophagi in the center of the chamber, and met the two wererats as they came at him in tandem.

  The sound of sword work between the three combatants filled the room while Gaston stood back and watched. Navarr’s left hand that held the parrying dagger worked separately from the rapier he held in his right. While he managed to parry every attack from the wererat on his left, his rapier did the same on the right but also managed to follow up with lightning fast ripostes that ended in piercing hits on his foe. In just a few moments the ratman he had been battling with his rapier stumbled back and out of the fight, having been struck more than a few times by Navarr’s flashing blade.

  As soon as Navarr found himself facing one foe, he made very short work of what needed to be done to end the battle. With a sharp striking beat-parry, Navarr knocked his opponent’s blade aside with his rapier and stepped into him with a hard thrust from his parrying dagger leading the way. The dagger’s thrust angled up from the ratman’s abdomen and pierced his heart. Just as fast as Navarr had delivered the fatal thrust he disengaged and stepped back, both blades at the ready for any unexpected attack from elsewhere. A second later the wererat crumpled to the floor, dead.

  Gaston had seen Navarr’s father teach swordsmanship at the Academy nearly twenty years ago, and had even taken a few personal lessons from the man. Navarr’s father, before his untimely death nearly a decade ago, was considered a grandmaster with a rapier, and Gaston could see that Navarr was certainly his father’s equal if not his better.

  Two wererats lay dead by Navarr’s hands, one shot by pistol and the other’s heart pierced by a sharp blade. One other wererat was severely wounded and leaning against the burial chamber’s wall. The fourth had been wounded by Gaston’s wild pistol shot and had run off into the catacombs.

  Navarr cleaned the blood from his parrying dagger and sheathed it. He then picked up one of the still lit torches that had been dropped by one of the ratmen. He walked over to the passageway the fleeing wererat had taken and did a quick examination of the floor. There were a few specs of blood that would provide a trail to follow.

  “Come on,” Navarr said urgently. “We’re going after the one that got away.”

  “What about him? Should we slit his throat and finish him quickly?” Gaston said as he pointed at the wounded wererat starting to loose consciousness. He had heard stories of such creatures, but never had he ever encountered anything like he had tonight. It all felt incredibly surreal.

  “He’s done for. He’ll soon pass out and bleed to death. It’s a fitting death for one such as him, though he probably deserves worse.”

  Navarr rushed into the passageway the wounded wererat had fled down. He held the torch up high above his head as he quickly scanned the blood spotted floor while keeping his eyes looking forward. Gaston followed closely behind and was keeping a close watch from the direction they came, for fear of possibly being snuck up on by more of the wererats. As they continued to follow the blood-trail they passed through several more burial chambers, most with multiple passageways. The place was certainly maze-like, and if not for the trail they followed Navarr knew they could easily end up lost in the catacombs.

  Several minutes more had passed of their rushing through the dank and dark tomb, when finally Navarr stopped in the middle of a burial chamber they were passing through. He paused to make a closer examination of the blood trail and noticed it seemed to be diminishing.

  “Our quarry managed to staunch his blood flow,” Navarr said matter-of-factly. “I fear before long we may loose his trail.”

  “I remember reading somewhere that lycanthropes can heal very fast and can only be killed by silver weapons,” Gaston said absently as he kept watch on the passageways in the chamber. He noticed there were a few rats scurrying around the corners of the room, and he couldn’t help but cringe at the thought of them gnawing on the bodies back at the bone pile.

  “Don’t believe everything you read. Those two that I killed were certainly dead. And that third that was wounded did not appear to be healing from his wounds as he bled out.”

  “True enough.”

  Navarr regarded Gaston for a moment. He noticed the other man seemed less fidgety than what he had been before, and he was glad for it. However, as much as he wanted to push forward and find the wererat that got away, Navarr also knew he needed to look out for Gaston’s safety and make sure he arrived safely to the Queen as ordered. He had already taken a great risk by leading the Duke into the secret passage from their room in the inn. Hindsight being what it was, Navarr knew he shouldn’t have done that, but his curiosity of the unknown had gotten the better of him.

  “We should probably head back to the inn,” Navarr said. “Where there are a few wererats I’m certain there are probably more to be found. And we’re wandering around in catacombs they probably know very well.”

  “I wouldn’t mind pressing on, actually. Mon Dieu, I probably wouldn’t have said that twenty minutes ago, but I admit I wouldn’t mind seeing this through to the end, bloody as it may be.”

  “I don’t necessarily disagree, but check your lantern and I’m sure you’ll find we’re low on oil. Once this torch goes out and the oil burns out we’ll be in total darkness. And though those wererats were carrying torches with them, I can’t help but wonder if they have good enough vision or an awareness that lets them get around in the dark.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t forget that the one you shot whose blood trail we are following ran into the passageway without any light. His blood trail is deliberate, and does not in any way indicate he is stumbling along through the darkness.”

  Gaston paled slightly at the thought of being caught in the catacombs in complete darkness, with wererats that could see easily enough. He looked at the rats scurrying around the edges of the room and realized they must be able to see somewhat in the blackness of the catacombs, why not a wererat? “Do you suppose in human form they need light just as a man would, but in their wererat form they can see well enough?”

  “I don’t know how well they can see in the dark, but it would seem better than we can.”

  “Then I’ve changed my mind,” Gaston replied skittishly. “Let’s make haste and remove ourselves from this tomb. We’ll confront the innkeeper then report this entire matter to the local guard captain or provost marshal – let them deal with it!”

  Navarr nodded in agreement and was about to start following the blood trail back the way they had came, when suddenly he and Gaston began to hear the sounds of booted feet echoing in two other passageways that led into the chamber. It was the distinctive sound of boot heels clicking loudly on the stone floor, and they rapidly approached.

  “This isn’t going to be good,” Gaston grimaced.

  Then both men noticed inc
reasing amounts of light coming from the echoing passageways.

  “Back the way we came,” Navarr ordered and pointed with his rapier. “Run!”