Down Among the Dead Men (Forest Kingdom Novels) (4 page)

“I’ve seen cess pits that were cleaner than this.”

“It is rather untidy,” said the Dancer. “But have you noticed the walls?”

“Yeah.” said MacNeil. “There aren’t any bloodstains down here.”

“Is that a good sign or a bad sign?” said Flint.

“Beats me,” said MacNeil.

“We’ve got to get out of here,” said Constance suddenly. “Something’s wrong here.”

The others turned to look at her. The witch was shivering violently.

“How do you mean, something’s wrong?” said MacNeil. “Have you Seen something?”

“It’s
wrong
here,” said Constance, staring blindly ahead of her as though she hadn’t heard him.

MacNeil looked at the others, and then looked quickly around the cellar one more time. He shook his head slightly, as though disappointed, and then moved back to take the witch’s arm. “There’s nothing down here that matters. Let’s go, Constance.”

She nodded gratefully and let him help her back to the cellar door. Flint and the Dancer followed them out.

Eventually they ended up in the main dining hall, at the rear of the fort. It was a good-sized hall, some forty feet long and twenty wide, with trestle tables set out in neat rows. As in the cellar, the walls were unscarred and there were no bloodstains anywhere. The tables were set for a meal long abandoned. Food still lay on some of the plates, dry and dusty and covered with mold. Bottles of wine stood open and unopened on the tables. It was as though people had come in for a meal as usual, and then halfway through had just got up and walked away… .

“We’ll sleep here tonight,” said MacNeil. “It’s comparatively untouched by the madness, and since there’s only the one entrance, it should be easy enough to defend.”

“You’re really prepared to spend the night here?” said Constance. “After everything we’ve seen?”

MacNeil looked at her coldly. “We’ve seen nothing that’s immediately threatening. Whatever killed all these people, it’s obviously been gone some time. We’ll be a lot safer here, and a great deal more comfortable, than we would be out in the Forest during a thunderstorm. We’ll set a guard tonight, and first thing tomorrow morning we’ll start tearing this place apart. There’s got to be an answer here somewhere.”

“I don’t think we should disturb anything,” said Constance. “I mean, it could be evidence.”

“She’s right,” said the Dancer.

MacNeil shrugged. “Anything that looks significant we can leave alone. Either way, it can all wait till the morning. They don’t pay me enough to go wandering around this place in the dark.”

“Right,” said Flint. “There isn’t that much money in the world.”

“All right, then, let’s get our bedrolls in here and get ourselves settled,” said MacNeil. “It’ll be dark soon.”

“Dark,” said Constance quietly. “Yes. It gets very dark here at night.”

They all looked at her, but the witch didn’t notice, lost in her own thoughts.

Out in the Forest, a lone figure watched the fort curiously, and then faded back into the shadows between the trees and was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

In the Darkness of the Night

Night fell suddenly. Less than an hour after the Rangers entered the dining hall, darkness swept over the border fort. Flint and Constance busied themselves lighting the torches on the walls as the daylight faded, while MacNeil and the Dancer arranged burning candles and oil lamps in a circle around the sleeping area they’d chosen. Though none of them admitted it aloud, they were all wary of what the darkness might bring, and none of them wanted to face the unknown without plenty of light to see it by.

Flint and the Dancer collected the saddle rolls from the horses and brought them back to the hall. They stayed close together in the narrow passageways and held their lanterns high. The lengthening shadows were very dark. Flint and Constance laid out the bedrolls in the middle of the dining hall, while MacNeil and the Dancer arranged the trestle tables around them in a simple barricade. The lightweight tables weren’t very sturdy, but they gave a feeling of protection and security, and that was what mattered. Even with all the candles and torches and lamps, the dining hall was still disturbingly gloomy and full of restless shadows. The size of the hall gave every sound a faint echo that was subtly unnerving, and outside the fort a strong wind was blowing, moaning in the night. And yet when all was said and done, none of the Rangers really gave much of a damn. After the day’s hard journey they were all bone weary and half asleep on their feet.

Flint volunteered to take the first watch, and nobody argued with her. They unwrapped their sleeping rolls and laid the blankets side by side. There was something comforting and reassuring in the simple proximity, and there was also no denying that the dining hall had grown uncomfortably cold.

MacNeil considered starting a fire in the open hearth, and then decided against it. A fire would be more trouble than it was worth, and anyway, it was a summer’s night, dammit. It couldn’t be that cold… . He climbed into his blankets and pulled them up around his ears. The floor was cold and hard and uneven, but he’d slept on worse. Already he was so tired he could hardly keep his eyes open. He yawned, scratched his ribs, and sighed contentedly. It felt good to be off his feet at last.

Flint fussed over the Dancer’s blankets, sorting them out for him while he watched patiently. The Dancer was hopeless at the little practicalities of life. He couldn’t saddle his own horse either, and if he had to live on his own cooking, he’d starve. No one ever said anything. The Dancer’s talents lay in other directions. Flint finally got him settled and sat down beside him.

“We should have looked for a room with an adjoining bath,” she said quietly. “We could both use one.”

“Speak for yourself,” said the Dancer.

“I am,” said Flint. “I once fought a walking corpse that had been buried in soft peat for six months, and it smelled better than I do right now. But that can wait till tomorrow. Get some sleep, Giles. I’ll wake you when it’s time for the next watch.”

The Dancer nodded sleepily, laid back, and closed his eyes. Flint smiled at him affectionately for a moment, and then drew her sword and rested it across her knees, ready to hand. Flint believed in being prepared.

Constance came back from the closed-off corner they’d designated as the latrine, and clambered stiffly between her blankets, next to MacNeil’s. “First thing tomorrow morning we find a room with its own jakes and move there,” she said determinedly. “That soup tureen is no substitute for a chamber pot.”

MacNeil chuckled drowsily without opening his eyes. “Good night, Constance. Pleasant dreams.”

The dining hall grew quiet as the four Rangers settled down for the night. The only sounds were the rising moan of the wind outside and faint snores from the Dancer, who was already well away. The Dancer could sleep through a thunderstorm, and often had. Constance tossed and turned for a while, unhappy with the hard stone floor, but eventually grew still. Her breathing became slow and regular, and some of the harshness went out of her face as her features slowly relaxed. MacNeil lay on his back, comfortably drowsing, occasionally staring up at the shadowed ceiling past drooping eyelids. Sleeping in the fort was a calculated risk, but he didn’t think there was any real danger in it. Not yet. Whatever it was that had gone on a killing spree, there was no sign of it in the fort now.

Whatever it was … The Demon War had awakened a great many creatures that might otherwise have slumbered on, undisturbed by the world of man. The Forest’s past lay buried deep in the earth, but after the time of the long night, the past no longer slept as soundly as it used to. Some of the deeper mine shafts were still sealed off because of what the miners had found there.

There were giants in the earth in those days… .

MacNeil stirred restlessly. If by some chance he was wrong, and whatever it was hadn’t left the fort yet, well, at least this way there was some bait to draw it out of cover. Bait. MacNeil smiled sadly. That’s what Rangers were when you got right down to it. Rangers were expendable troops, used to draw out an enemy and expose its strengths and weaknesses. The only difference was that this bait had teeth. MacNeil glanced across at Flint, who was staring straight ahead of her with one hand resting comfortably on her sword hilt. He was glad Flint had volunteered to take the first watch. He trusted her. The Dancer meant well, but if he got too comfortable he had a tendency to doze off. Which meant he spent most of his watches pacing up and down to keep himself alert. Things like that didn’t help at all when you were trying to get to sleep. And Constance … was untried. MacNeil closed his eyes and let himself drift away. He could trust Flint. She was dependable. He yawned widely. It had been a long, hard day… .

Time passed. Flint watched over the sleepers, and the lights burned steadily lower.

The demons came swarming out of the long night, vile and malevolent, and the guards at the town barricades met them with cold steel and boiling oil and what little courage they had left. Duncan MacNeil stood his ground and swung his sword in short, vicious arcs, cutting down creature after creature as they threw themselves at the barricades in a never-ending stream. Shapes out of nightmares and fever dreams reached for him with clawed hands and bared fangs, and their eyes glowed hungrily in the endless night. Blood flew on the air in a ghastly rain as the guards swung their swords and axes, and the demons died, but there were always more to take the place of those who fell. There were always more.

A tall, spindly creature with a spiked back and talonea hands reared up before MacNeil. He ducked beneath a flailing blow and gutted the demon with one swift cut. Long ropes of writhing intestines fell down to tangle the demon’s legs, but still it pressed forward until MacNeil sheared off its bony head with a two-handed blow. Its mouth snarled soundlessly on the blood-soaked ground, and the body swung this way and that for long moments before realizing it was dead. None of the demons made a sound, even when they died. Forever silent, in life or death, like evil thoughts given shape and substance.

Something the size of a man’s head, with thick black fur and a dozen legs, came flapping out of the darkness on bat’s wings. MacNeil cut it out of the air and it exploded wetly, showering him with foul-smelling blood that burned where it touched his bare skin. And while he was distracted, shaking and cursing, a patchwork demon with a vast corpse-pale body and huge scything jaws slammed into him from nowhere and threw him to the ground.

For a moment all MacNeil could see was a confusion of human and demon feet all around him, slipping and stamping in the crimson mud. He lashed out at the pale demon as it bent over him, and screamed shrilly as its claws tore through his ragged chain mail. He wriggled away through the mud, then drove his boot up into the creature’s gut, desperation lending him strength. The demon lurched backward, caught off balance, and MacNeil surged to his feet. By the time he had his feet under him again, the pale demon was gone, carried away by the shifting press of bodies, but there were still more demons to be faced. MacNeil wiped blood and tears from his face with his sleeve and hacked about him with his sword to try to clear himself some space. He put all his remaining strength into his blows, and the power from his muscular arms and broad chest drove his sword deep into demon flesh and out again in steady butchery.

The demons came from all sides now, vicious and unrelenting, and the night wasn’t dark enough to hide the horror of what they did. MacNeil fought on. He had no idea of how many demons he’d killed. He’d lost count long ago. It didn’t make any difference. There were always more. He swung his sword double-handed now, and the hilt jarred in his hands as he hacked through a demon’s spine. There were screams all through the night, and somewhere close at hand a man was cursing endlessly, his voice thick and empty. A woman sobbed, loud and anguished, until the sound broke off suddenly. And then the demons were retreating as suddenly as they’d come, melting silently back into the endless night.

MacNeil lowered his dripping sword and leaned on it, fighting for breath. The air was full of the stench of blood and death. The great muscles in his arms and back ached horribly, and he was deathly tired. There was no end to the demons, and the intervals between their attacks were getting shorter. They came to the slaughter like pigs at a trough, and there was no end to their appetite for carnage. And strong as he was, MacNeil knew there were limits to his strength, and he was fast approaching them.

He slowly straightened up and looked about him. There were bodies everywhere, and the barricades had been all but torn apart. The dead and the wounded lay where they had fallen on the blood-soaked ground. No one had the time or the strength to drag them away. Many of the bodies showed signs of feasting. The demons were always hungry. The long night was bitterly cold, and MacNeil pulled his tattered cloak about him. His hands shook, not entirely from the cold. High above, the Blue Moon shone down from a starless night, and the Darkwood held dominion over all the Forest. Demons swarmed everywhere in the darkness surrounding the small besieged town of King’s Deep. The town had been cut off from the outside world for so long its defenders were no longer sure how long it had been. The nightmare seemed to go on forever, as though it had always been happening and always would. No sun rose or set in the Darkwood; there was only the endless night and the creatures that moved in it.

MacNeil clutched his sword tightly, but it had lost all power to comfort him. He’d always thought of himself as brave, but that was before the Darkwood. In the past he’d fought footpads and smugglers and Hillsdown spies, and never given a damn for the danger. He was strong and fast and good with a sword, and he’d never once backed down from a fight. Unlike many of his fellow guards, he’d always looked forward to going into action; he loved the thrill in his blood and the chance for glory. But that was before he came to defend King’s Deep and found himself facing a ravenous horde of inhuman creatures that came swarming out of the dark in never ending numbers. He’d taken his place at the barricade and fought and killed and slaughtered until his sword arm ached and his armor was soaked with demon blood, and none of it mattered a damn. One by one the defenders fell, and a growing desperation gnawed at MacNeil as the siege continued with no end in sight.

He leaned against the barricade and closed his eyes for a moment. His whole body trembled with fatigue, and sweat and blood trickled down his face. He couldn’t face another attack. He just couldn’t. He opened his eyes and glanced back at the town behind him. Here and there in King’s Deep a few lights flickered defiantly against the darkness, but the light didn’t carry far. There weren’t many people left to look at them anyway. MacNeil looked down at his sword. Demon blood dripped steadily from the long blade, but he couldn’t find the energy to clean it.

He’d always thought he was brave. For almost two years he’d used his sword to enforce the king’s law, hunting down criminals and keeping the roads safe. He was proud of his strength and his courage, and neither of them had ever let him down. Until he came to King’s Deep, and the demons taught him fear. He killed them over and over again, and still they came swarming out of the darkness, driven by hatred and a never-ending hunger. MacNeil had given everything he had to stop them, and it hadn’t been enough. He looked out into the endless night and waited for the demons to come again. He thought he would die soon, and he doubted his death would be easy.

The demons had taught him fear. It felt like panic and despair.

He looked at the broken barricade before him and wondered why he still stayed at his post. King’s Deep was nothing to him, just another small country town in the back of beyond, of no importance to anyone but its inhabitants. The town was bound to fall sooner or later, and if he stayed he’d fall with it. If he stayed. He turned the thought over in his mind, studying it warily. He didn’t have to stay. The guard captain who’d given him his orders was dead and gone, along with most of the other guards. He could just slip quietly away from his post and run, trusting to the dark to hide him. No one would ever know. Except him.

MacNeil shook his head to clear it. In all the minstrels’ songs the heroes never once considered turning and running. They just stood their ground and died nobly It was different here in the darkness, facing an enemy without end… . He looked up sharply as he sensed rather than heard a stirring in the night. There was a clatter of running feet around him as others sensed the disturbance and moved forward to block some of the larger gaps in the barricades. MacNeil gripped his sword tightly and wondered vaguely why he was crying. The tears ran jerkily down his face, cutting furrows in the drying blood. He tried to stop crying and couldn’t. He was cold and tired and hurt so badly he could hardly stand up straight, and still he had to fight. It wasn’t fair. They had no right to expect so much of him. He’d done his best for as long as he could, but he just couldn’t do it anymore. Not anymore.