Dragonhammer: Volume II (28 page)

Night of Shadows

I
wake when the bellow of a warhorn stabs my eardrums.

“CAPTAIN!” a guard yells from outside.  “CAPTAIN!”

I’m already up and strapping on my armor, which I have kept in the wardrobe rather than the armory exactly for this reason.  “Enter!” I command.  Before the word is completely out of my mouth, the door slams the wall and several guards pour frantically into my room.  “What’s the matter?” I ask coolly.  “Where are they attacking from?”

“Attack?” says one of them.

“There is no attack,” the first specifies.  “We have intruders.  Enemies are here in the castle.”

“Assassins?” I ask, striding out of the room and into the hall.  The soldiers follow like ducklings.

“We don’t know, sir.  We just know that they are here.”

My hammer swings dangerously at my side.  “Well, let’s figure it out then,” I command.  “Do we know where they are?”  I stop and turn to face them.

“They were sighted on the second level,” the soldier explains anxiously.

“Any word from the Jarl?” I question.

“None yet.”

“Up we go,” I reply.

The castle is awake.  Men run up and down the halls, searching for those who are supposedly here with us.

I lead my squad up a flight of stairs and straight through the hall.  The Jarl’s chambers are just ahead.

The doors suddenly bang open and a man dressed completely in black hits the wall of the hallway.  Jarl Hralfar follows him out with his sword raised, wearing only a tunic and his pants.

The man looks up as Jarl Hralfar picks him up by the throat and hits him against the wall.  “Who are you?!” the Jarl barks.

The man struggles for breath and scrabbles at the Jarl’s hand.  Before Hralfar can get out another word, the man draws a needle-like dagger and stabs it through his own heart.

In grotesque horror, the Jarl drops the man and the figure crumples to the floor, dead before he hits the ground.

“Evidently they don’t want their secrets spilled,” Hralfar growls.

I study the cloaked figure on the ground.  Every part of his body is covered with a completely black article of clothing, and his head is wreathed in a long hood.  He has collapsed onto his stomach, and I push him with my foot until he rolls over.  His face is sallow and tattooed, but I do not care to examine the tattoos.  The clasp on his cloak catches my eye.

It depicts a snake, but there is no end to its tail.  The body loops around itself, never ending, somehow a circle of three loops though the neck protrudes from the intersection in the middle.  A dagger is laced between the bottom two loops.  The entire brooch is completely white.

Where have I seen that before?
I ask myself.

“How many were there?” I ask the guard.  “How many?”

“We don’t know,” he says.  “There were few that we know of.”

“Then where are the others?” Genevieve asks, having just shown up with a small group of men.

“Sythian,” I mutter.

Before waiting to see if they have understood, I race through the gathering crowd, pushing aside everyone and everything.  I reach the stairs and pound down a flight in two bounds, and then another, and another.  Above me I can hear the clack of the soldiers struggling to keep up.

I can’t get down the stairs fast enough.  My heart races and my anger rises. 
How could you be so stupid?  Why didn’t you see this?

There is no moon, so the only light comes from the torches hung on the walls.  It flickers and dances, the air from my desperate sprint disturbing the flames.

I almost slam a guard into the ground when he pops out around the corner, but fortunately I realize what I am about to do and avert the blow from him.  He stares at me in dismay as I push past him and continue down the stairs.

Finally I turn the corner and reach the bottom.  I can go no further.

Without stopping I bolt down the dark corridor and around the corner, my shadow flying ominously over the craggy walls.  My grip tightens on my hammer and I mentally reassure myself of the throwing knives on my belt.

Then I stop.  I stare.  My breathing echoes into the empty chamber that had served as Sythian’s cell.

The door hangs slightly ajar.  The torches flicker eerily.  The hay sits on the far corner.  The grime drips from the walls.  The cell is empty.

With a frustrated grunt I take off back down the way I had come.

Soldiers part before me like ants before a river.  I hear their cries as I pass.

“The guards down there-”

“Stole the keys and-”

“They’re all dead-”

“Men sneaking-”

“May have escaped-”

“No where to run-”

“QUIET, YOU FOOLS!” I roar, turning to face the clueless throng of guards.  Silence falls immediately.  “FIND THEM!”

Without bothering to see if they will even pretend to follow my orders, I fly up the first flight of stairs.  I will find them whether they help me or not.

I pause at the top.  I cannot follow them if I do not know which way they have gone.

My mind races to the trapdoor through which I had infiltrated the Bastion. 
No
, I reprimand myself. 
That would bring him up in the middle of the city and he’d have to pass through the main gate to escape.  That’s not it.

What about the dock? 
Too risky
, I decide. 
That place is still crawling with our men.  He got caught once and he wouldn’t chance it again.

Where else is there to escape to?
I ask myself. 
Come on, Kadmus!
  My mind flies around the city, scoping every possible entry and exit, every hiding place, and every route to get there.

The forest!
I realize. 
Perfect cover at night.  But how would he get there?

I recall the search that I had helped conduct right after we had overtaken the Bastion. 
Which tunnel is it
?! I rage.  There was one just down the hall in the closet, where I had emerged, there’s another hidden behind a tapestry on the wall a ways down the hallway, another on the ground floor behind the left stairwell, and a fourth underneath the armory on the far side of the Bastion.

I think of the broken window and the banner, but dismiss the possibility immediately.  He wouldn’t chance running through the entire castle.  For the same reason I dismiss the armory tunnel.

The trapdoor in the closet I had dismissed earlier.

Which is it, Kadmus?  The tapestry or the stairwell?

The tapestry faces west.  The tunnel would run west, straight underneath the wall.  There it could rise and emerge out of the wall into the port.  Or it could turn south and dive straight into the forest.

I think for a moment it may be a better bet to run all the way through the main gate and find him in the forest, but once again I dismiss the idea almost instantly.  I have no idea where in the forest to look, and we cannot possibly sweep the entire thing in one night.  By the time we get there he could be long gone.

Tapestry or stairwell?

The stairwell exit points south.  Towards the forest.

My eyes snap open; the carnage of thought had taken me less than a second.

It hardly takes me twice that to bound up the stairs to the ground floor.

Soldiers follow me probably just because I’m the only one who actually looks like I know where I’m going.  And I know exactly.

I’m in the stairwell on the left side of the entrance hall.  A large rug lies pushed against the wall furthest from the hall.  It is askew and the corner is folded.

With a single heave I grasp the edge and throw the rug to the side, revealing a trapdoor underneath.  There’s a click.

Trying the trapdoor reveals that it has been locked.  No matter.

With an infuriated bellow I bring my hammer down with all of my might, shattering the trapdoor into shards of wood.  The iron hinge hangs open, a piece of wood clinging on desperately, and the iron knob clangs against the floor at the bottom.  Ignoring the ladder, I jump in and the sound of my landing echoes through the hall.

There’s a loud clash as the shaft of my hammer blocks an incoming sword.  The steel of his blade rings even after he falls to the ground.

My hammer is already spattered with blood.  There are no torches in the corridor, but I need none.  I know he is near.

I can hear him fleeing.  I don’t know how many there are; probably three or four.  Not enough.

My footsteps thump in the tunnel.  It is dark, but ahead there is a dim orange light.  With all of the strength I have, I run for it.

A black silhouette steps into the light.  I do not slow.  The shadow pulls up a strange bow-like object.  Then I hit the floor.

The bolt whizzes down the length of the tunnel.  I lay perfectly still in the dirt as I wait for him to reload.

“You hit him?” I hear.

“No,” the shadow replies softly.  “He’s still here.”

I smile darkly.

The crossbow clicks as he loads it.  Then there’s the clatter of soldiers behind me.

“Dingflies,” the first voice says.

“Go on,” says the second.  “I’ll hold them off.”

Oh will you?

“Which way?”

“Gotta be down here-”

“I thought I saw-”

“Where’d the captain-”

The light moves down the tunnel and around the corner, out of sight.  The silhouette does not move, and disappears into the encroaching dark.

The soldiers have brought torches.  Good. They‘re not all so dimwitted.

That assassin is invisible in the dark.  I cannot allow the light of the torches to come over me, or he will have a blatantly obvious target to shoot at.  At the same time, if I move too quickly or loudly, he will detect me despite the shadows we both use as camouflage.

A bolt suddenly penetrates the chest of one of the guards.  Dark blood drips from the shaft that sticks straight from his heart.  Without emitting a single sound, the soldier drops to the ground.

I move quickly.  Crossbows, though powerful, are slow to reload.  If I can catch him before he loads-

Another sprouts from the chest of another victim.  This soldier groans as he sags to the floor, unable to do anything to resist the powers of death that overtake him.

My footsteps are light and fast.  I stay low to the ground.  Then to my right I hear a slight
click
.

A throwing knife leaves my hand before the bolt can leave the crossbow.  From the darkness there’s a surprised yell, and then a grunt of pain.

“There!” shouts one of the guards.

Torchlight floods the area, illuminating the man struggling violently to get away with a knife stuck in his leg.  His crossbow, loaded and primed, is just out of reach.

“Take him,” says one of the guards.  I don’t stick around to see what happens.

I take off at a dead sprint down the tunnel and towards my target.  He will get no mercy.  I don’t care what Lord Archeantus or Jarl Hralfar says.  Sythian will die when I see him.

The tunnel angles downward, and then suddenly inclines.  My pace does not slow.

I break out of the trapdoor in much the same way I had broken in.  Upon climbing out, I realize that they had placed a large rock or log over the top, but it availed them nothing.  The trapdoor is nothing more than shards of wood.

As I expected, a sword swings at me from behind a tree.  I block it quickly and jab the butt of the shaft of my weapon into my attacker’s shins.  He growls in pain and swings again, but I replicate the move, this time hitting him squarely in the nose.  With a short yell he stumbles away, holding his face.  I knock him out quickly with a light blow over the head with the shaft.

I’m standing in a small glade.  What looks like a small green matt has been pulled back behind what remains of the trapdoor.  There is little moonlight.

The wind blows.  The leaves rustle.  A chill runs up my spine and sweat drips from my hardened brow.

“COME ON, GURBOG!” I bellow, my knuckles turning white on the shaft of my hammer.  “COME ON OUT!  THERE’S SOME BUSINESS WE HAVEN’T FINISHED YET!”

The breeze picks up and whistles through the trees.  Light is beginning to come up over the plains on the horizon to the east.

“YOU OWE ME!” I continue.  “NOW COME ON!”

There is no response.

I wait, standing alone in the middle of the forest. 
Was it a decoy?
I wonder.

Then his voice.  It’s slight.  I must strain to hear the words, but when I block out all else I hear them clear as day.  “This is not over, Dragonhammer.”

I turn towards the sound and let loose an inhuman roar that shakes the trees and rocks the dirt beneath my feet as I bound like an animal in his direction.  I crash through undergrowth and thickets, destroying anything and everything to bar my way.  My hammer swings every which way in seeming chaos.