“What is it, Bishop?” he said quietly.
“I’m not sure.” The big mercenary fingered the heavy iron amulet he wore on a chain round his neck, and glowered unhappily into the gloom ahead. “Something’s wrong, Horse. This place doesn’t feel right.”
“Have you seen something? Heard something?”
“No. It just doesn’t ... feel right.”
The other mercenaries looked at each other, but Horse glared them into silence. He respected Bishop’s hunches. They’d paid off before. He gestured to the two nearest men. “Check out this section. Inch by inch, if necessary.”
The two men looked at each other, shrugged, and moved warily forward, swords at the ready. The light moved with them. There was still no sign of the rogue guard. The passageway was eerily silent, the only sound the scuffing of their boots on the plain stone floor. They’d gone about ten paces before part of the floor gave slightly under one of the men’s feet, and there was a soft clicking noise. They both looked down automatically, and consequently never saw the many long, pointed wooden stakes which shot out of concealed vents in both walls. The stakes slammed into the two men with brutal force, running them through in a dozen places. They hung there limply, their feet dangling, and blood pooled on the floor below them. They didn’t even have time to scream. There was another soft click as the lever in the floor reset itself, and then the stakes retracted silently into the walls. The two bodies sagged slowly to the floor, the blood-slick wood making soft, sucking noises as it slid jerkily out of the dead flesh. Bishop swore slowly, his voice more awed than anything else.
“Booby trap,” said Horse grimly. “And if there’s one, you can bet there are more. For all we know, the whole place could be rigged with them.”
“Then there’s no point in going on,” said one of the mercenaries behind him. “Is there?”
“Do you want to go back and tell Todd that?” said Horse, without bothering to look round. He smiled briefly at the silence that answered him. “All right, then; we’re going on. I’ll take the lead. Walk where I do, and don’t touch anything.”
He set off slowly, studying the ground before him carefully before gradually lowering his foot onto it. Bishop followed close behind him, all but treading on his heels. The other mercenaries brought up the rear, grumbling quietly among themselves. Horse glowered into the dark ahead of him. The guard they were pursuing had to have known about the booby traps and how to avoid them, which suggested he was no ordinary guard. It had been obvious from the other hostages’ faces that they’d known nothing about the hidden passageway. If they had, they’d have used it.
With the guard’s special knowledge, he could avoid all the traps and be anywhere in the House by now, but even so, they had to press on. They might not be able to run down the man himself, but at least they could identify the other hidden exits and block them off.
There was a soft click from somewhere close at hand, and Horse threw himself forward instinctively, Bishop at his side as a heavy crash sounded behind them and a cloud of dust puffed up, filling the passage. Horse clutched briefly at Bishop to make sure he was all right, and then looked back. A huge slab of solid stone had dropped from the passage ceiling, crushing two of the mercenaries beneath it. Blood welled out from under the stone and lapped at the toes of Horse’s boots. The sole surviving mercenary on the other side of the stone block was standing very still, his face white as a sheet. Horse called out to him, but he didn’t answer. Horse called again, and the man turned and ran. Some of the light went with him as he fled down the passageway, and then a section of the floor dropped out from beneath his feet and he disappeared screaming into a concealed pit. There was a flash of shining blades, and then the trapdoor swung shut, cutting off his scream, and the passage was still and silent again.
“This place is a deathtrap,” said Bishop.
“Yeah,” said Horse. “But the guard got through alive. Probably somewhere out there in the dark right now, watching us and laughing.”
“He’s no ordinary guard, Horse. Did you see the way he flattened Glen? I didn’t think anyone was faster than Glen.”
“He’s just one man. We can take him. And then you can show him some of your nasty little tricks with a hot iron.”
“You’re welcome to try,” said Saxon.
The two mercenaries spun round to find Saxon standing behind them, just out of sword’s reach. He was smiling. Horse could feel his heart beating hard and fast in his chest, but somehow he kept the shock out of his face. He lifted his sword, and Bishop did the same a second later. Saxon’s sword was still in his scabbard, and his hand was nowhere near it.
“You shouldn’t have come back,” said Horse. “You’re a dead man now. You’re walking and you’re breathing, but you’re dead. And we’re going to make it last a long time.”
Saxon just smiled back at him, his eyes cold. “I’ve had a really bad day. You’re about to have a worse one.”
Bishop growled something indistinct, and launched himself at Saxon, his sword out before him, his great bulk moving with surprising speed. Saxon casually batted the sword blade aside, and slammed a fist into Bishop’s side. The big mercenary stopped as though he’d run into a wall. The sound of his ribs breaking was eerily loud on the quiet. He stood hunched over before Saxon, breathing in short, painful gasps, trying to lift his sword and failing. Saxon hit him again, burying his fist in the man’s gut up to his wrist. Blood flew from Bishop’s mouth and he sank to his knees. Horse looked at him incredulously. It had all happened so fast. He looked back at Saxon, his sword forgotten in his hand.
“Who are you?” he whispered.
“I’m Saxon. Wulf Saxon.”
Horse tried for some of his usual bravado, but the words came out flat and empty. “You say it like it’s supposed to mean something, but I’ve never heard of you.”
Saxon shrugged. “I’ve been away for a while. People forget. But they’ll remember, once I’ve reminded them a few times. You shouldn’t have killed the girl, mercenary.”
“That wasn’t me. That was Todd.”
“You stood by and let it happen. You’re guilty. You’re all guilty, and I’m going to kill every last one of you.”
“What was she to you, Saxon? Your girlfriend? Family?”
“I never saw her before in my life.”
“Then why ... ?”
“She was so young,” said Saxon. “She had all her life before her. She had friends and family who cared for her. And you took all that away.” He leaned forward and took Bishop’s head in his hands. The big mercenary shuddered, but hadn’t the strength to pull away. Saxon looked at Horse.
“I’m going to send you back to the others with a message, mercenary. Be sure to tell them who sent it. Tell them Wulf Saxon is back.”
A moment later, the passage was full of someone screaming.
Eleanour Todd paced up and down, scowling angrily, and the hostages shrank back from her as she passed. She didn’t bother to hide her contempt for them. Nothing but sheep, all of them, shocked and terrified because their comfortable little world had been overthrown and the wolves had finally caught the flock undefended. They deserved everything that was going to happen to them. The guard had been the only one with any backbone. And that was the problem. It had been almost a quarter of an hour since she’d sent her mercenaries into the hidden passage after him, and there’d been no word from them since. There couldn’t be that many passages to search, surely? She stopped herself pacing with an effort. The guard was only one man; there was nothing he could do to upset the plan. Nothing could go wrong now. But what the hell had happened to the mercenaries? Could they have got lost in the passages? She glared out over the hostages, taking a quiet satisfaction in the way their faces paled.
“Who can tell me about the hidden passageways?” she said flatly. The hostages looked at each other, but no one said anything. Todd let her scowl deepen into a glare. “Someone here must know something about the passageways. Now, either that someone starts talking, or I’m going to have my men pick out someone at random and we’ll take turns cutting him or her into little pieces until someone else starts remembering things.”
“Please believe me, no one here knows anything about the passageways,” said Sir Roland. He stepped forward diffidently, and the crowd shrank back to give him plenty of room. “You see, the only people who might know anything are the House’s actual owners, and they’re not here. The whole Family moved out so we could have the place to ourselves.”
Todd nodded unhappily. It figured Madigan’s pet traitor would turn out to be the one with the answers, even if they weren’t the ones she wanted. “So how did that guard know about them?”
“I don’t know. He was one of a number of men the Brotherhood of Steel supplied us for use as honour guards. Perhaps he’d been here before and knew the Family. After all, the Brotherhood recruits from all the social strata.”
Todd grunted, and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. Sir Roland bowed politely, and stepped quickly back into the crowd. There was a murmur of praise for his courage from the other hostages, but it died quickly away as the watching mercenaries stirred menacingly. Todd beckoned to Glen, who was lounging by the door, and he hurried over to her with his usual puppyish grin.
“The mercenaries I sent into the hidden passage have been gone too long,” she said quietly. “Something must have happened. Take a dozen men and search the passageways from end to end. I want to know exactly what happened to Horse and his men, and I want that guard dead. Is that clear?”
“Oh, sure. But I won’t need a dozen men.”
“Take them anyway. There’s something about that guard....”
“I can take him,” said Glen confidently. “I just wasn’t ready for him last time.”
“Take the men. That’s an order. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
Glen’s face brightened. “You don’t?”
“Of course not. You’re a valuable member of our group.”
Glen’s face dropped, and he nodded glumly. “Don’t worry,” he said, for something to say. “Horse will probably have caught him by now. He’s a good man.”
“Horse? He couldn’t catch the clap from a Leech Street whore. I should never have sent him. Now get a move on.”
Glen winced slightly at her crudeness, and turned away to pick out his men. He wished she wouldn’t talk like that. It wasn’t fitting in a woman. And it seemed she still didn’t see him as anything more than an ally. She never would ... as long as Madigan was around. The thought disturbed him, and he pushed it aside, but it wouldn’t go away entirely. He scowled. That guard had made him look bad in front of Eleanour. He’d make the bastard bleed for that. It was amazing how long you could keep the other party in a sword fight alive before finally killing them. Sometimes they even begged him to do it.
He liked that.
He chose his men quickly, impatient to be off, and set them over to the opening in the wall to wait for him. He glanced back for one last look at Eleanour, and then stopped as he saw Bailey was talking to her urgently. From the expression on both their faces, it had to be something important, and bloody unwelcome news at that. He hurried back to join them. Bailey acknowledged his presence with a nod, but Eleanour ignored him, her gaze fixed on Bailey.
“Are you sure about this?”
“Of course I’m sure!” Bailey struggled to keep his voice low, but his eyes were angry. “Do you think I’d have come to you with something like this if I wasn’t sure?”
“Keep your voice down. This isn’t something we want the hostages to hear. It just seems impossible, that’s all. How can we have lost twenty-seven men without anyone seeing anything?”
Bailey shrugged. “They were all found dead at their posts. No one even suspected anything was wrong until some of them didn’t report in at the proper times. We did a check, and found twenty-seven of our people had been killed, all in the last twenty minutes or so.”
“How did they die?” asked Glen, frowning.
“Some were stabbed, some were strangled. And two,” said Bailey, his voice never wavering, “were torn literally limb from limb.”
Todd and Glen looked at him for a moment, trying to take it in. Bailey shrugged, and said nothing. Todd glowered, her face flushing angrily as she tried to make sense of the situation.
“These deaths took place not long after the guard disappeared into the hidden passageways. There has to be a connection.”
“One man couldn’t be responsible for twenty-seven deaths,” said Bailey. “Not in such a short time. And I saw the bodies that had been torn apart. Nothing human is that strong.”
“All right,” said Todd, “Maybe there was some kind of creature living in the passages, and he let it loose.”
“If there was, then he’s probably dead as well,” said Glen. “Damn. Now I’ll never know whether I could have taken him.”
“Oh, stop whining, Glen! This is important.” She didn’t bother to look at Glen, her gaze turned inward as she struggled with the problem. So she didn’t see the hurt in his face quickly give way to anger, and then disappear behind a cold, impassive mask. Todd glared once at the secret doorway, and then turned the glare on Glen and Bailey.