The farther they went, the smell of savory spices and roasting meat grew stronger, making Rathe painfully aware of his hunger. “I don’t care if Tulfa’s cooking rats,” he whispered to Loro, “I’ll eat them.”
“No! No rats for friends of Tulfa!” Tulfa said over his shoulder. He paused near a torch, pale eyes gleaming under thick folds of skin. “Oh, no. No rats! Never rats! Not for Tulfa and the shadowkin. Not for Tulfa’s friends. Come friends! Come along!”
“He’s spry enough, I’ll grant you,” Loro murmured. “But can you see him putting an arrow into a stag and dragging it here?”
“Never,” Rathe admitted. “But I expect there are hares and the like in these mountains.”
“We have guests!” Tulfa called, wheeling through an archway aglow with warm light. “Guests for dinner! Yes! Yes! We have guests!”
Before they reached the chamber, Loro halted Rathe. “We can still turn back.”
As Loro had seemed so eager before, that suggestion surprised Rathe. “Why should we?”
“If you’ve missed it, brother, this codger is off his head. I don’t trust him, even if my belly does.”
“My trust has grown thin of late, as well,” Rathe agreed. “But he’s an old man, and a short way from being a cripple. He’ll not trouble us.”
“I’ll eat his food quick enough,” Loro relented, “and give thanks for whatever Tulfa provides. Afterward, we’ll have to keep a watch, lest he decides to drub us in our sleep and rob us.”
Tulfa poked his head round the corner, his face lost in shadow. “Come along, friends! Come along!”
“I’ll take first watch,” Rathe volunteered, and strode into the chamber.
He had scarcely crossed the threshold when he halted. With a murmur of awe, Loro joined him. Rathe had expected an empty chamber, but found a colonnaded great hall fit for a wealthy lord. Gleaming bronze lampstands drove back all shadows. Tapestries, moth-eaten though they were, adorned soaring walls with scenes of the hunt and forgotten battles. Assorted banners emblazoned with unfamiliar coats of arms hung from stone balusters that girded high galleries. Some showed extreme age, their colors faded, looking as if they would crumble at the gentlest touch. Others were fresher, smeared with dark maroon smudges that brought to mind bloodstains.
Rathe looked to the long table running between two rows of pillars. The high-backed chairs guarding its flanks stood empty. Table and chairs had been polished to a low gleam. Farther on, a smaller table sat atop a broad dais spanning the breadth of the hall. The table’s gilded legs glowed with a dreamlike quality, but those who clambered over the top of it were creatures of nightmare.
“Gods and demons,” Loro gasped, as Tulfa joined what could only be his relations at the high table.
Tulfa looked around. “Come, friends! Come and feast!”
Rathe did not move. The folk gathered about Tulfa, a dozen at least, wore filthy rags, or nothing at all. Forgoing chairs, they squatted on the tabletop. Hunched over, growling amongst themselves, they made busy rending strips of meat snatched from heaped platters. One of the shadowkin looked up—a woman, Rathe thought, but would not have wagered on it. Her twisted fingers paused halfway to her mouth. Grease mingled with dirt on her cheeks and chin, giving her a gruesome aspect. She made a series of throaty noises, and Tulfa hooted laughter, as if hearing a fine jest.
About to decline Tulfa’s offer, Rathe’s teeth clicked together when two bent figures moved through a doorway, carrying between them a tarnished bronze serving tray near as large as a palanquin. Tulfa danced amongst the shadowkin, waving his staff overhead. “Another course! Yes! Yes! Meat on the bone!”
“Is that a….” Loro trailed off before he could finish putting a name to the roasted horror laid out on the tray.
“It is,” Rathe answered, throat burning with bile. His sword flashed from the scabbard.
Tulfa noted the bared steel, and his kindly nature vanished. He scuttled to the end of the table, perched there, a humpbacked fiend with white-blue eyes and too many teeth, all streaked black and sharp. His tongue, grossly long and pointed, licked over his bottom lip. “Come, friends, and feast with Tulfa!” This time his was no reedy invitation, but a growled command.
The two men carrying the serving tray placed it on the table at Tulfa’s feet, their movements reverent.
“We are leaving,” Rathe said, voice edged with warning. In case that was not enough, he added, “Follow us, and I will carve your bowels.””
Tulfa cackled merrily. “’Tis giblets you crave?” His gnarled fingers danced lightly over the crispy brown belly of the man’s torso on the serving tray, then stabbed into that obscene flesh, rooted about, and tugged free gray-pink loops of steaming entrails. “Then ‘tis giblets you shall have! Feast, my friends! Feast!”
At that shout, the shadowkin bounded off the table, their swift movements sending laden platters spinning off the table. Eyes wild and eager, they raced along on all fours as if born to it, spreading across the hall, jabbering in some uncouth, hateful tongue.
Rathe and Loro ran.
Chapter 5
Despite their twisted arms and legs, the shadowkin moved far quicker than Rathe would have believed, and with more agility. Before he and Loro reached the first turn on the way back to the horses, the shadowkin burst from the great hall and sprinted after them.
Rathe kept one hand on Loro’s back, urging him along, the other wrapped around his sword hilt. As they skidded round the second corner, he looked over his shoulder and found the shadowkin bounding closer.
“Faster!” Rathe warned. “They’re catching up.”
Loro did not waste a breath to answer, but ducked his head and stretched his legs. He was not a man built for running at speed, but he did so now. Still, the shadowkin gained three steps for every one Rathe and Loro took.
“Faster,” Rathe urged again, not sure how much faster he could have run, even if not impeded by Loro’s bulk.
Torches flashed by, followed by stretches of darkness. They careened off walls in their haste to navigate corners. The shadowkin narrowed the gap, wildly cascading down the corridor.
Knowing they would never make it back to their horses before being overtaken, Rathe slowed to tip a heavy marble bust. It crashed against the floor in a spray of rubble. Each time they passed something he could use as an obstacle, he knocked it over. His efforts slowed the shadowkin but a little. They came on, leaping over all in their path, howling rage.
He needed something larger. He found her, headless and waiting where she had stood for unknown years. After dumping the statue of the naked woman Loro had tried to molest, Rathe sprinted away. The first shadowkin to reach the toppled statue lost his footing and fell in a sliding sprawl. All who came after became entangled in his flailing limbs.
As the twisted cannibals yowled and fought to gain their feet, Rathe darted ahead, scrambled around a turn, and discovered Loro had vanished. Rathe ran headlong, and nearly missed the branching corridor. As he slid past, he saw a flash of movement. Loro, far down the second passage, and gaining speed.
“Not that way!” he cried. His warning came too late, and Loro wheeled out of sight down another passage.
Rathe ducked into the corridor a heartbeat before the shadowkin rejoined the hunt. Holding his breath, Rathe hunkered in deep shadow a few paces from the opening. Sword held before him, he watched them flash by. He tried to count them, but they were too bunched up, and their bestial gait tricked his eye. It seemed as if the dozen gathered in the hall had become a hundred.
When he was as sure as he could be that all of them had moved on, he followed after Loro, every few steps looking back to make sure one of the shadowkin had not discovered the deceit.
All lay dark around the corner where Loro had gone, but the clamor of a ferocious struggle far ahead was unmistakable. Rathe tore into the murk. Low curses, pained groans, and the sound of heavy fists battering ribs guided him. He came to one turn, then another, and the sounds of fighting grew louder. A faint light now lit the way, and he ran faster.
After a few more turns, he burst into an open chamber. At the same moment, Loro hefted a writhing shadowkin overhead and speared him into a wall. The crunch of the man’s skull cut off his enraged screech. Cursing to shame ten demons, Loro continued to batter the limp figure against the stonework, until Rathe laid a cautious hand on his shoulder.
At his touch, Loro whirled, teeth bared, eyes blazing. He held the broken corpse in his powerful grip like a crude weapon. For a moment he did not recognize Rathe as a friend, and looked ready to bludgeon him with the dead shadowkin. By heartbeats, the red rage fled his eyes. He tossed the corpse to the floor, spat on it with a disgusted grimace, then collected is sword from the throat of another shadowkin.
“Gods and demons,” Loro snarled when he straightened. “Where did you get off to?”
“You went the wrong way.” Rathe looked back. The corridor lay quiet, but he chose not to trust their luck to endure. Tulfa and his spawn must know this fortress far better than he and Loro.
“You’re mad,” Loro panted. “Why, the way out is just——” He cut off as he took in the pile of rolled up rugs staked against the chamber’s farthest wall, a dismantled bed, and a listing wardrobe, none of which they had seen when following Tulfa.
“There might be a way out from here,” Rathe said, thinking of all the entrances they had ridden past after entering Deepreach. He pointed to a well-lit doorway across the chamber. “That corridor must lead somewhere.”
“How can you know?”
“If not,” Rathe said, “then why waste torches lighting it?”
“I suppose,” Loro said. “This time, brother, you lead.”
Moving with caution, Rathe stepped into the passage. The troubling smell of roasting meat grew sharper in this direction.
“From the cook pot into the fire, and back again,” Loro said. “Don’t we just make a fine pair of fools? Gods and demons, why did we have to come into these accursed mountains?”
“Because Nabar’s men were hard on our heels,” Rathe snapped. “Had we not come into the Gyntors, we’d have been shot full of arrows, and our heads sent back to Onareth.”
“And now we are to be eaten by a brood of godless imps!” Loro retorted.
“Alive or dead, captured or free, I do not mean to be eaten.”
“What
do
you intend?”
Rathe shot a hard look at Loro. “We escape unseen, or we bring the slaughter.”
Chapter 6
Rathe led them through a long and winding stretch of many connecting passages. That savory fragrance of cooking meat twisted his guts, washed his tongue in bile, for now he knew the source. And where he saw niches filled with ornaments and bits of armor, he realized they had nothing to do with honoring past rulers or heroes. Rather, they were trophies taken from those poor fools Tulfa had lured to their doom. Just before he and his horde cooked and ate them.
Long before reaching the kitchen, the familiar clamor of a pots and pans told of its presence. At the entrance, Rathe peeked round a corner, eyes flicking, marking. An open fire pit dominated the chamber, its smoke rising to a hole built into the vaulted ceiling. To one side, a bent shadowkin busily cranked a long iron spit. Some unfortunate had lost a leg to Tulfa, and the spit-boy had crisped it to perfection.
“What do you see?” Loro whispered.
“You do not want to know.” Even as Rathe spoke, the spit-boy cast a furtive glance at his fellows, men and women bearing platters, pots, and pans, then snuck a chunk of meat into his mouth and gobbled it down.
The apparent head cook, if such an atrocious creature could bear the title, stood on a footstool at the edge of the kitchen, stirring a ladle through a kettle hung over the ruddy coals of a massive fireplace.
Rathe was trying to decide if they should retreat or attack, when he noticed a man trussed in a far corner. The scrawny fellow noticed him at the same instant, and immediately started thrashing about, mewling behind the rag stuffed into his gaping mouth. Rathe gestured for the man to be still, but his eyes widened in panic, and he redoubled his efforts.
All the shadowkin stopped what they were doing and looked to the bound man. All, that was, save the head cook. She followed the captive’s gaze, and Rathe ducked behind cover.
“What is it?” Loro asked again. His face went stony when he saw Rathe’s hand tighten on the hilt of his sword. “Battle? Well, let’s be about it.”
With a fierce cry, Rathe rushed into the kitchen. The gawping spit-boy whirled, his screech spraying half-chewed flesh. Rathe ended him, a single cut splitting his skull to the hollow of his throat. Rathe kicked the jittering corpse off his blade, set his feet.
Shock held but a moment, then all shifted into leaping, shrieking chaos.
Loro lumbered past, sword swinging like an axe to take off a shadowkin’s raised hand. The reverse stroke cleaved the howling shadowkin from groin to sternum. The man dropped into his own splashing vitals. With a bearlike roar, Loro pivoted to deliver a flat chop into the chest of another twisted man, shredding meat and ribs, leaving him to bumble away clutching at the viscera slithering from the gaping wound. Loro swung round again, blade slicing down the side of a shadowkin’s face and into the joining of neck and shoulder, ripping through flesh and bone. The screaming man tumbled away. Where he had stood, an ear attached to a flap of cheek joined a spasming arm on the blood-slicked floor.