Once Upon a Summer Day (8 page)

Yet even as it flashed through the air, with her index and little fingers of her right hand hooked like horns and pointing at the arrow, and her middle fingers pointed down and her thumb pointed leftwards, “Avert!” cried Hradian at the last instant, and the arrow veered to her left and ripped through her ear as it flew past. Hradian screamed in agony, even as Borel nocked another shaft.

Slate howled, and the Wolves charged.

But Hradian snatched up a talisman on a thong ’round her neck and cried a word and broke the amulet in two, and in a roaring black wind Borel was hurled up and away, his last sight that of the Wolves hurtling at the witch, yet she had mounted the haft of her twiggy besom, and then Borel lost consciousness and saw no more as the black wind bore him away.

Once more Borel stood in the stone chamber, the golden-haired demoiselle opposite, her eyes covered by a dark shadow, her hands held out to him in a plea.

“My lord, wake up! Wake up!” she again cried out in the Old Tongue, adding, “Peril comes down the steps!”

Reaching for his long-knife, Borel looked about, but there were no stairs leading downward from above—only rafters overhead with a conical ceiling beyond. The only steps from this chamber led to someplace below, though what that place might be, Borel did not know.

“My lady,” asked Borel, also in the Old Tongue, “peril comes whence?”

“Down the stairs it comes, my lord. Down the stairs. Oh, please, you must wake up!”

Yet confused but gripping his knife tightly, Borel looked about, and still he could see no stairs leading downward from above . . . and yet he could hear footsteps descending. And he—

—opened his eyes to find himself lying on his side at the base of a wall on a cold floor of a shadowy chamber. Across the darkened room, from a door high above, faint light shone along a set of steps angling down the far wall.

And bearing a candle and descending tramped two Redcap Goblins, the ilk so named because they dyed their hats in human blood. Some five feet tall they were and dressed in coarse-woven cloth and animal hides. And one behind the other, they stuck close to the wall, for there was no protective railing.

Feigning unconsciousness, Borel tightened his grip on his long-kni—
My blade!
—only to realize that unlike in his dream there was no haft in his grip. Instead he was empty-handed, and ’round his wrists—he chanced a quick glance—he discovered locked shackles. He was cuffed to chains embedded in stone behind.

Borel shifted slightly and set a foot against the wall and then closed his eyes and waited.

The Goblins reached the floor and neared, their bare feet plapping against stone.

They stopped at his side.

Borel felt a finger poke his ribs.

“Well?” snarled one.

“He’s lean,” replied the other. “Not much fat on these bones. There’ll not be much drippin’s, and—”

Borel lunged for the Goblins.

“Waugh!”
they shrieked and leapt backwards, the tallow candle tumbling to the floor.
“He’s awake!”

Borel now on his feet—
Chank!
—the chains brought him up short, the Redcaps scuttling just beyond his reach.

From the safety of their distance, one of the viper-eyed Goblins said, “Her Nibs di’n’t say nothing about this here one being a savage.”

“Huah! Di’n’t y’ see her ear?” said the other, wiping a dangling, gelid string of snot from his overlarge nose onto a well-used sleeve.

“See it? O’course I seen it, what with her screaming about it and all.”

“Wull then, likely he’s the one who near bit it off.” That Redcap covered his own left bat-wing ear with a knobby hand and took another step back from Borel.

Borel growled low in his throat.

The Goblins backed even farther away, then glanced at one another and turned and fled. As they reached the stairs, one of them screeched, “You won’t last long when th’ big’ns get back ’n’ come t’fetch you for the spit.”

“Yar, ’n’ I’ll have y’r boots, too,” shouted the other. Then they started up the steps, arguing over which one of them would indeed get Borel’s boots. They slammed shut the door at the top, and Borel heard a bar thud into place, or so it sounded. Dim light seeped through a small grille in the door and down.

Borel took up the fallen candle, its guttering flame nearly out. Upright, it caught and began burning steadily again, a thin tendril of smoke rising to the ceiling.

He held the stub high and examined the enshadowed chamber. As much as he could see by the light of the single flame, some fifteen or twenty paces wide and perhaps the same in length it was, with a ceiling mayhap twenty feet above, supported by four evenly spaced stone pillars set in a square. The floor and walls were of cut stone and the ceiling was of hewn timber. Along the wall at his back he could see several more pairs of shackles. Borel frowned.
Perhaps this once was a wine cellar, but now it’s a prison of sorts.
Near one of the pillars sat a rather tall and wide three-legged stool, yet the rest of the chamber as far as he could tell held nothing else.

Borel then examined his shackles. They were bronze and thick and clamped tightly about his wrists and required a large key to open. The massive chains themselves were some eight feet long and bronze as well, and they were linked to heavy bronze eyelets set low and deeply embedded in the stone.

Borel carefully placed the candle down and, wrapping the slack about his arms, he sat facing the wall and braced his feet against rock and pulled. Nothing yielded. After several tries, Borel gave up; the cuffs, chains, eyelets, and stone were simply too strong.

Borel then took stock of himself. He yet wore his leathers and boots, but his long-knife was gone. Of his bow and quiver of arrows, there was no sign.
And my rucksack? It yet sits in Hradian’s cottage, stuffed with scrolls and Hradian’s journal—

Again Borel took stock of his situation. Locked in shackles and chained to the wall with no weapons and nothing with which to—

Quickly, Borel undid the lowest buckle of his leather vest armor. He inserted the tang into the shackle keyhole and probed here and there, but the shank merely slid about. Borel removed the shank and held the candle close and looked into the opening and carefully examined the works. Once again he inserted the tang into the gap, and this time he felt it catch. Even so, he could not turn the lock.

Borel dripped hot wax into the lock, and then again inserted the buckle shank into the keyhole and . . . and . . . and just as he thought the tang would snap—
clack!
—the mechanism released.

The shackle fell free.

Moments later, Borel was loose.

But the candle guttered and went out. Even so, the dim light seeping down from the grille in the door was enough to make out shapes.

Feeling his way through the darkness, Borel located the seat.

Stool in hand, to the stairs went Borel and up. The steps were wide and the risers high; they were built for a large stride, and Borel took this, along with the size of the stool and the height of the ceiling, to confirm his suspicions concerning the big’ns. Quickly he came to a landing before the door, bronze-bound and heavy-planked and quite tall, twelve feet or so, and four wide. The small grille was inset some eight feet above the floor. Cautiously, he set down the stool and mounted up and peered through the opening. . . .

Daylight shone through a narrow slit along a stone corridor beyond. The corridor itself was empty.

Stepping down, he tried the latch and pushed; though it gave slightly, the door did not open, and from the feel of it, indeed it had been barred.

But the lattice was heavy bronze and well-anchored on the outside and defied Borel’s attempts at prying with a leg of the stool, for he could get no leverage, and the leg itself was too large to wedge into the grillework to give him better purchase.

He was about to start hammering upon the lattice when he heard a door slam. Quickly he stood upon the stool and peered down the corridor beyond.

A Redcap came bearing a bowl and grumbling to himself.

Borel stepped down and took up the stool and stood back against the wall.

A strained grunt and gritted curses, followed by a ponderous scrape of wood on wood, signalled that the bar was being lifted. A loud thunk followed, and a dragging. And then the latch rattled and the massive door swung wide, and, stooping over and picking up a bowl of gruel and muttering—“. . . them that wants to fatten up the prisoner ought to fatten him up themselves, ’n’ I says we doesn’t wait for the big’ns, but spits him ourselves, ’n’ . . .”—the Redcap moved through the doorway and onto the—

Borel stepped out from the shadows and, with a two-handed swing, slammed the Goblin with the stool, the force of the blow shattering the seat as the Redcap smashed into the wall, to rebound and pitch over the edge and plummet to the stone floor below and land with a sodden thud.

And all was silent but for the wooden bowl clattering down the steps, gruel flying, and finally that stopped as well.

Borel listened. . . .

There seemed to be no alarm.

Stepping into the hallway, he examined the remains of the stool. Tearing off a leg for a cudgel, he placed the rest back on the staircase landing, then closed the door and took up the heavy wooden beam—
Too unwieldy for a weapon
—and dropped it into the brackets.
Perhaps they’ll think that all is well with the door shut and barred.

Club in hand, Borel slipped down the corridor, pausing momentarily at the stone slit. A short way below lay a narrow ledge, the edge of a cliff, a long sheer drop down a rock face, a river wending past at the bottom, reeds thick along the banks. Perhaps he could free-climb down could he get through, but the slit was too strait for him to do so.

On went Borel, and he passed a door to the right. Perhaps the very door that the Redcap had come through. But Borel went on, looking for—
Ah, a corridor leading away from the precipice. Surely the entrance into this holt lies opposite that fall.

Along this new corridor he went, passing more doors, some closed, others open, leading into chambers with overlarge tables and chairs and other such.
The big’ns, no doubt.
He passed stairwells leading up and down, and these he ignored, for it was the main entrance he sought, a way out, and from the sight he’d glimpsed through the stone slit, he reasoned he was on the ground floor.

From ahead he heard voices squabbling, and cautiously he crept forward to come to what looked to be a step or two leading down into a broad hall.

In the chamber, three Goblins squatted—

—their attention completely on the game. All were armed: one with a saber, another with a wicked dirk, and the third with—