Down Among the Dead Men (Forest Kingdom Novels) (10 page)

“No. Just using it once drained most of my strength. I’m a witch, not a sorceress, and I know my limitations.”

MacNeil nodded and bent over the trapdoor. He stood listening for a moment, but couldn’t hear anything moving down in the tunnel. He hefted his sword, took a deep breath, and pulled back the two bolts. Everything was quiet. He braced himself, heaved the trapdoor open, and stepped quickly away. The trapdoor fell back onto the floor with a crash, but the dark opening was still and silent. The Rangers waited tensely, but nothing stirred in the darkness, MacNeil took his lantern and lowered it cautiously into the opening. For as far as he could see, the tunnel was empty. He looked back at the others.

“Nothing. No sign they were ever there.”

“I told you,” said Constance. “They’re gone.”

“Looks like it,” said MacNeil. “But I’m not going down into the tunnel to check.” He started to close the trapdoor, and then stopped and looked closely at its underside. The heavy wood had been split and splintered by savage blows from giant fists. MacNeil shivered once, and then closed the trapdoor and bolted it. He thought for a moment and then looked at the others. “Help me move some of those heavy barrels on top of the trapdoor. I want this opening blocked off completely.”

Between the four of them, they were able to manhandle two great casks stuffed with rusting ironwork onto the trapdoor. The wood creaked loudly under the weight of them. The Rangers leaned two more barrels against them, just to be sure, and then stepped back and admired their handiwork while they got their breath back.

“That should hold them,” said MacNeil.

“That would hold a rabid elephant,” said the Dancer. “And I should like at this stage to point out that I am a swordsman, not a laborer.”

“Would you rather the giants got out and we had to fight them again?” asked MacNeil.

The Dancer thought about it for a moment and then nodded eagerly.

The trouble is, he probably means it
, thought MacNeil.

“We have a problem,” said Flint suddenly.

“We have several,” said MacNeil. “Which did you have in mind?”

“Well,” said Flint, “what if the gold is down there in the tunnels somewhere? How the hell are we going to get it out?”

“We’re not,” said MacNeil firmly. “I’m damned if I’m going back down there armed only with a sword; they don’t pay me enough to do that. In fact, they couldn’t pay me enough. There isn’t that much money in the world. We’ll wait till the reinforcements get here, and let them figure out a way to get down there in force.”

Flint and Dancer nodded soberly. Constance frowned but said nothing. MacNeil sighed quietly and stretched his aching muscles. He never used to get this tired after a sword fight. He must be getting out of condition; it was time to start dieting again. MacNeil scowled. He hated diets.

“All right,” he said wearily, “let’s get out of here. You know, times are changing. I can remember when deserted forts just had rats in their cellars.”

“Yeah,” said Flint. “Next time, let’s just put some poison down.”

The Rangers laughed and left the cellar. In the darkness below, something stirred in its sleep.

Hammer, Wilde, and Scarecrow Jack crowded into the reception hall and pulled the door shut behind them. The roar of the rain died away to a loud murmur, and they could hear themselves think again. They stopped to shake off the worst of the rain and then looked around them in the pale glow from Hammer’s lantern. Wilde produced flint and steel and lit a torch he took from a wall bracket. The flaring light filled the hall with an amber glow and unsteady shadows. Four horses regarded the newcomers with grave suspicion. The outlaws looked around them, taking in the bloodstained surroundings and the four empty nooses hanging from the overhead beam.

“What the hell happened here?” said Wilde. “Hammer, you never told us it would be like this.”

“Everything was normal here when I delivered the gold,” said Hammer slowly. “I knew something pretty bad must have happened when the fort fell out of contact, but this … I don’t know. It doesn’t matter anyway. Whatever happened here, it’s over now; those bloodstains have been dry for some time. Unless it interferes with us, it’s none of our business. Let’s just get the gold and get the hell out of here.”

Wilde glowered uncertainly about him. “I don’t know, Hammer. I never banked on anything like this.”

“Is that right?” said Hammer. “What did you think, that we could just walk in and out again, as easy as that? If you want to get rich, you have to be prepared to take a few risks.”

“Calculated risks are one thing, Hammer. This is … different.”

“Not going soft on me, are you, Edmond?” said Hammer. “I’d hate to think you were going soft on me.”

Wilde met Hammer’s gaze for a moment, and then his eyes faltered and he looked away. “Have I ever let you down?”

“Of course not, Edmond. You never let me down because you know that the first time you do, I’ll kill you. You don’t want to worry about what happened here, my friend, you want to worry about what I’ll do to you if you don’t stop wasting my time. Now then, we go that way to get down to the cellars. You go first.”

Wilde looked at the door Hammer indicated. A wide, dark stain had soaked into the wood, and the heavy metal lock had been smashed apart from the other side. The bowman handed his torch to Jack without looking at him, and walked slowly over to the door. He drew his sword, hesitated for a long moment, and then suddenly pulled the door open and stepped quickly back, holding his sword out before him. There was only a dark corridor, silent and empty and daubed with old blood. Wilde hefted his sword but made no attempt to enter the darkness. Jack stepped forward and silently offered Wilde his torch back. Wilde took it and briefly nodded his thanks without looking around. He started down the corridor, and Jack followed him. Hammer brought up the rear, carrying his lantern in one hand and the sword from his hip in the other. The long sword hilt above his shoulder glowed very faintly in the dark.

Shadows swayed menacingly around the three outlaws as Wilde led them deeper into the border fort. Their footsteps echoed loudly in the quiet, and the air grew steadily colder. Scarecrow Jack looked warily about him, wishing he was back in the Forest. Ever since he’d entered the fort his instincts had seemed muffled and confused, but still he was sure that something awful had happened here, and not that long ago. The bloodstains bothered him. With so much blood spilled, why weren’t there any bodies? Maybe something ate them… . Jack frowned and shook his head. Being indoors was getting to him. He hated being inside any house or building, behind walls and under roofs. They made him feel trapped, hemmed in. That was partly why he’d left his village all those years ago and made his home in the Forest. The Forest was alive; the stone and timber buildings were dead and silent. He felt more alive among the great trees than he ever had among his people. He went back occasionally to visit his family, but he always slept out of doors and he never stayed long.

The border fort worried him in many ways. He found the thick stone walls oppressive. He kept feeling that they were crowding in around him. The ceiling was uncomfortably low, and he kept wanting to duck his head. It hadn’t bothered him too much the first time he’d entered the fort; he’d been so involved in his mission he hadn’t had time to think about where he was. But now he couldn’t seem to think about anything else. And above all that, there was a feeling … a feeling of something terrible, somewhere close at hand. Even with his instincts clouded, Jack knew it was there, just as he always knew where the hidden trails were in the Forest or what the weather was going to be. He tried to get some kind of feel for what it was he found so threatening, but his mind couldn’t seem to get it in focus. Whatever it was, it was very old and very deadly, and they were getting closer to it all the time.

Scarecrow Jack wiped at the cold sweat on his face, and wished he was somewhere else. Anywhere else.

Wilde led the way around a corner, and then stopped dead in his tracks. Jack and Hammer moved quickly forward to stand beside him. The corridor ahead was choked from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling with a thick, dirty gray webbing. At the edges it frayed into delicate individual strands, but the rest of the web was a sprawling, chaotic tangle that thickened at the center into a pulsing, solid mass. It was impossible to tell how far back the webbing went, but it looked to be several feet at least. Shadows moved in the web, dark shapes that came and went with unnerving speed. Some were small, barely a few inches wide, but others were easily the size of a man’s head, and a few were larger still. Every now and again Jack thought he caught a glimpse of burning blood red eyes. He sniffed cautiously at the cold air. It smelled foul, as though something dead and unburied lay close at hand.

“Did you come this way earlier?” Hammer asked Jack quietly.

“I think so, but … I never saw anything like this.”

“It’s obviously been here some time,” said Hammer. “No spider could weave a web that size in a few hours.”

“It wasn’t spiders that made this web,” said Jack firmly. “No spider spins like that. There’s no pattern to the strands. No pattern that makes any sense.”

“Maybe a strange kind of web means a strange kind of spider,” said Hammer.

“Is this what happened to the people here?” said Wilde.

“How the hell should I know?” said Hammer. “I suppose it’s possible, but I’d bet against it. If they had been attacked by spiders, the bodies would still be here, wouldn’t they?”

“Not necessarily,” said Jack. “Some spiders drag their prey back to their webs and spin cocoons around them. Then they either store the bodies to eat later or use them to lay their eggs in. The larvae eat their way out of the body after they hatch.”

The outlaws looked at one another, and then peered into the web to see if any of the unmoving shadows were human in shape.

“We’ll have to go back and try another way,” said Wilde.

“We can’t,” said Hammer flatly. “There’s no other way that will get us down to the cellar. We’ll just have to cut our way through this mess, that’s all. Cut it … or burn it.”

He gestured to Wilde, and he stepped warily forward and thrust his torch at the nearest clump of webbing. It blackened and steamed, but wouldn’t break or shrivel. Wilde pulled the torch back and looked almost challengingly at Hammer, who scowled at Wilde and then at the web.

“All right, we do it the hard way. Wilde, you take the left, I’ll take the right. Jack, hold the lantern and watch out for spiders.”

Jack took the lantern from him, and Hammer stepped forward and hacked at the nearest clump of webbing with his sword. It parted reluctantly under the blow and clung stickily to the blade. Hammer had to use both hands to jerk the sword free. Wilde smiled mockingly as he placed his torch in a wall bracket, safely out of the way. Hammer lifted his sword to cut the web again, and then stopped as the two separated strands of webbing before him slowly wound themselves together again. Wilde backed away. Jack bit his lower lip uncertainly. He was starting to get a very bad feeling about the web.

Deep in the webbing, something moved. A shadow stirred in the middle of the milky haze. It was tall, like a man, and the three outlaws watched uneasily as it moved slowly toward them, walking through the thick strands of webbing like a man striding through mists. Jack and Wilde fell back a pace as it drew nearer, but Hammer held his ground, sword at the ready. The shadow loomed up against the boundary of the web, looking more and more like a man. Except it was thinner and bonier than any man should be. It reached out a hand toward Hammer, and the webbing bulged outward and split open. Milky strands parted stickily as the bony hand thrust forward. The fingers were nothing more than yellowed bone, crusted with old dried blood and rotting strings of meat. The web bulged out again, stretching and tearing, and like some obscene mockery of birth, the creature clawed its way out of the web and stood before the three outlaws, smiling a smile that would never end.

It was mostly bone, a living skeleton of a man who had died long ago. Scraps and strings of decaying meat still clung here and there, to bones stained with blood that had dried long before, but it was the web that held the grisly figure together and gave it shape and purpose. Where muscle and sinew should have been, thick milky strands glistened slickly in the dim light, curling and twisting slowly around the dead bones like dreaming snakes. The creature looked unhurriedly from one outlaw to another. Nothing moved in the empty eye sockets, but still it saw them, and its death’s-head grin never wavered.

“Is it alive or dead?” said Jack.

“It’s dead,” said Hammer. “One way or another.”

He stepped forward and cut at the creature’s throat with his sword—a fast, vicious, professional blow that should have torn the creature’s head from its bony shoulders. Instead it raised an arm with inhuman speed and blocked the blow easily. The blade jarred against the solid bone and glanced away harmlessly. Hammer quickly recovered his balance and cut deliberately at the raised arm, aiming for the strands of webbing that held it together. The sword tip sliced easily through the milky strands, cutting them in two, but the severed ends flowed back together in a second, as though they’d never been parted. Hammer froze, startled, and the creature lashed out with a bony fist. Hammer threw himself aside at the last moment, and the fist swept on to smash into the corridor wall with enough force to crack several of the smaller bones. The creature recovered its balance in a moment, and turned its endless grin on the outlaws again. It felt no pain. It had been dead a long time, and was beyond such human weaknesses as suffering or compassion or mercy.

“What the hell is this?” said Hammer. “Some kind of lich? Jack, you ever seen anything like this before?”

“No,” said Scarecrow Jack. “There’s never been anything like this in the Forest. It has no place among the living.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, nature boy,” said Wilde. “I’ve seen this before in the Forest. In the Tanglewood, to be exact, on the border of the Darkwood. The web is alive, a single living creature that devours its prey by enveloping it. And after it’s sucked the meat off the bones, it puts them back together again and sends them out into the world to find new prey. Pretty smart, for a web. Hard to kill, too.”