The Battle for the Castle (16 page)

He stomped over and picked the dagger up from the floor. “We've got to keep track of time or we'll go crazy,” he said as he cut one deep line in the wood of the bench. “That's for the twenty-four hours from the time Tolliver left until we got down here.” He started to dig a second mark, but Jason put out a hand to stop him.

“No cheating,” he said. “Ten o'clock tonight we make the next mark. Seven hours from now.”

“It's only been a day and a half since Tolliver left?” William asked. “Are you sure?”

Gudrin nodded.

“Do you think he's gotten to Sir Simon yet?” asked William.

She shook her head. “It's a two-day ride to Ingle wich,” she said. “In the best of circumstances. And he is only a boy.”

Now that the worst had happened to them, William wondered if she had any more predictions to make.

“You heard the rats coming,” he said to her. “Do you hear them going away?”

“It is always difficult to hear silence,” she said in a tone that seemed to mock him. William thought again of the girls he knew at home and how different she was, how much older than her twelve years. She stood up and with a swish of burlap skirts, went to tend to Brian.

Just then, the cat emerged from some dark corner and prowled along the edges of the room until he reached the door. He stopped to sniff at the thin crack along the bottom, froze and then hissed. The gnawing did not lessen; in fact it seemed to increase as he yowled in frustration. William went over and scooped him up off the floor.

“Give him some scraps of meat,” Gudrin said from where she knelt over Brian. “It will distract him.”

The day took forever to end. Jason polished each piece of his armor with his bicycle rag. He spent most of his time on the shield, spitting and rubbing and spitting again. Gudrin moved from Brian to her uncle. She managed to coax him to the bench where she fed him and stroked his hair and listened to his babblings. Once when William glanced at the two of them, he could see tears glistening on Gudrin's cheeks.

Everybody but William seemed to have something to do. They concentrated on their little jobs as if they didn't have a care in the world, as if the endless scraping at the door didn't concern them in the least, as if all they had to do was wait because he was going to figure a way out of this mess. It made him angry and restless. He asked the time so often that Jason finally took off his watch and tossed it across the room to him.

On the dot of ten, William carved the second line in the bench and ordered them all to bed. At least I'll act
as if I'm in charge, he said to himself, as he tossed one way and then the other on the pallet. Finally, he tore two strips of cloth from the sleeves of his shirt and stuffed them in his ears to try and stop the noise.

His first thought when he woke was that the makeshift earplugs had worked and he put his fingers up to shove them in even farther. But they had fallen out during the night. What he was hearing was silence. He sat up and looked around. The others were still asleep in lumpy piles on their pallets.

It must be morning, he thought, because even though the torch above the bench had gone out during the night, the faintest ray of light had made its way into their black hole of a prison. The watch hands glowed faintly. Six-thirty
A.M.
And no more gnawing. Maybe they've given up, gone off to chew on some other victims. Before I wake the others, I'll just check, he thought. Ever so quietly, he upended an empty water barrel and scrambled onto it.

His eyes had grown so used to half-light, to the uncertain flicker of smoky torches, that for a moment he was almost blinded by the bright strip of sunlight that lay across the rough stones of the anteroom floor. He couldn't see its source, but he knew it must come from an arrow loop in the eastern wall of the outer room. And he also knew it wouldn't last long.

In the shadows against the opposite wall, he caught some movement, and slowly his eyes began to distinguish one shape from another. The rats were lined up in marching formation across the room, their backs against the wall, still, awaiting orders. William scanned the ranks for the leader and found him pressed into the darkest corner. What were they waiting for? What had made them stop the gnawing?

Then the leader must have given some secret signal because the first line of rats took one step forward and halted at the edge of the narrow strip of light. As the sun moved by inches across the hay-strewn cobblestone floor, the rats followed it toward the door of the dungeon. The light seemed to form some invisible boundary, and the rats did not allow so much as a whisker to be touched by it.

In time, they made it back to the door and began their gnawing again, but William stayed where he was. He waited with his face tilted downward until that first ray of sun had made its way up the side of the door to warm his skin. He opened his eyes in the white light and drank it in. As the warmth moved slowly across his face, he lifted his head to follow it and stood on his tiptoes to catch the last trickle before it slid away. He dropped down off the barrel and landed on his good leg.

Jason came around the corner from the garderobe. He stepped carefully over the sleeping bodies.

“What were you doing?” he whispered as he leaned over and pressed his finger against the rough wood.

“Watching them,” William said. “There's an arrow loop at one end of the anteroom that catches the eastern sun. When I woke up, they had stopped gnawing because the sun was in the way.”

“What do you mean?”

“They won't stand in the direct sunlight or get anywhere near it. Especially the leader.”

Jason dropped to his knees and ran his fingers over the lower part of the door. He looked like a doctor listening to a patient's chest. Then he signaled to William to step away from it.

“It's getting weak in places,” he whispered. “It's not going to last forever.”

“Are you serious?” William said. “That door is two feet thick.”

“Not anymore.” The two of them sank down on the bench and stared at each other.

Suddenly the cat appeared from nowhere. He floated across the room to the door and sniffed along the bottom edge of it. Then he settled himself to wait, with his tail sweeping the floor in regular rhythmic strokes like the pendulum of a clock.

“He smells them getting closer,” Jason said.

“Little does he know how many of them there are.” William glanced down at the bench. Two and a half
days had passed. Sir Simon and Deegan were just starting off from Inglewich.

“The fisherman told me the rats come at night,” William said, his thoughts reeling out a little ahead of his words. “And they seem to be scared of light. So as long as we have light, we'll be okay.”

“That's great,” said Jason. “We're locked in the darkest room in the whole castle, and you're talking about light. Do you have any more matches in your backpack?”

“No, I already checked,” William said. “All the ones we had went overboard with the dory. Plus the flashlight.”

“The torches are getting low,” Jason said. “Did you see the one above us has already gone out?”

“I saw,” William said.

Gudrin slid onto the bench beside them. “Brian is better this morning,” she said. “He's talking sense for the first time. And some of the bites have scabbed over.”

“Great,” William said. “We could use some good news.”

“What is it?”

“The door's giving way and the torches are running out of oil,” Jason said.

“We're going to have to make a break for it,” William muttered, mostly to himself.

They looked at him as if he were crazy.

“Listen, you had enough trouble with that crowd out there when there were just two of you,” Jason said. “Now we've got one wounded man and one guy who's crazy and a—” Jason glanced at Gudrin and stopped. “Not great odds,” he finished lamely.

“Well, what do you suggest?” William asked. “Stay here until all the light is gone and the rats gnaw their way through the door and overrun us?”

“What about Sir Simon and the token?” Jason asked.

“Two and a half days have gone by. That means they're just starting back now. Do you think that door is going to last for another day and a half?”

The other two slumped into silence, but William was getting the faintest stirrings of an idea. “Listen to me,” he said. “The rats are scared of light. Especially the big one. The sun lights up that room at six-fifteen in the morning for about thirty minutes. That's when we go.”

“They're scared of light?” Gudrin asked, and William told her what he had seen through the barred window.

“So once we get out into the courtyard, we should be safe,” Gudrin said.

“That's right. They won't follow us into the light. Particularly the big one. He was hiding in the darkest corner of the room.”

“Then what?” Jason said.

“We drop the drawbridge and get out of here. We'll have the whole day to travel.”

“What if it rains tomorrow?”

“Jason, I can't think of everything!” William exploded. “Come on.”

“Sorry,” he whispered. “I just don't think we're going to make it.”

“Well, until you come up with something better, we don't have any choices.”

They spent the rest of the day fine-tuning their plan. When they explained to Brian what they were going to do, he pulled himself to his feet and hobbled around the room testing his wounded legs.

“Rest, Brian,” Gudrin ordered.

“I've only got a day to get myself back up to fighting strength,” he said. “I'd like another crack at those nasty vermin.”

“We're not going to fight them, Brian,” William said. “We're just going to get away. No more noble stands, my friend.”

“Yes, sir,” Brian said and started on another tour of the room.

Gudrin gathered what was left of the food and packed it into the boys' two backpacks. Jason gave her his two water bottles to fill and his helmet.

“What's this for?”

“To wear on your head,” he said with a shrug. “For extra protection.”

“Not for me,” she said. “Why aren't you wearing it?”

“Because I'm going out in the armor,” Jason said in a low voice, but William heard him from across the room.

“That armor's too big for you,” William said. “You won't be able to move as quickly.”

“I'll go out first and beat them back with Sir Simon's sword,” Jason said. He was talking in a loud, don't-tell-me-what-to-do voice.

“The light's the thing that will keep them away from us,” William said.

“Listen, old buddy, you've got your ways of doing things and I've got mine,” Jason said.

He's scared, William thought, and without another word, he shrugged and turned away.

Toward evening, after they had eaten, William asked Jason for the repair kit.

“What for?”

“I need to take the side mirror off your bike. I figure I can use it to deflect the sunlight. It might buy us a little more time.”

“Sure, go ahead. But we're taking the bike with us.”

The two of them stared at each other. “We'll come back for it later, Jason,” William said gently. “It will
just hold us up if we try to take it out with us tomorrow. We've got to travel light.”

“Couldn't Gudrin walk it out?”

“I'll have my hands full with my uncle,” she said.

Jason looked from one to the other of them and his shoulders sagged. William clapped him on the back. “Cheer up,” he said. “I promise. We'll come back for it.”

“If we get away from here, I'm never coming back,” Jason said. “I want to get home as fast as I can,” he added, and his voice broke.

“We're going to make it,” William said in a voice that sounded a lot more convincing than he felt.

At ten, he made the third mark in the bench and set the alarm on Jason's watch for five-thirty in the morning. They lined up the pallets near the door and Gudrin set the backpacks next to them.

“I'll never get to sleep,” Jason said into the air when they had all settled down.

“Sing to us, Gudrin,” Dick said in a clear voice that startled them. Gudrin had spent the last hour telling him their plans for the morning, and he seemed more cheerful and alert than he had for days.

Gudrin sang them a song about the spring and the dawn, and the lilting tune wound its way into William's head. The next thing he heard was the tiny hammering beep of the watch alarm.

Brian helped Jason into his armor and lowered the helmet over his head. Jason poked his finger through the opening to straighten his glasses.

“Remember one thing,” William said as he slid the bike mirror into his belt. “Do not look into the big rat's eyes. He puts some weird spell on you that freezes you in your tracks. And no matter what happens, stay in the light.”

“I'll go first,” Jason said in a muffled voice. He looked like a kid dressed up for Halloween. “Where's my shield?”

William handed him the shield and Sir Simon's sword. “Can you see all right?”

“Sort of,” Jason said. “I wish this stupid helmet would stop sliding around.”

Don't wear it, William wanted to say but he kept quiet. No use starting a fight now.

Two more torches had gone out during the night. Brian was carrying the last one but it was already sputtering. They gathered in a line at the door and waited for the gnawing to stop. When it didn't, William began to doubt himself. Maybe yesterday had been a fluke. Maybe it was raining today. They had absolutely no way of knowing. Everybody began to get restless. The two men were carrying the backpacks, and they kept adjusting the straps.

“We're going no matter what,” William said. “There's no use staying here.”

The others murmured agreement, but nobody wanted to talk about it, about what was waiting for them on the other side of the door, or about the more certain horror of what they faced if they stayed in the dungeon. The cat curled in around Dick's legs and he leaned over to scoop the animal up.