The Skeleth (16 page)

T
om felt his way down the narrow stairs that led under the foundations of the keep. His lantern burned cobwebs from his path. His feet slid on the moldy grunge that covered each high and shallow step. He tried to avoid bracing his elbows on the casing stones around him, for things skittered up and down the walls, things he had no wish to look at any closer, let alone to touch.

“Tom!” Two dozen voices shouted in chorus. “Tom, it's us!”

The humid pall of the tunnel gave way to a piney breeze. Tom emerged over the steep-walled cove he had seen on his first assault upon the castle. The outer door hung wide before him, above the descent to the dock and river's edge.

“Everything all right?” Rahilda called out from the first of four little boats steering into the cove. “I heard shouting.” Each boat held a half-dozen figures, black against black water, pulling hard with their oars to turn out of the current.

“We've got the brigands trapped in the gatehouse.” Tom
clambered down the stone steps. He hung his lantern on one of the posts that held up the dock. “Lord Tristan is alive and free.”

“I am sorry, Tom. We should have been here sooner.” Rahilda seized his hand and stepped out of the boat. “Like herding cats, this bunch.” Her weight added to Tom's sank the dock to the waterline.

“The brigands still have their weapons.” Tom reached out to lash Rahilda's boat to the dock. “They've started taking their axes to the door in the side of the tunnel. It's only a matter of time before they get through.”

“Well, we'll see to them. Step quickly, everyone!” Rahilda started climbing. “One at a time on the dock. Quickly, now!”

Tom helped every woman and girl in each of the next three boats up onto land. Some clutched makeshift weapons and trembled timid white, while others seized his arm and stomped up the stone stairs at a furious march. A pair of threshing flails passed Tom by, a half-dozen sickles and other tools of the garden, clubs made from distaffs meant for gathering spools of wool and a few long knives from the kitchen.

“Everyone remember your jobs when we reach the top.” Rahilda propped the outer door wide with a noisy squeak. “Those of you tasked to the gatehouse, take your positions in the courtyard or up in the watchroom. The rest of you, search about for bows—check the tower and the barracks first. We can't rest easy until we've got these men disarmed.”

“Don't you worry on that score.” Brithwen Byley clambered up the stone steps behind her. “We know perfectly well what they'll do if we give them the chance.”

Her mother, Diota, thumped her stick upon the stairs. “Ask
me, we should just pour some boiling oil on them and be done with it.”

More boats came in, two fishing skiffs and a barge. Tom helped a stream of folk onto the dock, then sent them on their way up the stairs into the castle. A young woman propped her aged mother with one arm and bore her infant in the other. Two more children followed close behind, gripped to her trailing skirts. Chickens squawked, pressed tight in coops on the barge. A little girl led a line of goats up the stairs, helped by a boy who wore a sword he could not lift.

Rahilda's sister seized Tom's hand on her way out of her boat, and held it tight. “You are the cleverest boy I've ever heard about. The cleverest boy in all the world.”

Tom did not know what to do with such an obvious untruth. “I'm glad I could help.”

“My name's Melicent, by the way.” The auburn-haired girl drew in until her feet touched Tom's. She took hold of his other hand. “We were never properly introduced.”

Tom wriggled free of Melicent's grip. “We must be quick. Those brigands are still armed.”

Melicent kissed Tom on the cheek. “That's for saving us.” She lingered a moment, as though waiting for Tom to say or do something, then flitted away up the stairs.

Somewhere in the act of raising woman, child and elder onto land, Tom lost the joy of victory. Faces came to him, first the men he had buried, then the others, dead in the eyes and yet moving with vicious speed, wrapped within the ghastly, reaching shimmer of the creatures. Last and largest loomed John Marshal.

“Is it true, young man?” The last woman in the last boat reached for Tom's hand. “Does my lord yet live?”

“He does, but don't take my word for it. Go on up and see for yourself.” Tom brought her onto the dock, then guided the empty skiff out on its line to rest downstream. He left a few women in charge of loading in the grain and ascended the steps into the castle.

Torches spread and spun out through the dark of the courtyard beyond. A dozen people spoke at once: “Mama?” and “Everyone gather, gather here!” and “Where's your sister? I told you to watch your sister!” The courtyard around him had turned into a half-lit maze of villagers and livestock. Bawling children marked islands of huddled kin. Dogs chased one another through flitting pools of torchlight scattered thin across the space, but none of them was Jumble.

“Welcome, one and all.” Tristan stood with one hand upon the hilt of his sword and the other raised in greeting to the villagers. “Be not afraid. We shall put a wall between ourselves and the world tonight, and then take thought for the days to come.”

Tom threaded through the crowd to join him. “My lord, we have all the folk inside, and we've started loading the food.”

“Well done, Tom.” Tristan nodded his snowy head. “Come and stand before me. I have something for you.”

“Tristan!” Aldred Shakesby's voice rasped out in the dark from the gatehouse tunnel. “Tristan, come over here and let us parley! You don't have the men to hold us for long—come to a deal while you have a deal to make!”

“Keep at it, boys!” Younger voices boomed in echo behind
him. “Three swings apiece, then hand off your axe.” Two men at a time took turns at the side door set into the tunnel, hacking at it high and low. The door, like much of the castle, had not been made as well as it should, and though Tom had done his best to brace it up from the other side, it was only a matter of time before it gave through and let the brigands loose.

Pangs of dread struck Tom in the belly. “Forgive me, my lord, but all we have done is trap twenty men, just twenty brigands. Lords plot a war with the help of evil wizards, the women of your valley have lost their sons and brothers, and those creatures . . .” He could think only of John Marshal's twisted face, trapped within the deathly glow. “What do we do now?”

“Hold out your arms,” said Tristan.

“My lord?” Tom did not understand, but he did as he was asked.

“You have things confused, Tom.” Tristan took off his sword-belt and threaded it around Tom's waist. “You are the hero of this story, not the bard who tells it. It is for you to win the victory, not to rate its importance to the world.”

Tom shook his head. He was no hero—what a thought! “But, my lord—”

“Hush, now. Did I say this gift was one you could refuse? I am a lord of the realm, after all, and I must get my way at least some of the time.” Tristan snugged the sword-belt tight. “There. Let it ride at your hip, just like that. After a while, you'll feel naked without it.”

Tom's hand fell to cradle the hilt. “It's very heavy, my lord.”

Tristan took his shoulder. “You are still growing, Tom.” He
turned him to face in the direction of the gatehouse. “Come, there is a hard task that needs doing.”

Tom walked Tristan across the grass, falling in with a group of village women converging on the gatehouse. A pack of brigands clustered at the inner gate, blocking Tom's view of their fellows who chopped away at the side door behind them.

“Oh, now, what's all this?” Aldred Shakesby pushed up to the bars. The scar on his face made his snarl all the uglier. “You must be joking.”

Lord Tristan stepped in front of the villagers. “Men of the Free Company of Rutters, you have committed great wrongs against me and my people. You have made this war. Your only hope for the milder justice of peace is to renounce it here and now.”

Diota Byley raised her stick. “You heard him. If you men want mercy, pass your weapons through the bars and surrender.”

“Mercy? From you?” Aldred passed a vicious look around at the women. “Do you have any idea what we will do to you hags when we get out?”

A murmur ran through the crowd. Melicent flinched back from the circle, and a few others followed, their weapons dragging low.

The steward sneered and waved a hand. “Back to it, boys! That door will give way soon enough. Pay these shrews no mind.”

Rahilda joined the circle with Hamon Ruddy's crossbow and a case of bolts. “I found these.” She placed them both in Tom's hands.

“I'll give you all one chance, and one chance only.” Aldred curled his lip back to his scar. “Put down those sticks and whatnot and let us out, and we'll go easy on you.”

“Liar,” said Brithwen. “You'll act just the same whether we surrender or not.”

Aldred peered out between the bars. “Most of you have children, don't you? Little ones over there on the grass? You want to see them grow up? You want to see your sons be men one day? Then you'll do as you're told. You have no business making war.”

“Don't you tell us who has business!” Diota struck the bars and drove the men back. “You think you can come in here, turn our lives up and over, kill my only son and then tell me I have no business in it? It's you who have no business here! It's you who have no right!” She smacked the bars again and again—they rang and shuddered.

“Oh, come now.” Aldred snorted. He turned to his men. “Look at them! What will they do, weep at us? Shriek and lament until we surrender?”

Tom cranked back the crossbow. He set a bolt in the channel and pointed it through the bars. “Whatever we might do tonight, we won't be weeping over it.”

Aldred spluttered. “Tristan, be reasonable!” He turned to plead over the heads of the women. “We'll be through that door soon enough, so you can play nice with us and make a deal, or—”

“You have heard my judgment, Aldred Shakesby.” Tristan turned to the women beside him. “Young Melicent, are you
here among us? Perhaps you should not be around such hard business. Would you care to lead me to the hall?”

Aldred shook the bars. “Curse it all—Tristan, get back here!”

“We have nothing further to discuss.” Tristan let Melicent turn him toward the great hall. “I leave my orders in the hands of the captain of my guard.”

Aldred stared at him in confusion. “Your captain?”

Tristan touched Tom's shoulder as he passed. “See to it. When you have these men subdued, come take counsel with me in the hall.”

Tom took a step toward the gates. He fixed the face of John Marshal in his mind, then the other men bound with him in the torment of a living death, and then the men freshly buried by the edge of the village. He pointed the loaded crossbow at Aldred Shakesby. “Surrender your weapon.”

Aldred backed away. “What? Now, come—you don't even know how to use that thing!” He tried to hide behind the other brigands, but they dispersed, leaving him exposed in the tunnel.

Tom took careful aim. “I point it at you and I pull this trigger. If I miss the first time, I've got twenty more bolts.”

A brigand slid his sword hilt-first through the bars. “I'm done. I'll take my chances with Tristan.”

Aldred foamed. “You cowards! What's the matter with you? Are you afraid of a half-starved boy, a blind old man and a pack of housewives?”

Rahilda wept from fury and rage. “Tell me this—when that
wizard woman's done with the man I love, what will be left of him? I just want to know if I'll get a chance to bury him proper.”

“That wasn't us.” Another man put his weapon through. “That was Drake. I had no idea that was her plan, I swear it.” Another followed in surrender, and another.

Tom held his aim on Aldred. “Last chance.”

Aldred spat a curse and threw down his sword.

The women stepped up to the gate to pull the weapons out of reach. They set down sickle and kitchen knife to take up sword and axe. The brigands sat against the tunnel wall, resigned to their defeat.

Tom let the crossbow drop down, then fired the bolt into the earth. He looked about him and spied amongst the ragged courtyard grass the box from which the ghostly creatures had sprung the night before. He approached and bent to inspect it—perhaps
box
was not the right word, but he did not know what to call such things. It was a good deal smaller than a clothing trunk and had been fashioned entirely out of metal, dull of gleam but so old that, for all he knew, it might once have shone like the moon. Three women had been sculpted on the lid, their arms held out to clasp one another in a line, making a pair of handles between them.