“What makes you think,” asked Sniveley, “they ever meant to keep the deal? They tried to use us. For some reason they want that thing out of the vault, and they’d have done anything …”
“We could tear down the vault,” said Gib. “It would take a little time.…”
“I think I’m fairly clean,” said Cornwall. “I’d better be getting out of here. Hand me my trousers, will you?”
Mary gestured at the makeshift clothesline that had been strung up. “They aren’t dry,” she said.
“I’ll wear them wet,” said Cornwall. “We’ll have to start doing something. Maybe Gib is right. Tear down the vault.”
“Why bother with it anymore?” asked Hal. “We can fight our way through the Hellhounds. With the giant dead, the heart’s gone out of them. They won’t be all that tough.”
“You have only a couple of dozen arrows,” said Gib. “Once they’re gone, there aren’t any more. Then there’ll be only Mark’s sword and my ax.”
“Both the sword and ax are good,” said Sniveley. “You’ll never find better.”
Coon fell in the tub. Cornwall picked him out by the scruff of his neck, reached over the edge of the tub, and dropped him on the ground. Coon shook himself, spattering everyone with soapy, smelly water.
“Here are your pants,” said Mary, handing them to Cornwall. “I told you they aren’t dry. You’ll catch your death of cold.”
“Thanks,” said Cornwall. “They’ll be dry in a little while.”
“Good honest wool,” said Hal. “No one ever suffers from wearing wet wool.”
Cornwall got out of the tub, tugged on his trousers.
“I think we should talk this over,” he said. “There’s something in that vault the castle folk want out. If it’s all that important to them, it might be as important to us. Anyhow, I think we should get it out, find out what it is. And once we get it out, we’ll dig out Big Belly and the rest of them from wherever they may be and talk to them by hand. But until we get out whatever’s in the vault we can’t talk to them too well. All of it may do us no good, and it’ll be a messy job, of course …”
“There might be another way,” said Oliver. “The unicorn horn. The one that Mary has. Magic against magic.”
Sniveley shook his head. “I’m not sure it would work. Magic comes in specific packages.…”
“I hesitated to mention it,” Oliver apologized. “It’s no place to send a lovely lady and …”
“Lady, hell,” Cornwall snorted. “If you think it has a chance, give me the horn and I’ll go in again.”
“But it wouldn’t work with you,” said Oliver. “It would only work with Mary. She has to be the one.”
“Then we tear down the vault,” said Cornwall. “Unless someone can think of something else. Mary, I tell you, is not going down into that vault.”
“Now, you listen here,” said Mary. “You have no right to say that. You can’t tell me what to do. I’m a part of this band, and I claim the right to do whatever I can do. I’ve packed that horn for miles and it’s an awkward thing to carry. If any good can come of it—”
“How do you know it will do any good at all?” yelled Cornwall. “What if it didn’t work? What if you went down in there and …”
“I’ll take the chance,” said Mary. “If Oliver thinks it will work, I’ll go along with it.”
“Let me try it first,” said Cornwall.
“Mark,” said Hal, “you’re being unreasonable. Mary could try at least. We could let her down, and if there were any motion there, if there were anything at all, we could pull her out immediately.”
“It’s pretty bad down there,” said Cornwall. “It is downright awful. The smell is overpowering.”
“If it worked,” said Oliver,” it would only take a minute. We could have her in and out …”
“She could never pull it out,” said Cornwall. “It might be heavy. Maybe she couldn’t get a grip on it, couldn’t hang onto it even if she did get a grip.”
“We could fix up that hook,” said Hal. “Tie it to a rope. She hooks onto it and then we pull out both her and it.”
Cornwall looked at Mary. “Do you really want to?”
“No, of course, I don’t want to,” she said. “You didn’t want to, either, but you did. But I am ready to do it. Please, Mark, let me try.”
“I only hope it works,” said Sniveley. “I hate to tell you the kind of odds I’d give you that it won’t.”
30
They did it differently from the way they had for Cornwall. For Mary they rigged a seat, like the seat for a child’s swing, and fashioned a hitch so she could be tied securely into it. They tied a cord about the horn so it could be looped about her shoulder and she need not hold it, for it was an awkward thing to hold. Thus, she had both hands free to handle the hook, which, tied to another rope, was run through a second pulley.
Finally it was time to go.
“My robe,” said Mary. “It is the only one I have. It will be fouled.”
“Shuck it up,” said Hal. “We can tie it into place.”
“It might not wash clean,” she wailed.
“Take it off,” said Sniveley. “Go down in your skin. None of us will mind.”
“No!” said Cornwall. “No, by God, I’ll not have it!”
“Sniveley,” Hal said sharply, “you have gone too far. Modesty is not something you know about, of course …”
Gib said to Mary, “You must excuse him. He had no way to know.”
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” said Mary. “The robe is all I have. If none of you ever spoke of it or—”
“No!” said Cornwall.
Mary said to him in a soft, low voice, “You have felt my nakedness.…”
“No,” said Cornwall in a strangled voice.
“I’ll wash out the robe while you’re in the tub,” Oliver offered. “I’ll do a good job on it, use a lot of soap.”
“I think,” said Sniveley, “it’s a lot of foolishness. She’ll get splashed. That foul corruption will be all over her. The horn won’t work—you wait and see, it won’t.”
They tucked up the robe and tied it into place. They put a piece of cloth around her face, Oliver having raided the castle kitchen for a jug of vinegar in which the cloth was soaked in hope that it would help to counteract the stench.
Then they swung her over the opening. The putrescent puddle boiled momentarily, then settled down again. They lowered her swiftly. The loathsome pit stirred restlessly, as if it were a stricken animal quivering in its death throes, but stayed calm.
“It’s working,” said Gib between his teeth. “The horn is working.”
Cornwall called to Mary. “Easy does it now. Lean over with the hook. Be ready. We’ll let you down another foot or so.”
She leaned over with the hook poised above the cage.
“Let her down,” said Hal. “She’s directly over it.”
Then it was done. The hook slipped over two of the metal strips and settled into place. Gib, who was handling the hook-rope, pulled it taut. “We have it,” he shouted.
Cornwall heaved on the rope tied to Mary’s sling and brought her up swiftly. Hands reached out and hauled her to safety.
She staggered as her feet touched solid rock, and Cornwall reached out to steady her. He ripped the cloth off her face. She looked up at him with tearful eyes. He wiped the tears away.
“It was bad,” she said. “But you know. You were down there. Not as bad for me as it must have been for you.”
“But you are all right?”
“I’ll get over it,” she said. “The smell …”
“We’ll be out of here for good in a little while. Once we get that thing out of there.” He turned to Gib. “What have we got?”
“I don’t know,” said Gib. “I’ve never seen its like.”
“Let’s get it out before something happens.”
“Almost to the top,” said Hal. “Here it comes. The Beast is getting restless.?
??
“There it is!” yelled Oliver.
It hung at the end of the rope, dripping slime. It was no cage or globe. The globe was only the upper part of it.
“Quick!” warned Hal. “Reach over and pull it in. The Beast is working up a storm.”
A wave of the vault’s contents rose above the opening, curled over, breaking, sending a fine spray of filth over the edge of the opening.
Cornwall reached out, fighting to get a grip on the thing that dangled from the hook. It had a manlike look about it. The cage formed the head, its tanklike body was cylindrical, perhaps two feet through and four feet long. From the body dangled three metallic structures that could be legs. There were no arms.
Hal had a grip on one of the legs and was pulling it over the edge of the opening. Cornwall grasped another leg and together they heaved it free of the vault. A wave broke over the lip of the opening. The noisome mass sloshed out over the platform that ringed the top of the vault.
They fled down the stairs and out into the courtyard, Gib and Hal dragging the thing from the vault between them. Once in the courtyard, they stood it on its feet and stepped away. For a moment it stood where they had set it, then took a step. It paused for a short heartbeat, then took another step. It turned about slowly and swiveled its head, as’ if to look at them, although it had no eyes, or at least none that were visible.
“It’s alive,” said Mary.
They watched it, fascinated, while it stood unmoving.
“Do you have any idea,” Hal asked Sniveley, “what in the world it is?”
Sniveley shook his head.
“It seems to be all right,” said Gib. “It isn’t angry at us.”
“Let’s wait awhile,” cautioned Hal, “before we get too sure of that.”
Its head was the cage, and inside the cage was a floating sphere of brightness that had a tendency to sparkle. The cage sat atop the tanklike body, and the body was networked with many tiny holes, as if someone had taken a nail and punched holes in it. The legs were so arranged that there was no front or back to the creature; at its option it could walk in any direction. It seemed to be metal, but there was no surety it was.
“Son of the Chaos Beast,” said Cornwall speculatively.
“Maybe,” said Hal. “The son? The ghost? Who knows?”
“The castle folk might know,” suggested Mary. “They were the ones who knew about it.”
But there was still no sign of the castle folk.
31
Baths had been taken, clothing washed, supper cooked and eaten. A faint stench still, at times, wafted from the direction of the vault, but other than that, everything was peaceful. The horses munched methodically at a pile of ancient hay stacked in one corner of the courtyard. The pigs continued to root here and there, but the chickens had ceased their scratching and had gone to roost.
None of the castle folk had made an appearance.
“I’m getting worried about them,” said Cornwall. “Something must have happened to them.”
“They’re just hiding out,” said Sniveley. “They made a deal they know they can’t deliver on, and now they’re hiding out and waiting for us to leave. They’re trying to outwait us.”
“You don’t think,” said Mary, “they can help us with the Hellhounds?”
“I never did think so,” said Sniveley.
“The place still is stiff with Hounds,” said Gib. “I went up on the battlements just before sunset and they were all around. Out there and waiting.”
“What are we going to do?” asked Oliver. “We can’t stay here forever.”
“Wait and see,” said Cornwall. “Something may turn up. At least we’ll sleep on it.”
The moon came tumbling over the eastern horizon as night settled in. Hal piled more wood on the fire and the flames leaped high. The thing they had taken from the pit prowled restlessly about the courtyard; the rest of them lounged about the fire.
“I wonder what is wrong with Tin Bucket over there,” said Hal. “He seems to have something on his mind. He is jittery.”
“He’s getting oriented,” said Gib. “He’s been jerked into a new world and he’s not sure he likes it.”
“It’s more than that,” said Hal. “He acts worried to me. Do you suppose he knows something we don’t?”
“If he does,” said Sniveley, “I hope he keeps it to himself. We’ve got enough to worry about without him adding to it. Here we are, locked up in a moldering old stone heap, with the owners of it hiding in deep dungeons and Hounds knee-deep outside. They know we’ll have to come out sometime, and when we do, they’ll be there, with their teeth all sharpened up.”
Cornwall heaved himself to his feet. “I’m going up on the wall,” he said, “and see if anything is going on.”
“There are stairs over to the left,” Gib told him. “Watch your step. The stones are worn and slippery.”
The climb was long and steep, but he finally reached the battlement. The parapet stood three feet high or so, and the stones were crumbling. When he reached out a hand to place it on the wall, a small block of stone came loose and went crashing down into the moat.
The ground that stretched outward from the walls was splotched with moonlight and shadow, and if there were Hounds out there, he realized they would be hard to spot. Several times it seemed he detected motion, but he could not be certain.
A chill breeze was blowing from the north and he shivered in it. And there was more than the wind, he told himself, that might cause a man to shiver. Down at the fire he could not admit his concern, but here, atop the wall, he could be honest with himself. They were caught in a trap, he knew, and at the moment there was no way to get out. It would be foolishness, he knew, to try to cut their way through. A sword, an ax, a bow (with two dozen arrows at best) were the only weapons they had. A magic sword, of course, but a very inept swordsman. An expert at the bow, but what could one bow do? A stout man with an ax, but a small man, who would go under in the first determined Hellhound rush.
Somewhere out on the darkened plain a night bird was startled into flight. It went peeping its way across the land, its wings beating desperately in the night. Something was out there to have startled it, Cornwall told himself. More than likely the entire plain was alive with watching Hounds.
The peeping went away, growing fainter and fainter as the bird blundered through the darkness; but as the peeping faded, there was a cricket chirping, a sound so small and soft that Cornwall found himself straining to hear it. As he listened, he felt a strange panic stirring in him, for it seemed to him he had heard the same sound once before. Now the cricket-chirping sound changed into another sound, not as if there were a new sound, but as if the chirping had been modified to a sort of piping. And suddenly he remembered when he had heard the sound before—on that night before they had stumbled on the battlefield.
The quavery piping swelled into a wailing, as if some frightened thing in the outer dark were crying out its heart. The wailing rose and fell and there was in it something that hinted at a certain madness—a wild and terrible music that stopped one’s blood to hear.
The Dark Piper, Cornwall told himself, the Dark Piper once again.
Behind him came a tinkling sound as a small bit of stone was dislodged and went bouncing down the inside wall. He swung about and saw a little sphere of softly glowing light rising above the inner wall. He stepped back in sudden fright, his fist going to the sword hilt, and then relaxed as he realized what it was—Tin Bucket making his slow and cautious way up the slippery flight of stairs.
The creature finally gained the battlement. In the light of the risen moon his metallic body glinted, and the luminous sphere inside his head-cage sparkled in a friendly manner. Cornwall saw that Tin Bucket had sprouted arms, although arms was not quite the word. Several ropelike tentacles had grown, or had been extruded, from the holes that pierced his body.
Tin Bucket moved slowly toward him, and he backed away until he came up against the parap
et and could go no farther. One of the ropelike arms reached out and draped itself across one of his shoulders with a surprisingly gentle touch. Another swept out in an arc to indicate the plain beyond the wall, then doubled back on itself, the last quarter of it forming into the shape of the letter “Z.” The “Z” jerked emphatically and with impatience toward the darkness beyond the castle.
The piping had stopped. It had been replaced by what seemed a terrible silence. The “Z” jerked back and forth, pointed to the plain.
“You’re insane,” protested Cornwall. “That’s the one place we aren’t going.”
The letter “Z” insisted.
Cornwall shook his head. “Maybe I’m reading you wrong,” he said. “You may mean something else.”
Another tentacle stiffened with a snap, sternly pointing backward to the stairs that led down from the wall.
“All right, all right,” Cornwall told him. “Let’s go down and see if we can get this straightened out.”
He moved away from the parapet and went carefully down the stairs, Tin Bucket close behind him. Below him the group around the fire, seeing the two of them descending, came swiftly to their feet. Hal strode out from the fire and was waiting when they reached the courtyard.
“What is going on?” he asked. “You having trouble with our friend?”
“I don’t think trouble,” said Cornwall. “He tried to tell me something. I think he tried to warn us to leave the castle. And the Dark Piper was out there.”
“The Dark Piper?”
“Yes, you remember him. The night before we came on the battlefield.”
Hal made a shivering motion. “Let’s not tell the others. Let’s say nothing of the Piper. You are sure you heard him? We didn’t hear him here.”
“I am sure,” said Cornwall. “The sound may not have carried far. But this fellow is insistent that we do something. I gather that he wants us to get going.”
“We can’t do that,” said Hal. “We don’t know what is out there. Maybe in the morning …”
Tin Bucket strode heavily forward to plant himself before the gate. A dozen tentacles snapped out of his body and straightened, standing stiffly, pointing at the gate.