Down Among the Dead Men (Forest Kingdom Novels)

  The witch called Constance raised her hands in the stance of summoning, and drew the remains of her power about her. Most of her magic was gone, but she drew on what little was left to her for one last effort. She spoke a Word of Power, and a blinding glare gathered around her upraised hands. The trolls nearest her screamed and fell back as their bones cracked and splintered within their bodies. A slow headache began to beat in Constance’s left temple, and a steady trickle of blood seeped from her left nostril. Constance ignored it. Her body would stand up to the strain for as long as it had to, or it wouldn’t. There was nothing she could do about it.

  The four defenders fought on, blocking the entrance to the cellar with their bodies and their skill and their courage. Trolls fell and died before them, but there were always more to take their places. There were always more.

  Deep in the earth below the fort, the tunnel finally began to level out. MacNeil stumbled to a halt, and Hammer and Jack crowded in beside him, staring into the pitch black opening that ended the tunnel. MacNeil frowned. He could tell there was some kind of drop immediately ahead of him, but that was all. Maybe the tunnel led into some kind of cave… . He moved cautiously forward until he was standing right on the edge of the tunnel floor, and then held his lantern out before him. The pale golden light reflected back from thousands of tiny crystals embedded in the cavern walls. They shone brightly in the darkness, like so many distant stars on a moonless night, illuminating a cavern so huge it took MacNeil’s breath away. There wasn’t enough light to fill all the cavern. It had to be at least half a mile in diameter, and possibly even more in height. The tunnel opened out high up on a wall, with the cavern floor hundreds of yards below. A narrow ledge ran along the wall, leading from the tunnel mouth to another opening some fifty feet away and perhaps ten feet lower down. MacNeil didn’t like the look of the ledge. It was barely two feet wide, and the dark stone was cracked and uneven, as though it had only recently been cut from the bare stone wall. MacNeil looked down into the darkness and felt a sudden surge of vertigo. He turned his head away and breathed deeply until it settled.

  Jack and Hammer stood on either side of him, staring out into the cavern. The glowing crystals stared back like so many knowing eyes. Hammer caught his breath for a moment, and then quickly let it go in case anyone had noticed. The cavern made him feel small and insignificant, and he didn’t like that. Jack studied the narrow ledge cut into the cavern wall, and chewed his lower lip dubiously. It looked to be a long way down if someone lost their footing.

  “How far down is that, do you think?” he said finally.

  “I don’t know,” said MacNeil. “A hell of a long way, whatever it is.”

  “Do you think the Beast’s down there?”

  “Has to be,” said Hammer. “But is the gold down there with it, or could it be in that other opening?”

  MacNeil frowned. Anyone out on that narrow ledge would be very vulnerable to a surprise attack. They’d have to go in single file, hugging the cavern wall all the way… . But when all was said and done, he couldn’t ignore the opening. Hammer was right; there were only two places down here the gold could be, and the second opening was the easiest to get to. He nodded slowly.

  “All right, Hammer, it’s worth a try. I’ll go first.”

  He stepped out onto the ledge, testing it carefully before committing all his weight to it. The cracked stone seemed solid enough, and he moved farther along the ledge, pressing his shoulder against the cavern wall. He looked down once and immediately wished he hadn’t. Heights didn’t normally bother him, but this was different. Very different. He looked resolutely at the second opening ahead, only some ten feet below him and fifty feet away. It hadn’t looked very far from the tunnel mouth, but out on the ledge it seemed a hell of a long way to go. He leaned even more against the cavern wall and kept going. The solid rock face was a comforting presence. Hammer moved out onto the ledge after him, once he was sure it was safe, and Jack brought up the rear. Of all of them, Jack was the only one unaffected by the long drop. In the Forest he climbed the tallest trees for fun. On the other hand, he hadn’t liked the enclosed space of the tunnel at all, so the much larger space of the cavern actually helped to put him at his ease. He moved confidently along behind Hammer, holding his torch high and staring happily about him with easy curiosity.

  The second opening in the cavern wall proved to be the entrance to another tunnel. MacNeil crouched down on the ledge before it and studied the circular tunnel in the light of his lantern. It was roughly seven feet in diameter and appeared to have been bored through solid rock. Its walls were unnaturally smooth. MacNeil’s imagination conjured up a picture of some monstrous worm wriggling blindly through the solid stone, and he scowled thoughtfully. For as far as he could see in the lantern light, the tunnel appeared to be deserted. And when all was said and done, he wasn’t going to discover anything more just squatting there on the ledge. He sighed regretfully and moved forward into the tunnel. Hammer and Jack followed close behind him.

  After some twenty or thirty feet, the tunnel opened out into a cave. And in that cave, piled carelessly one upon the other, lay hundreds of stout leather sacks, each bearing the royal imprint of the Forest Treasury. Hammer pushed past MacNeil and ran forward to kneel before the sacks. He grabbed the first that came to hand and opened it, clawing impatiently at the drawstrings. He thrust his hand into the sack and pulled out a handful of gleaming gold coins. He stared at them for a long moment, and then opened his hand and let the coins trickle slowly through his fingers and back into the sack. He smiled gently as he listened to the musical clatter of gold on gold.

  “A hundred thousand ducats,” he said softly.

  “Don’t get any ideas, Hammer,” said MacNeil calmly. “That gold belongs to the king, and that’s the way it’s going to stay. You’re entitled to a reward, and I’ll see that you get it, but that’s all.”

  Hammer smiled at him, and then pulled the sack’s drawstrings tight and placed it down by the others. Scarecrow Jack sniffed dismissively and looked around him. He had no use for gold in the Forest. He frowned suddenly and held his torch close to the right-hand wall. The extra light revealed a narrow opening, low down on the cave wall and almost obscured by the shadows of the piled-up sacks. He drew MacNeil’s attention to it, and the two of them crouched down before the opening. It was barely three feet in diameter and led into yet another tunnel. Once again the tunnel walls were unnaturally smooth and even. Jack looked at MacNeil.

  “What do you think? Shall we take a look?”

  MacNeil shrugged. “Might as well while we’re here. But, Jack … keep your eyes open. That gold must have been brought down here for a reason, and I’m starting to get the feeling that so far we’ve just been led around by the nose. Constance thought the Beast could be using the gold as bait, to lure us down here.”

  Jack looked at him uncertainly. “What would the Beast want with us?”

  “That’s a good question, and I’ve a strong feeling we’re not going to like the answer when we find it. Hammer!”

  Hammer looked around sharply. “What is it?”

  “There’s another tunnel here. Jack and I are going to take a quick look; you want to come along?”

  Hammer smiled and shook his head. “Somebody had better stay here to look after the gold.”

  “Somehow I just knew you were going to say that,” said MacNeil. “All right, suit yourself. Jack, leave your torch here. We’ll make do with the lantern.”

  He got down on his hands and knees and crawled into the tunnel. Jack handed his torch to Hammer and followed after MacNeil. Hammer watched him go, then turned his attention back to the sacks of gold, his lips moving silently as he counted.

  The narrow tunnel was cramped and slippery, and MacNeil crawled along it as quickly as he could. He pushed the lantern along in front of him, and its unsteady light shone dully back from the smooth tunnel walls. The pale golden light made the tunnel seem even smaller than it was, and MacNeil
could feel a shivering claustrophobia gnawing at the edges of his self-control. He shuffled stubbornly onward on all fours, peering ahead into the darkness beyond the lantern light. He could hear Jack struggling along behind him, and the quiet grunts and scuffling sounds reminded him suddenly of the crawling giants, moving blindly through the tunnels under the earth. He shook his head quickly to clear it, and then his hands slid off the smooth floor and onto rough stone, and he realized the tunnel had opened out into another cave. He crawled out of the tunnel, straightened up painfully, and held his lantern out before him. Jack emerged from the tunnel mouth and got up to stand beside MacNeil. They stood together for a while, and stared in silence at what they’d found.

  Every man, woman, and child who’d died in the border fort lay piled in one great heap at the back of the cave. They seemed to have just been dumped there and left to rot. The cave had to be a hundred feet across, and the bodies filled half of it, stacked from wall to wall and from floor to ceiling. Every body showed signs of a violent death, and most were caked with dried blood. MacNeil stared grimly at the piled-up bodies, and felt painfully helpless. They were dead and gone, and there was nothing he could do about it. The children got to him most. The small bodies, torn and mutilated and discarded. No child should have to die like that. His hand dropped to the sword at his side, and silently he promised them vengeance, whatever it cost.

  Jack moved closer to the bodies and looked them over carefully, checking the exact cause of death where he could. He didn’t find their presence disturbing in the way that MacNeil did. Living in the Forest had accustomed him to the presence of death in all its forms, and it no longer affected him on an emotional level. It was just a part of the world. And then something very disturbing occurred to him, and he crouched to study the floor of the cave.

  MacNeil tore his gaze away from the great mound of bodies, and tried to think with his mind instead of his gut. There was something about both the gold and the bodies that worried him. How did they get down here? Somebody must have brought them. Perhaps the crawling giants … MacNeil frowned and shook his head. The giants were little more than animals. Besides, they were too large to have managed the ledge on the cavern wall, never mind the last tunnel.

  “Bring your lantern over here,” said Jack suddenly. “I’ve found something interesting.”

  MacNeil moved back and crouched down beside him, and looked at the cave floor that Jack was studying so intently. It was bare rock, with a faint pattern of dust. There were a few vague traces that might have been tracks, but they were too faint for MacNeil to read them.

  “Well?” he said after a while. “What do you see, Jack?”

  “Footprints,” said the outlaw quietly. “Human footprints. Men, women, and children—so many they overlap each other again and again. There’s no other tracks at all. Nobody brought these bodies down here, Sergeant. They walked here.”

  MacNeil gaped at him, and then snapped his head around as something stirred on the edge of his vision. One of the corpses opened its eyes and looked at him. Another drew back its blackened lips in something that might have been a smile. Jack and MacNeil straightened up from their crouch, and the dead eyes followed them. There was a slow stirring in the mound of bodies, and all the hundreds of corpses opened their eyes and turned their blood-smeared faces to look at the living interlopers who had stumbled upon them. MacNeil felt a cold hand clutch his heart as his imagination showed him how it must have been: an endless line of walking dead, making their way through the dark tunnels and along the narrow ledge, and finally filing into this cave to drop and lie still. And then more coming, to fall on top of the first, and on and on until the mound of bodies was complete. The last few would have had to climb the mound to reach the top… . MacNeil swore dazedly and backed away. Jack moved with him. The corpses followed them with their unblinking eyes.

  “Bait,” said MacNeil hoarsely. “The gold and the missing bodies … just bait, to lure us down here and destroy us.”

  “But why go to so much trouble?” said Jack. “What makes us so important? Why didn’t the Beast just drive us mad as it did the others?”

  “I don’t know!” said MacNeil. “There must be something the Beast wants from us; maybe we’ve got something that could harm it… .” His eyes widened suddenly. “Of course! The Infernal Device! It doesn’t want all of us, just Hammer and his damned sword!”

  “Wait a minute,” said Jack, glancing nervously at the watching liches. “This can’t be the Beast’s doing; it’s still asleep, remember?”

  “It’s not human,” said MacNeil shortly. “Its mind doesn’t work like ours. It must have recognized Wolfsbane when Hammer first came to the border fort to deliver the gold. The Beast knew how powerful the sword was, and saw it as a threat. So it sent its dreams out to destroy the people in the fort, to gather some bait that would lure the Device back … so that the Beast could destroy it.

  “Get into the tunnel, Jack. We’ve got to collect Hammer and then get the hell out of here. If the Device is the key, we can’t risk losing it to these creatures. Go on, move it! I’ll be right behind you with the lantern!”

  Jack nodded quickly and divided into the narrow tunnel. MacNeil gave him a count of five and then hurried after him, scrambling along the tunnel as fast as he could on hands and knees. But even as he struggled through the tunnel in his little pool of light, his imagination replayed the last thing he’d seen as he turned to the tunnel mouth: the great pile of bodies shifting and stirring like so many seething maggots. The dead were rising to walk again. Jack and MacNeil scrambled desperately through the tunnel. It seemed much longer than it had on the first trip through, and they’d barely reached the halfway stage when they heard something else enter the tunnel behind them. Somehow they found a little more strength and speed, and a few moments later the tunnel mouth fell away behind them as they threw themselves out into the outer cave. Hammer spun around, startled by their sudden entrances. He took one look at their shocked faces, and his hand fell automatically to the sword at his side.

  “What is it? What have you found?”

  “Walking dead men,” said Jack breathlessly. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “And leave the gold?”

  “The gold will keep!” snapped MacNeil. “Those liches want your sword, Hammer! The Device! The Beast must be frightened of it. That’s why it had the gold brought down here, to lure you into its clutches.”

  He stopped suddenly and looked back at the tunnel, and as he did a bare dead white arm snaked out of the tunnel mouth. MacNeil put his lantern down on the floor and drew his sword. The tunnel was full of soft, slow, scrambling noises. MacNeil swung his sword with both hands and cut cleanly through the lich’s wrist. The sword rang dully on the stone floor, and the severed hand flew away across the cave. It scrabbled briefly on the floor, and then pulled itself back toward MacNeil like a huge pale spider. Jack kicked it away. The lich burst out of the tunnel mouth and threw itself at MacNeil. Its pallid skin was flecked with long-dried blood, but no blood pumped from the handless stump. Hammer handed Jack his torch and drew the sword at his hip. MacNeil cut at the dead man’s neck with his sword, but the lich blocked the blow with its bare arm. The blade jarred on bone, but the lich just smiled. MacNeil backed away as the lich reached for his throat, and the dead man went after him. Another lich crawled out of the tunnel. MacNeil cut again at the advancing lich, but still it kept coming. Hammer moved in beside MacNeil and cut at the lich’s legs. It finally fell to the ground as a half-severed leg collapsed under it, but already the second lich was moving toward MacNeil, and more of the dead were emerging from the tunnel mouth.

  Hammer and MacNeil tried to stand their ground, but faced with an endless stream of opponents that wouldn’t stay dead, they were forced back step by step. The only way to stop the liches was to hamstring or behead them, and even then the crippled bodies would drag themselves along the floor to try to pull down the living that dared stand against them. Most of the l
iches had once been men, but there were also women and even children. MacNeil found it almost impossible to cut down the first child, but then he looked into the dead child’s eyes and saw there a blind, unreasoning malevolence that had nothing human in it. After that, he dealt with the dead children as methodically as he took on the adults, and with every child lich he faced he renewed his promise of vengeance against the Beast that used them in this way. Hammer didn’t seem to care whom he was fighting. He swung his sword with grim competency, his only expression a slight, satisfied smile.

  Jack stood to one side, holding his torch out before him and waiting for any lich that managed to get past the other two. He’d already guessed his knife wouldn’t be much use against the dead, but he’d had some success with the torch. Their cold flesh felt no pain from the blazing brand, but their hair and clothing were bone dry and burned fiercely. Already the cave was brightly lit by half a dozen burning corpses that thrashed weakly on the floor as the fire slowly consumed them.

  And still the dead crowded into the cave from the narrow tunnel, forcing the three defenders back. The cave floor was strewn with mutilated liches that still crawled determinedly after their prey. MacNeil felt an old fear stir within him again, threatening to unman him—the same fear he’d felt when the demons came swarming out of the endless night in a nightmarish assault that seemed to go on forever. Fear and panic tore at his courage until he wanted to scream at the liches, but somehow he held on to his self-control and continued his slow, cautious retreat to the tunnel behind him. Hammer moved back with him, and Jack guarded their rear with his flaring torch.