In the Shadow of Mountains: The Lost Girls

Chapter Twenty-One

  Prisoners, Fate and Compromise

  All around the pit’s edge men stood shouting and cheering. Some of the men were eating meat on a bone and would throw the half eaten joints down into the pit and then cheer wildly.

  Debbie stood alone on the plank that led out over the edge of the pit. She was crying, she was battered and bruised, her clothes were all torn, and she was cradling her broken arm in her hand. Behind her a man kept prodding her with a long pike, urging her further along the plank. Each prod brought a scream of terror from Debbie and shouts of delight from the men gathered around the edge of the pit.

  Debbie was terrified. Terrified and still deep in shock. For a moment she couldn’t even remember how she had got here. She wracked her brain, thinking back, trying to remember. At first it was all a blank, but then the brightness of the chamber and the noise of the cheering men faded, and she did remember.

  She and Samantha had been separated from the others almost as soon as they had arrived at the castle. The other girls had screamed and shouted, and tried to hang on to them, but it didn’t matter. They had been dragged away.

  The men who took them had been horrible to them. They had dragged them down a dark and dismal corridor to a dungeon lit by torches. It looked horrible, it smelled horrible. But worse was to come.

  No sooner had they been thrown into the dungeon when the men fell on them like animals, tearing their clothes and their skin in their hurry. Samantha and Debbie had screamed and fought and cried, but the men had shown no mercy or regard for their age. They were cruel and brutal.

  When it was over, Samantha and Debbie weren’t even given the time to rest. They were dragged straight out of the dungeon and led deeper down the corridor. The smell had got nastier, but even worse, there was something about it that had made their hair stand on end. There was something evil here, something dark and nightmarish that until now had only lived in the furthest recesses of their minds, like a distant, lost, memory. Now it became real, physical. They could smell it. They could taste it in the air.

  Samantha had been sick. The men hadn’t stopped to let her finish. They just dragged her on as she threw up on the stone floor. With her ankle broken, Samantha couldn’t move so fast, and Debbie had reached the end of the corridor first.

  Beyond the corridor was a large circular chamber. Flaming torches hung from the walls all around. Debbie remembered how bright it had looked after the darkness of the corridor. Bright and noisy. Men were gathered three or four deep on a ledge around the chamber, shouting and waving their arms at whatever lay in the pit beneath them.

  The shouting and the sights around her had confused Debbie. And with everything that had happened to her, she had quickly reached a level of hysteria that took all reason from her mind. She kept thinking back, back to before the crash: The game with the other school, getting up that morning, how she had dressed. What had she done differently? Why had this happened to her now?

  Another prod in her back broke into her thoughts and caused her to scream. The reality of the chamber and the shouting men returned once more, and she took another step further along the plank. Until this moment she hadn’t bothered to look down, to see what lay in the pit beneath her. Now at last she did look down, and she saw that the pit was very deep and very wide. If she fell, the fall would most probably kill her instantly. In a way, she would be glad when it happened. She almost welcomed it.

  She had just made up her mind to jump when she realised that the pit wasn’t empty. There was something at the bottom waiting for her, and it was a horror made from the worst of nightmares.

  At first there were only two red lights at the bottom of the pit, weaving about in the shadows. It was only when the creature emerged slowly from the shadows and moved into view beneath her, sitting on its haunches staring up at her, that Debbie realised the red lights were its eyes; fiery red. It was big and scaly, its scales glinting like silver in the harsh light from the flaming torches, and it had a long serrated tail that it wagged lazily, like a cat. Every so often it would open its mouth and snap at the hunks of meat the men threw down at it, revealing long, curved teeth.

  SNAP!

  At the instant she saw it; everything else around Debbie ceased to exist. It was just her, and it. It was like a fantasy, a fantasy made even stranger when the creature spoke.

  “YES, MY CHILD,” it said in a deep resonant voice. “YOU ARE MY DINNER!”

  Debbie wet herself.

  Samantha was dragged into the chamber. She stared around at all the shouting men, and then she saw Debbie standing way out near the end of a plank over a large round pit. She was looking down at something in the pit, something that made her eyes big and round. She looked like she was about to fall, or jump.

  “Debbie!” Samantha screamed at her. “Debbie!”

  The men were shouting at the tops of their voices and Debbie couldn’t hear her. She was still staring down at something in the pit, mesmerised and frozen in terror, her mind lost in some fog where reality and imagination met and fought for supremacy.

  Samantha was still shouting at Debbie, shouting as loud as she could, but she couldn’t make Debbie hear her. There was too much noise from all the cheering men, and everyone was staring down into the pit.

  Then Samantha heard a voice, louder than all the others. It was a powerful voice, deep and guttural, and it made her rib-cage vibrate. The very sound and feel of it brought a huge chasm to her stomach. It was evil, and although its voice was soothing and purring, the words it spoke were a lie.

  “JUMP, CHILD! DO NOT BE SCARED! JUMP AND I WILL CATCH YOU!”

  Samantha saw Debbie fall from the plank. One second she was there, and the next second she was gone.

  “Debbie!” Samantha screamed.

  As Debbie dropped towards the creature, it swiftly crouched down on its haunches and leapt up to meet her. At that moment, reality cleared the fog in her mind, and Debbie screamed in terror as the creature’s jaws gaped wide, and she saw it’s long, curved teeth glinting like silver…

  SNAP!

  Samantha heard Debbie scream as she fell into the pit. But almost immediately, the scream stopped. It was as if it had been cut off by a door closing. Samantha had distinctly heard it snap shut. At the same instant, all the men around the edge of the pit roared in approval.

  Then a man shoved Samantha in the back, pushing her forward, causing her to limp and hobble towards the plank.

  Now it was her turn.

  When Anne Jenkins awoke, she found herself in what looked like a darkened cave. The walls were of rough hewn stone, and torches hung from the walls casting eerie shadows. They also gave off a strange oily smell that filled the cave. Straw had been spread over the floor. It did little to ease the feel of the cold stone against her back. She was lying down, and she wondered what she was doing here. She began to sit up, and immediately became aware of the other girls.

  Linda and Jo quickly grabbed her hand.

  “Oh, Miss Jenkins! You’re alright!” Linda said, helping her to get into a sitting position with her back to the wall.

  “We were so worried!” Jo added.

  Behind them, Anne saw Christine and Paula looking on anxiously.

  “We thought you were dead,” Paula said rather bluntly.

  “Well, I’m not,” Anne said. “But I feel like I ought to be.” She rubbed her head and found a large lump. It was then that she remembered everything. She sat up straighter and demanded, “Where are the others?”

  Linda did most of the explaining. She told Anne how they had been split up and put into different wagons after they had been captured, and how their wagon had been brought to the castle while the other one had been left behind. Then she told Anne about the other children who were already in the wagon.

  Anne was surprised. “They were French, you say?”

  Linda nodded, and Christine said, “I managed to talk to them for awhile. They were on a school trip like us, and
they ended up in that forest just like we did. But they weren’t together when it happened.”

  “What about their teachers?” Anne asked.

  “They got separated,” Christine replied. She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe they got caught too.”

  “What happened after that?”

  Linda continued with her explanation. “After we were all put in the wagons, they brought us to this castle and brought us down here. It was down a long staircase and then along a passage. They split us all up again. They pushed the French children through one door and us through another. They took Samantha and Debbie away, Miss. We couldn’t stop them. Honest we couldn’t.”

  Linda began to cry when she spoke about Samantha and Debbie, so Anne took her in her arms and hugged her. “It’s alright. It wasn’t your fault. Don’t cry now.” She could see the tears welling up in the eyes of the other girls. She pulled them close.

  “Come on, all of you. Calm down. How long have we been here?”

  Jo said, “About an hour.”

  “And no one has been in since we got here?”

  Jo shook her head.

  “And you haven’t seen or heard anything of the girls who were put in the other wagon?”

  Now all the girls shook their heads.

  Anne sighed. She felt so confused. How could they be in a castle? And what had happened to the other girls? And why had they taken away Debbie and Samantha? She felt like screaming, but she knew that if she fell apart the girls would be quick to follow. With sudden determination she got up and went over to the large wooden door. She banged on it and shouted at the top of her voice.

  “Hey! Anyone out there? Vanessa! Becky!”

  All the girls quickly joined in. They banged and kicked at the door, shouting out the names of their class-mates. There was no answer. Finally they gave up, panting and leaning against the door.

  “Maybe they got away,” Linda suggested rather hopefully.

  Paula said, “Or maybe the door is too thick and they just can’t hear us.”

  Linda snapped at her, “They could have got away! You don’t know!”

  Anne quickly intervened. “Alright, you two! No arguing! For all we know they could have escaped, or they could be in the cave next door.”

  “Then why don’t they answer?” Christine asked.

  “I don’t know,” Anne said in annoyance. She wished she knew what was going on. She kicked at the door again. “Why doesn’t somebody come?”

  Paula said, “Because it’s a dungeon, Miss, not a cave. And I think they’ve locked us in and thrown away the key.”

  It was much later, and the ledge around the pit was empty but for two men who walked and argued. The only sounds that filled the cavern now were their angry voices as they shouted at one another, neither one letting the other talk for long without an angry reply. But the voice from the pit was more deep and insistent, and it rose above theirs.

  “I WARNED YOU! YOU WOULD NOT LISTEN, NOW HUMANS FROM THE OTHER SIDE HAVE ESCAPED INTO THE FOREST! WE WILL BE FOUND OUT! I WARNED YOU!”

  Sir Henry L’Crieff was red-faced in anger, and he kept following L’Roth around the ledge over the pit, poking him with his finger as he spoke. “She’s right! We should have let her out! She could have led you to them before all this happened! This is all your fault!”

  “My fault?” L’Roth repeated, equally angry. He turned to face Sir Henry. “Is it my fault that your men can’t even catch children?”

  Sir Henry stood right up to L’Roth, poking him in the chest.

  “Children are one thing, Destroyers are another! She warned you! You knew they were in the forest! I lost some good men because of your over confidence!”

  “You call them good men?” L’Roth shouted.

  “Aye! Good and loyal!” Sir Henry shouted back. “And not easily replaced either, unless you suggest I send news of my loss to the King and ask that he send replacements?”

  “Arghhh!” L’Roth growled. He pushed Sir Henry aside and turned his back on him.

  L’Roth was angry, but more with himself than with anyone else. He knew Sir Henry was right, he had been over confident. The Destroyers had been waiting for him, and now their prisoners had escaped. And if they reached the villages on the edge of the forest, it wouldn’t be long before news of the strangers reached Ellerkan.

  If L’Roth’s anger and insults to his men had annoyed Sir Henry, his body language and silence now worried him far more. His own anger evaporated, leaving him only with his fear. “What are we to do, L’Roth?” he asked in a calmer voice.

  From deep within the pit came a gravely whisper. “LET ME OUT. I CAN FOLLOW THE PATH THEY TOOK. I CAN LEAD YOU TO THEM IN THE DARK. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY. LET ME OUT.”

  L’Roth spun round and shouted into the pit, “I will not have you let off your leash!”

  Sir Henry grabbed his arm. “But it’s the only way!” he pleaded. “You heard her! If we don’t let her out, they’ll get away! And the King is bound to learn of them sooner or later. No, we have to let her out! Even now it may be too late!”

  L’Roth stared at Sir Henry, and when he spoke, it was almost in a whisper. “You would allow such a thing to roam free in the forest?”

  “If we don’t, it will be our heads,” Sir Henry replied grimly.

  L’Roth ground his teeth. “Then we must compromise…”