In The Shadow Of The Beast (6 page)

Tears began to fall freely from her eyes as
she surveyed the carnage before her, and as much as she wept for
the victims of that destruction, she wept too with the knowledge
that things were about to change forever.

CHAPTER 4

Thieves in the
night...

The black smoke was acrid, it billowed
relentlessly through the tight confines of the corridor and Sigourd
was unable to breathe without pulling lungfuls of the choking soot
and ash down his throat. He tried in vain to cover his mouth with a
scarf that he’d pulled from the corpse of a court serf, but it was
doing a poor job of filtering the hot, poisonous air.

Here in the servant’s wing, the situation
was dire. By Sigourd’s estimation the explosion had come from the
direction of the weapons chambers. Undoubtedly the result of the
gunpowder stores secreted there being lit. There were over fifty
barrels of the explosive powder hidden in a secured vault below the
foundations of the west wing, which would be called upon in times
of conflict to power the lethal weaponry of his father’s armies.
Not any more.

Weather by accident or design, those powder
stores were undoubtedly gone, vaporized in the time it would take
Sigourd’s heart to hammer out a single beat.

Unfortunately for most of the castles
servant’s, they were quartered in a building adjacent to the
weapons store. That building was now mostly unidentifiable ruin,
and what remained was being swept by fire, consumed hungrily by
roiling flames as a strong wind from the east fanned them to even
greater heights of ravenous consumption.

Outside, men at arms and other inhabitants
of the palace had gathered to fight the terrifying blaze, to stop
it spreading to the rest of the castle before all was lost. Sigourd
cursed himself for not being there with them, for not standing
shoulder to shoulder with those brave souls. But Sigourd had to
find her first. Find Isolde and get her to safety. That was all he
could think of doing. The guilt lanced him like a blade driven into
his belly, but he forced it down and pressed on into the billowing
smoke.

All around the sounds of shouting and the
groans of the dying filtered through the darkness toward him. He
knew that Isolde had been given a room near the north west section
of the building, the closest part of this wing to the site of the
explosion. He prayed to the gods that she had survived unharmed,
that he would find her amongst the survivors, wide eyed in terror,
shaking like a leaf with fright but otherwise unscathed.

As he progressed, members of the serving
staff rushed past him, coming out of the smoke like phantoms they
didn’t stop to question what their lord was doing in this part of
the building, so near to the danger. They were too terrified to see
anything but their hopes of escape. They fled past Sigourd into the
ruined warren of the servant’s quarters.

Voices nearby. Calling for help. Sigourd
strained to discern the direction they had come from, and when they
came again he shouted out, ‘This way, to me!’

He continued shouting as he moved deeper
into the darkness, struggling against the unrelenting black smoke
and the blistering, scolding heat.

More figures ahead, moving amongst the
shadows. Sigourd shouted again, ‘To me!’ and the figures began to
move in his direction, two serving girls that Sigourd recognized
and a senior footman that he did not. Huddled together, they
staggered toward Sigourd, who clambered through the twisted
wreckage to pull them further along the corridor to a point where
the heat was less intense, the smoke less choking.

‘
Are any of you hurt?’ he
asked quickly, scanning them for signs of injury.

‘
No lord’ replied the
footman, blinking in surprise to see who his rescuer happened to
be, ‘just a little shaken.’

‘
Then lead these women back
along the corridor to safety. Follow the curve of the wall if the
smoke becomes too thick to see.’

‘
I will lord, but what of
you?’ replied the footman, a note of grave concern in his
voice.

‘
I must find someone. A
serving girl named Isolde. Do you know her?’

‘
I saw her moments before
the explosion,’ offered one of the terrified serving girls, her
voice cracking with fear, ‘she was heading back to her room to
rest.’

‘
Go, follow the wall,’
Sigourd commanded, and without further delay he threw himself into
the pall of smoke as the trio of terrified servants moved off
quickly in the other direction.

It was hard to tell if Sigourd had the right
room, he’d only been here once before. Dressed as a common footman
he’d secreted his way to Isolde’s room in the dead of night for a
chance to lie with her. Now, surrounded by all this madness, it was
a tall task to negotiate the corridors with any certainty let alone
pick one door from another. But Sigourd was fairly certain he’d
arrived at the right place, and besides which he didn’t have the
luxury of time to mull it over.

He swung open the door and ducked inside,
relieved to be out of the corridor and its choking effluent. He
called out, ‘Isolde!?’ but no answer came.

Instead, what greeted him was the sight of a
room turned over. Not by any explosive shaking of the castle, but
as if a struggle had taken place. Clothes and furniture were
sprawled about the room in a manner that indicated someone had
deliberately been searching Isolde’s possessions, casting them
carelessly about the place as they went.

Sigourd looked for any sign of Isolde, but
there was nothing to provide any clues as to her whereabouts. And
then it came; a faint chirruping from under a pile of discarded
clothes.

Moving to the noise Sigourd pulled at the
pile until revealed beneath it there lay a bird cage, fallen on its
side, and within it Isolde’s pretty little nightingale.

The bird fluttered about inside the cage,
fearful of the gathering heat and smoke.

The young lord reached down to pick the cage
up, lifting it from the floor so that he might peer through it at
the frightened creature inside, ‘Where did she go eh, my little
friend?’

The bird was something Isolde said she had
picked up last summer, won in a carnival sometime before she’d
arrived at the castle. She’d brought it here with her and the
creature seemed now to view her as its surrogate mother. Whenever
she was inclined to let it out of the cage, the bird would alight
upon her, like some saint that was beloved by the creatures of the
world, the bird would flitter and flutter about Isolde in a way
that was remarkable to witness.

‘
We cannot stay here,
lord,’ came a voice from behind Sigourd, who turned to see Cal
standing in the choking darkness of the doorway. The old rogue
stepped inside the room and closed the door, looking about the
place at the obvious struggle that had taken place there, ‘we must
think of your safety, lord.’

‘
What are you doing here
Cal?’ asked Sigourd.

Cal winked, that playful, damnable gleam
flickering in his eye that was so much a part of his charm.

‘
Come now lad, you didn’t
think your dalliances with the raven haired lass were going to stay
secret from old Cal did you? When this shit storm came down and I
couldn’t find you I figured there’d only be one place you’d go
first.’

‘
You should leave, it’s too
dangerous here.’

‘
Leave!’ exclaimed the old
soldier in shocked disbelief, ‘I’d sooner leave both my arms on the
battlefield than leave your side lord.’

Nodding, Sigourd turned his attention to the
fluttering nightingale once more, reached up to unfasten the
delicate latch on the door to the cage. He pulled that tiny door
open, and in an instant the little bird had darted from the cage,
zipping across the room to alight on the mantle above an old brick
fireplace.

It hopped and danced there, chirruping all
the while.

‘
Odd little bugger,’ said
Cal.

But Sigourd had noticed something inside the
fireplace, toward the back where old soot and grime coated
everything. Parchments, thrown casually onto the floor near the
foot of the fireplace were fluttering ever so slightly, as if
stirred by the gentlest of breezes.

Sigourd crouched down to better see the
source of the draught, and was able to see that the back of the
fireplace was actually a carefully concealed hatchway that rose up
the inside of the chimney, about half the height of a man.

Cal crouched beside his lord, craning his
neck to better study this new discovery.

‘
I’ll be, I haven’t seen
one of these in quite some time,’ said Cal.

‘
You mean there are more of
these hidden doorways?’ asked Sigourd.

‘
The castle used to be full
of them. Convenient means of escape in times of peril. But your
father had most of them filled in before you were born....Our
position was more certain in those times.’

Sigourd reached out his hand, pushed open
the door to the secret passageway beyond, and as the ironwork
creaked open, the little nightingale zipped through the opening
into the darkness beyond, chirruping as it went.

Sigourd shared a look with Cal, before
pushing the trap door open entirely and moving cautiously after the
bird. Cal shrugged, resigned to the impetuousness of his master’s
youth, before following him through the secret door.

The courtyard was like a scene from ancient
myth, where men and their lands burned in hellish fires delivered
upon them by wrathful gods.

Everywhere there was chaos as soldiers
struggled to suppress the raging fires, and women and children ran
crying from their homes. Many others had gathered to witness the
destruction, staring on in horrified disbelief at the damage that
had been wrought to the castle.

More soldiery and civilian aid was streaming
up the hill from the city itself, officers of the watch shouting
orders above the noise and confusion, trying valiantly to organize
the rescue of the castle from this abominable tragedy.

The Baron looked on through it all. Standing
apart from the madness a safe distance from both the fire and the
terrified crowd.

If one were to look upon the face of The
Baron Mortaron at that precise moment, one could be forgiven for
thinking that the man was witnessing nothing more remarkable than a
servant polishing his shoes or serving up a midday supper, so
serene was his aspect. So calm and composed in the face of such
unspeakable destruction. So calculating.

An officer of the household guard, his face
and armor blackened with soot and filth, hurriedly approached The
Baron, snapping to attention as soon as he was close enough to be
obliged to do so.

‘
Report captain,’ said the
old Baron.

‘
It’s as we feared my lord.
The powder stores were deliberately lit.’

‘
Deliberately? You’re
sure?’ asked Mortaron.

‘
Yes lord, we found the
duty officer and his retinue. From what we can determine from the
remains they’d had their throats cut.’

The Baron considered this news, studying the
flames creeping higher around the east wing of the castle. Another
building went down, crumbling in upon itself in a plume of smoke
and dust. More screams.

‘
What are your orders,
lord?’ asked the guardsman.

As The Baron considered, heavy footfalls,
crunching across the gravel heralded the approach of another. Huron
emerged from the cover of night to stand before Mortaron and the
guard captain. The guardsman gave the towering knight a nervous
sideways glance, uncomfortable at being so near to such a fearsome
battlefield killer.

‘
Secure the castle,
captain,’ said The Baron.

The guardsman saluted and hurried off to
carry out his orders, running back in the direction of the fire
shouting orders to his men.

Mortaron turned to face the towering
Huron.

‘
I have found no sign of
any intruder, lord,’ said the knight.

From across the courtyard, a cry went up,
‘Hail The Regent, The Regent approaches!’

In the distance, the lord of the realm of
Corrinth Vardis was riding at the head of his personal retinue to
see first hand what damage had been done to his home.

The Baron cast one final look back toward
the still blazing ruin that had until very recently been the
weapons stores for the entire city. After a moment he turned and
swept from the scene of the carnage, he would relate to his liege
lord exactly the details he deemed worthy of note.

Sigourd pushed open the iron gate, its heavy
frame scraping oh so quietly against the rough hewn stone of the
floor. Beyond the entrance leading onto the stairwell, all was
darkness. Just a few stone steps leading into the flickering
candlelight gloom of the catacombs below, and who knew what
else.

Sigourd hadn’t realized that for the last
few moments he’d been holding his breath, too swept up with the
tension of the moment to remember to breathe. Quietly he let out a
sigh, the breath whispering out of him to faintly steam the cold
air in the stone chamber. In response, a fetid gust of sepulchral
stink, cold and damp, wafted up out of the depths of the darkness
ahead of him. It carried upon it the scent of minerals and mold,
and something else too. Some sweetness that tickled his senses.

From his side, Cal sniffed at the air,
picking up the same teasing bouquet that now lingered between them.
‘Honeysuckle and Lilacs?’ He said after another perfunctory
sniff.