the castle. It had been a quick decision on the Duke's part, made when the larvae had won success atop the walls, and it looked as if the citadel might after all fall quickly.
The Duke would not have trusted any of his subordinates to lead a mission like this one, not when he wanted to be sure that the prize gained reached his own hands. He had faced war at close range many times before, when the prizes at stake were far less than these Swords. And now, secret but most powerful encouragement, Coinspinner was giving signs that he took to mean its powers were fully active. Just as the small force had started out toward the beleagured castle, the Sword of Chance had begun a whispering thrumming in its scabbard, so soft a sound that the Duke was sure no one but he could hear it. He could hear it himself only when he put a hand upon the hilt. Even then the thrum was more to be felt than heard; but it was steady, and it promised power. The Duke kept one hand on the hilt as he walked.
The small body of men, seventeen in all, had moved out from the lines of the ducal army about an hour after dark, just as soon as the Duke had convinced himself that Kaparu's offer represented a worthwhile gamble. The gamble had to be taken soon if it was to be taken at all, for it was impossible to count on the defenders of the castle being able to hold out much longer, and at any moment the human army of Yambu might move as well.
Moving toward the castle, the Duke's small force traversed a slope of worn grass, cut by ditches, that Kaparu said had been a fairground only a few days ago. The ditches afforded a certain amount of cover not that the castles defenders had any attention to spare right now for this little group of men. Torches still burning on the walls ahead showed that parts of them were still held by Sir Andrew's troops, but new assaults against those sections were being readied to left and right, where now the regular troops of Fraktin and Yambu alike were moving forward, following the larvae.
But, just ahead, where the keep itself almost became a part of the outer wall, that wall rose to a forbidding height. Until now, no direct attack had been attempted at this point.
When his party was halfway across what had been the fairgrounds, the Duke stopped. He warned Kaparu yet once again, with Coinspinner's edge against his throat: 'You will be first to die, if there is any treachery here.'
The fellow took the threat calmly and bravely enough. 'There'll be no treachery from me, Your Grace. I look forward too eagerly to receiving the generous reward that you have promised.'
Silently the Duke pushed him forward.
When he and his men had topped the outer lip of the almost waterless moat, they could see rectangular patches of faint light in the castle wall, now just a few meters in front of them.
'The windows,' breathed Kaparu. 'As I promised. I tell you the old man is a soft-brained fool; I only wonder that his defenses held out as long as they did.'
The Duke had to admit that the rectangles certainly looked like windows, open and undefended. Any castle lord who came to be known as Kind could hardly expect to keep his castle…
The group easily forded the muddy moat, and easily climbed its inward wall, which was badly eroded and had obviously been neglected for years. As they came at last in reach of the castle wall itself, Kaparu leaned a hand upon the giant stones, and paused for a final whisper: 'As I have already warned you, there will be ponderous iron bars inside. Once through the wall, we'll be inside a large dungeon cell, whether locked or unlocked I do not know.'
The Duke nodded grimly. 'Bars we can deal with,' he said, and glanced at some of his men who carried tools, and at BlueRobes in his incongruous armor. They silently nodded back. The wizard had volunteered half- willingly to accompany this expedition, as a sort of penance; Mars had not, after all, made his appearance as predicted.
In a voice barely audible, the Duke hissed at Kaparu: 'Just so there are no tricks.'
The guide Kaparu was made to be the second man in through one of the tunnel-like windows, with Duke Fraktin right behind him. The Sword of Chance, throbbing faintly with the risks its master was taking, was touching its needle point to the guides back.
Once inside, through the five or six meters of the wall's thickness, the Duke dropped down from windowsill to stone floor, following closely the men ahead of him and moving to make room for those who followed closely after. Yes, they were in a cell, all right. The bars were visible as dark outlines against some illumination of ghostly faintness that came through an archway atop some stairs.
As the Duke motioned his tool-workers and wizard forward, to grope in silence for the door, he found himself starting to sweat. As the last of his party dropped in through the window, and his men milled around him, he found uneasiness, queasiness, growing in the center of his belly. Fear, he reminded himself, was quite natural when a man was engaged in an enterprise as dangerous as this. Even fear enough to make him feel sick… but this… this sickness had been only in his gut at first, but now it felt as if it were centered somewhere even more central than that, if such were possible…
Beside the Duke, one of his hand-picked men cried out in a low voice, then seemed to be struggling with himself, trying to muffle yet another cry. Another's weapon fell clashing on the stone floor. A third sobbed loudly. The Duke would have struck out at them all, in anger at their noise, but something was turning like poison in the core of his own being, and he could hardly move his limbs…
Not poison, no.
The wizard was perhaps the first to understand what was happening to them all, and he choked out the first words of a phrase of power. But it was too late to be an effective counter, or perhaps too weak something strangled the next words in his throat.
The sensation of deadly illness had now fastened upon all the men who were crowded into the large cell. Blue force, no longer completely invisible, hung in the black air around the windows, preventing any effort at retreat. Some of the men had groped and pushed their way to the cell bars, and hung on the bars now, rattling them. Now blue fiery tongues, constructions almost more of darkness than of light, were playing in the air all around the men, tongues of force that became more clearly visible as the wakefulness and the hunger of their possessor grew.
With Coinspinner drawn and throbbing strongly in his hand, the Duke managed to tear himself free of momentarily faltering blue tongues of light. He threw himself down on the stone floor of the cell, rolling violently from right to left and back again. He was trying, and managing successfully so far, to avoid that groping, subtle touch, that was so wholly horrible… Two men were hurriedly carrying Sir Andrew downstairs on a stretcher. They had shoved their way somehow through a melee on the first floor of the castle, and then had slammed a door on a charging Yambu warbeast to get down to ground level. Their intention was to carry their master through the dungeons and then on out through the secret passage that here, as in so many other castles, offered one final hope when defenses and defenders failed.
The bearers entered the long dungeon stair. The warbeast had been evidence enough that human attackers, coming in their own hordes on the heels of the remnants of the Horde itself, were now battering at the doors of the keep above. Above were screams and murder, fire and panic; down here there was still almost silence.
At any other time, the sight of the faint blue horror that hazed the air inside the large end cell might well have stopped the stretcher-bearers and sent them running back. But now they knew there cold be no going back. They set their burden down in the narrow corridor that ran between the cells, and one of them ran on ahead, through a false cell whose secret they knew. He meant to scout the secret way ahead and make sure that it was still undiscovered by the enemy. The other bearer meanwhile crouched down by the stretcher; watching and resting with his knife drawn. He was willing to die to protect Sir Andrew; but at the moment the man's bloodied face showed only terror as he gazed in between the bars of the end cell.
Sir Andrew, who was still wearing portions of his armor under the rough blanket that covered him, winced, and stirred restlessly on his pallet. When his eyes opened he was facing the end cell. In there, behind the bars, the silent blue terror wavered and grew and faded and came back, like flickering cool flames. All of the seventeen men in that cell were like candle wicks, being slowly consumed, as from the inside out.
One shape among them was clinging to the bars, and the mouth of it was open in a soundless yell.
Sir Andrew recognized that face. His own voice was a weakened whisper now. 'Ah, Kaparu. I'm sorry… I am sorry… but there's nothing I can do for you now.'
The tortured mouth of the blue-lit figure strained again, but still no sound came out of it.
The knight's weak voice was sad but clear. 'I told you you were my only human prisoner, Kaparu. I had one other captive, as you now see… no stone or steel could have held him in that cell, but Dame Yoldi's good work could… he had been half-paralyzed, you see, long before we encountered him. Some skirmish against Ardneh, two thousand years ago.'
