Celeste moved to the trunk at the foot of the Ogre’s cot. She studied it a moment, and then stepped back to her improvised stair and climbed up. Holding her breath, for here the stench was strongest, she climbed up and onto the bed and strode past the corpse and to the chest.
Using her length of rope tied to the hasp, after a struggle she managed to haul the lid back, where she tied it to the foot of the bed, and scrambled down into the trunk.
Inside she found clothing of a size for ordinary people, along with goods suitable for travel-rucksacks, flint and steel, tinderboxes, knives, a bow, arrows, some feminine supplies, a cutthroat razor, a jar of salve of some sort, and other such paraphernalia.
A glint caught her eye, and she took up an argent heart-shaped locket on a broken silver chain. She opened the leaves and inside and facing one another were small painted portraits in profile of a handsome, dark-haired man and a beautiful, redheaded woman.
She snapped the locket shut and started to lay it aside, but on impulse she slipped it into her pocket.
She continued to search through the goods, finding combs and mirrors and various herbs and simples and boots and undergarments and scarves and other such fare, but she found no climbing gear.
Clambering out of the chest and crossing the chamber, Celeste scaled up to the top of the sideboard and examined the utensils there-huge spoons, knives, cleavers-none of which offered a way to reach the smoke hole high above the open-pit fire.
Weary with defeat and needing sleep, Celeste sighed and sat down.
By lamplight and firelight, she surveyed the cavern for something she might have overlooked. Beyond the fire, beyond the well, a massive corpse lay on a bed.
And then she knew what she would do, and she lay down to sleep.
Roel was up before dawn, and he fed the horses and watered them and then took a meal of his own as he watched the sky slowly gain light.
He saddled the steeds and laded the packhorses even as the sun broached the horizon, and he examined the stony floor where yester he had lost the track.
Sighing, he climbed the ridge on the left and down into the slot below. Once more he swept back and forth, seeking spoor-an overturned rock, an imprint of some sort, anything that would show him the way. Along the floor he went, sunwise and then starwise, but nought did he find.
Back up the ridge he clambered, and at the top he slowly turned about.
Quickly Roel scrambled down from the ridge and ran to the horses, and he leapt astride his mount and spurred away, the other animals in tow.
Hacking, coughing in spite of the wet cloth covering her mouth and nose, Celeste poured water upon the great armload of straw she had ripped from the mattress. She then cast it onto the fire where other wetted straw now burned, releasing dark smoke up toward the hole above, though it also filled the cavern.
Back to the straw-filled mattress she trod, where she tore out more of the bedding, and she carried it to the well.
Once again she tossed Lokar’s rope-tied goblet into the shaft, for the drinking vessel served as her pail, the Ogre’s wooden bucket too massive for her to use. She drew up the goblet and dipped her improvised mask into the water and then retied it around her nose and mouth. Then she wetted the straw.
She took it to the fire and set it aside.
To the woodpile she went, and took up an armful and headed back to the fire pit.
Even as she knelt to jam branches into the coals, a rope came snaking down from above.
Celeste leapt to her feet.
She grabbed the end of the line to keep it out of the fire.
She pulled away her wetted mask and cried, “Roel!
Roel!”
There was no answer.
She stood, her heart in her throat, and moments later a figure came sliding down through the dark smoke.
It was Roel.
Even as his feet touched the floor, he reached for Coeur d’Acier, but he could not draw it, so fierce was Celeste’s embrace.
And she wept, as did he.
“I thought I had lost you,” whispered Roel.
And she hugged him all the harder.
And he kissed her and kissed her again-her eyes, her cheeks, her throat, her lips-and she mastered her sobbing long enough to take his face in her hands and fervently kiss him on the mouth, and then she laid her head against his chest and quietly wept again.
And Roel looked through the smoke and ’round the chamber.
“The Ogre, by the smell of it, is he-?”
“Dead,” said Celeste, her voice small. “I slew him.”
“You slew him?” Roel’s eyes widened in astonishment.
“Oui.” She looked up at him. “Oh, Roel, let us flee, for I do not wish to spend another moment in this dreadful place.”
“Oui, cherie,” said Roel. “Indeed, let us leave.” He looked about.
“We need to climb,” said Celeste, disengaging, “for a great boulder blocks the way.”
“Up through the smoke, then,” said Roel, grinning, and he pulled the wet, smoldering straw from the fire to diminish the column somewhat, and then he gestured for her to begin.
Celeste grabbed the rope, and even as she looked above, “Wait,” she said, and she turned and ran back to the bed. Up she clambered and onto the cot, and strode to the cheek of the Ogre. And there she grasped the hilt of her long-knife and pulled it free. “This will teach you, Lokar, to leave princesses be.”
She wiped the blade clean against his beard and sheathed and secured the weapon. Down from the bed she scrambled and back to Roel, and, together, Celeste first, Roel coming after, up the rope they went.
24
Warband
Back in the drawing room, Borel passed the letter ’round, and all read Celeste’s words:
My dears:
I hope this finds all in good health and spirits, and I pray to Mithras that Anton and the warband came through the battle unscathed, though I fear some took wounds. If so, please keep them safe, and give them the best of care.
As for Roel and me, when we fled from the attack of the Redcaps and Bogles and Trolls, we escaped through the twilight border on the sunwise bound of my demesne. As you know, that bound is perilous, and perhaps we gave you a scare. You might have thought we drowned, since there is nought but ocean where we crossed. Yet
