At the top of Rampart Way Kiska found the Hold’s towering iron-studded gates closed. No lantern or torchlight shone from the slits of the machicolations to either side. Normally, the glinting barbed tips of crossbow quarrels would have tracked her movements and the watch captain would have hailed her long ago.
Cut into the timbers of the left-hand gate, the tiny thieves’ door stood ajar. Something lay jammed at its bottom. Kiska slid along the timbers until level with the opening. A forearm, bloodied palm up, stuck out as if offering a macabre greeting. She peered through the gap. It belonged to one of the mercenaries who had kidnapped her. He was dead, the leather armour at his back stitched by cuts. From the way he lay he must have been trying to escape. Darkness obscured the entrance tunnel and she knew she was now outlined by the moonlight glowing behind her. Slipping in, she stepped to one side and stopped dead, listening.
Nothing but the faint and distant surf. The stink of blood and voided bowels filled the enclosure. As her eyes adjusted to the dark, the twisted shapes of two other mercenaries distinguished themselves from the cobbled lane. Perhaps they’d been left behind to guard the gate and since then, someone had come and made quick work of them. She knelt: a dark trail of blood, still sticky to the touch, traced where one of the men had dragged himself just short of a small side-door in the tunnel; the entrance to gatekeeper Lubben’s quarters. She followed, stood over the body, and listened at the door. After a few heartbeats she was about to step away when the scuff of a shifting foot reached her. Someone was within, perhaps listening just as she was. Did she want to know if it was the hunchback or his murderer? No, she’d leave that alone. Somewhere ahead Artan must be…
The door whipped open. A thick arm and a hand the size of a small shield grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her in. A hatchet blade shoved under her chin jammed her against the wall. Close hot breath reeking of wine assaulted her.
‘Oh, it’s you, lass,’ Lubben growled. He squinted through his good eye then released her and pushed himself away. ‘Sorry.’
Kiska caught her breath, straightened her shirt and vest. The room was no more than a nook. A hole overlooked during the fortress’s construction — too short for her to straighten, though tall enough for the hunchback gatekeeper.
‘By the Elders, child. I thought you’d better sense than to come here tonight.’ He shoved her aside, closed the door, slammed the bolt.
’What’s happening upstairs?’
Lubben thumped down into a chair beside a brazier of glowing coals. He took a pull from a skin, wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his stained leather jerkin.
‘Don’t know and don’t care.’
Kiska stood near the door, shivered in the damp air. ‘But you must have some idea.’
Lubben laughed, coughed hoarsely. ‘Lass, I’ve ideas all right. Plenty. But here they stay.’ He tapped one blunt finger to his temple.
‘Well, I’m going to find out.’
Head tilted to one side, he eyed her as if estimating the degree of her insanity. He pointed to the door. ‘Be my guest.’
Kiska hesitated. ‘You mean you’re just going to sit here?’
‘Indeed I am.’ Grinning, he took another pull from the skin. ‘Listen. It’s a war up there — no prisoners. You understand? This ain’t your regular social affair.’
‘Fine. I’ll go alone.’
Lubben frowned, shoved a wood stopper into the skin and set it down on the floor. He cleared his throat, spat into a corner. ‘You could stay here for the night, y’know. Been safe enough so far.’
Shifting to warm her hands over the brazier, Kiska shook her head. ‘No. Thanks. I’ve got to look into this. There’s…’ She stopped herself, decided against revealing names or just what might be at stake. ‘This is important. I’ve got to know what’s going on.’
A deep-throated chuckle shook Lubben. ‘I’m thinking that’s what everyone would like to know.’
Kiska got the feeling that Lubben knew more than he was revealing. He’d been the Hold’s gatekeeper for as long as she could remember. As a child she and her friends had often gathered at the open gate, daring each other to tease the ’hunch’ with his crablike walk and the great ring of keys rattling at his side. Remembering that, Kiska felt her face burn with sudden embarrassment. To think she’d almost called him a coward for hiding in his cell. Who was she to judge?
She sighed. ‘All right. I’ll be going then.’ Lubben nodded, stared at the sullen coals as if reviewing his own painful memories. Struck by a thought, she turned from the door. ‘Can you lend me a weapon?’
He grunted, pulled a dagger from the wide belt at his waist and handed it over. She took it: one of the meanest-looking blades she’d ever seen on a knife — curved like a hand-scythe.
‘Thanks.’
He grunted again, his gaze averted. She unbolted the door.
‘Lass…’
She turned. ‘Yes?’
‘You keep your back to the walls, you hear?’
‘Yes. I will.’ Slipping through the door, she pulled it shut behind her.
The bailey stood empty, unguarded. Just inside the fortified door to the main keep she found four more dead mercenaries. Among them was one of the scarred commander’s picked veterans. No visible wounds — it was as if they’d simply dropped dead. Her back prickled at the possibility of a Warren-laid trap such as a ward. If so, she prayed it was now spent. She wasn’t sure how many men had escaped the hound’s attack: maybe fifteen or twenty. By her rough reckoning that left ten men, including their commander and the woman she believed to be a cadre mage.
In the reception hall the light was low. The candles had burnt out, leaving only oil-lamps guttering here and there along the walls. Deep shadows swallowed most of the chamber, gaps so dark someone could stand within and she’d never know it. A circular stone stairway hugging the wall started on her right. The high official and her Claws had taken over the top floors of the keep.
With Lubben’s warning in mind, she eased herself along one wall. In the darkness her foot pushed up against something at the base of the stairs. She crouched down. One of Artan’s two remaining guards, dead, a throwing spike jammed into his throat. Hood’s breath! At this rate no one would be left alive. And who was doing all the killing? So far, the murders stank of the Claws.
At the second-floor landing a single oil lamp cast a weak glow upon a scene beyond her worst nightmares. The dead lay in heaps, most of them from the mercenary band. Smouldering tapestries and scorched furniture sent wisps of smoke into the air. She gagged at the sweet odour of burnt flesh. Eviscerated and blackened, the head and upper torso of a Claw hung through the smashed planking of a door. Another Claw lay sprawled amidst the thickest pile of dead, virtually hacked to pieces. It looked as though another one of those alchemical bombs — Moranth munitions — had been touched off in the enclosed quarters.
Holding a portion of her cloak over her nose and mouth to keep out the worst of the stench, Kiska stepped over the bodies to cross the landing. A hall led to a second flight of stairs. Another veteran lay on the floor in a pool of blood, throat slit. From the number of corpses, it looked like the commander couldn’t be left with more than a few survivors at most. The woman didn’t appear to be among the bodies, nor Artan or Hattar.
Blood dripped down the worn stairs, sticking to her slippers as she followed the curve of the inner wall. She halted just short of the top behind the body of a man who’d dragged himself up from the carnage below. She recognized the lozenged armour: it was the sergeant who’d captured her at Mossy Tors.
She stepped over him and crouched, head level with the landing above. She paused to listen. Silence. Profound and utter quiet. It made her back itch. Was everyone dead?
A sough and a slip of cloth sounded beneath her. She looked down, the hair at the nape of her neck rising. The mercenary was not dead. While she watched, a hand rose then snapped at her ankle. She nearly shrieked aloud. It yanked and she fell back onto him, her head cracking on the stairs. Stars and tearing pain half-blinded her. The mercenary’s arm rose and she blocked his feeble blow, though the effort sent her sliding backwards down the stairs.
The grip on her ankle weakened and she jerked her leg free. The mercenary lay slumped on his back. Half the
