There were two problems with this just and wonderful vision: First of all, the Lady Dannelle di Caela was uncertain as to how she would dismount from her horse.
And secondly, the drawbridge in question was boarded up by makeshift carpentry. Behind it stood engineers with little better to do than weathering hangovers and speculating as to how to repair the mechanism kicked asunder by a big stallion not two days before.
For several years, everyone in Castle di Caela had marveled at the lack of foresight or intelligence shown by the fabled nomad chief who had given Carnifex to Sir Robert.
'Such a fine piece of horseflesh,' they marveled. 'As a gift outright.'
And they shook their heads at nomadic stupidity.
All but the grooms in the stable, who had known for several years that Sir Robert had the worst of the deal- that the real stupidity lay in part with the old lord of the castle, but chiefly with the big horse itself.
Carnifex did not shorten his stride. Ignoring the cries of the woman atop him, her frantic tugging at his long silver mane, the animal lowered its head and whickered, its speed increasing until a panic-stricken Dannelle scarcely noticed they were airborne.
The horse and his two passengers leapt from the far bank of the brimming moat and splashed into the mud on the other side. Birgis, by far the most practical of the three, untangled himself and plunged into the water, as with a short, powerful surge, Carnifex strode up the incline and charged toward the half-repaired entrance, Dannelle hanging on desperately atop him.
It is hard to imagine the surprise of those engineers who, still aching from their bout with Thorbardin Eagle and settled in for a safe, undemanding afternoon of examining gears and pulleys, were confronted suddenly by a wild horse surging through the woodwork, a long-vanished noblewoman astride it.
In a moment, everyone scattered. Engineers and carpenters dove from their path, and whether by reflex or foresight or simply damned good luck, Dannelle di Caela grabbed the dangling chain of the drawbridge mechanism and swung acrobatically from the back of the horse, landing ankle-deep in the sucking mud and precariously, dramatically gaining her balance.
She looked cautiously around for an audience. She seemed disappointed, but decided that the engineers would do.
Dannelle was telling her story before Carnifex was out of sight, before Birgis had shaken the water from his coat and trotted merrily through the shattered drawbridge. She told them the lengthy story as, filled with alarm, the engineers carried her between them toward the infirmary, terrified that they would be blamed for any of her bruises or breaks or discomfiture.
Birgis tipped along behind them, yawning and wagging his tail.
'Which brings us to this juncture,' Dannelle concluded, 'where I guided the stallion over the moat outside and in through the drawbridge…'
'A daring exploit that must have been, m'lady,' the head engineer commented absently, shifting the girl's weight in his bony arms.
'Not so daring, that,' she objected, well schooled in false modesty. 'The moat was full, after all, and would have cushioned my fall from the saddle, and then there was the mud…'
'I beg your pardon?' the man said, his beard trembling, his eyes suddenly intent.
'There was the mud in the courtyard that-'
'The moat was full, you say?'
Dannelle nodded. 'I suppose the lot of you have been busy in my absence. Where are the others?'
Without waiting for her answer-indeed, dropping the young woman perfunctorily at the steps of the infirmary- the engineer turned and raced toward the cellars of Castle di Caela, where the brimming moat had told him that the underground was filling with water.
Birgis trotted up to the indignant young woman and
again most reverently licked her nose. He murmured in her ear, something that sounded like words again to the jostled Dannelle.
'You are muddy,' he seemed to say, 'and you smell like salt.'
Birgis charged off jubilantly around the corner of a guardhouse, and something squawked and fluttered from the direction he had taken.
Down in the tunnels below the castle, something stirred in the rubble. Gileandos, tutor to the Pathwardens, scrambled out from a rockpile, trailing gravel and dust.
He did not know he had been unconscious for a day.
'Oh, dear!' he exclaimed. 'Oh, dear! I fear that my companions have been… submerged past all recovery.'
His hands fluttered like bats in the darkness. He could not see them.
After scrambling and worrying and exclaiming and fluttering, the tutor groped in the darkness, found a large rock-one, in fact, which missed his head by inches in — the cave-in-and seated himself upon it.
'Now, think clearly, Gileandos,' he told himself. 'There is… there is a lantern in these whereabouts, and if the gods are kind, it is still in working order.'
Like a mole, he turned and dug in his subterranean blindness, his soft, thin fingers scrabbling through rock and dust.
Above Gileandos, the engineers stopped at a fork in the passage and caught their breath. The dozen or so castle servants they had brought along-grooms, sappers, a cook or two-ran into one another in the gloomy, lamplit corridor. Following behind the stumbling wall of men, Dannelle stepped through the crowd and laid a muddy hand on the shoulder of the younger and more promising engineer.
'You've been this way before, Bradley,' she said. 'Where from here?'
The young man blushed. Dannelle's touch, it seemed, was volatile in many quarters.
'He has no idea, m'lady,' the head engineer replied testily. ''Twas long before this that Bayard Brightblade made the lot of us turn back.'
Dannelle nodded in the shadows, being accustomed to unwelcome protection.
'And yet,' the young man said, his eyes on the two passages, 'after a brief inspection of incline and breadth and the mathematics thereof, I would venture that the leftward passage leads toward Sir Bayard and his party.'
'Nonsense, Bradley!' the head engineer sputtered. 'Surely you are aware that the workings of the well lie south of here. If Sir Bayard knew aught of engineering and matters hydraulical, he would surely have pursued the passage to the right.'
'Then I would venture that Bradley is right,' Dannelle interrupted, and the old man gazed at her with something approaching contempt.
'I shall be food for bats!' Gileandos murmured, fumbling hysterically at loose things. 'Or giant rats, or lizards, or huge flightless birds that have evolved into something menacing, or… or… that
Hysteria turned to blind panic as the tutor flung rocks in all directions. As he raised dust in the blackness, he coughed and sneezed and continued to burrow deeper into the rock-pile until he reached the floor of the corridor, until his right hand struck solid rock…
And his left hand metal.
Panting, squealing, fumbling with the lantern, he juggled it from one hand to another, heard the splash of lamp oil on the dark rocks around him. Fumbling in his robes, he came up with a tinderbox, wrenched it open, and drew out flint and tinder…
There were times years ago, in Coastlund, when Gileandos was said to be careless with fire. It was a reputation he did not deserve. Frequently ignited by the youngest and oldest Pathwarden boys-who worked sometimes separately, sometimes in tandem-the tutor spent much of his time in the infirmary, nursing burns and the ill regard of Sir Andrew Pathwarden. In those long, reflective hours on his back (or on his belly, depending on where the fire had struck him) Gileandos had come to believe that he had set the fires himself, or walked into them
