The next room was twice as tall as the one above. That explained a lot about how the first floor had been constructed and hadn’t stepped off the way he’d thought it should have.
Warren didn’t have any time to think about that, though. The large object turned out to be a spike-laden hammer that swung toward Warren without a sound. In the darkness with the torch failing, he saw that the hammer was brutal and ugly.
Turning at the last second, he managed to let the spiked hammer whip by him. His chest stung. He hit the floor on his hands and knees and scuttled forward. Knowing the hammer would come back toward him, he hugged the floor.
Ratcheting sounded overhead. When Warren looked up, he saw that the hammer mechanism had allowed it to come down farther, jerking into place. Being low wasn’t going to work. He rolled to the side and barely stayed ahead of the hammer.
His torch lay against the wall twenty feet away. Darkness surrounded him. Almost effortlessly, he switched over to the night vision the arcane energy allowed him to have. Maintaining it for long gave him a headache that prevented searching the building with it. But it helped now.
The hammer ratcheted again and jerked lower. This time it slammed into the ground only a few feet from where he’d been. If he’d been faster, if he hadn’t noticed the hammer was descending, it might have gotten him then.
Drawing a deep breath, Warren stood up on shaking legs. He glanced down at his burning chest and saw that his shirt and coat had been shredded. Long scratches marred his chest, and blood stained the material of his shirt.
“Are you all right?” Naomi shone her torch over him, coming to a rest almost immediately on his wounded chest.
“Not really.” Warren mopped at the blood with his shirttail.
“You’re going to need stitches,” Naomi announced after her preliminary inspection. Her torchlight played over his chest. She’d pulled open his tattered shirt to reveal the wounds.
“Later.” Warren rummaged in the kit he’d brought. He brought out bandages and handed them to Naomi. “For the moment, bind them. We’ve got to keep moving. Whatever is down here that Lilith wants, we have to get.”
Naomi cursed as she accepted the bandages. She helped Warren take his coat off, then she ripped away the ruined shirt. After she had the gauze bandages in place, she taped them to him and tore the shirt into strips. She used those to further bind his chest.
“The bleeding’s slowed,” she told him when she stepped back, “but it hasn’t stopped.”
Carefully, Warren bent and retrieved his torch. He shone it around to make certain it still functioned properly. “There we go,” he said. “There’s a bit of luck.”
With the torch raised, they saw that the room held rotted crates and sealed jars. Ill-made wooden bowls held crude gold coins and gems. Bolts of what had at one time been fabric sat in the corner.
“What is this place?” Naomi asked.
“Treasure room.” Warren shoved his hand into a bowl of gems and drew a fistful out. He let them trickle back through his fingers. They flashed emerald, sapphire, ruby, and purple in the torchlight as they fell.
“How much do you suppose is there?” Naomi asked.
“A queen’s ransom. At the very least. By standards before the Hellgate opened, at least a considerable fortune.” Warren shrugged and found the movement almost excruciating. “Now they’re just pretty stones. Same with the gold. You can’t trade them to anyone. A man who has food or a safe place to live from the demons has all the treasure he needs.”
“It wasn’t so long ago,” Naomi said, “that men killed each other over things like this.”
“Amazing how the prospect of sudden death changes priorities, isn’t it?” Chest on fire, Warren played the torch around and examined the rest of the room.
Drawings and the strange language adorned the walls and drew his eyes. He walked close to them and brushed away the layers of dust. The cloud came back into him and he turned his face away.
The drawing beneath stood revealed in his torchlight. In it, a figure that was obviously a woman sat on a massive throne and warriors knelt before her.
“Lilith?” Naomi asked.
“Couldn’t imagine it being anyone else.”
“It would be good if we could read the inscriptions.”
Warren moved down the wall and started brushing again. He felt the same way. There was a story written into the wall, perhaps several of them, and he wanted to know them.
“Who do you think the people were that she ruled?” Naomi asked.
“I’m not that familiar with British history,” Warren admitted. “I know the Picts were here. The Angles and the Saxons. The Romans.”
“Maybe these were Roman warriors.”
Warren studied the images. “I don’t think so.”
“Why?”
“The armor seems wrong.”
“You’d know about armor?”
Warren smiled a little at that. “I’m a war-gamer from way back. I know armor. The Romans used short swords, spears, and occasionally axes. If these drawings are representative, the swords are too long.”
Naomi moved away and started working on the wall on the other side of the room.
“Careful,” Warren advised. “That hammer might not have been the only trap.”
“I know, but I don’t think anyone who constructed this would want to hurt this room.”
“A treasure room? If I were building this as a dungeon for my mates to rumble through, I know I would.”
“This isn’t a game.”
Feeling the pain of the wounds across his chest, Warren silently agreed.
“There were demons here,” Naomi said.
Warren crossed the room and joined her. He added his torch beam to hers. The ghastly image on the wall tightened his stomach and dried his mouth. Looming over the warriors around him, a gigantic demon wielded a massive club and took out horses and riders, oxen and carts, and dozens of men. The image was stark and savage, violent death frozen on the wall.
“Giants,” Warren said. “A lot of mythologies always include stories of giants. Always fierce
