Just ahead of them, the velduke slowed sharply, and then started to curse.
'What is it, Darendarr?' Taeauna asked, hurrying to join him.
'We're too late,' Deldragon snapped, his ice-blue eyes blazing. 'Too glorming late.'
Right in front of his boots, the blood and bodies began. Dark Helms, here and huddled in a heap far down the passage. Between them, unarmored men in aprons and homespun: cooks and scullions.
Rod peered down at them and winced, feeling more than a little queasy. 'If they've found your kitchens…' he said warningly, feeling even more queasy at the thought of food.
'Exactly,' the velduke said grimly, stroking his mustache. 'Amandur! Belros! Turn you around and go get as many men as you can and lead them to the kitchens. We'll be heading for the well. Again. Once you hold the kitchens, send most of your blades on to the well to join us. We'll be there. Alive or dead.'
'But, lord!' Amandur protested. 'Leave you, now? Alone down here?'
'I'm not alone. I stand with an Aumrarr and a man of mysteries. I need both of you to go, in case you encounter invaders; one man, alone, as you have just hinted, stands less chance of making it.'
'Lord,' Belros rumbled. 'We hear and obey. Keep yourself alive, and so will we, and you'll have your blades right soon. Soon, I said; if I were you, I'd dawdle on my way to the well.'
'And have them poison it, and doom us all?'
'Oh. Glorming bloody
Iskarra's boots felt like rocks clamped around her ankles, and her bony chest burned. Live or die, she'd not be running much farther. The thunder of Dark Helm boots was like a cruel roaring of waves crashing on rocks behind her. Not far enough behind her.
They'd catch up to her, soon. Even sooner, if a lorn came winging out of the darkness again. She could barely hold her hairpin now, let alone stab anything with it. Not that it mattered.
Not that anything mattered, without her Gar.
Let a Falconfar without Garfist Gulkoon in it be also a Falconfar without old Iskarra. Not that it would remember either of them, a day and a night from now.
Except for one Arlsakran, glorm him. And his poor daughters, all fourteen of them, if he hadn't worn any of them out and into early graves yet. He'd remember them. Much comfort would it do him.
No, she didn't much care now…
Hold! What was that, there?
Iskarra peered, stumbled, slowed hastily to keep from falling, and peered again. A grating! The first she'd seen, along all these passages, and it was askew. She looked back. No, too dark for them to see her. She bent and tugged at it and it came up in her hand.
There was a shaft down there, more than big enough for her. Right. If all she had to worry about was dozens of Dark Helms pissing on her head, so be it. She dropped her dagger into it and heard it
She followed it, feet first, holding the grating above her like a hat.
And landed hard; the shaft was five feet deep, if that, but at least she had room to gently place the grating back into place above her, without any clangs or clanks. She found her dagger, and thrust it point-first into the deep darkness around her, hoping to stab anything that was lurking there before it did worse to her.
Nothing came at her out of the darkness, and she was able to snatch her breath back at last.
She was in some sort of dusty, disused basin that had once gathered some sort of liquid from overhead. Hmm, might still gather rainwater, down pipes from above. It didn't smell like a privy-sluice. And it was large enough for her to get right in under the passage floor, out of view. So she did, lying down and keeping quiet.
Just in time.
'Glork! Glorm and bloody glork! There's a way-moot here! Anybody see which way she went?'
'No,' a deeper voice said gloomily. 'Why the lorn aren't flying ahead of us, I don't know.'
The first voice chuckled nastily. 'She killed two of 'em, in less time as it takes me to say it, that's why. All of a sudden like, they decided hunting that little lass wasn't in their orders. Well, I'm not wasting time on her, either. Our orders were to bring the fat one back alive, and we've got him. She'll never be fat.'
'Ah. Good idea,' the deeper voice said, as two pairs of boots scraped stone right above Iskarra's head. A moment later, two streams of urine came hissing and spattering down through the grating, wetting the wall not far from her.
'I thought they'd never get him tied. Fought like a stabtentacles, he did.'
'He's only half-tied now! What they did in the end was tie the three lorn wrapped around his arms to each other, with his arms somewhere inside the bundle, so to speak. I wonder if he'll manage to strangle any of them before we get back to the wizard.'
'Ho, now there's something worth betting on,' the nasty-voiced Dark Helm observed as he started back the way he'd come.
Iskarra lay there in the darkness, wondering how long she should wait before getting back up into the passage again. If Garfist was alive, she had to find where they were taking him.
To a wizard. He was probably doomed anyway.
'But we doomed must stick together,' she whispered to herself in the darkness, and got to her feet again.
The smell of what the Dark Helms had done reminded her that it was high time she relieved herself, too. She squatted right next to their wet, to keep the rest of the basin dry.
If the Falcon flew high, she and Garfist might soon need it again.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“We turn aside here,' Deldragon murmured, absently stroking his flaxen mustache, his eyes very blue in the glow of his sword. 'I'm going to open a door, and I need you both to be very, very quiet. Step carefully, and put out a hand to touch my back as we move forward. Things are going to be dark.'
The velduke quelled the faint magical sword-glow that had been giving them light enough to see by, and Rod and Taeauna heard the faintest of metallic scrapings as he lifted a metal rod out of a hasp, and swung wide a door they could barely see.
Beyond it, light was streaming up out of a stout iron grating in the stone floor of a room. The velduke approached cautiously; the radiance below was growing stronger, moving in the cellar level below them, to the sound of boots tramping from Rod's right toward his left, the light of a lantern moving with them. Taeauna reached her hand back for Rod, took hold of his arm, and towed him gently in a wide circle around the grating, keeping well back from it, so they were looking down through it at an angle, rather than standing at its edge peering down.
Rod looked, and saw.
A long, narrow cellar passage stretched straight as an arrow below, passing beneath the grating. There were doors in its walls here and there, and striding along it, right underneath him and heading steadily on down the passage, were twenty or thirty Dark Helms, carrying a large, securely tied bundle in their midst.
The bundle looked like a large, burly-limbed human with three or four lorn wrapped around him that had been lashed together into one helpless mass. Helpless, but squirming. Rod was sure he'd seen something straining to move within all those bindings. The light was coming from lanterns carried by the Dark Helms, and was already lessening, moving away from the grating.
'Toward the well,' the velduke murmured. His voice was barely more than a whisper, and every bit as grim as an old gravedigger Rod had once talked to, who'd been burying his old wartime buddies, one after another, as their times ran out.
'So is there a way down, hereabouts?' Taeauna asked just as quietly, her slender but strong arms reaching out to tow Rod and Deldragon close together, so they could whisper and clearly be heard. 'Or do we rush along on this level, try to get ahead of them, and descend somewhere closer to the well?'
'We can either go about three chambers that way, and down a staircase that'll let us travel parallel to the Helms,' Deldragon replied, 'or, yes, we…'
