charge off. I’ll study the yfelgopes here in the city. I’ll observe them from the windows, get their movements and rhythms, all with a view to taking down Kelm and his boss as soon as possible.” He turned his open gaze from Freya to Vivienne.
“Why don’t you go looking for the Carnyx?” Vivienne asked.
“We’ll have plenty of time for scavenger hunts if we can deal with the single greatest threat to our safety and that of the overworld-namely Gad and Kelm. Come on, you know it makes sense!”
“Well. . look into it, but come see me first if you decide on leaving the Langtorr,” Vivienne said haltingly.
Daniel hesitated for just the briefest of moments. “Of course. Of course I will.”
“If any of you do leave the threshold of the tower forecourt. .” Frithfroth said abruptly, making them all start. “I would not risk coming back. All who pass the threshold die.”
“Except for you,” Daniel said. “I’m going up. Don’t bother me.” With another long look back at Freya, he resettled his backpack on his shoulders and started trudging up the stairs.
Vivienne turned to Freya. “We’ll talk more about this later,” she said. “For now, let’s hear Frithfroth out on what happened here.”
IV
Ecgbryt and Alex stood over the corpses of six black bears. That was good. Alex was worried that the bodies would turn back into men when they died-which would have been more troublesome for them. People would want to find them very quickly in order to ask some very urgent questions if six people were found dead. But as it was, half a dozen slaughtered bears were more of a strange puzzle than an act of mass murder.
They were shaking as they took stock. Neither of them had so much as a scratch, although there were some bruises. When Alex ran out of bullets, he had dropped the gun and drawn his sword, which was strapped to his back. Alloyed steel and custom craftsmanship made it sharp and deadly. Even if he wasn’t as practised with it as Ecgbryt was with his axe, he was still very capable.
They retreated past the standing stones and toward the trees, their backs almost edging up along the black metal rail fence that surrounded the Rollright Stones. Getting backed into a corner was not ideal in most circumstances, but in this instance it was preferable to being surrounded.
Alex’s arms ached; swinging that sword through fur, muscle, and bone was hard work. He was buzzing from adrenaline, panting, his arms and shoulders on fire; it was a good feeling.
Ecgbryt cleaned his blade and was sliding it back into the holster he wore on his back, underneath his coat.
“Shall we try to hide them?” Alex asked. “Half a dozen fivehundred-pound bears are quite the handful.”
Ecgbryt considered and then shook his head. “Leave them here. We should be away.”
“The RSPCA will be hot, no doubt. Do you think they’ll turn human again when daylight hits?”
“We’re not going to be around to see it if they do. Come. The survival of young Daniel and Freya depends on our swift movements hereafter. I do not wish to storm the city, only to be greeted by their lifeless corpses hanging off the main gates.”
CHAPTER THREE
I
“The boy is very impatient,” Frithfroth said.
“You’re not wrong there,” Vivienne assented.
“His blood runs hot-too hot. It boils and rises to his eyes in a mist. When it leaves, it leaves him empty, so empty. I have seen men chase after such heat. I hope it will not be his ruin.”
“Tell us what happened, Frithfroth. How Ni?ergeard fell, if they could not take the Langtorr.”
As an answer, Frithfroth crossed over to one of the tapestries hanging at an angle. He pushed up a corner to show a dark archway. He slipped through it and the tapestry fell back to its skewed position. Freya and Vivienne traded apprehensive looks, and then Vivienne crossed over and pulled back the thick woven cloth.
Swallowing hard, Freya ducked under the faded cloth, which smelled of rot and mold. Descending a curved stairway, the two women gradually lowered themselves into the thick, sharp smell of death that seemed to rise up in a cloud around them. They blocked their noses, but it crept into every breath they were forced to take. It stung their eyes and made their skin crawl. It was like a slap in the face.
“This was our last defense,” Frithfroth said, apparently oblivious or immune to the stench. “After finding Ealdstan departed, Godmund grew desperate. He spouted betrayal, deceit, perversion.” The staircase wound down and then opened into a wide, semi-spherical room. It was aglow with hundreds of silver lamps arranged along walls and pillars. The light that shone from them fell upon four concentric circles, each with a low stone slab cut to contain a man, but rising only a couple inches in height off the ground.
There were one hundred and five sleeping spaces arranged in four concentric circles-seven in the inner ring, twice that in the next, and doubling again and again in the next two rings. A circular dais was raised in the centre, and on it, a stone throne.
“This is the
However glorious it sounded and once may have looked, it was a slaughterhouse now. The biers were covered with the mangled remnants of the bodies they once held in state. The skin and flesh were beyond decay- black and leathery in some instances, or already decomposed. Bones could be seen, but not the clean, white bones in movies and on TV-these bones were brown and corrupted, with leathery flesh still hanging on to them. Forms could really only be made out by the clothing and armour that the bodies once occupied. Some heads appeared to be absent. Some biers only bore a shattered weapon or a broken shield.
Horrifically, perversely, the ground was moving. Maggots, insects, and some reptiles could be glimpsed in Frithfroth’s lantern light and the large flashlights that Freya and Vivienne carried. The dead bodies had apparently presented enough nourishment to produce a macabre ecosystem, a carrion food chain in the Langtorr’s cellar.
Freya gasped when she saw all the crawling nasties that swarmed the floor and raised an arm to prevent Vivienne from walking past her. Vivienne tensed and they stood there, a few stairs up, where nothing, they hoped, could crawl up to them, as Frithfroth unheedingly navigated the large room. He wove in and out of the biers, uncaring of the creatures that scuttled across his feet or clung briefly to his cloak. He went to the far wall where an iron hook was mounted, on which was hanging a horn. He raised an arm to it, as if he were reaching out and touching it with his missing hand.
“He blew this horn to wake them. When the knights awake, they are not like the city’s guards-they are mortal, and thus able to vanquish the yfelgopes permanently.
“Yes, he blew the horn, and it will never sound again, for there will not be any to hear it. They rose and went forth to battle, striking at the heart of the enemy, beyond the once-high walls of this city. It should have been a charge to victory, to a glorious routing of the enemy, but the unimaginable happened-the greatest war band ever seen in these isles was withstood.
“They fought for days without a one of them falling. The bodies of their slain enemies mounted higher and higher, and became their fortress. They fought along its walls and built them higher, bulwarked with more of their
