A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (33 page)

“It’s not working!”

“I know what to do!” says Thud, suddenly.

“What?” says Bronwyn, desperately.

“What?” says Gyven, skeptically.

Thud unties the rope from the tree and takes it to a huge boulder that stands at the brink of the cliff. The rock is as large as a small house, or so it seems to the girl. It is, at least, several times larger than Thud. The Kobold takes the rope in both hands, so that it makes a vast loop, and tosses it over the boulder. He then ties it securely. The rope now comes in from the darkness, makes a turn around the tree, then ends tied to the boulder.

Thud signals Gyven, who joins him behind the rock. Together they begin to push against it. Under their combined masses, the rock, unbelievably, begins to move.

“What are you
doing
?” cries Bronwyn, almost afraid to believe what she is seeing.

The rock begin to oscillate like a ponderous metronome as the two men work with its natural period. With each outward swing, it hangs just a little further over the abyss. In the flashing lightning and swirling, misty rain, Thud and Gyven look like creatures from some primal, pagan mythology ‘and quite probably are). Suddenly, with a grinding crash, the top of the boulder tips past its center of gravity and plummets into the chasm like a meteor.

“Watch out!” screams the princess.

The rope snaps as taut as an iron rod with a sound that rivals the thunder, as though Musrum Himself has just cracked a titanic whip over their heads. From across the gorge comes a detonation that can be heard even above the thunder. The rope screams as it winds around the big tree, nearly sawing it in half in a cloud of acrid smoke. An instant later something as large as an adult ox smashes into the tree like a meteorite, throwing splinters, rubble and dust in all directions. Bronwyn is thrown to the ground by a whipping branch and is only prevented from going over the edge of the cliff by the strong arm of Thud Mollockle.

“Are you all right?” he asks.

“I think so! Where’s Gyven?”

“Here!” comes his voice from the other side of the vast, grey mass that had nearly crushed them.

“What
is
this?” she asks before realizing that she is looking at most of the outside wall of the baron’s cell
. Holy Musrum!

“Where’s the baron? What’s happened to him?”

“There he is!”

She looks across the gorge. In the lurid electrical illumination she can see the gaping black hole where the baron’s window once was. A pale figure stands within it.

“It’s the baron!” she cries. She waves to the figure, who gives a jaunty salute in return.

“We must hurry!” says Gyven.

“What Thud accomplished won’t go unnoticed!”

“How can we get him out?”

“I’m not sure! I think he needs to get to the roof! If he can get up there, then perhaps he can lower himself to the top of that wall, where it meets the Tower.”

He points to the low wing that is pierced by the outlet for the moat. As he speaks, Gyven reloads the crossbow. Once again he ties a string to the quarrel. This time, however, he aims higher and the heavy projectile carries the line over the peak of the roof.

“If he can get up there, he can pull over another rope!”

“But how can he climb up there?”

“Look!”

The figure in the wall-less cell has swung out of the opening. Not more than a yard from the hole is the iron cable of the lightning conductor. By grasping the edge of the broken masonry with one hand, he is just able to reach the cable. Bronwyn gasps and shuts her eyes when the baron swings from the cell, supported for the moment only by his grasp on the wet wire rope. Using the staples that attach the conductor to the wall, the baron begins to climb the cable. It is the most harrowing thing Bronwyn has ever seen. The wind has increased during the last quarter-hour, all the time that has passed, amazingly, since they first arrived at the cliff, and it now howls down the confining chute of the gorge. Bronwyn has to hold onto the branch of a tree for security, and can only wonder at how the baron is able to withstand the buffeting gale that must be trying to pluck him from his precarious hold. Lightning laces the low, smoky clouds and the thunder is now an almost continuous roar.

The baron is only a yard or two from the eave when Bronwyn cries out, “Look!”

The twin spears of the lightning rods are glowing with an eerie, flickering aura of blue-violet light. The atmosphere is so heavily charged with electricity that Bronwyn can feel her skin prickling and the hairs on the back of her neck starting to rise. She has no idea what would happen to a man holding onto a lightning conductor when it is struck...her meager physics are not up to that, though her macabre imagination is working hard to compensate for that lack. The baron’s figure becomes radiant; pink and yellow rays shoot from it and sparks fly from his fingertips, even from the ends of his every erect hair, so that his head is surrounded by a coruscating globe of fire.

Bronwyn, certain that the baron has been fried like a moth in a candle flame, squeezes her eyes shut against the uncanny vision. However, when she opens them again, the baron is not only still there, but has managed to clamber over the projecting eave and is on the edge of the roof. The electrical effects are abating, though the lightning rods still flickers fitfully, gobbets of violet flame running up and down them like ghostly squirrels.

The baron quickly finds the string and begins reeling it in, eventually bringing a hundred feet of rope across the gorge; it now lay coiled at his feet. Carrying this to one of the lightning rods, he ties one end to the base and throws the other over the edge of the roof, where it dangles across the wall below.

“He’s going to make it!” shouts Gyven.

“Come on!”

Bronwyn, with Thud close behind, follows Gyven out of the woods. Running down the road, heedless of being seen, as unlikely as that is on this night of all nights, they cross the river by way of the scenic footbridge over the falls. Bronwyn, who never can run very far without cramping, has to stop. She is panting fitfully and the painful stitch in her side is bending her double. The road to the fortress is now uphill and daunting. Gyven, with scarcely a pause, sweeps her into his arms and carries her. He seems totally unaware of her weight. His arms feel to Bronwyn as though she is resting in a cradle of hard oak.

The vicinity of Kaposvar is reached in only a few minutes, and they slow in order to not attract attention. Anyone not at the coronation would be instantly suspect. Gyven drops the princess to her feet and the three conspirators leave the road and cut diagonally through a small woods toward the corner of the fortress wall that met the cliff. They are just in time to see a dark figure drop from the wall. Bronwyn gives a short, low whistle and the figure immediately turns toward them.

“Baron Milnikov, presume?”

“If you are my unknown friends, I am.”

“This is Gyven, he’s Thud Mollockle, and I am the Princess Bronwyn.”

“Well, I’ll be damned! What an interesting evening this is becoming.”

“We’d best hurry,” urges Gyven.

“Yes, indeed,” agrees the baron. “I don’t know how you people did it, but you’ve stirred up the whole fortress. They’ve no idea yet what happened, but they’re searching the place and it won’t be long before they discover that my cell no longer has a wall. Fortunately you chose a perfect night: the place has only a skeleton staff.”

“We’d better go,” urges Bronwyn.

Hurrying back down the road, the quartet find a shelter erected for the sightseers who never came to the falls. The rain has finally begun in earnest, now that the preliminary electrical display is over. It is a deluge that quickly turns the narrow road into a river of mud. In the obscurity, Bronwyn is able to get her first real look at the baron. He resembles to a degree that surprises her the romanticized illustrations in the weeklies: the same tall, lean figure, gaunt face with eyes in a perpetually amused squint, long, erratic nose, upturned moustache and pointed goatee. His curly black hair is plastered to his head, revealing a normally hidden bald spot on his crown. However, instead of the flamboyantly fashionable clothing he normally affected, he is dressed in the flimsy pajama, like uniform issued by the prison. Gyven removes his own coat and drapes it over the baron’s shoulders.

“What a pleasure it is to see you, Princess,” the baron says, with a bow. “I’m entirely at your service!”

“That’s what I’d hoped you’d say,” she replies.

The coronation, as it turns out, is a social disaster. To protest Payne’s presence, many of the old nobility have refused to attend, disdaining the anger of the king. Those who do attend are scandalized beyond expression when Payne is blasphemously allowed to carry the crown in the procession to the altar. More than one head turns nervously ceilingward, hoping that the wrath of Musrum would be a carefully aimed manifestation.

The arrangements for the coronation had been left entirely in Payne’s hands and he botched them, well, royally. Schedules are either impossible to meet or are not met at all; nothing is on time and many sacred and traditional events are cancelled out of hand or performed out of their properly ordained order. Ferenc is rude to everyone and Payne supercilious far above his birthright; the representatives of a score of ancient families, who had arrived willing to forgive and forget, went away insulted and offended. Afterwards, the new king held a private party in the great lodge that dominates Catstongue Island, a celebration of victory that is still going on well into the early hours of the following day.

He and Payne have surround themselves with their closest sycophants and toadies. The party is that sort of orgiastic revel that only Ferenc can organize or desire, especially now that he literally knew no restraints. There are several orchestras, trestles bending under the weight of more food than most Tamlaghtans are likely to see over the entire winter, fountains of champagne and wine, glossily handsome men in full evening dress and fashionably beautiful women in spectacular evening undress, every one of whom looks as though they had been ordered from a catalog, and a gloating, bloated king looking down upon it all.

To Ferenc, this is all that being king means, he desires nothing more than an endless continuation of this night. Payne, however, sees only a herd of sheep and is mentally flexing his shears. Even the king is not so stupefied as to not be surprised when the enormous glass double doors at the head of the ballroom crash open, showering his startled guests with a bright, tinkling hail. The music stops, dying out raggedly as the musicians become individually aware of the disturbance. A monstrous black horse plunges through the open doors, looking as though a ragged piece of midnight has been ripped from the sky and flung into that little box of lurid, inimical illumination. It made the ballroom’s brilliance look bleached, cheap and garish. Its vast hooves, each the size of half of Ferenc’s head, send pieces of parquet flying as they sink inches into the floor. It looks around with rolling, wild eyes, its breath roaring and steaming like a supercharged engine. The tall woman riding it appears almost diminutive compared to the shimmering monster. After only a moment’s hesitation, the horse and rider, having found their bearings, approach the dais upon which sits the new king and his chamberlain. No one dares stop them. Ferenc has turned a shade of blue-white that makes his eyes and nose almost luminously red in contrast. The tablecloth he clutches splits, spilling wine and food unnoticed into his lap. Payne stares at the rider with an expression of mixed consternation, fury and frustration. Why had he ordered General Praxx away from the island for the evening? ‘He doesn’t know it, but at that very moment the general is on his way to investigate the mysterious disappearance of both a wall and a prisoner from the Iron Tower.)

The slim figure, clad entirely in a black leather riding costume, with a black domino across the eyes, stares insolently at the two figures on the dais.

“Bronwyn!” hisses Payne, who, as we have seen, is no fool.

“What?” says Ferenc. “What?”

“I’ve got a message for you!”

“Someone stop her!” shouts Payne, a little shrilly, but not a soul in the ballroom moves. One woman is weeping loudly; the horse nickers impatiently.

“I’ve got a message for you, Payne Roelt.”

“Well, what
is
it? Just what do you hope to accomplish?”

“Your defeat. I’m going to see you dead.”

“Oh,
really
? How? How are you going to do that? It’s too late, Bronwyn, can’t you see that? How can you even
think
of threatening me? You’re finished, you’re all alone; you’ve nothing but words now, Bronwyn, just words. Do you know how seriously I take your threats? I’ll not even call the Guards, I’ll not have you pursued...You’re harmless to me now, so threaten all you like...you’re only a minor nuisance. Someday I might choose to slap you down, like an insect, if I decide to take the trouble. Then again, maybe I’ll just forget about you. So go ahead, do your worst...you simply don’t frighten me.”

“I should!”

She wheels the midnight horse and bounds from the ballroom with a sound that blends with the thunder of the storm outside. The chamber shudders with her passing. Payne Roelt has just made the biggest mistake of his life.

END OF BOOK ONE