Back Under The Stairs - Book 2 in The Bandworld Series (17 page)

John stood. Bent down to hoist his pack,
getting his arms through the straps, the brief rest from its weight
making it seem lighter.

As a further precaution, John turned; crossed
the width of hall and bent down to pick up the soldier's sword. If
the man woke up, John wanted to make sure the soldier wasn't armed,
precluding the man trailing John's party all by himself.

Angling the blade of the short sword over his
shoulder and working it under the flap of his pack, John was ready.
"Follow me."

And he was off, turning his head to see the
army officer pivoting woodenly, the soldier plodding forward, the
expanded procession continuing down the corridor, then bearing left
to take the branch of hall from which the solider had come. For
that was how John read the map. Ahead and to the left.

A necessary, though gruesome choice as it
turned out, the party coming upon the sprawled bodies of the dead
soldiers the Head had specified.

Bloody ... their pooled blood more black than
red in the feeble light of a single wall torch!

After the initial shock of that macabre
scene, John realized where he was in the castle. In the hall of the
tee-shaped corridor. It was in the corridor to the right that John
and Platinia had crouched to listen to the three soldiers of the
burial detail talk about the missing body of "Pfnaravin."

Five feet ahead in that widened space was the
same wood table, one of the soldiers tumbled under it, his legs
sticking out at unnatural angles. Still seated in a chair, flopped
forward, was the other man. His face a ghostly white, a red-lipped
"grin" where his neck gaped open, the thick pool of blood from his
jugular still dripping off the tabletop.

Seeing the dead men in that familiar
location, John guessed that the soldier he'd knocked out back along
the corridor was the third man of the burial party.

Thinking along that line, John imagined that
the third soldier was the "nervous" one, the one frightened because
he'd failed to follow orders to bury "Pfnaravin." John could
speculate that the soldier had slipped off to tell the Army Head
that "Pfnaravin's" body was missing, bringing the Head back here
only to discover ..........

John shuddered. Turned to console the others.
Found that was unnecessary.

The Head was still "out," seeing nothing in
his mesmerized state. Platinia's face was at its solemn best.
Little -- including the brutal death of others -- seemed to phase
her. And Zwicia was calm. While the old lady was capable of
screaming at nothing, she hadn't turned a hair at the sight of all
that blood.

Stopped in his tracks, shivering now, John
couldn't seem to find the nerve to by-pass ... death.

Across the widened hallway from the dead
soldiers was the heavily-braced door. The exit John had thought was
the postern gate.

Needing to stop looking at the dead men,
grateful to have something else to do, John unfolded the map again.
Consulted it.

According to what he thought it showed, the
fortified door was, indeed, the postern gate to the castle. Now
that he was closer to the door, could look at it with something
more than quick peeks from a distance, he saw it was barred and
chained, three massive rusty padlocks fastening it shut. How the
lock and chain arrangement opened, he didn't know. It didn't matter
anyway since he had no key.

The situation was beginning to "fit," at
least. It was through that back door that the soldiers were going
to take the body.

Assuming that theorization held up, one of
the dead men must have a key to the locks.

An idea John could verify -- provided he had
the stomach to search their bodies.

Only he didn't.

Or it could be that the third man -- the one
he'd knocked out down the passageway, had the key.

None of which mattered.

Sooner or later, he had to lead his party
past the slaughtered soldiers, in spite of the knowledge that out
there, somewhere, was a killer!

The passage of time helping him pull himself
together, John motioned to the women.

And they were off again, sidling past the
bodies, John's knapsack scraping the left wall, the bulk of the
pack causing him to slip on the blood-slick flagstones.

Unknowingly holding his breath, John panted
out his relief when he'd finally passed the dead soldiers.

The others clear as well, John shifted his
carryall until it was as balanced as possible, then led the retreat
into blackness, John's single torch the only light, once again.

John's emotion now? Elation! Elation that he
was still alive! (Not admirable, but entirely understandable!)

Though wanting to hurry now that the map
showed them close to their goal, John had to go slowly enough so
the women and the zombie-like Army Head could use the torch's
guttering light to keep from tripping on an increasingly uneven
floor.

All that mattered, John told himself, was
discovering the Mage-exit -- and finding it quickly, a task made
more difficult because John kept pausing every second step ... to
listen.

He shook his head; reminded himself there was
no time to lose. And yet, he stopped again. ....... Why?

Because he imagined he heard noises in the
dark? Rustlings? Footsteps that dogged him down the corridor,
moving when John moved, stopping when he stopped? ...........

Refusing to give in to paranoia, John set out
again. .......

There!

Certain he'd heard something following him,
John stopped cold and raised the torch, in the same instant
pivoting quickly, his eyes gnawing at the shadow edges beyond the
crude circle of throbbing light. ... Saw ....

Eyes! Glowing red! Near the floor just beyond
the torch's circle! ... Small eyes. Narrow eyes that suddenly went
... out.

A rat.

Nothing but a rat, human presence disturbing
the loathsome creature in its foul domain.

Relieved to have an explanation for those
haunting sounds, John waved the group on and was immediately
rewarded with ... the other door! Right where he thought it should
be! (Besides gaining confidence in his ability to read the map,
John was beginning to get a sense of scale from the paper's
markings.)

Motioning to the rest who came up to cluster
around him -- the Army Head still sightless -- John creaked up the
door's unlocked, wrought iron latch and shouldered the door
forward, its rusty hinges squealing, the rough, wood slab moving
steadily, if noisily, inward.

Yes.

Stairs.

Spiraling down.

Stepping through the doorway -- the rest
staying close to take advantage of the fuzzy circle of light of
John's elevated torch -- they began the dizzying, cylindrical
descent.

The narrow stairs a corkscrew, John
concentrated on placing each foot on the triangularly irregular
stone steps, at the same time, wondering how the mesmerized soldier
behind him could feel his way without falling. Apparently, even
"asleep," a hypnotized man was "awake" to danger.

Down and down. To wetness and to increasingly
foul air. Until ... they hit bottom.

Everyone off the stairs, John stopped to
unfold, then refold the map so that only the basement of the castle
showed, the sturdy thickness of the folded page helping him hold
the map still in the weak light.

Taking his time, John studied the "vault"
part of the page.

As nearly as he could tell, another twenty
feet should take them to a heavy barricade: the door to the dungeon
of the castle? It didn't matter. If John read the map right, they
didn't go through that door, anyway, but turned to the left to
slide through what looked like a narrow, side corridor.

After that, ten feet further on, they should
come to the object of their search: the opening to the secret exit,
the start of a tunnel that slanted up and out of the castle.

Sweating, John made weak from the strain of
wandering through dank passageways with real (or imagined) enemies
on every hand, from carrying the pack, from having to breathe
miasmal air, he forced himself to move.

To turn left.

To pace off twenty steps.

Yes. The monstrous door.

Turning left again, taking ten more steps,
John lifted the torch to find himself in a widened spot in the
hall, an area that, surprisingly, seemed to provide both better air
and better light.

Looking up, expecting to find a wall torch
or, in this older part of the castle, one of the iron, fire
baskets, John saw a faint, direct light slanting down from some
kind of shaft.

The secret passage!

To gain perspective, John backed the width of
the "swollen" hallway until he was pressed against the opposite
wall.

Only to have his hopes fall. From that
vantage point, what he'd taken to be an escape passage was nothing
but a four foot high, narrow window, a small shaft that slanted up
and up until emerging into what had to be the light of day. A faint
light at best, down-light nearly upon them.

John consulted the map again. Saw what still
looked like a tunnel at this location. It was just that, what the
map showed to be a passageway was, in reality, a 40-inch-wide,
10-inch-high window -- ten feet up the wall.

Shocked, angered -- John thought furiously,
John not coming this far to give up easily (the strength of his
determination bolstered by having no back-up plan.) "Hold the
torch, Platinia," John said, trying to keep dejection from his
voice, the girl, always obedient, coming forward to take it. "Hold
it high."

Swinging the pack off his back, lowering it
to the ooze-slick, rubble-stone floor, John crossed the space
(Platinia coming with him.)

Standing again before the window-wall, John
found that the partition was roughly constructed of stacked, three
feet blocks of dark, moss-grown rock, little, if any, mortar.

Glancing up, John saw that the builders had
formed the ceiling of the corridor by continuously wedging in the
upper wall blocks until the thick slabs gradually pinched in to
touch overhead, a more primitive method of roofing than either post
and lintel or arch-dome-vault construction.

Back to the first business of all captives.
Escape!

Though he didn't see how it could help, John
decided to climb the wall in order to get a more direct look at the
window that, on the map, still seemed like the entrance to an
escape "hatch."

Putting the toe of one foot on the jutting
edge of a lower block, finding finger holds higher up, John stepped
up on the wall.

Stabilizing himself, he scrambled to the edge
of the next block to find a higher finger niche. Pulling up again,
he discovered he was already head-high to the window.

Scraping with his boots until he'd found
secure toe holds for both feet, getting the fingers of his left
hand through the clammy window slit, John turned to look down at
the girl.

"Hand me the torch, Platinia."

Stretching up as far as she could, the girl
pushed the torch up to him.

Holding tight with his left hand, bending
down as far as he could without slipping, John grabbed the torch by
its fire stone head, his fingers buried in the cold magic of its
flames.

Straightening, flattening himself against the
wall, John then made small toss/catches of the torch until he had
it firmly by the handle.

Ready at last, holding the flames before the
window slit, taking a deep, mind clearing breath of the window's
fresher air, John peered through the window slot to be surprised by
something that couldn't be seen from the floor. Instead of a
uniformly narrow opening sloping up at 45 degrees until it cut
through to the outside world at fifty yards, the space behind the
meter-thick, window-wall took a radical plunge. To become a
passageway, a corridor both wide enough and tall enough for someone
to negotiate: the Mage-exit as marked on the map!

Posing the question: why wall up this end of
the escape way, leaving only a window slit on the castle side?

Only one reason seemed possible. To disguise
the fact that this was the way out! From the corridor floor, there
was no way to tell that beyond and below the window was a
man-sized, underground tunnel. To discover the space behind the
window-wall, someone would have to climb the wall as John had done
and look directly down through the window space, something no one
would do -- unless having a reason to suspect there was a tunnel
here.

The problem now was how to get past three
feet of solid stone wall, John not even sure a stick of dynamite
would penetrate that barrier.

Mages.

And their secrets. ............

Secrets not only known to Mages, but also to
.........

In addition to Melcor, the long dead
architect who built this fort had to have known its concealments;
would likely have been the person who designed the keep's
intricacies -- probably the same man who'd drawn this map. The man
who'd constructed the tower room ........

It was worth a try!

Letting go with his hand, John jumped down
the three to four feet, hitting the unyielding floor hard enough to
jar him, but not hurt him.

Taking a step back, holding the torch high,
John tried to see some kind of ... irregularity in the wall .. ....
the faint light of the magic flames making that difficult.

Handing the torch to Platinia again, John
stepped forward and began to run his fingers over the cold, wet
wall, feeling around the mossy edges of the blocks.

Felt here. ............ There.

Until John stretched his arms to encompass a
two block width of the wall, his fingers seeming to find a
"fit."

Hoping this was what he was looking for,
digging in, John pulled. Straight back.

Nothing ....

No.

Not nothing!

Imperceptibly at first, then noticeably, John
felt the wall ... shift ... felt the blocks above and below the
stones ... move!