J. F. Bone, page 9
I still had things to do to make my escape as easy as my entrance. I found the rope I wanted without much trouble, marked where it was, and left it alone. I’d need it going out, not going in. Just to be on the safe side, I marked another location where rope was to be found, and from this store took a three-meter piece about as big as my thumb in diameter. I wrapped this around my waist, got rid of my sword and sword belt behind a coil of rope and stuffed the dagger beneath my tunic. I went back to the southwest corner of the donjon, knotted one end of the rope and jammed it into a crack between two of the coping stones of the moat and let the free end drop into the water. I made a careful mental note of the exact location of the rope in relation to the tower before sealing the actions of the webcor and the kelly, taking off my sandals and lowering myself into the moat. My chain-mail jacket weighted me down and I promptly sank below the surface, but I had expected this; keeping my position in the water as stable as possible, sank some three meters to the bottom and then walked across the twenty-foot gap between the edge of the moat and the walls of the donjon. The big rough-hewn rocks of the donjon offered good handholds as I pulled myself slowly to the surface about two meters from the debris pile where the masons were rebuilding the corner of the wall.
With considerable care, and taking plenty of time for the excess water to run off my clothes, I moved up the debris pile to the wall and began to climb the sloping surface. My bare fingers and toes found cracks for foot and fingerholds until the sloping wall of the moat gave way to the sheer wall of the tower. If it hadn’t been for the repair work, I never would have made it. As it was I had some hair-raising moments before my fingers got a firm grip on the inner edge of the arrow slit. I left a little skin on the stones as I squeezed through the opening—but I was inside the donjon! Now all I had to do was avoid getting into the dungeon!
The arrow slit opened into a small bare room, hardly more than a niche in the thick walls of the keep. I passed through the doorless archway and into a corridor that ran through the walls and opened onto other arrow slits. It was unlit and dark as the pit. Evidently this corridor was purely military, unused except in time of war, for it echoed only silence.
At intervals along the inner wall heavy nail-studded doors were set into the masonry. I tried each one as I came to it. Each was closed and apparently locked, for I could not budge them. The fifth door, however, yielded to my push and swung open with a hideous creaking that I was sure would alert the entire garrison. I froze, waiting with my kelly in my hand, but nothing happened. There was no challenge, no alarm, just the same dusty silence. The door opened onto a rough wooden landing from which one flight of stairs went up and another, downward.
“As far up as you can go, or as far down,” Sar Malthor had said. In my book upward was the probable way. And that was the way I went. I passed two landings and the stairs came abruptly to an end at another annular corridor with more arrow slits and more locked doors. This level, however, was divided into sections by two cross corridors. I went down one of these, trying the doors. Some were open, others closed. The open ones gave onto groups of rooms that were obviously empty apartments, and obviously of no use to me.
I had looked into two of them and was about “to leave the third when I noticed a beam of light coming through a hole in the floor. Curious, I tiptoed over to the hole, put my eye to it and looked down into a richly furnished room. A big man—larger than Sar Malthor—wide-shouldered, heavily muscled, and thick through the middle, sat in a large, padded chair before a fireplace. The ruddy glow picked out highlights of his face and body without showing any details. His pose was a picture of comfort, his robe half-open, his legs crossed, his feet encased in slippers of Didikhide, with the fur side in. A nude young Tharn female sat at his feet.
He was eating slices of spiced meat, which he took one by one from a silver tray held by another nude. Other females, equally devoid of clothing, sat on the floor or stood by the fire warming themselves. It was obvious that he liked his females available and it was equally obvious that they were used to their situation, for there was no constraint nor shyness to be seen, and most of them, when they saw his eye upon them, postured and displayed their smooth bodies in attitudes that had meaning even to me. By Tharn standards they ranged from pretty to beautiful, and there was no question that they were owned.
This was Sar Virra. I needed no introduction to know who he was, and even at this distance I disliked him. As I watched, a tall, gray man entered. He spoke. “We have her fast, my lord, as you directed.”
“Did she give much trouble?” the seated man asked. His voice was mellow and pleasant, an incongruous voice for so gross a body.
“She fought like a she-Fer. Pasora has a broken arm, Valase has a broken nose and all are bruised and hurt. She is as strong as a man, milord, and fights like a man with fist and foot; and in addition she bites.”
“We’ll cure that anon. And what of her man?”
“I left Wittal to care for him. With an arrow through his throat he’ll not be caring what happens to his woman.”
Sar Virra laughed. “And where is this she-Fer now, Lorn?”
“Gerd has her in the aerie. She has been warned that the strange woman is dangerous.”
“Gerd will be careful enough, I expect. You have done well, Lorn.”
“Thank you, milord. Is there any other way I may serve you?”
“Not unless you can persuade Sar Vostek to hold the trials somewhere else next year. Zamal has become a perennial trial center.”
“It is unfortunate that we have so many advantages, but Zamal is well located and your predecessor built the second largest arena in all of Tharn.”
“Curse his memory.”
“Gladly; but that will do no good. Moreover, the arena is built of stone, so burning it would hardly be possible. Sar Samdi is dead, but his works live on.”
“To bedevil me and keep me from my pleasures.” Sar Virra placed his foot on a kneeling girl’s rump and shoved her roughly aside. “I did not become lord of Valthi to act as host for a motley crew of office and glory seekers, rag-tail peasants, and petty lords.” He snapped his fingers. Two slender girls darted from behind his chair, one with an amphora in her hands, the other with a golden goblet. The cup was filled before Sar Virra’s eyes and the girl holding it knelt gracefully and presented it to her lord. Sar Virra took the cup, drained it, and tossed it back to the cup bearer, who caught it deftly and faded back into the shadows.
He spoke again to Lorn. “My neighbor Provincal, Sar Tami of Jortan, sends word of his arrival. Apparently he is spared the trials this year. Jortan is a state that should never be a Province and would not be one an I had my way. Quarter him befitting his station, but not in the castle. Explain that we are undergoing extensive repairs. Methinks he’d send me a gage of battle rather than a letter an he were sure I held his jewel.” He gestured and the girl he had been fondling stood up and rotated slowly before him. “So I shall honor his coming by bedding her this night.” Sar Virra said.
“Thank you, master,” the girl said.
Sar Virra chuckled. “See what patience and attention to detail can do, Lorn? A year ago she was afire with pride, hatred and contempt. Now she thanks me for the very thing she spurned.”
“You turn women into harlots without a surgeon, my lord. Would that I could do as well.”
“Not so, Lorn. They are not free with their favors. Nor are they altered from the way Tharn has made them. That would spoil my pleasure. Now, be off. I will inspect my new addition tomorrow.”
Lorn left the room and I played voyeur while Sar Virra played with his women. The peep show was at once disgusting and fascinating, but I didn’t wonder how he commanded such instant obedience. To these he had the powers of a god. It wasn’t hard to imagine what had been done to them. But Martha was a different kind of woman from the subservient Tharn female. I couldn’t imagine her behaving like these.
“Enough,” Sar Virra said. “Kyri and Selme remain. The rest of you go back to your kennels.”
There was a stir of movement as the women filed out, except for the two Sar Virra chose—big broad-beamed Selme and slight, graceful Kyri.
“Come here,” Sar Virra said, and the girl Kyri came and knelt before him. He took her chin in his hand and lifted her bent head. “Are you excited that Sar Tami is near?” he asked.
“No, master,” the girl said in a clear emotionless voice.
“Would you go to him if you were free?”
“No, master. I am no longer worthy of him. You have made me into an animal, fit only for your lust.” Her voice was uninflected.
Sar Virra’s face darkened. “So! There’s spirit in you yet?” The hand under her chin flicked across her face, knocking her sprawling in a grotesque huddle on the floor. “So much for spirit,” he said. He pulled at a cord dangling beside his chair and in moment a big rawboned woman in a gray smock came into the room from the same door through which the others had left.
“Gerd,” Sar Virra said, “take this animal and teach her to respect her master, but flog her tenderly so that her hide is not marked. I would have her in pain but not disfigured. Perhaps when you are finished this time she will know her station.”
“My lord—please—no!” Kyri said. Her voice still held that flat stolid note. “I pray your mercy. Some demon had my tongue.”
“The demon was in your mind. But we shall exorcise it, Gerd and I. We shall drive it so far from your brain that it never will return. Gerd shall flog your rump and scorch your hide until your mind is as clear as limpid water.”
“Master!” Kyri grovelled, her limbs quivering, her buttocks twitching as she crawled toward him and embraced his outthrust leg. “Please don’t.”
“I am inclined to mercy,” Sar Virra said, “but I cannot brook a mouthy slave. Your cries move me. Your body attracts me. But you give me no pleasure.” He rose to his feet. “Take her away, Gerd.”
Kyri screamed, a raw note of terror and despair that made my skin prickle as Gerd bent over her, twisted her arms behind her back and tied her wrists.
“Don’t mar her permanently, Gerd,” Sar Virra said as the woman pulled the nude girl to her feet, “just break her and break her thoroughly.”
“Never fear, master. When you next see her she will be as sweet as a flower and as gentle as a carm. This time I will exorcise her demon completely.”
Kyri stopped screaming. She just stood there and shivered, which was worse than the screams.
“You should betimes remember that ease is sweet and pain is bitter,” Sar Virra said. “You should remember whose animal you are and whose pleasure you serve, and whose hands hold your life and death.”
“I know these things, master. Have mercy.”
“But you do not believe. You are stubborn. You are defiant. So, like a stubborn jesset you must be better trained. Leave me Gerd.”
“And that,” Sar Virra soliloquized as the door closed behind the two women, “is another reason I hate Sar Tami. The girl serves me, yet she loves him. Though I own her, she thinks of him. By Tharn! She’ll surrender or she’ll die! I’ll have no more of this!”
The woman Selme eyed Sar Virra with outright terror.
“Now wench, you’d not defy me?”
“Never, master,” Selme said.
Sar Virra sighed. “I know not which is worst, defiance or compliance. Yet I can enjoy compliance where opposition only enrages me.”
Sar Virra arose from his chair. Despite his bulk he moved with an odd grace that said much for the musculature beneath his fat. He was huge. He was impressive. He was essentially evil. Despite Tharn law, I debated a moment on the advisability of burning him right there, and while I debated he moved out of sight.
I knew where I had to go. I had somehow to reach that door in Sar Virra’s chambers. There was probably another way to the aerie, but this was direct and private and I wouldn’t leave a trail of stunned and burned bodies behind me on my way to Martha. That would be stupid, because guards weren’t on duty all night. They changed at regular intervals, and the bodies would be found and the alarm would be out before I could escape. I’d be trapped in the castle. I had no illusions about the effectiveness of modern weapons. Despite adventure video and books, one man still couldn’t beat an army, and at two hundred yards the effectiveness of a kelly was almost zero, while a crossbow could still drive a quarrel through a man’s body.
Silence and stealth were the best policy. And besides, I had noted something. When Lorn had left Sar Virra’s quarters he had drawn the bolt of the door, and in the orgy that followed and the distraction of Kyri’s pitiful defiance, no one had thought to close the bolt again. Not that it mattered to Sar Virra. There would undoubtedly be a guard outside his door. But to me, the information was vital.
I left the unused room, descended the stairs and continued around the annular corridor on the level below. I rounded the second corner and stopped. Ahead was the glow of a cresset and I could see the guard leaning on his spear in front of Sar Virra’s door. I set the kelly carefully. I didn’t want him out more than half a minute, but I wanted him totally unconscious for that time. He’d know something had happened, of course, but having had no experience with a blaster, he’d probably charge it to drowsiness, or wine, or something he ate. He certainly wouldn’t mention it to his guard commander. That would be a good way to end up doing extra duty.
I waited until he was leaning against the wall and yawning before I beamed him. He stiffened with spasmic shock, as they always do when a stun charge hits, and by the time his muscles were starting to loosen he was coming out of it. He never really knew what hit him, but in the fifteen or twenty seconds that his brain was short-circuited from his body, I had gone by him, opened the door to Sar Virra’s room and closed it behind me.
The noises coming from the curtained bed effectively covered my stealthy passage across the room and the noise I made opening the private door. Nevertheless it was with a feeling of relief that I felt the wooden stairs under my bare feet.
I climbed between the walls in a vaulted tunnel winding upwards. It was completely dark except the occasional tiny shafts of light from under doors that mitigated the blackness. Sar Virra, I thought, could easily check on anyone living in the donjon if he wished. Probably he did. Possibly he discovered the people in the suite above his own and eliminated the peeper.
I shrugged and continued to climb. The stairs ended abruptly at a door, and for the first time since I’d been in Tharn I saw a lock. It wasn’t much of a mechanism and it could be opened by hand on this side, but from the other side it would be impossible to open if one didn’t have the key. I turned the wards that released the bolt, eased the door back and stepped through it into the aerie.
CHAPTER 15
The door opened onto a passageway lined with closely spaced doors. I moved down them, listening, but all I could hear was silence, faint murmurings and snores. And then, “I’ll see your lord in hell first!” came faintly through one of the doors. I had found Martha.
Gerd’s voice replied, “I don’t know where hell is, but let us see what you will say anon.” There were soft rustling noises, a thump of a body being dropped on something hard, and Gerd’s voice with a satisfied sound saying, “There, that does it, my pretty,” another silence and, “Lorn wasn’t wrong. You are a beauty, oddly formed, but attractive. You will amuse my lord.”
“Your lord can go jump in the lake!”
“And why should he do that?”
“Oh, get out of here!”
“I shall bring you some food.”
The door opened and I hit Gerd at the base of the skull with the butt of the kelly. She dropped like the proverbial stone. I stepped into the cell to rescue my beloved, and the ceiling fell upon my head with an explosion of soundless light!
I awoke with my head in Martha’s lap. She was rubbing my wrists and making small noises that were intended, I guess, to be comforting. At least that was how I took them. Gerd was lying in the corner neatly trussed into a ball with strips of cloth. Martha was as naked as the day she was born. I wondered a little at the complete practicality she had shown in taking care of Gerd, and the complete impracticality in taking care of me. She’d have done better for herself if she had put on some clothing.
I groaned and felt my head. I had the grandfather of headaches and the room persisted in tilting up on edge and sliding away from me.
“Thank God you’re awake,” Martha said. “I thought you were Gerd coming back. I hit you with the stool. You know, Warren, I love you, you damned quixotic fool!”
“You have a poor way of showing it,” I replied.
“I couldn’t wait, not if I was going to get her. So I got you instead. And she darn near got both of us. Lucky her dress was within reach. I dragged her in as she was coming to, clobbered her once more for luck and tied her up. Now how about being a good fellow and going out into the hall to collect my things.”
“Go yourself, I groaned. “You’re in better shape than I am.”
“I can’t. Gerd chained me to the bed.”
“That’s what I should have done with you back at the inn. Then we wouldn’t be here.”
“It’s not funny.”
“Why didn’t you use the kelly? And cut the chain?”
“It’s out in the hall. You dropped it when you went down and I can’t reach it.”
I pushed her away, crawled into the hall, recovered the kelly and the bundle Gerd had been carrying. Martha was clothed again and had burned off the chain that fastened her to the bed. She had to leave the strap of iron riveted around her ankle, but we could cut that off later with a file. I still wasn’t feeling too good, but could walk, albeit unsteadily. My head hurt, and I had occasional double vision. If I didn’t have a concussion, I had a good imitation of one. “I had the webcor in a sleeve holster,” I said.
