David Drake - Godess of the Ice Realm

Nobody was out on the street. Occasionally Ilna caught a glimpse of eyes through the crack in a shutter. A baby cried desperately behind the counter of a used clothing shop as they passed, but neither it nor the mother hushing it were visible.

"What're they afraid of?" Hutena said, frowning with anger and frustration.

The same thing you are, Ilna thought, but instead of that she said, "They don't know what's going to happen any better than we do. The difference is that they've decided to hide and let it happen to them, whereas we're choosing to deal with it on our own terms."

"Yeah, I guess so," the bosun muttered. He gave her an appreciative smile and hefted the maul. "I'd rather be us."

"Yes, me too," said Ilna with a wintry smile of her own. Perhaps she was learning to tell the truth in a way that other people didn't find offensive. That'd be a useful skill, though she'd use it to supplement her instinctive responses rather than replace them.

The street grew steeper and switched back; the only buildings this high up the hill were three-story structures whose upper floors were laid back along the slope. The castle loomed like part of the crag. The outer gate was open.

"Do you know, 'The Single Girl,' Master Bosun?" said Chalcus cheerily, his right middle and index fingers touching the nock of the arrow on his bow string. "When I was single, I went dressed so fine…"

"Aye, I know it," said Hutena. "But we'll sing another time if you please, sir."

Chalcus laughed. They'd reached the gate. Nothing moved but the wind.

Chalcus slipped through the gateway, drawing the bow to his cheek in the same sweeping motion. A cat yowled and sprang from a trash pile. The bow string went back to Chalcus' ear; then he relaxed with a gust of embarrassed laughter.

"I'm not the man I once was if a little cat makes me jump," he said as Ilna and the bosun joined him. He was smiling, but the comment wasn't altogether a joke.

"We're none of us the people we wish we were," Ilna said, sharply because she understood perfectly the thing Chalcus hadn't been willing to put in words. "We never were. As for what matters-you'll do for this."

She smiled, coldly because in a crisis she was always cold; but with enormous affection. "And you'll do for me."

Chalcus set the bow against the inner side of the curtain wall, dropped the arrow back into his quiver, and set the quiver beside the bow. He drew his sword, keeping his left hand free. "I think from here on I'll not worry about what there might be beyond the reach of my blade," he said with a grin.

The buildings around the ancient watchtower were empty-abandoned, not just closed around their cowering inhabitants. "I figured there'd be servants still," Hutena said. "Are they that scared of us?"

"It's not us they're worried about," Chalcus said. "It's what they think we'll let loose that scares them, eh?"

Ilna sniffed. "Then we'll have to be careful not to let it loose," she said.

The tower's outer door was closed. Hutena raised his maul in anticipation, but when Chalcus pulled on the great iron ring, only its weight resisted. The interior was dank and spartan, a military post whose thick walls filled most of what seemed from the outside to be interior space.

A stone staircase ran around the walls. Every fifth step-the thumb of Ilna's hand-was broader and had an arrow slit. The only light came from the slits and from the open trap door that gave onto the roof platform.

Set into the base of the staircase was a small, heavy door with a peaked arch. Chalcus tried it with his left hand; the panel had no more give than the stone jambs that held it. Chalcus moved back and nodded to the bosun.

Hutena stepped to the side of the doorway and eyed it for a moment as he waggled the maul to work his shoulder muscles loose. The panel was hung to open inward. There were staples for a bar on this side from the days the cellars were a dungeon, but they'd rusted to nubs.

"Huh!" the bosun said as he swung, stepping into the blow so that his whole body drove the massive oak head. It crashed into the lock, smashing the plate loose and splintering the internal bolt out of the panel.

Hutena backed away, breathing hard. Chalcus shoved the door open with the toes of his left foot. Air puffed out, chill and stinking of ancient slaughter. The stairs leading down were lighted faintly from below.

"I'll lead," Chalcus said, speaking quietly. He drew his dagger.

Ilna looked at Hutena. The bosun had leaned the maul against the jamb and was trying to slide the short axe from his belt. His hands trembled and his eyes were fixed on a damp patch of wall across the circular room.

"Master Hutena," she said crisply. "I'd like you to wait here and keep people from coming at us from behind. I don't like stone walls, and I certainly don't want to be blocked into this place while I'm busy with-"

She smiled with about as little humor as she felt; she wasn't joking about her dislike of stone.

"-other matters."

"Sir?" the bosun said. He tried to keep a strait face, but his relief was obvious to anyone.

"Aye, and I should've thought of it myself," Chalcus said, shaking his head in feigned irritation. "Indeed, that's all we'd need-locked in a dungeon with no company but a dead wizard."

To Ilna, in a faintly thinner voice, he went on, "Ready, dear heart?"

"Yes," she said; and she followed her man down the narrow steps.

The staircase was steep, but its flights were straight and reversed at landings instead of spiralling like those of the tower above. The treads had been cut from the rock of the hillside, and they were so old that the feet of those passing up and down them had worn them concave.

Ilna couldn't imagine what would have justified such an amount of traffic. Perhaps these steps were much older than the tower built over them, though it dated to the Old Kingdom of a thousand years ago.

There were two handsful of steps in each flight. Looking over Chalcus' shoulder as she turned onto the third flight, Ilna saw a doorway at the bottom. The iron door hung askew; the upper hinge had rusted away, and the lower one was a red mass which would've crumbled if anybody tugged hard enough to swing the door closed.

Chalcus paused three steps up from the bottom. Ilna could hear the wind whispering, and a slight breeze traced her ankles.

"Eh?" murmured Chalcus. He didn't turn his head.

"Go on," said Ilna, also in a quiet voice. Smashing down the door'd made enough noise to wake the dead, but it still didn't seem right to talk loudly.

The pattern Ilna'd woven was in her left hand, the silk lasso in her right. She didn't know which she'd need-or if either would help-but she was as ready as she could be.

Chalcus jumped a double pace into the room below, as smooth as water flowing down the steps but much, much faster. He poised, motionless except for quick movements of his head.

"I'm behind you!" Ilna said sharply, halting an arm's length back of Chalcus. Her eyes swept the circular room beyond.

Its width was four or five times her height. Its illumination came from slots in the upper walls which must've been cut through the crag on which the tower stood. Ilna wouldn't have guessed that any useful amount of light could trickle through such long narrow passages, but in what otherwise would've been total darkness her eyes quickly adapted to see shapes if not colors. Nothing was moving.

The ceiling had been hollowed into a natural dome. The builders had trusted the strength of the living rock without adding supporting pillars. Ilna smiled faintly. Given how old this room must be, they'd been right.

There was no furniture except chests of wood and metal around the walls. Some were covered with animal skins to make adequate benches, and other furs and skins were heaped in several places on the floor.