Down Among the Dead Men (Forest Kingdom Novels) (6 page)

MacNeil snapped awake as the scream broke through his dream. He tore at his tangled bedding and sat bolt upright, his mind still howling
demons demons demons
. He thrashed wildly about him for his sword, and then stopped as he realized where he was. He let out his breath in a long, slow sigh, and the dream fell away from him. His face was covered with a cold sweat, and he rubbed it dry with the edge of his blanket. His hands were still shaking slightly. He took a deep breath and held it a moment. It didn’t help as much as he’d hoped. He looked quickly about him. Constance was sitting up beside him. Her face was buried in her hands, and her shoulders were shaking. The echo of her scream was only just fading away. The Dancer was standing by his blankets, sword in hand, looking around the empty hall for a target. Flint stood at his side, also clutching her sword. Her eyes were vague and only just beginning to focus.

MacNeil slowly relaxed.
It’s all right now. It was just a dream. You’re safe now
. The last of the panic died away, and he was himself again. He reached out and put a comforting hand on Constance’s shoulder. She cried out at his touch and flinched away from him. And then she looked up and saw who it was, and some of the tension went out of her. The calm poise of her face was gone, shattered by her nightmare, and MacNeil was strangely touched as he saw how open and vulnerable she looked. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her, promise to keep her safe from the world. Even as he thought it, the familiar calm features reappeared as Constance regained control of herself. She sniffed once and rubbed her face with her sleeve.

“I’m sorry,” she said muffledly, “I had a bad dream … a nightmare.”

“I guessed that,” said MacNeil dryly. “Are you all right now?”

“Yes, I’m fine. I’m sorry I woke you.”

“I’m not,” said MacNeil. “I was having a pretty bad dream of my own, and I can’t say I’m sorry it was interrupted. If you hadn’t woken me up, I’d have probably felt a bit like screaming myself.”

“You had a nightmare?” said the Dancer, frowning.

“Yes,” said MacNeil. “So what? Everyone has nightmares.”

“Including me,” said the Dancer quietly. “What are the odds on three of us having nightmares at the same time?”

“Four,” said Flint.

MacNeil looked at her sternly. “You fell asleep on watch?”

Flint nodded unhappily. “I must have dozed off for a moment.”

“That’s not like you,” said the Dancer.

“No,” said MacNeil thoughtfully. “It isn’t.”

Constance looked at Flint, started to say something, and then changed her mind. “Your dream,” she said finally. “What was it?”

Flint frowned. “I dreamed about the time I fought a walking dead man. Only in my dream, I lost.”

“I dreamed about a werewolf I killed a few years back,” said the Dancer. “Only … things were different in the dream.”

Constance looked at MacNeil. “What about you, Duncan? What was your dream?”

“What does it matter?” said MacNeil. “It was just a nightmare.”

“It might be significant. Tell me.”

No,
Constance. I can’t tell you. I can’t tell anyone. I can’t tell anyone about the time I almost turned and ran
.

“I dreamed I was back in the long night,” he said finally “Fighting the demons again.”

Constance frowned. “Demons …”

“I hardly think that’s significant,” said MacNeil. “I mean, we were talking about them earlier on, weren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Constance, “we were.” She thought for a moment, and then looked seriously at MacNeil. “My dream was different. You all dreamed of things that happened to you in the past. I dreamed of what happened here in the fort, not long ago.”

“A kind of Seeing?” said Flint.

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Constance shuddered suddenly. “I saw the people here go insane and kill each other and themselves.”

For a while, no one said anything.

“That’s certainly one explanation,” said MacNeil. “But if that is what happened, where are all the bodies?”

“They haven’t left the fort,” said Flint. “We’d have seen the tracks.”

“I don’t know,” said Constance. “But what I dreamed is what happened here.”

“Are you sure?” said MacNeil.

“Of course I’m sure! I’m a witch! There’s something in this fort with us. Something powerful. It sent us those nightmares. It’s testing how strong we are, looking for weak points. Only I was stronger than it thought, and I Saw something of the truth.”

MacNeil chose his words carefully. “I think you’re reading too much into this, Constance. I’ll agree it seems likely these dreams were sent to us, but that’s all they were—dreams. Anything else is just guesswork. We’ve been through every room and corridor in this fort; there’s no one here but us.”

“Don’t look now,” said the Dancer very quietly, “but that’s no longer true. Someone’s watching us from the door.”

In the quiet of the night, a lone figure stepped out of the trees at the edge of the Forest, and scurried quickly across the clearing toward the fort. Moonlight filled the clearing as bright as day, and there wasn’t a shadow anywhere for Scarecrow Jack to hide in. He ran on, head down and arms pumping. If the guards had left a lookout on the battlements he was a dead man; they couldn’t avoid seeing him in this much light. But he’d waited almost an hour, hoping in vain for a cloud to cover the moon, and in the end all he could do was make a run for it and trust to his luck. Given the small number of guards he’d seen, the odds were they hadn’t bothered to post a lookout, but Jack hadn’t survived this long in the Forest by trusting his luck. Except when he had to. His nerves crawled in anticipation of the arrow he’d never see before it killed him. The fort finally loomed up before him, and he threw himself forward into its concealing shadows. He sank down on his haunches and leaned against the cold stone wall until he got his breath back. The night lay dark and silent all around him.

Scarecrow Jack was a tall, slight man in his mid-twenties. Long dark hair fell to his shoulders in a great shaggy mane that hadn’t known a brush or comb in years. A thin length of cloth knotted around his brow kept the hair out of his eyes, which were dark and narrowed and always alert. He wore a collection of roughly stitched green and brown rags that barely qualified as clothes and seemed to be largely held together by accumulated dirt. They smelled rather pungent, but in the Forest the green and brown rags enabled him to blend perfectly into the background, hiding him from even the most experienced of trackers. No one found Scarecrow Jack unless he wanted to be found.

Jack had started out as a footpad, a lier-in-wait, but almost despite himself had slowly developed into a local legend. He’d lived alone in the Forest for almost nine years, living on its bounty and by what his wits could bring him. He developed an uncanny accord with the Forest and the creatures that lived in it, and every year the human world had less attractions that might call him back. And yet he never forgot his humanity If anything, the harsh world of the Forest taught him the value of mercy and compassion.

He never robbed anyone who couldn’t afford it, and would often poach fish and game to provide food for poor families unable to provide for themselves. He never let a tax collector pass unrobbed, and would help those who turned up lost or distressed in his part of the Forest. He had a way with birds and animals, and small children. Officially he was an outlaw, with a price on his head, but no local man or woman would turn him in. Scarecrow Jack was a part of the Forest and accepted as such. He kept apart from people, for he was by nature shy and ill at ease in company. Some said he was one of the wee folk, or a rogue goblin, or even the result of a mating between human and demon, but he was none of those things. He was just a man who loved the Forest.

Scarecrow Jack.

He got to his feet, still keeping carefully to the fort’s shadows, and uncoiled a length of rope from across his shoulder. He checked the knot that held the grappling hook secure, and looked up at the battlements with a calculating eye. He hefted the rope a moment to get the feel of the weight, and then threw the hook up into the night sky with a swift, easy movement. Moonlight glinted on the steel hook as it arced over the battlements and disappeared from sight. Jack waited a moment to let the hook settle, and then pulled carefully on the rope until it went taut. He tugged hard a few times, to be sure the rope would bear his weight, and then climbed nimbly up the outer wall of the fort. His experienced feet found a good many footholds in the apparently smooth stone to help him on his way, and he soon reached the battlements and dropped lithely down onto the inner catwalk. He crouched motionless in the shadows for a long moment, but there was no sign of anyone watching.

Jack quickly made his way down into the courtyard, and padded silently over to the stables; the number of horses would tell him how many guards there were. But even as he approached the stable he knew something was horribly wrong. He stopped by the slightly open doors and sniffed cautiously. The thick, coppery smell of blood was heavy on the night air. Jack eased the doors open and crept slowly forward, one step at a time, and then stopped dead as his excellent night vision showed him the wrecked stalls and the dark stains on the floor and walls. Jack frowned. By their condition, the bloodstains had to be weeks old, but the smell of blood in the stable was so fresh and strong as to be almost overpowering… . He checked the floor for tracks. Two people had come and gone recently, but there was no sign to show what had attacked the horses. Jack scowled and left the stables.

The air outside was clear and fresh, and he breathed deeply to clear the stink of blood from his nostrils. Jack looked thoughtfully around the empty courtyard. He’d known something had to have gone wrong in the fort for it to have seemed deserted for so long, but this … worried him. It wasn’t natural. It grated on his senses, like a roll of thunder too faraway to hear. Jack couldn’t put his feelings into words, but that didn’t bother him. He lived as much by instincts as reason. He glared warily about him and followed the guards’ tracks across the empty courtyard and into the main reception hall.

Four horses stood close together, fast asleep. Jack remembered the state of the stables and nodded under-standingly The four nooses hanging from the ceiling were less easy to understand. Jack scowled. The bad feeling he’d had in the courtyard was even stronger here, and once again he could smell blood on the air. It was cold too, unnaturally cold. Something bad had happened here; he could feel it in his bones. He checked the dusty floor for the guards’ tracks, and moved carefully past the sleeping horses. They seemed disturbed in their sleep, as though bothered by bad dreams, but they didn’t wake as he passed. Jack followed the tracks out into the corridor, and then stopped and peered about him uncertainly. The gloom wasn’t much of a problem to him, but he didn’t like being inside buildings. They made him feel all trapped and nervous, and he kept thinking the walls were closing in on him. He shivered once, like a dog, and then put the thought out of his mind. He had a job to do.

He followed the guards’ tracks through the narrow corridors, and came eventually to the main dining hall. He opened the door a crack and peered cautiously into the brightly lit hall. He froze where he was when he saw a woman sitting guard over her three sleeping companions, and he then relaxed a little as he saw she was also fast asleep. Jack frowned disappointedly. From the look of the party they had to be Rangers, but he’d always thought them to be more professional than this. Jack’s frown deepened as he saw that all four of them were twitching and mumbling in their sleep. More bad dreams, by the look of it. He could understand that. This place gave him the creeps. And then one of the Rangers suddenly sat up and screamed, and all of them woke up.

Jack didn’t dare move for fear of drawing attention to himself. He stood very still in the shadows of the door, and listened carefully as they discussed their dreams. And then one of them spotted him.

The dark figure was off and running before MacNeil could get to the door. He plunged down the corridor after the fleeing shape, sword in hand. For a moment the dim figure had looked disturbingly like one of the demons from his dream, but as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, MacNeil could see he was chasing a man dressed in rags. A stray memory tugged at him—Scarecrow Jack?

MacNeil smiled slightly. He’d heard about that outlaw, and the price on his head. He tried to force a little more speed out of his tired legs, but the outlaw could run like a startled deer and MacNeil was hard put even to keep him in sight. He ran on, vaguely aware the rest of his team were following some way behind. The chase continued, through rooms and corridors that blurred together in the darkness, until finally the outlaw charged between the sleeping horses in the reception hall and out into the courtyard. MacNeil had to spend a few moments calming the dismayed horses before he could follow, and when he finally got out into the courtyard, Scarecrow Jack was nowhere to be seen. The rest of the team arrived soon after, and they stood together by the hall door, looking around them at the courtyard’s impenetrable shadows.

“This may seem a stupid question,” said Constance finally, “but just who the hell are we looking for?”

“An outlaw,” said MacNeil. “He was spying on us from the doorway.”

“How long for?” said Flint.

“Too long,” said the Dancer. “He’s very good, whoever he is.”

“Scarecrow Jack, I think,” said MacNeil.

The Dancer raised an eyebrow. “I hadn’t realized we were in his territory. I wonder what he wants with us.”

“More importantly, how did he get in here, and where is he now?” MacNeil hefted his sword impatiently. “He couldn’t have got in through the main doors; they’re still locked and bolted. I saw to that before we turned in.”

“He must have come over the wall,” said Flint. “He’s probably up on the catwalks somewhere.”

They all looked up at the battlements, but there wasn’t enough light to see them as anything more than darker shadows against the night.

“If he was up there, he’s long gone by now,” said MacNeil disgustedly. He hesitated and then slammed his sword back into its scabbard. Flint and the Dancer looked at each other and put away their swords. MacNeil turned to Constance.