The Sellsword (22 page)

“Are you quite done with that one?” Gredchen yelled at the top of her lungs. “Because I could use a little help!” Vanderjack pushed the ghoul aside and looked up to see the baron’s aide clinging to the beam by one hand. The last remaining ghoul was tugging at the wooden board in her other hand, shrieking.

“Let go!” Vanderjack said, climbing to his feet. His head was hurting again; he must have hit it again, reopened the old wound. “Just drop!”

Gredchen did so. She fell to the floor of the stable, landing with a heavy thump on a pile of old horse blankets stacked on a crate. The crate flew apart with the sudden weight; the wind was knocked out of Gredchen’s lungs.

With nobody on the other end of the wooden board, the ghoul fell backward, dropping from the support beams and smashing through the rotting wooden roof of the horse stall below. As it fell out of sight, Vanderjack heard a disquieting crunch.

The sellsword staggered over to help Gredchen up, and as she dusted herself off, he went to investigate what had happened to the last ghoul. Opening the stall door, he saw that it had fallen on the rusty prongs of a hay fork, carelessly left point up within the stall.

“Couldn’t happen to a better undead,” Vanderjack muttered and let the stall doors swing back shut.

“He’s completely immobile,” Gredchen said as the sellsword came back over to where the baron’s aide was cradling the little gnome in her arms. “I don’t know anything about ghoul paralysis. Is it permanent?”

Vanderjack shook his head. “No. It should wear off in a couple of hours. The only problem is we can’t exactly stay in here. If all the noise in the dungeon didn’t alert the master of the castle, crashing about in here fighting ghouls would have done so, no question.”

“So we take him with us?”

“Unfortunately, yes. Now if you’ll excuse me just a moment, I’m going to be sick.”

Cazuvel sat patiently in the high-backed wooden chair in the great hall of Castle Glayward.

For the past hour, he had waited for the arrival of Highmaster Rivven Cairn. A few hours before that, he’d sent word to her in Wulfgar, telling her of his remarkable luck in capturing not only the sellsword Vanderjack, but his gnome companion and the aide to Baron Glayward himself. Even more remarkable, he’d captured a living dragonne, which he’d fully sedated by the powerful threads of magic the wizard strung about it.

He watched the great beast sleeping fitfully within the enormous iron cage in the center of the great hall. All of the tables had been shoved back and stacked up by the sivaks to line the walls, crumpling the tapestries.

Aggurat was there too, also studying the cage. The sivak commander, missing his left arm, stood silently near the huge, ironbound doors at the hall’s entrance. He wore the guise of a minor Nordmaaran official he had killed the previous week: tanned, hair cut short, purple tunic and the arms of King Shredler Kerian emblazoned
on his chest. He had said nothing in the past hour.

“My lords!” said the sivak, in his natural draconian form and thus bulky, winged, and silver-scaled. “The prisoners are escaping!”

“I know,” said Cazuvel. Aggurat looked over at him, raised one eyebrow, but said nothing.

“Should I take the others downstairs and stop them?”

“Not at all,” said Cazuvel. “I expect the highmaster here any moment. Besides, I have something the sell-sword wants. He’s not going to leave here without it. Nor, indeed, is he going to leave here without that which the baron has sent him to collect, nor without this great beast slumbering in front of us. I am not concerned.”

The sivak looked at Aggurat, who shrugged. Confused, the draconian turned and left the room.

Aggurat finally spoke. “If he comes in here, do I kill him?”

“All I need you to do is protect me in the event of any assault on my person,” Cazuvel said, stretching his arms and relaxing back into the chair. “I shall be drawing upon magic you could not possibly comprehend, and it is very focused work. Keep the sellsword and his friends from interrupting the magic, and it will all be over quickly.”

“I shall do my best,” Aggurat said. “One last thing, honored master.”

“Yes, Aggurat?”

“What did you do with the real Cazuvel?”

V
anderjack carried the gnome up a flight of stairs.

Castle Glayward was awkwardly laid out. It had been built upon a broad, flat mesa of basalt, a much smaller cousin of the impressive towers of stone that composed the highest reaches of the Emerald Peaks. During construction, the rear half of the mesa had cracked and dropped twenty feet, prompting the inclusion of the dungeon rooms, a guard post, and a stable before the main part of the castle was added. Buttresses and support columns were later added for the mezzanine levels that helped keep the main tower level. When Castle Glayward was finally done, it was a maze of hallways, rooms, secret passages, and staircases.

Somewhere along the way, they had acquired a lantern with just enough lamp oil in it to push away the darkness for about six hours. Two of those hours were already up.

“Do you need me to take over?” asked Gredchen, stopping in front of him and looking down.

“I’m fine. Keep on going.”

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen anybody throw up that much,” she said. “Was it the ghoul fever?”

Vanderjack paused. “Yes. Ghoul fever. I’m fine now, though. I’ve had worse.”

Gredchen climbed a few more stairs and onto a landing. She waved the lantern off to one side, revealing a simple, ironclad wood door. “Through here is the east ballroom.”

“Did gnomes build this place?” Vanderjack asked. Theo didn’t flinch in his arms, though the sellsword entertained the thought that the unconscious gnome could hear all of their talk.

“Baron Glayward comes from an eccentric family,” she replied. “It’s … complicated. His ancestor, having fled Solamnia, was thought in later life to have been afflicted by madness.”

“Nice. So where’s his daughter most likely to be locked up? She wasn’t in the dungeon.”

Gredchen coughed. “Right.”

“Oh, don’t tell me. She’s not really here as a prisoner; she’s been married off to some dragonarmy officer, and they’re living happily ever after upstairs with ghouls in the basement.”

“This is no joking matter,” the baron’s aide cautioned briskly. “Anyway, if we pass through the east ballroom and the lower residence suite, we’ll get to where we are headed, the grand stair, right beside the great hall.”

“And up the grand stair is …?”

“A gallery.”

“She’s locked up in a gallery?”

Gredchen put her ear to the door and raised a hand to quiet Vanderjack. He shut his mouth and waited. When she looked back at him, she gave the sign for all clear and opened the door.

Thankfully, the door didn’t squeak or groan. Beyond, an impressive vaulted chamber waited. A mosaic covered
the floor, and seven narrow stained-glass windows lined one wall. Vanderjack followed Gredchen in and gave a low, impressed whistle that echoed throughout the ballroom. Gredchen glared at him.

“Sorry,” he whispered. He looked around for somewhere to lay Theodenes down and settled on a long bench underneath one of the windows. He took a moment to look up at the stained glass, which featured a stylized harp surrounded by stars and rays of light, all fashioned from pieces of amber, crimson, and emerald.

“Looks like you’ve found more Branchala,” said Gredchen, standing beside him. “It’s traditional in old Solamnic castles to not only represent the standard symbols—kingfisher, crown, rose, and sword—but also all of the religious iconography of the old gods.”

She indicated the other stained-glass panels. “I used to know all of them, from stories I heard as a child. The new clerics are bringing those stories to life, I suppose, with the return of true believers and so on. But of course, as I said back in Pentar, the baron wouldn’t have any of it.”

“Not the religious type?”

“No. Not for lack of missionaries trying.”

Vanderjack sat on the bench beside the rigid body of Theodenes. “How about yourself?”

Gredchen looked nervously over at the doors out of the ballroom but sat down on the other side of Theo. “It hasn’t been that long since the war,” she said.

“You said a priest of Paladine came by once. Lord Gilbert sent him off, but you weren’t tempted?”

Gredchen shrugged. “I suppose. But I have my place in the baron’s manor, and if he’s not going to join the club of the faithful, who am I to take the other option?”

She grinned. Vanderjack had to admit that, despite
the heavy brow, the big nose, and the lopsided cheekbones, she had a smile you could warm up to. “Your turn,” Gredchen said, pointing at him.

“Oh no. Not a chance. I think the closest I’ve ever come to following a god is when one of my commanders told me to go to the Abyss.”

“Not even Shinare? I hear she’s a popular mercenary goddess in the south.”

“Most of the Shinarites I’ve met have been moneylenders hoping to score a few more steel coins by quoting scripture. And their scripture was probably made up first thing in the morning before breakfast.” Vanderjack shrugged. “I’m not swayed by religious talk. I have my sword, and—” He reached for his belt again, remembering he didn’t have his sword anymore and feeling suddenly vulnerable.

“I think it’s time we pushed on, don’t you?” The sellsword took a breath, steeled himself, and stood up wobbly. “The baron’s daughter is surely sick and tired of being locked up in her makeshift prison.”

Gredchen cleared her throat and nodded. She waited for Vanderjack to pick up the gnome, then followed him across the ballroom and through the doors.

The residential suite Gredchen had spoken of was really nothing more than a handful of rooms leading off a central curving corridor, ending with a sitting room. More windows, set with latticework, allowed the light from outside to illuminate the passage. Vanderjack put his face close to the glass to try and see outside, but it was milky-white with age.

“I have no idea what time of day it is,” he said, stepping back from the windows. “This could be daylight, but then again, Solinari’s in High Sanction at the moment, and it could just as well be moonlight.”

“Once we pass through these doors we’ll be near the balcony overlooking the entrance hall,” whispered Gredchen. “There’s a really large rose window, and you can see the Emerald Peaks through them if the weather’s cooperating.”

“Lovely,” Vanderjack said. “But I’d bet that balcony’s guarded.” He felt the absence of the Hunter, who would ordinarily be coming back to him at such a time to tell him all about the armed forces in the castle—where they were, what they looked like.

“Of course. Hand Theodenes to me, and you take a first look.” Gredchen held out her arms.

Vanderjack handed the gnome over as if he were a bundle of hearth logs and crept to the doors. He threw the latch and opened one door a crack.

Through the narrow gap, he could see the wide curve of the balcony sweeping around an open space. A flight of marble stairs led upward from a landing in the middle of the curve, and Vanderjack caught movement just out of sight: something large, silver, and dressed in red.

“Ackal’s Teeth,” he muttered.

“What is it?” asked Gredchen.

“Sivaks.”

“We can’t take on sivaks,” hissed Gredchen.

Vanderjack looked at Theo then at Gredchen, silently agreeing with her. “But I think I have an interesting idea,” he whispered, grinning.

“Not Theo!” she said, aghast, reading his mind.

“Why not? He’ll be useful. He likes being useful.”

“Absolutely not!”

Vanderjack looked at the door then back at her. “Well, if you’d prefer charging on out there and taking our chances with the sivaks …”

Lord Gilbert’s aide exhaled. “All right. What’s your plan?”

A few minutes later, after some poking around in the bedrooms in the residence suite, Vanderjack and Gredchen had gathered together an old footlocker, a child’s wagon with four wheels and a handle, several linen sheets, a length of thick silk cord from the curtains around a bed, and a three-pronged candelabra. The two of them carefully stood the gnome up on the footlocker, set it atop the wagon, threw a sheet over his head, and tied the candelabra in place on top of everything with the cord.