Swords & Dark Magic Read Online Free PDF Page B

ceiling, but it was too dark to see much of anything up there—no obvious gap open to moonlight, though. “Smells kinda scaly in here.”
    Huggs stumped in. “Captain, we got a problem.”
    “What?”
    “Horses getting edgy. And some kind of ward’s sprung up at the gate. Stinks, burns the eyes and throat just getting close. Probably kill us if we tried to push through.”
    “Someone wants us to stay the night,” Dullbreath said, his breathing loud and whistling in the chamber.
    “Lonely ghosts?” asked Flapp.
    Dullbreath shrugged. “Could be.”
    “All right,” Skint said, “we pick us a room with one way in and one way out—”
    “Ghosts go through walls, Captain—”
    “Huggs, how’s the wound?”
    “Wither dug it out. It’ll do.”
    Skint nodded and looked around once more. “Fuck ghosts,” she said, “this ain’t ghosts.”
    “Shit,” said Huggs, and she walked back outside.
    “Stay here, Dull,” ordered Skint. “Sergeant, fire up that lantern and let’s go find us a room.”
    “Never thought you cared, Captain.”
    The first three chambers along the row in front of them were dark, stinking hovels with passages through to secondary rooms—and those rooms opened out to both sides, their facing walls revealing the keep’s heavy stones where rotted sheets of plaster had peeled away. The two mercenaries did little more than peer into those back chambers. The fourth room was an old armory, picked bare.
    Flapp lifted the lantern and said, “See that? There, far corner—a trapdoor.”
    They walked to it. The brass ring was gone and the wood looked rotted through. “Give it a prod with your sword,” Skint said.
    “You sure?”
    “Do it.”
    He handed her the lantern and withdrew his long blade of blued Aren steel. As soon as he touched the tip to the door, the planks crumpled, fell in a cloudy whoosh through the hatch. They heard sifting sounds from below.
    “That ain’t been used in a long time,” Flapp observed.
    Skint edged closer and brought the lantern over the hole. “Iron ladder, Sergeant. Looks like the looters lost their courage.”
    “I’m not surprised,” he replied.
    “Still drunk, Sergeant?”
    “No. Mostly…no.”
    “We might want to take a look down there.”
    He nodded.
    “I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him, “we got ourselves a demon.”
    “That’s the smell all right.”
    They heard clattering from the main hall.
    Skint led the way back to the others.
    Wither and Huggs had brought in the crossbows and dart-bags and were pulling and dividing up quarrels. Dullbreath was ratcheting tight the cords on the all-metal fist-punchers, smearing gobs of grease into the thick braids.
    “Light the rest of the lanterns, Sergeant,” said Skint, tightening the straps of her gauntlets. “Where’s my helmet, Withy?”
    “Behind Dullbreath, Captain.”
    “Everybody suit up. The night’s gonna start with a bang. Then we can get some rest.”
    “I thought we’d left crap-face demons behind us,” griped Huggs.
    “One got out and squirreled up here, that’s all.”
    “A magic-shitter, too.”
    “It’ll show, we drive it back, corner it, and kill the fucker.”
    The others nodded.

    High in the rafters, the imp stared down at the five fools. Soldiers! How exciting. They had managed well reining in their panic, but the imp could smell their acrid sweat, that pungent betrayal of terror. It watched as they assembled their weapons, went over each other’s armor—what was left of it—and then, arranging the five lanterns in a broad circle, they donned their helmets—one of those badly cracked, the one on the taller of the two men—and, slotting quarrels into the crossbows, settled into a circle well inside the ring of fitful light.
    Sound defensive positioning.
    The demon they were now discussing could come from anywhere, after all, any of the doorways, including the one leading outside. Could come from the ceiling, too, for that matter. And the imp