Death After Death

Millie didn’t like it. Not when she saw the vile room, nor when she noticed all the corpses a few seconds later. Simon waited for her to finish vomiting in the corner before he told her that she was going to have to wear the clothes of a dead man. She categorically refused.

“It’s a corpse, Simon!” she insisted. “Even ignoring the blood, I’d be cursed for life!”

He tried to explain that she wouldn’t, but that was less effective than he would have liked, given how little he could explain to her about where they were, or how they’d gotten there.

“I just don’t understand. We were alone, and now… who are all these people?” she demanded. “This isn’t even Castle Gravenstone, is it?”

“Not the one you knew,” he admitted. “All I can say is… this place is cursed, and we must escape. We must help this man escape, and then we will figure out what’s going on.”

That the castle they’d just left was cursed wasn’t up for debate. Everyone believed that, and with good reason. So, Simon clung to that thin fig leaf as he coerced her into putting on the armor of the man with the broken neck. She hated it, but eventually she agreed. Unfortunately, even leaving off as much as he could get away with, it was almost too heavy for her, and he lacked the gesture of strength to fortify her body.

Instead of that, he took the breastplate back off of her and bundled her up in a cloak instead, hoping that the helmet and the shield would be enough. Then, after he changed himself into the bloodier outfit, he woke the torture victim with a violent shake of his shoulder.

He woke, reaching for a weapon, but found none. “Easy, easy,” Simon told him. “We’re here to help you escape, we’re going to…”

Simon didn’t really get through to the man until he reached down and found that his mortal injury was nothing but a faded scar. Then he asked, “How is it I’m still breathing? Witchcraft?”

“Divine intervention,” Simon countered.

“Why would the gods care what happens to me?” the prisoner asked. “Or listen to you for that matter?”

“Good question,” Simon agreed. “Millie. Tell him about the vampires.”

She started to do just that and passionately explained, “He saved me and everyone else in the castle. He’s a vampire hunter for true, and if he asked the Gods to heal you, well, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if someone answered.”

Unfortunately, it soon became clear there was a problem. Simon might speak both languages, but the other two people in the room did not. So, he had to translate everything back and forth, which blunted the impact of Millie’s words and slowed everything down.

That went on for several minutes, and as much as Simon wanted to ask basic questions about the man and why he was being tortured, he refrained in an attempt to build trust. Unfortunately, shortly after he learned that the other man’s name was Darius, and was just starting to turn the conversation toward his plan for escape, their luck ran out.

While Simon was talking, the door to the torture chamber opened, and they all froze.

“Hey, you get anything yet?” the torch-bearing man asked. “The captain wants to start planning… What the hell happened here?”

As he took in the bodies of his dead comrades, Simon acted without thinking and yanked the guard in by his helmet’s chin strap, sending him sprawling and tangling his limbs among the other bodies on the ground.

Millie froze in place, but Darius reacted, at least as much as his enfeebled body could, and lurched to the door, slamming it shut again before the panicking guard could really start shouting for help. Simon nodded in approval at that and crouched next to the man, sword in hand.

“I’ve already killed three men in this room,” Simon said quietly. The guard might work for an odious master, but his aura wasn’t dark enough to justify killing him in Simon’s eyes, not unless it was in self-defense. “And I’d happily trade information for your life to keep from making it a fourth.”

“They’ll c-catch you!” the guard retorted, but there was no defiance in his eyes or his soul. This was a bluff. “After you kill me, they’ll hang the lot of you! There’s no way out.”

“There’s always a way out,” Simon countered. “And if you tell me what I want to know, you’ll live to see us make our escape.”

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That visibly calmed Millie. Simon could see that just the thought of more bloodshed was making her faint. Darius’s reaction, though, was just the opposite. He picked up the torturer’s blade and gestured at the guard with it. “You can’t be serious. Killing isn’t enough for these monsters. We need to gouge out their eyes and—”

“We need to escape,” Simon countered. “That’s the only consideration, and if he helps us with that, then as far as I’m concerned, manacles will work just as well as a sword to keep him out of our hair until we’re free.”

The two of them argued about it, but as Darius’s words grew more bloodthirsty, the guard eventually cracked without Simon having to do any further pushing. “Please, just tell me what you want to know, and I’ll tell you. Just keep that maniac away from me.”

Simon smiled at that and had the frightened man draw a map of the grounds for him on the dirt floor. He showed them where the curtain wall was, and where all the gates were, and he talked about guard patrols, and who should be where at this hour.

“Garvik’s usually snuck off with one of the maids this time of night,” he declared, “and Heltrig is likely as not asleep, so if you stay close to the eastern wall and loop around to the main gate, you should be able to get out without being seen. After that, well, I can’t help it if the watch spots you and blows the horn, now can I?”

As the man spoke, the plan came together in Simon’s mind quickly enough. He and Millie would post as guards and escort the prisoner. It wasn’t likely to be convincing, but this time of night, there would be few people to convince. Then, once they got to the courtyard, they could steal three horses from the stables and ride out the main gate as fast as possible, since it was usually left open overnight. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it was a pretty good one.

Simon saw little that could go wrong with it until they actually started to implement it. After they bound their informer with the same manacles that had held down Darius, they made their way out of the dungeon and toward safety.

Except for the man’s desire to gouge out the helpless guard’s eyes as recompense for what he’d suffered, that part went smoothly. Simon rejected that horrifying suggestion firmly, and as much as Darius might have wanted to carry it out, he was too weak to stand up to Simon.

In the courtyard was where things got complicated. That wasn’t because the fortress was larger or more imposing than he’d expected, or that a guard spotted them, though, because their move to the stables seemed to go entirely unnoticed.

The night was almost picturesque. The crescent moon showed through the gaps in the clouds, and gave him enough light to study the unfamiliar stonework. He didn't recognize the style, but it was clearly meant for war more than decoration. This was likely a border fort and not anyone's palace.

His problems weren't with any of those details, but with the gate itself. The portcullis was up, and the drawbridge was down; leaving wouldn’t be a problem. Well, at least it wouldn’t be a problem for anyone but Simon. The real dilemma was something no one else even noticed. When they moved closer to it, the edges of the portal lit up to his sight, and Simon could clearly see the next level appear before he took a few steps back.

Normally, it would have been a relief to find the portal so quickly. Not only did it show that he was on the right track, but it also showed that he was all but done with this level. The only problem was that he didn’t want to leave this level, not yet, anyway. He’d just gotten somewhere new. There was a struggle in a country that Simon had only ever heard of in passing, and he desperately wanted to learn more.

More so, he wanted to find somewhere safe to drop off Millie. What he’d glimpsed of the next level was a dark cavern, and that was exactly the opposite of where he wanted to take her.

It was only when they were safely in the stables, and a horse for Darius was saddled up, that he let everyone know they weren’t riding out together. “I think this is where we say goodbye, Darius,” he told the stranger, before he translated that again for Millie. She took it harder than he did.

“I thought you said we were going to get horses, and—” she started to say, but Simon cut her off.

“There’s been a change of plans,” he sighed. “We won’t be joining Darius after all.”

“Why not?” he asked, as confused as Millie was.

Simon couldn’t very well tell them that Helades had strung the portal across the main gate, and that if he was close by, it wouldn’t go anywhere he wanted to be. So, instead, he lied.

“I have been given a revelation,” he said, falling back into the language of the Whitecloaks he’d lived with for so long. “If we ride together, then we will not escape. You must go alone, while we provide a distraction. We will then find another way out.”

“Another way?” Millie asked. “If we’re trapped here then—”

Simon could see fear of ending up back in that torture chamber flash across her face. He felt terrible about bringing her along. She was an innocent and not ready for this sort of danger.

Her heart’s about to give out already, Simon reflected. Can she really take another level? Not that he really had a choice in the matter. He’d love nothing more than to find her another way out. While he could send her off with Darius, he didn’t really want to leave her in the midst of a violent rebellion in a country where she didn’t speak the language. She had already shied away from him after his violent reaction to letting the guard live, and he doubted very much that things would end well for her here.

It will be fine, he told himself. Just one more level and you can find her someplace close to home. First, you get out of the castle, and then you get out of the cave, and you’re home free.