In moments, they would be swarming every passage of the castle. In moments, they would find this chamber.
Mouse fled to the door, his hands trembling as they reached for the latch. He wanted to crawl under the bed and shiver into nothingness, to let the nightmare of monsters sweep over his head and be gone! But that could never be. He must escape this chamber now, before they filled the keep and he was trapped.
He opened the door and peered out. The corridor was empty, but all around were roars and screams.
If he could get to a lower level, perhaps he could escape out a window? He was small; he might fit through one of the narrow openings. Or if he could make it to the wall, perhaps he could jump? Not on the river side, of course; that would be suicide. But off the southern wall, would the ground below be soft enough? Was it worth the risk of a broken leg or worse?
He stepped out into the passage.
Alistair moaned.
It was a slight sound compared to the screams rising from outside, but Mouse started and looked back into the room. The young lord’s eyes blinked blearily open, but they were glassy, unseeing. The wound at his shoulder was blackening fast, spreading ugly veins of poison across his chest, up his neck.
“They’ll kill him.” Mouse closed his eyes, and a curse choked him. “They’ll kill him in his bed.”
If he tried to help, the goblins would catch them both.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he told himself. “I am no part of this.”
The next moment, the sounds of horror below ringing through the air and rattling Mouse’s ears like the voice of insanity itself, the boy sprang back across the chamber. He took Alistair’s limp arm and pulled it across his shoulders. “Dragons eat you,” Alistair groaned vaguely, trying to push the boy away. But he was too weak and scarcely awake.
“Come on!” Mouse muttered, hoping the tone, if nothing else, would give Alistair the right idea. “You must help me, or I shan’t be able to help you!”
His head lolling, Alistair sagged but somehow found his feet. He was much taller than Mouse and a great deal heavier. The boy cursed and knew even as he staggered under his burden back to the doorway that they would never make it out alive. Goblins would pour up the stairway, ripping, tearing, slaying as they went! They would run the young earl through and tear Mouse to pieces. How vividly his imagination painted it all, as though it had already happened.
Nevertheless, he supported Alistair into the corridor. He could scarcely balance, and he fell against the stone wall, bruising his shoulder, just managing to keep the tall young man upright.
The goblins were coming. Mouse saw their shadows along the wall at the end of the corridor. He froze, unable to find his heartbeat.
“Pssst! Look here, mouseling!”
Again Mouse started and turned. From the doorway a few paces down the passage, the scrubber’s ugly old face peered out at them. He beckoned with the handle of his mop. “Inside, quick!”
Desperately, Mouse flung himself and his burden forward. They reached the open door and fell headlong into the chamber, but Mouse was up like a shot. He heard the bark of a goblin voice, thought he saw a shadow along the floor. His mouth open in a silent scream, he pushed the door shut and stared at the lock to which he had no key.
Any moment . . . any moment . . .
There was an inside bolt. He threw it just as a goblin hurled its weight against the door. One instant more would have been too late.
Mouse stood, his hands shaking, one finger dripping blood where the iron bolt had caught it. He turned around, crying, “Help me!” to the scrubber.
But the room was empty, save for the prone form of Alistair on the floor. Of the scrubber there was no sign.
“Come out. Come out, tender mortal!”
There was no time for wonder nor even for pain, only action. That bolt would not hold them forever. Fire coursing through his body, Mouse grabbed a nearby chest and, with strength he did not know he possessed, shoved it across the floor, blocking the door. Beasts and devils! If he could move it, so could those monsters.
“We’ll have you in a trice anyway. Best come out and give us no fuss!”
He understood. Their dreadful voices rang through his head, and he understood each word as though it were spoken in his own tongue.
“Fire burn! Fire purify!” Mouse cried out and leapt back. There was a washbasin along the wall. It quickly joined the door and the chest. What else? What else? Their hands were at the latch!
Mouse turned about, searching the room. He realized—in a distant manner, for it scarcely mattered now—that he stood in the dead Ferox’s own chamber.
There was a chair by the fire. He shoved it alongside the washbasin and the trunk. The earl’s hunting knife and a ceremonial sword hung upon the wall. Mouse leapt for the sword, but he could not lift it from its place. So he took the knife, cutting himself in his frenzy, and stood with it clutched in his hands for half an instant.