Arutha whispered, “Try the latch.”
The soldier nearest him quietly moved the latch up and the door opened. There was a faint squeak, but no one inside the room seemed to notice. He followed the first man into the room and pianced around in the dim light. A single candle burned on a table halfway across the long wall, opposite the stairway leading upward to the next level. The floor was littered with a dozen empty sleeping pallets, while another six were occupied. With a hand signal, Captain Subai indicated they were to be subdued and they were. Solders entered from the second door and Arutha smiled as he whispered, “Well, it seems I owe those soldiers an apology; that was a lot of stair climbing for no good reason.”
Subai said, “They understand.”
Arutha turned to locate Brother Dominic. The cleric wore a helm and breastplate, but carried no sword. He only sported a dull cudgel. He had said that his order would not permit him to spill blood. Breaking heads, Arutha had observed dryly, was permitted, however.
“What now?”
Dominic said, “There is something . . .”
“What?”
“I don’t know. A presence . . .”
Arutha said, “A presence?”
“It’s something I’ve felt before, but fainter, more distant.”
“What?” urged Arutha.
“I don’t know,” whispered the cleric. “But whatever it is, it is not good. I should lead the soldiers up the stairs. If it is magical or mystic, I may be able to protect us.”
Arutha nodded, frowning. Since the death of the Pantathian Serpent Priests and Pug’s destruction of the demon Jakan, there had been no reports of any magical activity among the enemy. The possibility that some agency of darkness had hidden among them and was now about to manifest itself bothered him. But there was no turning back.
Dominic mounted the stairs and Arutha, Subai, and the soldiers followed. They entered a long hallway with doorways on either side, each leading into a large storage room, used to house books just a year earlier. Each doorway was open, and through the portals they could see more sleeping men. Arutha did a quick estimation and judged a hundred men between the two rooms. He signaled, and Subai placed archers at each end of the hall.
He then set about waking the invaders, quietly and one at a time, so that each man awoke to the sight of a naked blade before his face and archers behind drawing a bead. In less than a half hour, all one hundred mercenaries were herded down to the lowest chamber, to join the first six men captured.
“This can’t last,” said Subai quietly.
As if his words were prophetic, at the top of the next flight of stairs they were spied by two men walking down the corridor. As soon as they saw the black uniforms, the mercenaries knew there were Kingdom soldiers in the building. They raised alarm, and Arutha shouted, “Every man to his position!”
Each man knew his assignment. There were a dozen key positions throughout the abbey, and if the Kingdom forces could secure them, the invaders would be isolated from the town below. While Arutha and his men might be forced to eventually withdraw back down the stairs into the lower chambers of the abbey, they could keep the garrison up here from mounting a counterattack down the mountain to relieve the garrison at Sarth.
Sleepy mercenaries came stumbling through doors on both sides of the hall, and Arutha found himself fighting for his life. He had never fought in combat before, and until this moment had harbored a deep fear he would not be up to the task. He anticipated shame that he could not serve his King the way his father and sons already had. Yet now, without hesitation, he was coolly engaging a man intent on killing him. He had no time to think about his previous doubts, and without conscious effort, years of practice and drill took over and he began laying about him, using the sword once carried by his namesake, Prince Arutha.
Slowly they moved along the corridor, driving the forces of General Nordan before them. At the end of the corridor, another flight of stairs led upward. By the time Arutha reached them, the hall was littered with bodies, most of them invaders, and a trio of men stood at the bottom of the stairs. Fighting up the stairs would be difficult, as the advantage of height would make this a difficult contest.
From behind a voice shouted, “Down!”
Without hesitation, Arutha fell to the floor, ignoring the pool of blood in which he lay. A flight of arrows sped by overhead, and the three men upon the first step of the stairway fell. Before Arutha could rise to his feet, men were racing past him, their boots pounding on the stones of the steps as they hurried up to engage the enemy on the next level.
Arutha knew he was one flight below ground level. Above them stood the abbey, the stable, the outbuilding, and the walls. If they could get to the tower above the abbey, and command positions atop the walls, they could win the day.
Arutha took a deep breath and charged after the soldiers in front of him.
Thirteen - Calamity