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Quickly I carried Ehrig back down into the bowels of the castle, to our cell
in the roots of one of the towers. There I dumped him and barred the door.
Perhaps the vampire filth under the earth would find him and devour him before
he recovered fully. I didn't know and cared much less.
Then I hurried through the castle, lighting lamps and candles wherever I found
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them, illuminating the place as it had not been lit in a hundred years.
Perhaps it had never known such light as I now brought into being in it.
There were two entrances: one was across the drawbridge and through the door
I'd used when first I arrived here escorted by Faethor's wolves, which I now
barred; the other was from a narrow ledge in the cliff at the rear, where a
roofed over causeway of doubtful timbers formed a bridge from the ledge to a
window in the wall of the second tower. Doubtless this had been the
Ferenczy's bolthole, which he'd never had cause to use. But if he could get
out that way, so could he get in. I found oil, drenched the planking, set fire
to the causeway and stayed long enough to ensure that it was well ablaze.
I paused periodically at other embrasures to gaze out on the night. At first
there were only the moon and stars, stray wisps of cloud, the valley,
silvered, touched occasionally by fleeting shadows.
But as I proceeded with my task of lighting and securing the castle, so I was
aware that things were beginning to stir. A wolf howled mournfully afar, then
closer, then many wolves. The trees in the gorge were inky now, ominous as the
gates to the underworld.
In the first tower I found a barred, bolted room. A treasure house, maybe? I
threw back the bolts, lifted the bar, put my shoulder to the door. But the key
had been turned in the great lock and removed. I leaned my ear to the oak
panels and listened: there was sly movement in there, and...
whispering?
Perhaps it was as well the door was locked. Perhaps it had been locked not to
keep thieves out but something else.
I climbed to the hall where Faethor had poisoned me, and there found my
weapons where I
had last seen them. More, I took down from the wall a mighty long-handled axe.
Then, armed to the teeth, I returned to the locked room. There I loaded my
crossbow and placed it close to hand, stuck my sword point-down in a crack in
the floor, ready for grasping, and took both hands to the axe in a huge swing
at the door. I succeeded with that blow in caving in a narrow panel, but at
the same time I dislodged from its hiding place atop the lintel a rusty iron
key.
The key fitted the lock. I was on the point of turning it to enter, when -
such a clamouring from the wolves! So loud I could hear its doomful dinning
even down here! Something was afoot.
I left the door unopened, took up my weapons and raced up winding stairs to
the upper levels.
Wolves howled all around the castle now, but they were loudest at the rear. In
a very little while I
traced the uproar to the burning causeway, and arrived in time to see the
bridge go crashing down, blazing into the back chasm. And there across the gap
were Faethor's wolves in a pack, crowding the narrow ledge.
Behind them in the shadow of the cliff... was that the Ferenczy himself? The
hairs on my neck stood erect. If it was him, he stood crookedly, like a queer
bent shadow. Broken from his fall? I
took up my crossbow but when I looked again - gone! Or perhaps he'd never been
there. The wolves were real enough, however, and now the leader, a giant of a
beast, stood at the rim measuring the gap.
It would be a leap of all of thirty feet, possible only if he had a clear run
along the ledge. And even as I thought it, so the lesser wolves made way,
shrank back into shadows, left the ledge clear.
He ran back, turned, made his loping run and leaped - and mid-flight met my
bolt, which sank directly into his heart. Dead, but still snarling his last
snarl, he hit the rim of the opening and went tumbling into oblivion. And when
I looked up, the rest of the pack had melted away.
But I knew that the Ferenczy would not give up that easily.
I went up onto the battlements, found jars up there full of oil and cauldrons
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seated on tilting gear. Setting fires in braziers under the cauldrons, I
half-filled each one with oil and left them to simmer. And only then did I
return to the locked room. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]