SQUIRE OF CARLOVAIN, CHAPTER SIX
"Lord Dentremon's Dungeon"
Andrew walked into the daylight of the afternoon sun and into chaos. Men seemed to be moving in all directions, each intent on some individual mission. Most of them were dressed as Andrew was, in simple brown clothing. Except for the sword at his side (which encumbered him with a weight it had not had since his early training, advertising as it did his non-servant status), he blended in well. So he dared to stride toward the side of the house, where he had seen the servants entering and exiting.
The side of the house turned out to be nothing but windows, and a row of small houses to its right, the "honored guest" quarters. Servants' housing would be either behind or within the house itself in some segregated manner.
Faces looked at him curiously as he walked in a leisurely manner (though his heart begged him to race madcap headlong instead lest he be captured), but no one impeded him and so he made it to the rear entrance unscathed.
Two old women were over a kettle boiling at one end of the massive kitchen, but neither looked up from it as he walked by. He heard a bit of their conversation.
"He shouldn't have gone out riding." one of them complained. "That carriage rattling about his old bones. He's damaged himself inside, I tell you."
"And would you be the one to tell his Lordship what to do?" the other rejoined.
"Nay, but I can see folly as well when it's committed by a Lord as well as a fool like my husband. If he hadn't gone out riding, he'd have lived a good many more days."
Andrew didn't hear the response, and his heart fell. Lord Dentremon would not have gone riding except as a means to speak with him privately. He now lay dying ahead of his time because Andrew and his friends had had need of him. "Rest in peace, old friend." he said softly.
But where was the entrance to the cellar? He thought it must be here in the servant's area, but he roamed the rooms, four of them all connected by doors to each other, without finding anything. That left only the rest of the house.
He squared his shoulders and went into the dining room. No main hall, this was where the family ate when not entertaining; it was a small room only some twenty feet on a side. The family inn's main room was bigger, and higher.
The doors to one side were double-doors, and he decided that they could not lead to anything but a main dining hall, and these doors could be opened to accommodate extra guests. But over to one side was a small door. And opening it, he saw a staircase going down.
And he had never met a single person in all these rooms. Except for those two old women in the kitchen, the house seemed empty.
At the bottom of the stairs was a short hall lit by a single small window up near the ceiling at the far end, which let in daylight, with two doors. Looking into the first one, he saw rows of wine bottles in racks, and boxes. There was left only the final door.
He crept up to it, seeing it had a small window and could be barred with a large beam from the outside. The dungeon, without a doubt.
A single, large room, the size of the four servants' room above, floor covered in straw. There were his friends, Trevish and Adomeh chained to the wall by their wrists, sitting upright, while Edwar and Derevan were untidy heaps laid out lengthwise further over. Andrew could not see how they were chained. Andrew looked at the door, the rusted hinge. He needed not only for the guard to be distracted, but noise to cover his entrance. He must wait where he was for the opportunity.
A single guard was in the room, lounging with the impudent casualness that spoke of a long watch. Perhaps in his mid-twenties, he was solid of build and with a light sandy-colored hair that again spoke of partial Saxony ancestry. His face was plain and somewhat stupid-looking, combined with a nature that seemed inclined easily to evil. A house guard rarely had the long formal training Andrew had received, but he was armed, and Andrew did not yet know if others were about.
"Faith, but I'm thirsty again." the guard said.
Trevish looked up languidly.
"It's unbearably hot in this cellar." the guard said to him. "Think I'll get a drink of water and maybe stand by the window for a while." the first said. "It's the only bit of cool breeze you get in this damnable place this time of year."
He went to an open-topped barrel there and scooped up water with a wooden, long-handled dipping cup. He made a proper mess of himself with the water, drinking audibly in loud gulps, and then pouring more water over his head with loud sounds of relief.
"Ah, nothing cools you off like a bit of well water, does it?" the guard. "Mayhaps you two would like a drink? I'm told that poppy seed and alcohol can leave you very thirsty when you awaken."
Andrew saw the look on Trevish's face even from this not-inconsiderable distance, the way his eyes followed the dipper as it was dipped into the water, the way it dribbled water from the edges (for the guard had filled it to capacity) and how it sloshed about as he brought it over.
"Would you care for a drink?" the guard said to Trevish.
"At your same price as before, I assume." Trevish croaked out. Trevish looked to the door and his eyes widened and face nearly cracked a smile. He had seen Andrew. Instead he looked abruptly at the window, and that sent the guard's look that way. Andrew indeed followed suit, but he looked back in time to see Trevish's head nodding to him, nudge Adomeh and gesture at Andrew with his eyes, before turning his attention back to his captor.
"Don't look for your friend to come rescue you." the guard said. "We caught him just a few hours ago, I'm told. Slit his throat proper, we did."
"You lie." Trevish stuttered out. He made it sound like he believed it, but didn't want to. Clever Trevish!
The guard waved the dipper of water over Trevish's head, let small dribbles of it fall down onto Trevish's face. Trevish moved quickly and a small bit of it landed on his lips, he licked them quickly.
"Tastes good, doesn't it? If you want more, all you have to do is ask me."
Trevish was silent for a time, then, softly, "Pray." he said.
"What was that?" the guard said.
"Pray, sir, give me water."
The guard fumbled hastily with his trousers, he was not able to see the door now from this position. He shucked his trousers down to his ankles one-handed and his prong was erect and long, jutting out towards Trevish's face.
The guard poured some of the water on his cock and said, "Now, you can lap that off, can't you?"
"Trevish, don't do it." Adomeh said, his voice equally cracked. As if their throats hurt, dry. The day was very hot and Andrew thought how he might feel if he had had nothing to drink all day long. While he had taken lunch with Lord Dentremon, his friends had been here in this hot, hot house, this stifling cellar which was trapping the heat of the day rather than fighting it off, and with nothing to drink, nothing at all.
"Do it and you shall drink deeply." the guard countered. "I shall even give you enough water now to refresh your throat, so that you may take it the easier." And the guard lifted the last of the dipper's contents to Trevish's mouth, and Trevish drank eagerly the few meager swallows it still held.
"Now, Guardian of the Sovereign of Carlovain, show me your talents which are well-known throughout this land." the guard used the proper title of the royal bodyguard.
Trevish looked at the cock, wet and with water still clinging to it, licked his lips, and then moved his head toward the cock. The guard chuckled and stepped forward, and Trevish took the long prod into his mouth and slurped on it eagerly, whether for the moisture it bore, the desire to distract the guard while Andrew approached, or the sheer joy of it.
"Ah, ah!" the guard groaned. "They tell no lies when they say that the royal bodyguards are a bunch of royal cocksuckers. I knew it would be so. And your warm lips tell me that you no longer need coercion, do you, my handsome prisoner?"
The guard was as distracted as he would get. Andrew looked at the door latch and then turned it softly, pushed the door gently. It was a thick door, but it must have received some oil recently for it did not creak as loudly as it could have.
He slipped inside and gently pushed the door back shut. The guard began to turn around, perhaps at the sounds or the soft draft of air that the door had let in, but Trevish grunted and slurped on him harder, and the guard forgot about it, lost in his joy.
Andrew moved forward stealthily, noting without wishing to how the guard's buttocks were taut twin globes as he pumped them back and forth into Trevish's mouth. The guard held his tunic bunched up in the fore, so that his entire lower body was exposed and he moved his hairy legs with lithe precision while he forced Trevish to suck on him.
Adomeh saw him now, as he hadn't before. Adomeh nodded, and Trevish seemed to have understood, for now he sucked at the guard yet even more lustily than before, and the guard grunted, groaned, and his hips took on an abandon borne of climax, and he rutted into Trevish's face with the loud gasps of orgasmic pleasure...
And Andrew was upon him. He snatched the sword from its sheath at the guard's waist, the sword hilt caught upon the bunched-up tunic, and the guard, caught in his ejaculation and concomitant inability to move, was alerted but helpless. Andrew brought the sword out and then, casting it well to one side (until his friends were free, it was useless to him), grabbed the guard by his neck and pulled him away from his comrade.
And the guard, still squirting his load, splattered Trevish's face as his prong was jerked from Trevish's mouth.
"S'blood!" Trevish groaned as the white viscuous fluid caught him in the eye, to smear down onto his cheek, nearly reaching the corner of his mouth.
Andrew threw the guard, whose chest was heaving and face was flushed, down onto his back and stood over him, sword at the man's throat. "Be silent or die, son of a she-dog!" he snarled.
"Harm me not!" the guard begged. "I was merely making sport and would have given them water both."
"I saw the means you used to give them water." Andrew said. "Now, unchain my friends.'
"I have not the key." the guard said, fearful.
"It is true." Adomeh said. "Young Lord Dentremon has them himself."
"He is upstairs with his father, who is dying." Andrew said. "We have some time yet. How may we free you?"
"If you can wrench this chain which holds the shackles from the wall, we will be able to move." Adomeh said. "Other than that, I know not." It was a single length of chain, with links containing the shackles on loops, and another link through a loop on the wall. By simply removing the loops that held the chain to the wall, the prisoners could be marched in chained file to whatever doom awaited them.
"There are metal bars over there you can use." the guard volunteered.
Andrew looked at him. "Are you so faithless a cur that you would surrender your loyalty yet again?" he asked.
"I wish my life." the guard said. "If I have chosen to follow the young Lord rather than the old who will be dead soon, where have I failed in my loyalty, which is to my Lord and his house?"
"And yet you would help me now?"
"Either you escape with me dead, or you escape with me alive." the guard said. "I see not why the difference would matter anyone else, but to me it is my life. I shall do as you bid, at the threat of your blade and me helpless and unarmed. Later perhaps, I can do that which will redress the balance. But a dead man redresses nothing."
Andrew had to admit the rather rough logic of it. Surely many of the other guards he had seen were of the same frame of mind. A man's first loyalty was to his own Lord, and the King was merely first among the Lords. How would the King buy the fief of such a man as this? He had his father's teachings to thank for his own loyalties, after all.
"Then you shall fetch the bar and free my comrades." Andrew said. "And do not wander near your sword."
"I shall need to rise and adjust my clothing." the guard pointed out.
Andrew could see no real harm in this. "Very well."
He stood nearby, ready to strike at the smallest betrayal, but the guard did as he said, he brought up and refastened his clothing, and went to a wall other than where Andrew had cast his sword.
"These bars are to be heated in the brazier in the center and then applied to the prisoner's flesh to make him talk." the guard said, almost amiably. "I have never seen it done, but I am told it is quite effective."
"Do your work and chatter no more." Andrew said.
"These bars have one other use." the guard said as he plucked one from the wall.
And he swung it at Andrew's sword, knocking it aside.
Andrew cursed himself for a fool as he recovered, backing away. That bar gave the young guard a weapon with a longer reach than his, and the staff (which this made a serviceable one) was a long-time weapon of the peasantry. Andrew had never learned it, but had seen it in action enough to not underestimate its usefulness.
And the guard was calling for help as he fought, loud calls that rebounded through the room.
Andrew's sword was jolted as the guard played the long bar two-handed with the ease of long use. A wooden stave would not have hit him so hard. As it was, he was losing ground fast.
The guard got into his guard and struck him hard on the left shoulder, dropping Andrew to both knees. Andrew sliced at the guard, forcing him away, and got up to one knee before the man closed in again. He was losing this battle.
"I shall take you." the guard crowed, as he now toyed with the fallen Andrew, keeping Andrew's sword blocked while not giving him the chance to rise. "You shall taste my manhood the same as your comrade there, for I shall take you alive."
The guard struck yet again, hitting Andrew's right arm, and Andrew was knocked over to his left, one hand landing on the floor.
Something contacted his hand within the straw, something soft and warm and sticky and rank-feeling. Something dropped long ago, excrement or decaying matter. No matter, it was something other than light straw; Andrew snatched it up, and threw it at the guard's face.
He was fortunate, for the whatever-it-was, brownish soft material, was still soft enough that it hit and stuck to his face, blinding one eye. The guard recoiled, one hand left the stave to wipe away the foul, burning stuff, and Andrew slashed at him hard.
The stave fell to the floor, along with the guard's other hand and most of his forearm. The guard screamed, and Andrew, as much in mercy as in fighting fury, ran him through.
"Hurry, Andrew." Adomeh called. "That will bring the guards upon us for sure!"
Andrew sheathed his blade still bloody and wiping his hand on his trousers, grabbed up the iron bar and ran to his friend's help.
Guards were calling out above. They would have to fight their way out of this.
Andrew at least had his years of work at the inn to aid him. It was the work of a moment for him to slide the iron bar into the shackles on the wall and yank them free. Trevish was waiting for this, he grabbed the chain and pulled at it. "The chain is also fastened at this end!" he said. "If you can free it from there, we can slide it out of these shackles!"
Andrew knocked aside the flooring of straw. There! A large iron ring, the chain was interlinked with it. The ring was out of reach of the prisoners when shackled to the wall, the ring was a mere twist of metal and with Trevish holding the ring and chain taut for him, Andrew was able to pry it apart easily. The chain link fell off as he did this, and Trevish quickly reeled it in.
Footsteps outside. Andrew raced for the guard's sword and reached it as the door opened. He tossed it towards his friends and prepared for the fray.
Two guards only. They ran both at Andrew and he fenced with them, more secure now than he had been with the iron bar/stave, and held them at bay by dint of quick legwork and rapidly losing ground, until Trevish charged in at his side with the other sword.
One on one now, Andrew had the advantage of his father's training. This other guard had been trained with a sword, but it was the difference between a torch and the sunlight, both gave light but one gave it more. Andrew cut it short, swirling the other man's blade out of his grasp and lunging in for the stroke.
And now Adomeh had a sword, and they had one more to spare, and a short breathing space.
"Derevan and Edwar?" Andrew gasped.
"Forget them." Adomeh said.
"What?" Andrew said, shocked.
"Nothing can be done for them, I fear, other than a Christian burial, and we have no time for that. They drank more of the drug than we did." Adomeh said
Andrew bowed his head briefly. He hadn't known these guards long, but any comrade fallen in battle...nay, not even in battle, the victim of a poisoned drug taken in the house of a friend!
But more guards were coming, and Andrew could not spare the time. He and his friends made it to the hallway, and the foot of the stairs, but there six guards met them.
The stairway was narrow, two guards side-by-side there were almost hemmed in. Andrew, Adomeh and Trevish held them to this advantage, keeping the guards pinned in by the stairway while they had the extra foot on either side of the hall.
Two guards met their deaths there, and then a loud crash from above. Two large barrels had been sent down the stairwell from further above. They slammed into the guards and knocked them headlong down among Andrew and Trevish. Again it took an assassin's blow, but Andrew dealt it without qualm, dealing with two of the guards while Trevish dispatched the other two.
They stumbled over the mess of bodies and broken barrels at the foot of the stairs and made it to the top. A young man was there, Andrew had never seen him before.
"To the rear gate!" he said. "Cedril waits there with your horses! Hurry!"
Andrew did not wait, but ran with the others. In the courtyard, men at the wall sent arrows their way, but Andrew and his friends were fortunate in that none met their targets, arrows require careful sighting-in, and are thus of limited use on erratically-moving, individual targets such as they were.
Beneath the shelter of a large oak tree, Cedril stood with their horses, saddled and ready. He asked no questions why there were only three of them instead of five, but let loose the reins as Andrew and his friends approached, and he appropriated one for his own mount and rode with them out the opened gate.
Another volley of arrows flew at them as they rode, and then another, more ragged than the first, for the range was rapidly increasing. And now they were among the trees and safe from any further volleys.
"Cedril, we would never have made it without your help." Andrew said jocularly as he turned about.
But the fourth horse had no rider. There was only a limp figure of cloth in the road far behind him.
"Cedril!" Andrew called out.
"Come." Adomeh said. "We cannot aid him. I saw. We must ride."
Andrew rode, a fierce anger rising within him. Three of his friends now lay dead, nay, four counting poor old Lord Dentremon, because of this rebellion. Lord Montaigne would pay for this, he swore.
But before that, the traitorous son, Jean Dentremon.
It gave him the strength to ignore his aching heart, and to ignore his aching body at the jolting of the galloping horse. They rode on into the dusk, and in the darkness, over the road, northwards towards Castle Tiresval.