Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

“Do it.”

He handed her the lantern and withdrew his long blade of blued Aren steel. As soon as he touched the tip to the door, the planks crumpled, fell in a cloudy whoosh through the hatch. They heard sifting sounds from below.

“That ain’t been used in a long time,” Flapp observed.

Skint edged closer and brought the lantern over the hole. “Iron ladder, Sergeant. Looks like the looters lost their courage.”

“I’m not surprised,” he replied.

“Still drunk, Sergeant?”

“No. Mostly…no.”

“We might want to take a look down there.”

He nodded.

“I think,” she said slowly, turning to face him, “we got ourselves a demon.”

“That’s the smell all right.”

They heard clattering from the main hall.

Skint led the way back to the others.

Wither and Huggs had brought in the crossbows and dart-bags and were pulling and dividing up quarrels. Dullbreath was ratcheting tight the cords on the all-metal fist-punchers, smearing gobs of grease into the thick braids.

“Light the rest of the lanterns, Sergeant,” said Skint, tightening the straps of her gauntlets. “Where’s my helmet, Withy?”

“Behind Dullbreath, Captain.”

“Everybody suit up. The night’s gonna start with a bang. Then we can get some rest.”

“I thought we’d left crap-face demons behind us,” griped Huggs.

“One got out and squirreled up here, that’s all.”

“A magic-shitter, too.”

“It’ll show, we drive it back, corner it, and kill the fucker.”

The others nodded.

High in the rafters, the imp stared down at the five fools. Soldiers! How exciting. They had managed well reining in their panic, but the imp could smell their acrid sweat, that pungent betrayal of terror. It watched as they assembled their weapons, went over each other’s armor—what was left of it—and then, arranging the five lanterns in a broad circle, they donned their helmets—one of those badly cracked, the one on the taller of the two men—and, slotting quarrels into the crossbows, settled into a circle well inside the ring of fitful light.

Sound defensive positioning.

The demon they were now discussing could come from anywhere, after all, any of the doorways, including the one leading outside. Could come from the ceiling, too, for that matter. And the imp grinned with its needle teeth.

All very good, very impressive.

But there wasn’t just one demon, was there?

No. There were lots. And lots. And lots.

The imp awoke sorcery again, sealing the keep’s doorway. One of the women caught the stench of that and she swore. That one had a nose for magic, she did. Too bad it wasn’t going to help.

Still grinning, the imp summoned its fiends.

In the stable, the horses, sensitive to such things, began shrilling and screaming.

Flapp saw the captain lift her head, as if trying to hear something behind the maddened horses. A moment later, she straightened. “Collect up the lanterns. Time to retreat to our room.”

Burdened with gear, crossbows cradled, the lanterns slung by their handles over the stirrups, the group moved in a contracting circle toward a lone gaping doorway.

Flapp was the first through. A quick scan, and then a grunt. “Clear.”

The others quickly filed in.

Huggs made to speak, but the captain silenced her with a gesture, and then, when Skint had everyone’s attention, she hand-talked, fast, precise. Nods answered her all around. Lanterns clunked softly on the floor.

Gray-scaled, trailing cobwebs and shedding mortar dust, the demons poured like foul water down a cataract, round and round the spiral stairs of the north tower. Ten, twenty, thirty, their jaws creaking, fangs clashing, lunging on all fours, tails slithering in their wake. They spilled out onto the landing, talons screeching across the tiles as they rushed the single lit doorway two-thirds of the way down the corridor.

Cries of rising bloodlust shrilled from their throats, a frenzied chorus that could curdle a lump of lard and set it quivering. The imp dropped down from the rafters and scurried into their wake, in time to see the first of the demons plunge through the entrance.

It howled—but the cry was one of blunted frustration.

The imp slipped under, over, and around the mob clamoring at the doorway, leapt through to find itself in a room with naught but demons lashing about, gouging the walls in fury.

The lanterns had been kicked against the walls.

The five humans were gone.

Where?

Ah—the imp caught sight of a gaping hole in the floor.

With frantic screeches, it commanded the demons to pursue, and the one closest to the trapdoor slithered through, followed quickly by the others.

Clever humans! But how fast could they run?

Not fast enough!

The imp awakened the rest of its children, and curdling howls erupted from countless chambers.

The first demons swarmed down the ladder to the first subterranean level—there were a half-dozen such levels, a maze of narrow, low-ceilinged, crooked passageways bored in the hill’s enormous mound. Storerooms, cisterns, armories, cutter surgeries, and wards. It had been centuries since the demons last scoured these tunnels.