Chapter 10: Just For The Night
The tower wasn’t alone on its dismal, fog-shrouded island. There was a whole little compound of moldering buildings slowly sinking back into the mud. Kaligos couldn’t imagine what would have driven someone to build such a building this far out into the middle of nowhere. It was a creepy old thing, but unlike the rest of the buildings, it still had a roof, and since it looked like more rain, that fact alone settled their sleeping arrangements.
He’d initially planned on setting up camp on the top floor to give them a commanding view of everything, but that changed after a quick survey of the area with Von Wandren. The top of the tower stank of evil, and it didn’t take his pet mage’s warnings to understand why - the remains of a magic circle on the floor was caked in blood. Something terrible had happened here.
“I think we should tell the others,” the mage said on their walk back down, but Kaligos just glared. He knew how superstitious his team was.
“I think you should leave your damn mouth shut and let me decide what’s the best thing to tell to who, Von Wandren. You’ve already done enough today, don’t you think?” Normally Kaligos didn’t like to twist the knife, but right now, he was short-tempered and didn’t want to stay up half the night arguing about ghosts. He wanted to do his watch - get some sleep and be halfway back to the boat by this time tomorrow.
Besides the signs of old evil, there really wasn’t anything to worry about. The rest of the day had gone remarkably well. Once they’d stowed the injured and the gear on the tower’s second floor, they’d scavenged wood for a large bonfire just outside the tower’s front door. Then Kaligos had put the uninjured to work chopping up lizardmen and stacking tails. Even after they paid out to the families of the dead, they still looked to make even more than he thought when they planned this trip. The deaths were tragic, of course, but not as tragic as wasting this windfall would be.
That night the company dined well. Why shouldn’t they? They’d packed in enough supplies for a week, so they had a hearty stew instead of the thin soup they usually dined on this far out in the wilderness. “Did you decide to thicken this up with some lizard meat when no one was looking, boss?” Serin joked. His humor didn’t slow down his eating, though, Kaligos noted. The bowl was halfway empty already. Serin was a big man with a powerful appetite, so he had no doubt he’d be back for seconds.
“Of course! Anything to pinch a copper or two,” he said, absently looking past him to those assembled. Something seemed amiss, and it was only after he did a head count he realized what. “Where did Marko and Lizela sneak off to now?”
“Oh, you know them,” Serin laughed. “Always looking for a little alone time.”
“Maybe when you finish that bowl, you go beat the bushes and let them know it’s supper time. I don’t want them out after dark.” Kaligos was worried about something even though he shouldn’t be, and it wasn’t hard to think of what. The blood-red sunset made it impossible not to think about what he’d seen on the tower’s top floor, and that wasn’t doing anything for his appetite or his sense of inner peace.
“Oh - well, they aren’t out there. Too many bugs.” As Serin spoke, he gestured broadly to the horizon with a spoon. “Marko decided to have a look at her underground passage… I mean the tower’s
passage.” The big man blushed at the slip of his tongue. “You heard about that, right? About the trap door?”
“I vaguely recall telling everyone not to wander off alone…” Kaligos said, his annoyance rising.
“Well, they ain’t alone, are they? They’re…” Serin stopped and stood. He wasn’t the sharpest sword of the group, but he could see when he was about to get himself in trouble. “You know what - let me just go and fetch those two love birds right up.”
After that, they were down to six by the fire, and one of those six was the bard, who was strumming his lute quietly while he apparently tried to find the right rhyming word for ambush. Once the sound of the trapdoor on the bottom floor being opened and the tromp of Serin’s big boots on the stairs faded, it was a lovely night - peaceful even. A few minutes later, though, that peace was shattered by a yell from inside the tower and the sound of running. “Captain! Captain!” Serin bellowed, rushing back up the stairs. “I think you need to get down here. I think everyone with a sword needs to get down here right gods damned now!”
Kaligos took the kettle off the fire and picked up his sword, leaning against the tower wall not far from him. “You heard the man. Everybody finish up and get ready for anything.” Normally he’d chastise one of his men for overstepping like this, but Serin didn’t scare easy, so if he came back up in a wide-eyed panic, there was a problem. “What did you see down there?”
“It’s not… I c-can’t…” Serin stammered, “I think maybe you should see for yourself.” He was obviously shaken, but Kaligos wasn’t inclined to doubt him.
“Alright. I’ll do that.” Kaligos said grimly, “You break out the torches, get ’em lit and start passing them out.” Then he went inside himself and started walking down alone into the dark. The void beckoned, and Kaligos could feel the evil on the humid breeze from the yawning dark, but he could feel the love of his god too, and that was enough. With a thought and a silent prayer, the holy man lit his sword in a glowing holy light that was brighter than any torch, and he started walking. He soon saw what had Serin so spooked.
The tunnel stank of death and the tunnels were built in such a way that they weren’t quite human. Nothing was plumb. Nothing was completely level, and nothing was straight. This was the work of something dark and monstrous - but the hard limestone the tunnels were dug through ruled out green skins or lizards. Nothing like that would have the steel or the patience to dig a structure like this. In the minute or so he’d been walking, the hallway that Kaligos was walking down had already split and divided half a dozen times, and never at right angles. This place was neither a warren nor a cellar - it was a maze built with no apparent purpose.
Kaligos inhaled, ready to call out for Marko to pull his pants up and get out of there, but that’s when he saw the blood. It was fresh, and there was enough of it to tell the story of what happened here. At least one of the lovebirds lay dead or dying somewhere down here. He could see torches approaching him in the dark now. The rest of the company would be here soon, and he’d have to have answers for them, but honestly, he had no idea what they should be. The right answer was to follow the trail of smeared blood and save their friends or take their revenge, but the further he walked into these dark halls, the more every fiber of Kaligos’ being told him that they should leave. Not after a search. Not after they’d packed or at first light. They should leave right now and count themselves lucky for having escaped.
A leader couldn’t tell his people to run away and abandon their friends, though. Not when they’d already lost good people today.
Once they had regrouped, they talked about it. A few, including their bard, had voted to leave and burn the place down, but he didn’t get a vote among a company of equals like the Unwritten Rule. So they followed the trail of blood and broken fingernails that led off of what Kaligos had come to think of as the main passage before splitting up. They split into two teams of four, with Von Wandren in charge of the other group. He could be unreliable at times, but right now, everyone could see that he was just itching to burn down whatever it was that they found.
The tense silence didn’t last much longer. Kaligos spotted a silhouette moving at the edge of his light and had Teryn and Grim put a couple arrows in it; the screaming started from somewhere behind them. The holy man didn’t let that distract him as he noticed that not only did the arrows do nothing to the creature that was very slowly approaching, but that others seemed to be closing in behind it.
“Zombies,” he spat in disgust. True evil had a face, and it was a face that was very slowly decaying. “Come on - let’s get back to the other group and see if we can stay ahead of these slowpokes. No need to fight what we can outwalk.” Kaligos tried to put a brave face on it, but he was worried. Who knew how many of these abominations were tucked away down here or even how long they’d been here.
The way back was easy, and when two zombies suddenly appeared from a side passage, his glowing claymore made quick work of their heads, but Kaligos was already regretting his choice of weapon. If they got boxed in, the thing would be less than useless, and the further they went, the more shuffling and moaning they could hear down the side corridors. Once their group had returned to where they’d split up, Kaligos called out, “Wizard - where in the hells are you!” There was no response to that or the follow-up calls he made, so, in the end, he had to rely on his sense of smell, leading his team to the smell of burning that became visible as smoke after only a few more turns.
“Show’s over,” he said, walking into the room. “Grab your wounded, and let’s get out of here before we’re…” The words died in his throat. This wasn’t a battlefield - it was a last stand. Even as they rushed into the room to try to save the other half of their team, they found only pieces of them mixed with pieces of the enemy they’d died fighting. It was a charnel house, and just looking at the scattered viscera and the violent end it implied made Kaligos gag. He turned to block the doorway and keep his remaining men, but the fop Solovino was too close behind, and his eyes went wide at the awful sight before he ran off into the darkness screaming.
“Solovino - get back here!” Kaligos yelled, but the bard was beyond listening, but more importantly, he was heading the wrong way.
“Want me to chase him down, boss?” Teryn asked, looking pale as he tried to keep it together. “There’s about 15 royals running away in terror right there.”
“Hang the money. We’re leaving while we still can,” the holy man said, turning around and leading them back toward the staircase. There was nothing left down here worth dying for.
Kaligos cursed himself on the way back. He cursed himself for deciding to stay the night in this tower. He cursed himself for not listening to Von Wandren, and most of all, he cursed himself for not listening to his gut while it screamed at him all through dinner. If Marko and his minx wanted to die as kinkily as they’d lived, that was between them and their gods. All Kaligos wanted to do was live to fight another day. Fighting was something they couldn’t escape, though, and by the time they got back to the main hall, they found it clogged with another dozen zombies, including the one with two arrows in its chest.
That meant that they were surrounded now, but that fact would only become more obvious as the minutes passed and the noose closed tighter. Kaligos did something he hadn’t done in a long time, and he beseeched his god for aid, “Lord of blood and battle - smite this wickedness from the face of creation,” he cried out, holding his claymore not as a cleaver, but as the cross that it was in the face of evil. The light of his sword shone brighter for a moment, and the two zombies closest to him crumbled to dust before they could reach him.
The rest froze or backed off a few steps as they recoiled from the light, and Kaligos pressed his advantage, beheading one as he tried to break through. If they could just force their way past these last few, then they could reach the stairs and flee long enough to return with a cadre of real templars to deliver proper vengeance for the fallen. He could hear his last two men fighting their own battles behind him, but it didn’t sound good. He was no mage, able to cast spell after spell, and his faith was no match for the darkness of this place. Reluctantly he let go of his sword that was stuck in the body of one of the bloated corpses before him and pulled out his last axe.
If they were going to die on this spot, then they were going to die fighting.