Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

CHAPTER 1
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Silence Carved in Stone
    Duncan MacNeil reined in his horse and looked around him. Narrow shafts of golden sunlight pierced the Forest gloom, shining down through the occasional gaps in the overhead canopy. Tall trees stood close together on either side of the beaten trail, their branches heavy with the summer’s greenery. The hot, muggy air was thick with the scent of earth and leaf and bark. A handful of birds sang in the higher branches, warning the creatures of the wild that man was moving through the Forest.
    MacNeil stirred impatiently in his saddle. After two weeks’ hard traveling, the Forest’s charms had begun to pall. In fact, MacNeil was beginning to think he could live quite happily if he never saw another tree again. He glanced back down the trail, but there was still no sign of the rest of his party. MacNeil scowled. He hated being kept waiting. He looked at the trail ahead, but the tightly packed trees cut short his view. MacNeil signaled his horse to move on again at a slow pace. The border fort couldn’t be far ahead, and he was itching to take his first look at it.
    The Forest moved slowly by him, his horse’s steady muffled hoofbeats sounding loud and clear in the quiet. The birds slowly stopped singing, and no game moved in the surrounding shadows. MacNeil dropped one hand to the sword at his side and eased the blade in its scabbard. Everything seemed peaceful, but he didn’t believe in taking unnecessary chances. His gaze fell on a clump of dead trees to his left. They were twisted and hollow, eaten away from within by decay. The gnarled branches were bare, the bark mottled with lichen. Even after ten years there were still parts of the Forest that had never recovered from the long night.
    The trees fell suddenly away to either side of him, and MacNeil jerked his horse to a halt at the edge of a clearing. He leaned forward in his saddle, shading his watering eyes against the bright sunlight, and smiled slowly. Square in the middle of the huge clearing stood the border fort, a vast stone edifice with two massive iron-bound doors and only a series of arrow slits for windows. MacNeil looked the fort over carefully. The two doors were firmly shut, and there was no trace of movement anywhere in or around the fort. The great stone walls brooded silently and enigmatically in the late afternoon sunshine.
    MacNeil sat back in his saddle and frowned thoughtfully. There were no guards at the doors, and no one walked the high battlements. There were no flags flying, no pennants at the watchtowers, and no smoke curled up from the dozen or more chimney pots. If there was anyone in the fort, they were going to great pains to hide the fact. MacNeil looked back over his shoulder. There was still no sign of the rest of his party. He looked back at the fort, scowling unhappily. Normally he’d have more sense than to get so far ahead of his own people, but this business with the border fort worried him, and the sooner he got to grips with it, the better he’d feel.
    There was a storm coming. He could feel it. Dark clouds were gathering in the sky, and the air had been close and muggy all day. MacNeil looked up at the lowering sky and cursed mildly. He had planned to look the fort over thoroughly from the outside and then spend the night in the Forest, but all the signs suggested it was going to be a filthy night. And MacNeil had no intention of sleeping on muddy ground in a thunderstorm when there were comfortable beds to be had close at hand. He and his team had spent too many nights in the field of late, and this summer had to be the wettest he’d ever known.
    He stretched slowly and eased himself in the saddle. Somehow he’d thought the border fort would look more impressive, given the commotion it had caused at court. The panic had begun when it was discovered the fort hadn’t communicated with the outside world in almost a month. No messengers, no carrier pigeons, nothing. The king sent messengers to the fort. None of them ever returned. Magicians and sorcerers tried to make mental contact with the fort, but some kind of barrier kept them out. The king listened to all the reports and grew steadily more worried. This particular fort lay on the border between the Forest Kingdom and its neighbor, the Duchy of Hillsdown. It had always been a disputed boundary, even to the point of war, and in the chaos that had followed the long night, Hillsdown had made several attempts to settle the