Forest Kingdom Trilogy 3 - Down Among the Dead Men

It’s very cold. And very hungry …”
    As if in response there came again a shrill neighing scream from deep in the earth, the vast, monstrous sound of an insane horse. The scream was brutally loud, and the three men clapped their hands to their ears in pain. The scream continued on and on and on, far beyond the point where any normal lungs could have sustained it, and then cut off as suddenly as it had begun. The echoes seemed to linger in the air for some time, but in the end even they fell silent. The three men slowly took their hands away from their ears. MacNeil looked at Hammer.
    “It’s time to draw the sword. The Device.”
    “No,” said Hammer. “Not yet.”
    “We need it!”
    “You don’t understand,” said Hammer tiredly. “You don’t understand at all.”
    In the cellar, Wilde sat on one of the piles of rubbish and swung his legs back and forth impatiently. He hated waiting. As long as he was doing something, anything, he was fine, but waiting gave his nerves the chance to work on him. He fiddled aimlessly with his longbow, checked the string was taut for the hundredth time, and let his hand drop again to the sword at his side.
    He looked across at Flint and the Dancer, sitting casually beside the trapdoor. The wait didn’t seem to be bothering them. They just sat together, talking quietly, their faces calm and easy. Wilde smiled slightly. Jessica never had been one for getting rattled. He remembered her standing on her own in a corner of the castle courtyard, waiting for the huge gates to open on the last great battle of the Demon War. She’d looked tall and splendid in her shining chain mail, her night-dark hair pulled back in an elaborately tied ponytail. Her face had been calm then, too, as she slowly and methodically sharpened the edge of her sword. He’d been pacing up and down and sweating buckets, half out of his mind with fear, but her poise and calm had shamed him into cooling down and recovering his composure. Her confidence had helped him find his. He’d never forgotten that.
    Now they were together once again, getting ready for another battle. The situation hadn’t changed much, but the people had. Him most of all. He sighed quietly and shrugged the memories from him. What was gone was gone, and best forgotten. He looked carefully at the Dancer. He’d always thought the man would be … bigger. After all, he was a Bladesmaster, one of the legendary perfect killers. No one knew exactly how many men the Dancer had killed in his time, there’d been so many, and yet seen up close he didn’t look much at all. Throw a stick into any tavern and you’d hit a dozen just like him. Wilde smiled slowly. Sir Guillam hadn’t looked like much either, but all the king’s guards hadn’t been enough to stop that Bladesmaster when he went berserk. They’d needed Wilde to do that. His smile died away as he stared at the Dancer. Ten years ago, he would have been sitting where the Dancer was now, smiling and talking with Jessica. Ten years ago, he’d had it all. He’d been a hero, and Jess had been proud to stand at his side. Now he was just another outlaw and the Dancer had taken his place with Jess.
    Wilde plucked the taut bowstring, feeling it thrum under his fingertips. There was power there, power to maim and kill and make the world go the way it ought to go. The odds were he’d be going into some kind of battle soon, and in all the excitement, who could possibly blame Wilde if one of his arrows happened to go just a little astray and shoot the damned Bladesmaster in the back? And with the Dancer out of the way, getting the gold away from the Rangers would be relatively easy. Wilde grinned happily. At the end of the day he would have it all again; a fortune in gold, his freedom from Hammer, and Jess back at his side where she belonged. He’d talk her into it; he’d always been able to talk her into anything.
    Constance leaned back against the cold stone wall and watched Wilde unobtrusively. Of all the three outlaws, Wilde worried her the most. Hammer was dangerous, but she could understand what drove him, even if he didn’t. Scarecrow Jack was obviously there only because he was under Hammer’s thumb. But Wilde … there was something disturbing about the quiet, scowling bowman. When he’d first spoken with Flint, there had been something almost sad and tragic about him, but now all Constance could see in his face was a harsh, pitiless brutality that made her wish for a