Date: Sun, 20 Jun 1999 19:11:41 EDT
From: Tommyhawk1@aol.com
Subject: Squire.of.Carlovain.Chapter.6

		     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.