Darendarr Deldragon went white and said a very dirty word. His hand shot up to stroke his flaxen mustache, as unnecessarily as always.
"Come!" said Taeauna, clapping him on the shoulder. "Leave the battle here to your knights; someone else can rally them in the Warhorn Chamber. Bring two of your best blades, and show me a way down into the cellars that isn't already full of Dark Helms!" She waved at the passage full of fighting, hacking, and dying men in bright armor and in dark. It was a. hopeless tangle of shouting combatants, heaped corpses, and the sagging or writhing dying.
The velduke stared at her for a moment, shaking his head. Then he bit his lip, whirled around, and bellowed, "Tarsil! Amandur! Belros! To me!"
"Lord, I come!" someone shouted, through the din, and "Lord!" someone else echoed; Rod saw a tall knight pushing through the milling Bowrock knights from one direction, and two armsmen doing the same from another.
The knight got there first. "Lord?"
"Tarsil," Deldragon snapped, "take command here. Try to hold the Helms, and have the archers save their shafts for any lorn they see. If many lorn break past you, or the Dark Helms press, fall back to the Warhorn Chamber and make a stand there. Do it!"
"Lord!" Tarsil acknowledged with a bow, and the velduke clapped him on the arm and turned to the two armsmen.
"Amandur, Belros! Come, out of this! With me! We're going hunting!"
Deldragon waved to Taeauna, and she nodded, ducked around some trotting Bowrock armsmen, and sprinted across the passage, Rod right behind her, and the velduke and his two armsmen right behind Rod.
The Aumrarr plunged into a side-passage that seemed, by the smell, to lead past kitchens, and slowed for the others to catch her up. "Darendarr, if you wanted to get back down to the well-chamber but not take yon passage, all choked with Dark Helms, which way would you take? And is there a goodly choice, or only a few routes?"
Deldragon shook his head ruefully. "There are dozens. My great grandsire did not build this keep with thoughts of defending it floor-by-floor, up or down, in mind. Do you think haste on our part is most important, or descending by a way least likely to meet with our foes repeatedly, along the way?"
"The back way," Taeauna snapped. "As 'back' as you can fashion for us, lord. We must not get buried in lorn or Dark Helms before we find that gate!"
The velduke nodded. "Then this way!" he said, darting into another passage and starting to run. They all plunged after him. Rod kept his sword in its sheath and devoted himself to just running; he suspected he was going to be rushing around in dark stone hallways for quite some time.
Almost immediately Deldragon saw something ahead that made him snarl a startled curse and duck through a door into a very dark room. Wrenching open a door on its far wall, he led them out into a narrower, dimly lit passage, growling, "Getting more and more 'back' as we go. 'Ware! Stairs down!"
Then he seemed to plunge into the floor and disappear.
Enthusiastically, everyone followed, Rod running hard to keep up and frowning as he caught hold of an aging iron railing and swung himself around and down, plunging deeper into the stone roots of the velduke's keep.
From what he'd seen thus far, all Galathans seemed to be in a very great hurry to get themselyes killed.
The great cleaver had hewn through boar and oxen many a time, but boar and oxen seldom wore armor.
So when the furious cook swinging that cleaver puffed his way around a corner, snarling out obscenities as fast as he could breathe, and came face to face with a trio of chuckling Dark Helms, the hard-swung cleaver rebounded from the black breastplate of the foremost warrior, ringing in protest and trailing sparks.
Boar and oxen seldom thrust swords at a cook, either.
The head cook of Deldragon's keep would then have perished swiftly indeed if a second wave of Dark Helms hadn't charged out of a side-passage beyond the grinning trio, roaring triumphal roars, and thrust forth a forest of gleaming blades that forced the incongruously bosomed Garfist Gulkoon to desperately windmill his arms into a wild, skidding stop.
Spitting out fervent curses of his own, Garfist tried to turn and flee back the way he'd come and blundered right into the backs of the trio of Dark Helms menacing the cook, sending them toppling and sprawling helplessly.
They shouted in fear. So did the cook whose cries doubled in volume and fervency a moment later, when his seven undercooks and scullions ran right into his backside, hurling him helplessly forward atop the three Dark Helms.
Whom Garfist shed like a cloak of tumbling men as he burst out and upwards from beneath all the wallowing, flailing bodies, to lumber away down a thankfully empty passage, gaining speed as he went. The boar carcass, looking a little more ragged and worn, still trailed behind his large and hairy left hand.
No sooner had he vanished into the distant darkness than Iskarra "Vipersides" burst into view out of the passage he'd turned back from, running hard and panting harder.
"Old blundering ox," she gasped, "you'll be the glorking death of me yet!"
The wave of Dark Helms who'd set Garfist to flight were butchering their way enthusiastically through the kitchen staff and the trio of their fellow Dark Helms alike, gleefully hewing a clear path forward. They promptly tried to make Iskarra's breathless observation true, reaching for her with their blades.
She leaped forward into a somersault under those swords, yanking a hairpin out of her hair in mid-tumble, and sprinted off down the passage after Garfist.
The few surviving cooks and scullions, shrieking for all they were worth, pelted after her. A flood of Dark Helms ran after them, slashing and stabbing at the air, and as they caught up to each kitchen, worker in turn, they butchered screaming, sweating flesh, too.
As cook after cook was loudly murdered behind her, Iskarra ran on, hoping the Dark Helms now pursuing her weren't spellguarded against skaekur. If fair fortune was with her for once, she'd not have to find out, but fair fortune so seldom rode escort with her these days that…
Her pessimism was promptly proved well founded. She came to a passage-moot at last, and had to stop to peer wildly, trying to see which of the three diverging ways Garfist had taken.
He'd turned down the last passage she shot a glare along, of course. Looking took just enough time that the foremost Dark Helms pounced before she could get started down that passage, roaring hloodthirstily and hacking at her like woodcutters impatient to split kindling.
Iskarra flung herself at their ankles, tripping one into his fellows. That took two black-armored warriors to the floor and left a third clawing his way free of them, off balance and with sword swinging wildly to try to regain his footing.
Iskarra sprang up from the floor like a leaping frog to crash into his chest with both bony knees and stab his face repeatedly with her hairpin. The Dark Helm went down hard on his back, shouting, and she bounced up from his chest to her feet and sprinted hard down the passage after Garfist with the Helm's shouting dying into slurred gurgles in her wake.
Three or more Dark Helms, by the sounds of running boots, were right on her heels, after her like hounds.
"Gar!" she shouted. "Gar?"
There was a lantern somewhere around a corner to the left, ahead in the passage; its light was spilling out along the walls and ceiling in the distance. Iskarra ran toward it as hard as she could, almost winded now, panting raggedly, wondering if she'd tire enough that they'd catch up to her in the open passage and hack her down from behind, too.
She could hear a lot more boots, running behind her closest pursuers, now. Great. How many Dark Helms does it take to kill one ragged, slightly tipsy, seen-brighter-days woman?
"Gar… fist," she gasped angrily, reeling around a corner. "I sure hope you… went this… way."