“Yes!” the creature hissed in despair, “That is our fate! But have you come to speak, or to die, mortal.”
“Neither.”
“By damnation’s ghost!”
Montague bared his sword and lunged at the creature, but it disappeared into the darkness, vanishing into nothing.
“We will meet again,” Montague whispered, “And I will not regret the day I die.”
With that, he returned to the soldiers he had left behind. They remained together, unwilling to part in the desolate, earthen Hades. Instead, they sat in a circle, facing outwards with their lanterns in one hand and their swords in the other. Montague had been gone for an hour.
“I am back,” he said as he come up to them, “What have you seen, that you are so terrified?”
“We have seen nothing, but a multitude of footsteps passed around us for several minutes, then suddenly stopped and silence fell down once more. We ventured out to look and found gnarled footsteps in the dust of the floor, covering our own. What is more, we found a stone tablet lying on the floor – there are esoteric figures upon it, though we cannot read them,” and the soldier handed him a smooth, rectangular stone.
On one side there were hieroglyphic letters – not symbols, but actual letters written in complicated picture forms. For a moment, Montague was silent and his face knotted. He was a student of ancient languages and this was a script older than all others, from which the lesser alphabets had descended. So, combining the aspects of several scripts, he was able to read the tablet. He read aloud:
In the name of Uranos, by whom the trident of the nations will be sunk to the nether lands of Hades. The Pillars of Heracles has been sunk, and with it the gods of men. The Garden of Hesperides has been sunk, and with it the men of gods. Soon, the third and final remnant of the ancient world will be destroyed. Just as Eden was overrun by evil and sank, so will it be. Just as Atlantis was conquered by the Titans and sank, so will it become. The trident of the nations will pierce Hades.
Montague looked up from the tablet with a light in his eyes: the light of revelation.
“We must return at once!” he said, “For Gylain must hear of this. Perhaps his forebodings were not as unjustified as I feared. The three lands of paradise, corrupted and destroyed! He must know,” and Montague trembled.
“Look, my lord, over there!” a soldier cut his thoughts in two, “There are lights, as if lanterns.”
Montague smiled. “Put out the lanterns!” and they were plunged into darkness. “We have been seen,” he said after a moment, “For the other lanterns have faded as well. Arm yourselves, for they come!”
But he did not finish, for his voice was overrun by the sound of approaching footsteps.
Chapter 69
“How are there so many footsteps?” de Garcia whispered. “Does Montague have an entire army behind him? This cannot bode well for us.”
“To the contrary,” Patrick said with a stolid lip, “For if it is an army, it is not his. Whoever they serve, they are as contrary to Montague as to us and therefore must be used to our advantage. Let us hide ourselves.”
“Very well,” Willard said, “But prepare for action nonetheless – we may be enemies of Montague in Atilta, but in France we are countrymen.”
“A noble sentiment,” Patrick said, “But Atilta is more than the men who inhabit it; it was before, and it will be after. Besides, do common hardships erase a wicked past? No, I say, and geography does not make evil into goodness.”
“Leggitt and de Garcia stand here together,” Willard answered. “If they, why not another?”
“Yet Montague is no man,” Leggitt whispered, hardly concealing the feeling with which he spoke, “No man, but a bloody devil!”
“I am no different, for I have more than one man’s blood to my account,” de Garcia paused and looked to Ivona. “And a woman’s as well.”
“Love does away with fear: for fear expects punishment, while love is forgiving,” Ivona said. “My heart is not hardened toward your past transgressions, de Garcia, nor is my mind.”
The old, veteran killer was a child in emotion. “My lady, you know what I have done?”
“I do, since childhood.”
“And yet you do not disdain me? In the catapult, that night we first met, you smiled at me in innocence – and your smile cut me more than the whips of the jailers. Did you know, at that moment, consciously?”
“I did.”
De Garcia moaned and was visibly pained. “I am the devil incarnate.”
“No, and I neither judge nor condemn you. A convict cannot despise his fellow prisoners, can he?”
“But you are neither guilty nor convicted! Your mother’s blood was spilled by these very hands,” and he held his hardened, plate-mail hands before him. He paused to combat his tears, but when they did not retreat, he continued. “And yet you drink my cup, and call yourself guilty? May it never be!” De Garcia wept. “Listen, the footsteps have been replaced with the clashing of swords. If I remain here, I am dead within and to be killed without. Let us deliver Montague from whatever creatures steal the silence.”
Before the others could object, de Garcia charged toward the clamor coming from further within the massive chamber. They followed him, willingly or not, into the melee. It was still too dark to see what was taking place before them, but as they drew near the chamber suddenly burst into light, coming from a multitude of fire-buckets hanging from the lofty ceiling.
In the light, the chamber was suddenly dispossessed of its damning demeanor. The ceiling stood fifty feet from the floor and both were crafted entirely from the mountain’s native stone. Carved murals adorned the walls in the same fashion as the previous hall, but they were proportional to the room’s size and therefore much larger. In its entirety, the chamber was circular; but it was divided into three distinct sections: the first was a semi-circle beside the hallway to the outside, and the last section was its symmetric partner with a tunnel leading to some other portion of the mountain’s chest. The central division was square, however, with a stout pillar in its center that formed a wall, in which stood a double-hung stone door. This central island blocked either party from seeing the other, until they came out at right angles and converged their lines of sight.
“Forward,” de Garcia called back to the others, “We can see our enemy, so let us overcome him.”
Indeed, the mysterious footsteps were no longer shrouded in mystery. Montague and his five men were huddled into a tight circle, surrounded on every side by a horde of terrible creatures, similar in appearance to the one Montague had conversed with. They wielded tridents, using two hands and thrusting them like spears. Amid the tumult the approaching party was not observed until they chose to join the battle.
When that moment came, de Garcia unfurled himself to his full height, drew his sword, flourished it above his head, and bellowed in a deep, throaty voice, “Montague, we have come to rescue you!” Then he cut into the creature nearest him, removing his head with a single, clean stroke. The body fell left, the head right, and the latter split in two – an intricate mask and an ordinary human skull.
“No one desires your rescuing,” Montague called over the din, though his men were clearly being overcome. As they grew tired, their circle collapsed foot by foot.
“And yet we give it,” Willard returned. “Prepare to receive it!” and he thrust his sword into one of the strangely attired men.
Nearly a hundred men fought behind the strange masks, but when de Garcia and his comrades charged they were sent into confusion. They could not see at first how many the newcomers were, nor where they had come from. Above the clash of steel could be heard their shrill cries, articulated in some strange tongue, though their fear was evident in any language. One of them – more prominently built than his fellows – formed them into a tight company and retreated to the chamber wall. Once there, they fled precipitously; but the lights were extinguished at that moment and their destination could not be guessed.