She dragged two logs from the pile and cast them on the coals. As the fire blazed up she took the ladle in hand and began stirring the stew within the cauldron.
Lokar watched for a moment and then moved to the table and sat idling with dark tiles of some sort, and he continued to tell her just what she was to do: “And then you can use your tongue and. .”
Celeste refused to listen, and even as she stirred, the ladle struck something hard, and then it surfaced.
What’s this? A row of teeth glinted in the lantern light, and then rolled in the stew, and bone was revealed. Is that someone’s jaw? Oh, Mithras, it is! It is a jaw! Celeste cast a glance at the litter of splintered bones beyond the woodpile. Human! They are all human bones. Or if not human, then humanlike.
“. . but in my pleasure I made the mistake of grabbing her, and. .” Celeste looked at the Ogre and gritted her teeth. I’ve got to find a way to stop this monster.
As Lokar continued to idle with the tiles, he went on talking of being pleasured.
“Are those pips?” asked Celeste.
Lokar looked up from the tiles. “Do you know the game?”
“My brothers and I play at times.”
“As I eat,” said Lokar, “you will be my opponent and learn that I am a master at pips. Then afterward you will delight me.”
As Celeste stirred the cauldron, using the ladle much the same as if she were plying an oar, her mind raced: Mithras, but how will I avoid “pleasuring” him?
Then she remembered an ancient fable, and she struck on a plan. “Have you any wine?” she asked in all innocence. “I would flavor the stew.” Once again Roel climbed a ridge, up the near side and down the far. And in the stony vale beyond he moved along the slot, first one way and then the other, and he swept back and forth; this time he found nought.
He crossed back over the ridge and climbed the fold opposite. And there an impression of a gigantic toe in a low swale pointed the way. He followed as soon as he had retrieved the horses, for he and Celeste might have to flee upon the mounts, once he had rescued her. . or so was his intention.
“Aha!” roared Lokar. “Again I win.”
“You are a master indeed,” said Celeste, “but I think I will win the next one.”
“Pah, woman! Do. . do you. . do you not by now understand I am far and away your s-superior?” Celeste pointed at the great, foot-long tiles and said,
“We shall see, Lokar. We shall see. Shuffle the tiles while I pour more wine and refresh your bowl.” Lokar had eaten nearly the entire cauldron of stew, including crunching through long bones for the marrow, and through spines for the matter within, and he had drunk almost an entire cowhide full of wine. Groggily, he pushed the facedown tiles around on the table, while Celeste used one of the huge cups rather like a bucket to fill Lokar’s wine goblet to the brim and then hefted more meat-and-bone stew into his great bowl.
Roel despaired, for the sun had set, and in spite of the light of the nearly full moon and that of the lantern he bore, he could not find the subtle signs of spoor. He sighed and finally made camp at the last trace of track that he had found. He unladed the steeds and curried and watered and fed them and took a meal of his own, though he had no appetite. Even so, he knew he needed to eat, for that was one of the lessons of war: eat when you can, and rest when you can, for you never know when the opportunity will come again.
Lokar pushed back his chair and wobbled to his bed.
“Now you will pleasure me,” he slurred as he shed the animal hides clothing him and stood naked and filthy and blearily looked down at Celeste. And then he fell backwards onto the mattress and immediately began to snore, his feet yet on the rough cavern floor.
Though his manhood hung limp, Celeste gasped at the monstrous thing. Mithras, had he tried to bed me, I would be lying dead.
She stepped to the woodpile and took up a sturdy billet, and then walked back to the bed and set it down.
Then back to the fire pit she went, and drew her long knife and shoved the blade into the red coals. Then she dragged one of the empty cauldrons over to the bed and upended it to use as a step to reach the mattress. Next, she upended a cook pot to use as a stool to climb onto the cauldron. With her stair built, she picked up the billet of wood and clambered up onto the cot. Across a blanket crawling with vermin she went, and she laid the wood down near Lokar’s head.
Back off the mattress she climbed and went to the fire, and there she withdrew her long-knife from the coals, the two-foot-long blade radiant with heat.
Swiftly she ran across the floor and scrambled up onto the cook pot and then the cauldron and finally the bed; across the blanket she trod, where she took up the wooden billet and moved to stand at Lokar’s cheek.
The Ogre yet snored.
Celeste positioned the point of the long-knife just in front of his right eye, and angled the blade, and raised the billet. . and hesitated. Of a sudden, the Ogre ceased snoring, and he opened his eyes, and gasped.
With sharp blow of the wooden billet Celeste drove the red-hot blade through Lokar’s eye and into his brain, the blade sizzling as it was quenched in his head.
The Ogre cried out and lurched up and fell back, and then his air left him in one long sigh, and he breathed no more. And his bladder and bowels loosed, and liquid and slurry splashed to the floor, and a great stench filled the chamber.
Gagging in the stink of urine and feces and burning flesh, Celeste reeled hindward, and turned and fled and scrambled down from the bed. Even as her feet touched the floor, she retched again and again. . but no vomit came, only a thin, yellowish bile.
And she wept, for she had never before slain someone in his sleep or even in near sleep and perhaps would never do so again, no matter how vile.
Still sobbing, she strode to the great boulder block shy;
ing the exit. And there she confirmed that she could not squeeze past it to the outside. Nor could she roll it aside.
Along with his massive corpse, she was trapped in the Ogre’s cave.
23
Escape
Celeste stepped to the woodpile and took up a length of sturdy limb to use as a lever, and she bore it back to the boulder blocking the door. She set one end in between the edge of the massive stone and the cavern wall and pried with all of her might. . to no avail.
Next she sat with her back to the wall and placed her feet against the limb, and braced as she was, she tried to use her leg strength to roll the boulder. The limb flexed, but the boulder moved not.
Perhaps if I had a fulcrum. .
She fetched a thick billet from the woodpile, and as close to the boulder as she could lodge it, she jammed the log upright between limb and wall. She moved to the far end of her improvised lever and pushed with all of her strength, trying to nudge the weight away. .
again to no avail.
With tears of frustration blurring her vision, she walked back into the cavern, and wiping her eyes, she examined the walls for a crevice or rift that would lead to freedom, but she found nought.
Taking a burning brand from the fire, she peered into the well. . and water glimmered some forty or fifty feet below. Yet it stood still. It does not flow; hence perhaps is not a stream leading out from this prison.
Up at the smoke hole above she looked, and then examined the walls and the ceiling leading that way, but she saw no cracks or protrusions by which she could reach that cleft without climbing aids.
All I have is ten feet of rope- No, wait, there is also the rope on the well bucket. Even so, I have no pitons or jams, hence no way up unless I can improvise.
Celeste moved to the trunk at the foot of the Ogre’s cot. She studied it a moment, and then stepped back to her improvised stair and climbed up. Holding her breath, for here the stench was strongest, she climbed up and onto the bed and strode past the corpse and to the chest.