“I do so like the sky for my ceiling,” the halfling whispered.
“One-eye!” came an echoing cry from somewhere in the distance, followed quickly by the ring of steel, and then a guttural grunt, followed soon by a Fairborn voice claiming, “They are in here still!”
“Siobhan!” Oliver called softly, trying hard to backtrack. He went through an archway, but every direction looked the same. “Left breast, right breast, down the middle, damn the rest,” Oliver chanted, pointing in each direction. Then, as Gascon tradition demanded, the halfling went the way of the last “Damn the rest.”
He heard more sounds of battle, individuals clashing but nothing large-scale. The cyclopians were indeed in here, hiding separately, looking to ambush.
Oliver went left at the next low arch, then, thinking he recognized the area as the entry foyer, came around a corner with a bright smile, expecting to see only the stairs leading back to the main floor of the cathedral.
His light was immediately swallowed by a pair of forms too large to be Fairborn, too wide to be Katerin.
The halfling squeaked and thrust forth his rapier, trying to get his lantern to the floor that he might draw out his main gauche. He thought that his slender blade would surely get the closest foe, but the form moved with the perfect balance and grace of a pure warrior, smoothly and deftly dodging.
Oliver thought he was about to die, but the shine of skin as the foe came around was ruddy and tan, not the grayish hue more common to one-eyes, and this opponent had two eyes—cinnamon-colored eyes.
“Luthien,” Oliver began, but stopped short as he realized his error.
“Watch that blade, fool!” Ethan Bedwyr snarled, gingerly turning aside the still-poking rapier.
“What are you doing here?”
“I was told that Katerin had come in here,” Ethan replied softly. “I promised my brother that I would watch over her.”
A sly grin came over Oliver. “Your brother?” he asked.
Ethan had no time for such semantic games. He motioned to two other Huegoth companions who were still on the stairs, indicating that they should go to the right, then he and his immediate companion set off straight ahead.
Oliver bent down to retrieve his lantern and replace the main gauche on his belt, only to find himself alone once more. He looked to the stairs, tempted to go back up, but then he heard another cry from somewhere in the distance, a voice he recognized.
Siobhan and one Fairborn companion went down a dozen steps and turned a sharp corner, putting the sounds of the others far behind, then dared to crawl under a tiny door, no more than three-feet-square, barely large enough to admit a large cyclopian. The tunnel beyond was not much larger than the entrance, and the pair had to bend low, even crawling at points to continue along.
The darkness was complete, even to the sensitive eyes of the Fairborn, forcing Siobhan to light a hand lamp, a tiny lantern she had used often in her days as a housebreaker in Morkney-controlled Montfort.
She motioned for her companion, who was leading, to move on.
Finally, they came out into a higher area, the oldest catacombs in all the cathedral. Open crypts faced them from every wall, displaying the tattered skeletal remains of the first priests and abbots in Carlisle, perhaps in all of Avonsea. Most were lying on their back, but some, in more ornate crypts, were seated upon stone thrones.
Siobhan worked hard to steady her breathing as she noted one ancient corpse beside her, sitting tall and proud through the centuries, except that its skull was on the floor, probably the victim of hungry rats whose bones, too, were now likely resting in this place of death. The half-elf pulled her gaze away to see her companion bump his head hard on the curving ceiling of the next arch.
“Careful,” Siobhan whispered, but then she cried out as her companion turned about and toppled.
Even in the dim light of her hand lamp, Siobhan could see the bright blood spewing from the elf’s chest, which had been ripped from armpit to spinal cord.
Ahead of her stood the brutish cyclopian duke, that fabulous broadsword dripping elvish blood, Cresis’s ugly face twisted with the promise of death.
There had only been a single, distant cry, and yells were becoming more frequent with each passing moment as more and more of the hunters happened upon hiding cyclopians. But Oliver had never been more focused in all his life. His mind, his soul, had locked on to that single utterance, and the maze seemed to sort itself out before him as he darted along, daring to turn up the flame in his lantern that he might better see the breaks in the uneven floor.
He paused in one wider area to jab his rapier into the butt of a battling cyclopian. Then, seeing that his prod had distracted the brute enough to give its Fairborn opponent an insurmountable advantage, Oliver ran on.
He passed through one archway without a look to either side, replaying that cry in his head, following his instincts and his heart.
Katerin spotted him and called out, and she, Ethan, and a Huegoth came in close pursuit.
But they could not keep up with Oliver in these tight quarters. They reached the top of a broken and uneven staircase, angling downward, just after the halfling had entered the little hole at its bottom.
Only the ring of steel told them that they had come the right way.
Siobhan was an archer, among the finest shots in all of Avonsea. But she was no novice with the blade, as Duke Cresis soon discovered.
The brute thought it had her by surprise, and so its first attack was straight ahead, a thrust for the half-elf’s heart.
Out flashed a short sword, turning the brute’s blade minutely as the half-elf turned her own body. A clean miss, and Siobhan countered lightning-fast, rolling her wrist to launch her blade in a diagonal line at Cresis’s ugly face.
The brute fell back, stumbling over a block of stone into a wider area, the oldest altar in the ancient abbey.
Siobhan was fast to pursue, trying to press her advantage, but the same block of stone slowed her enough for the one-eye to steady its defenses.
“Duke Cresis?” Siobhan sneered.
Cresis snorted and did not bother to answer.
“I offer you the chance for surrender,” Siobhan bluffed, and she prayed that the obviously powerful one-eye would accept. “The city is ours; you have no place to run.”
“Then I will die with my sword in one hand and your head in the other!” the one-eye promised, and on Cresis came.
The broadsword flashed right, left, left again, and then straight down, the brute taking it up in both hands for the final attack. Siobhan parried and dodged, ducked low under the third swing and came up hard to meet the chop, her blade flat out over her head. She meant to catch the broadsword and turn it out wide, then step ahead, in close, and use the advantage of her much shorter sword in the tighter press.
Cresis’s swing was far too powerful for that maneuver, and Siobhan found her legs nearly buckling under the weight of that vicious overhead chop. Her finely forged elvish blade held firm, though, stopping the attack short of her head, and she rolled out to the side, stabbing twice in rapid succession as she went, scoring one slight hit on the cyclopian’s hip.
Cresis laughed at the minor wound and came in fast pursuit, thrusting his sword with every step. Siobhan danced desperately to keep out of the brute’s reach. She came up hard against the block of stone that had once been an altar, and Cresis, thinking her caught, forged ahead.
Siobhan’s balance was perfect as she went over the thigh-high block, falling prone on the other side as the cyclopian’s blade swished the air above her.
Cresis leaped over, but the agile half-elf was already gone, scrambling out one end and putting her feet back under her. She reversed direction immediately, regaining the offensive, snapping her smaller blade at the brute’s groin, then cutting it up so that Cresis’s down-angled sword missed the parry.