In The Shadow Of The Beast by Harlan H Howard Read Free Book Online Page B

Isolde’s room in the dead of night for a
chance to lie with her. Now, surrounded by all this madness, it was
a tall task to negotiate the corridors with any certainty let alone
pick one door from another. But Sigourd was fairly certain he’d
arrived at the right place, and besides which he didn’t have the
luxury of time to mull it over.
    He swung open the door and ducked inside,
relieved to be out of the corridor and its choking effluent. He
called out, ‘Isolde!?’ but no answer came.
    Instead, what greeted him was the sight of a
room turned over. Not by any explosive shaking of the castle, but
as if a struggle had taken place. Clothes and furniture were
sprawled about the room in a manner that indicated someone had
deliberately been searching Isolde’s possessions, casting them
carelessly about the place as they went.
    Sigourd looked for any sign of Isolde, but
there was nothing to provide any clues as to her whereabouts. And
then it came; a faint chirruping from under a pile of discarded
clothes.
    Moving to the noise Sigourd pulled at the
pile until revealed beneath it there lay a bird cage, fallen on its
side, and within it Isolde’s pretty little nightingale.
    The bird fluttered about inside the cage,
fearful of the gathering heat and smoke.
    The young lord reached down to pick the cage
up, lifting it from the floor so that he might peer through it at
the frightened creature inside, ‘Where did she go eh, my little
friend?’
    The bird was something Isolde said she had
picked up last summer, won in a carnival sometime before she’d
arrived at the castle. She’d brought it here with her and the
creature seemed now to view her as its surrogate mother. Whenever
she was inclined to let it out of the cage, the bird would alight
upon her, like some saint that was beloved by the creatures of the
world, the bird would flitter and flutter about Isolde in a way
that was remarkable to witness.
    ‘ We cannot stay here,
lord,’ came a voice from behind Sigourd, who turned to see Cal
standing in the choking darkness of the doorway. The old rogue
stepped inside the room and closed the door, looking about the
place at the obvious struggle that had taken place there, ‘we must
think of your safety, lord.’
    ‘ What are you doing here
Cal?’ asked Sigourd.
    Cal winked, that playful, damnable gleam
flickering in his eye that was so much a part of his charm.
    ‘ Come now lad, you didn’t
think your dalliances with the raven haired lass were going to stay
secret from old Cal did you? When this shit storm came down and I
couldn’t find you I figured there’d only be one place you’d go
first.’
    ‘ You should leave, it’s too
dangerous here.’
    ‘ Leave!’ exclaimed the old
soldier in shocked disbelief, ‘I’d sooner leave both my arms on the
battlefield than leave your side lord.’
    Nodding, Sigourd turned his attention to the
fluttering nightingale once more, reached up to unfasten the
delicate latch on the door to the cage. He pulled that tiny door
open, and in an instant the little bird had darted from the cage,
zipping across the room to alight on the mantle above an old brick
fireplace.
    It hopped and danced there, chirruping all
the while.
    ‘ Odd little bugger,’ said
Cal.
    But Sigourd had noticed something inside the
fireplace, toward the back where old soot and grime coated
everything. Parchments, thrown casually onto the floor near the
foot of the fireplace were fluttering ever so slightly, as if
stirred by the gentlest of breezes.
    Sigourd crouched down to better see the
source of the draught, and was able to see that the back of the
fireplace was actually a carefully concealed hatchway that rose up
the inside of the chimney, about half the height of a man.
    Cal crouched beside his lord, craning his
neck to better study this new discovery.
    ‘ I’ll be, I haven’t seen
one of these in quite some time,’ said Cal.
    ‘ You mean there are more of
these hidden doorways?’ asked Sigourd.
    ‘ The