Castle Murders

Nine Mill

She had wandered all afternoon without seeing signs of intelligent life, and when she found the dilapidated mill house she was overjoyed. She had begun to think that this world was uninhabited. The old mill, floorboards half-rotted, beams sagging, proved that it at least had been inhabited at one time.

It was dusk when she finished gathering enough tall grass to make some sort of mattress to lay over the plank flooring up in the loft. As bedding, she made do with two old gunnysacks. They were scratchy and mildewed, but when the chill of night came on, she was grateful for them.

Nocturnal chirping and twittering came out of the forest. The moon was out, outlining the small window above her and throwing an oblong of blue light on the floor. The wind played in the trees.

An owl hooted. She thought it was an owl.

She wondered about nonhuman worlds. Was this one? The mill looked human enough, but how could she know for sure?

She turned over and tried to fall asleep, unsuccessfully. A cricket trilled very near, then stopped. The old mill creaked and groaned.

She heard something, far off. She listened intently. The sound grew. It was a thumping… a stamping… the sound of hooves. They came nearer, nearer. They were right below the window. She froze, her heart bouncing against her breastbone.

The hoofbeats stopped.

Below, footsteps. Someone had come into the mill and was looking around. Something crashed. A male voice uttered an unintelligible curse. More crashing. Whoever it was went outside again, then came back.

She listened as more activity went on below. Gradually it subsided. Then everything was quiet again.

Someone sighed. Coughed. Cleared his throat. Then let out a long breath.

In a little while, she heard snoring.

Whoever it was, he sounded human enough. But she was still afraid. Highwayman? Rapist? Murderer? All of those, maybe.

She was afraid to relax her body, afraid to move a muscle. Her back ached, and her stomach churned.

She was worlds away from the existence she had known just hours ago. It seemed like years. The short time she had spent in the castle seemed like another life, and this, still another.

Was this all a dream? Yes. She'd be waking up soon in her room in Haberman Hall. There was a calculus test to cram for. She'd have a few hours to do it if she got up early enough. What time was it?

She felt her wrist. Her Phasar Quartz was still on her wrist. It had a night light. Slowly, she ducked her head under the sack and pressed the tab on the side of the watch.

The tiny digital readout seemed to light up the night.

:39 A.M.

Okay, the sun should be up by now. So how come it isn't?

No, she was not on Earth. She was somewhere else entirely. Where? The trees and flowers and plants had looked earthlike enough, but they were also different somehow. She'd seen no maples, but something that looked like an oak. That was it as far as her tree-knowledge went. The sun had looked like the sun, and she wasn't about to get up to look at the moon.

The crickets sounded like crickets. Some help there. Maybe this was Earth, but the past. No, Linda had said nothing about traveling in time.

She wondered if she would ever see her world again.

Through the window, the sky was gray. It was morning. She marveled that she had actually fallen asleep. How long had she slept? What about…?

She rolled over. A tall man was standing over her. She threw the sacks off and jumped to her feet.

The man sized her up. Apprehensively, she did the same to him.

He was young, about twenty-five, with a light beard and hazel eyes. He had on a hooded doublet and cape and wore high boots. A cross-hilted sword in an ornate scabbard hung at his left side.

He said something, and for some reason she understood him, though he hadn't spoken English. He had said, "So you are a woman. You dress like a boy."

He eyed her up and down. "Not a bad woman at that. Young. Run away from your parents?"

"No," she said. Then: "I'm lost. Can you help me?"

The man frowned. He didn't understand. She couldn't understand why the comprehension was one-way.

"A foreigner, eh?" He took a step toward her, and she edged back against the wall.

He stopped, smiling. "You've got nothing to fear from me," he said. He had something in his hand. It looked like a brownie or a piece of sheet cake. He was offering it to her.

She took it. It smelled okay, and she took a bite. It was chewy and tasted like an oatmeal cookie with ginger and cinnamon. It was good. She smiled at him.

"Yes, break your fast, because you've got to be on your way. My kindly half-brother's paladins are close on my heels, and they leave no unprotected woman unravished."

He laughed, more or less to himself. "Why am I telling you this? You don't understand, and their having at you might be all the diversion I need to get clean away. I know they won't pass one like you by. You even have all your teeth."

She understood all of it. The language sounded like Scots, burred and broad-voweled, but with a hint of something like French in it. Anglo-Saxon? No, she remembered what that had sounded like; the prof for EARLY ENG LIT, as her class schedule printout had put it, was given to dramatic readings of Beowulf and other incunabula. This was different. Medieval French? Maybe, but she doubted it.

"Come along, then." He went down the rickety ladder to the ground floor. She followed.

Outside, she watched him saddle his horse. The tack was of a type totally unfamiliar to her; it looked unwieldy and not at all comfortable. The horse was a chestnut mare and had a long flowing mane.

He mounted. "Well, then, girl, it's farewell. I'd advise you to be on your way. You're a pretty wench, and I'd like you for myself, but I don't intend to be caught with my breeches down. God go with you."

"Wait!"

He halted. "What is it?"

"Take me with you."

His brow lowered, but he appeared to understand. "I think not. Much as I'd like to have my bedding warmed, you'd be a millstone round my neck."

"I'm lost. Please help me. I have no one else to turn to."

He scowled. "What a strange tongue you speak. Sounds like a mallard in heat. Whereabouts do you ―"

He suddenly looked off, his expression tightening.

"Damn them. They usually lie slugabed."

He turned back to her. He extended a hand.

"Come on, girl. Hurry."

She clambered up and took a precarious seat on the animal's rump, circling her arms around the man's waist.

The horse headed down the trail and away from the stream, first at a trot, then a walk, then breaking into a canter. She found the canter easier on her backside than the trotting. The horse's hard bony spine knifed between her buttocks. It hurt. She wondered how long she could ride like this.

Hoofbeats behind. The man gave a quick look back, then heeled the horse into a full run.

They plunged headlong through the woods. Melanie held on desperately, but there was little riding experience in her background. She had no idea of how to maintain a seat on a mount, much less how to hang on riding tandem. She bounced and slid, shifted and recovered, not daring a look behind.

But she could hear the pursuit, their hoofbeats sounding on the beaten dirt of the trail, closer, closer still.

They rode up a hill, ran along the crest, then down into dense trees, branches whipping at them from both sides. Splashing through a brook, they mounted a shallow bank and came back onto the beaten path.

It happened when they tried to take the next steep incline. The horse hesitated at the bottom, then leaped. Melanie lost her grip and slid off, hitting hard, her head slamming against the ground. The rider kept going, not looking back.

She was stunned momentarily. When she lifted her head she saw three men on horses standing around her. She sat up.

"Well, look what we have here," said the one with the dark beard and small eyes.

All three were in chain mail, their heads bare in the warm weather.

The three dismounted. "He's getting away."

"He can wait. Besides, we can always say we killed him."

"He's right. Who will gainsay it?"

"Who's first, then?"

"I am," said the black beard, unstrapping his scabbard.

Two grabbed her. She didn't fight; she was still woozy.

Soon they had her stripped and spread-eagled on the ground.

The black beard was down to his knit tights, but something he saw made him stop.

"What's this?" Looking back up the hill, he guffawed. The two other paladins released Melanie and got to their feet.

Melanie sat up and looked. The rider had reappeared on foot at the top of the hill, sword drawn, and was now slowly descending, his face set resolutely, as if confronted with an unpleasant but necessary task.

Laughing, the two casually drew their swords, waiting. The black-bearded one hurried to dress.

Without thinking about it, almost as though her body were obeying an inexorable law of its own, she crawled, naked, to the dropped scabbard. She slid the huge sword out, its two-edged blade oiled and gleaming. She stood. She approached the black-bearded one from behind, slowly raising the sword.

When she was directly behind him, she brought the heavy weapon down as hard as she could.

She was surprised by how deeply the blade cleaved the skull. Two geysers of blood erupted to either side of the wound. She let go of the sword as the man fell.

One of the other paladins turned his head and registered momentary shock. Then he advanced toward her menacingly. At the same time the rider began to charge down the hill.

The one coming at Melanie looked back. She turned and ran, but didn't get far. The paladin soon caught up, grabbed her by the hair, and whipped her to the ground. He raised the sword high to do the job.

Her penultimate thought, before the blade came down, was that she didn't have to worry about the calculus test.

Her last thought was for her two sons who would never be.