The Ultimate Helm

Chapter Fifteen

The rats were a black carpet, swarming up the tower stairs in a sea of rotted fur and gnashing yellow teeth. The stairway was hidden by their solid black mass, and they moved up the tower in an undulating wave, their ragged claws scraping the stone steps.

"Get him up!" Teldin shouted. CassaRoc and Chaladar lifted HarKenn from the stairs. "Get him inside!" he said. "It's rats! Gods! I've never seen so many rats."

Teldin backed up the stairs and rushed through the open door with the warriors. He slammed the door behind them and bolted it. Still, the gap under the door seemed too wide to him, too vulnerable; as Teldin watched, a long black snout appeared under the door. Claws and teeth ripped at the wood.

Teldin lashed out with his boot and crunched the rat's snout under his foot. Black blood trickled from its shattered jaws. The rat was still for a moment, then twitched back to unlife and started clawing at the door in increasing fury.

"Undead," Teldin said. "The rats are all undead."

CassaRoc stared at him in surprise. Chaladar said, "It can be only the Fool."

Teldin nodded unconsciously. Chaladar's words rang true. Instinctively, he knew the paladin was right.

They were trapped in the common room. The bolted door was their only exit, and, as they watched, the gap at the bottom was gnawed larger under the fury of the rats' yellow fangs.

CassaRoc hefted HarKenn in his arms and laid him out at one end of the bar. The guard moaned once, then fell unconscious. Blood oozed from his wounds and dripped onto the bar.

The warriors drew their swords and waited. They knew the blades were virtually helpless against the undead swarms, unless they could somehow sever the rats' spines or chop them until they truly died; but they had no other weapons, and the rats were attacking in too large numbers.

"Fire would do it," CassaRoc said.

"If we could have a fire in the flow. You saw what happened at the neogi tower," Teldin said. "It would bring the tower down on us all-right where the Fool wants us."

Chaladar said, "No. I believe he wants you."

CassaRoc nodded. "This is another assassination attempt, Teldin. He doesn't care about us. It's you he wants."

"Because of the Dark Times?"

"No," Chaladar said. "He would have no concern of the Dark Times, since he lives in darkness. He wants you for some other reason."

Teldin placed the light rod on a table and stared down at his amulet. The rats had chewed ragged the bottom of the wooden door. "Me

…"

Teldin sagged and let the amulet fall against his chest. He looked over to the rats. Their claws and teeth were flashes of dull ivory, and splinters of wood were spewed across the floor by their razorlike teeth. Then one was squealing, squirming its fat body through a chewed-out gap along the floor. It leaped straight at Teldin.

Chaladar cried out. The paladin's sword was a silver flash as it swung down and sliced the rat in two. Its hind legs scrabbled to move forward; its jaws snapped at Teldin's booted feet. Then it ceased, finding true death at last.

"We're going to have to do something," CassaRoc said.

Chaladar frowned at the oily blood smeared on his sword. From outside they Could hear CassaRoc's warriors shouting for them, warning others of the rats. CassaRoc yelled back, "We're trapped in here! Call a mage! We need help!"

Then another rat was inside with them, and another, and another. Within minutes, the floor was strewn with the severed torsos of the black vermin, and more were streaming through the widening gap in the door.

The trio kicked and sliced their way through the rats and climbed up on the bar. Three rodents leaped up and were killed instantly by the grand knight's swift sword. Some scrambled up the wooden bar using their sharp, dead claws, and were crunched under Teldin's heavy boots or skewered by CassaRoc's blade.

The floor was a slimy mass of dark blood, of dead and undead vermin. Teldin paused and focused, concentrating on his cloak and its powers, but its hidden energies refused to be summoned. The powers of the cloak seemed to be exhausted, and Teldin considered if its magic did not work on the undead… and if it would work on the Fool.

The undead rats came on.

Teldin said, "The cloak will not help us, and we can't stay here and try to chop them all in half. There are just too many." As he said this, two rats leaped onto the bar and dove for his legs. He lashed out and kicked one across the room; the other drove its fangs into his flesh, and he screamed in pain. CassaRoc reached down and tore it away, then bent it back in his bare hands until its spine snapped with a loud crack.

"We might have to make a run for it," Teldin said.

"Where do we go then?" CassaRoc asked. "They'll just come after you again."

"The Fool is the one we have to stop," Chaladar said angrily. "He is the one controlling this evil."

The rats leaped and scrambled over each other in their frenzy to reach the Cloakmaster. The warriors lashed out with their swords and their heavy boots, but the rats swarmed from under the door with increasing ferocity, spitting chunks of wood from their bleeding mouths. Sweat ran from the warriors' faces as they speared the vermin on their blades, and CassaRoc's bar ran with the rats' black blood.

Then the wooden door rocked under the impact of a great weight. Again the door shuddered in its frame. The heavy iron bolt squealed as the weight hammered the door again and again.

Then the bolt sprang out of its braces and the wooden door shot open. A wave of rats poured into the room, chattering with unnatural hunger, and, from the corridor beyond, a large black creature crawled in on eight clawed legs. Its long yellow teeth gleamed in the light, and it focused its eellike eyes on Teldin and smiled. Gray drool oozed from its lips.

"A neogi," CassaRoc said.

"No, look!" Teldin said, pointing. "It's the one Na'Shee shot when I crashed on board."

The neogi hissed at Teldin, focusing its black eyes on him. A bloody crossbow bolt protruded straight through its neck.

Teldin said, "It's undead."

"Distracted are they," said one squat lieutenant, crouching in the shadows at the bottom of the Tower of Thought.

"Undead of the rats because."

"Guards all main level on. This way follow."

The two furry shapes scurried up the tower's back stairs. Their black claws clacked against the stone. Behind them, two muscular shapes followed, lumbering blindly up the stairs.

On the upper level, they paused to listen through the wooden door. At the leader's command, the tallest of the huge shapes opened the door and stepped into the dimly lit corridor.

The guards at the door stared openly and quickly whipped out their swords, but the giant intruders reached them in seconds. One guard went down from a single hammering blow to his forehead. The other managed one lunge at his grotesque attacker, then was gripped from behind. His attacker's mandibles quickly closed on the guard's soft neck, and he died as his blood spilled onto the floor.

The intruders opened the door to Cwelanas's quarters. She lay in the bed, in restful sleep.

The furred black leader grinned. "Now… now, ours the shemeat is. Soon, soon, cloak perhaps ours will be."

Silently, the Unhuman intruders approached Cwelanas.