Pool of Radiance - James M. Ward [126]
"Bushes screaming?" Shal asked in astonishment.
"There's a pain scent from the fluids lost when any woody plant is cut. This hedge has been hurt bad, and in lots of places." Ren looked for a moment like a shaman searching for an aura, his hands outstretched, his nose uplifted to catch scents.
"This way," he said finally, leading them off to the left. Suddenly he stopped and raised his hand to stop Shal and Tarl. "Blood…" he whispered. "I smell blood."
Moving even more cautiously, they turned the next corner in the maze. The emblem of the Black Watch greeted them from the chest of a man suspended grotesquely in the hedge. His machete was still in his hand, but it hadn't done him any good once he'd come in contact with the bush's thorns. His skin had already taken on an unnatural color from the poison that had worked its way through his system as fast as the blood circulated in his body. His eyes were bulging, but when his mouth began to move, they realized that he was still alive-barely. With incredible difficulty, he gasped, "Cadorna… the bastard… didn't care… how many of us… died…"
Tarl reached out to try to heal the man, but he was too late. The soldier's last breath rattled in his throat, and his body hung limp in the thorny hedge. Beyond him lay a companion, another soldier of the Black Watch, also dead, lying facedown with his hand caught up high behind him in the hedge. Across from the two men, the hedge walls had been chopped wide open, wide enough for three or four men to pass through.
"Do you think he meant that Cadorna brought the Black Watch here?" Shal whispered.
Ren nodded. "I can't think of anybody else paranoid enough to let men die just to get through a hedge. I'm sure he's here somewhere. In fact, we might have a chance to get the Lord of the Ruins and Cadorna, because I don't see any sign that anybody's come back out through these bushes."
There was no question now which route would lead to the heart of the castle grounds. A nearly straight swath had been cut through at least a half dozen walls of shrubbery, and the two soldiers had died cutting through the final one. Ren wondered how many others had died hacking their way through the hedges. From where he stood, he could see a boot protruding near one hedge wall and a hand sticking out near another.
"Follow me," Ren declared. "Keep low and to the center of the path, as far away from the branches as possible."
Once they emerged on the other side of the maze, they found themselves staring up at the central tower. Its lofty walls were of rarest white marble. At another time, Shal thought, the tower must have been beautiful and pristine-looking, a giant monument to all that was good in the land, but now its every feature reflected the same kind of corruption and defilement Shal and the others had been fighting since their first mission for the town council. Runes of the type often used by black mages marred much of the marble surface of the building's exterior. Despite its light color, the tower appeared to be shrouded in shadow.
Part of the tower had tumbled in on itself. A scaffold had been erected halfway up the damaged portion of the tower, and two ogres lay dead beside it. "That's one fight we missed," whispered Tarl. Shal and Ren smiled. They were all feeling excited and obsessed with a growing sense of purpose, but at the same time, all three were as tense as stretched slingshot bands, so the levity, however brief, brought relief.
Tarl pointed to a huge doorway to the left of the scaffolding. Its monstrous wooden door stood wide open.
"I suspect Cadorna and any men he has left went in that way," Ren said. "Let's see if there's another door."
* * * * *
Cadorna was fit to be tied. The kill fee he would have to pay the Black Watch and the mercenaries' guild was astronomical. Five soldiers of the Black Watch had been poisoned by the