The Charnel Prince - J. Gregory Keyes [38]
Footsteps started up the stairs. The bow whined again, and again, and someone shouted in pain.
“A lucky shot,” shouted the person who seemed to be their leader. “Up, and quickly.”
“Now!” Artwair hollered, and ran back up the stairs.
Leoff lit the oil-soaked rag.
And he saw a light suffusing the landing. It was beautiful, golden, the most perfect light he had ever seen. A promise of absolute peace filled him, and he knew that he could not live without seeing the source of that light.
“Now, I say!” Artwair shouted.
Distantly, Leoff heard glass breaking and a renewal of shouts from below. Gilmer must have thrown his flask, aiming for the entrance to the house. But Gilmer didn’t see the light, didn’t understand . . .
Leoff suddenly remembered the corpses in the inn. He remembered their eyes.
He threw the flask at the landing Artwair had just vacated. The light was brighter now, more beautiful than ever. Even as flame blossomed like a many-petaled rose, Leoff leaned out to catch a glimpse, just a small glimpse—
And then Artwair knocked him roughly to the floor.
“By all the saints, what do you think you’re doing? You cannot look!” he snarled.
More screams. It was a night for screams. The oil burned quickly, and so did the mostly timber house.
“Gilmer!” Artwair shouted. “Did you hit the doorstep?”
“Auy, that I did,” Gilmer replied. “I reckoned it was worth risking a peek, since they had the thing on the stairs. My aim was true.” He scratched his head. “Course, now we’re trapped in a burning house.”
“So are they,” Artwair said. He went to the window, pushed open the curtain, and set an arrow on the bow. “Now is the reckoning,” he said. “Watch the stairs. If any get through, call out.”
The stairwell was already an inferno, and choking smoke boiled up. This was also a night for fire, Leoff mused. He was destined to burn, it seemed.
He heard the bow twang over the roar and over the screaming. And again, as Artwair fired at something in the street.
A shadow came up through the flame then, something the size of a small dog, but serpentine. The flames turned golden.
Leoff snapped his eyes shut.
“Close your eyes,” he screamed. “It’s come up.”
“Follow my voice,” Artwair returned. “The window. We have to jump.”
“Here,” Gilmer said. He grasped Leoff’s hand and pulled him up. The smell from earlier was all around, and he felt his skin tingle from more than the heat.
Then he touched the window frame, and driven by terror he gripped it, stepped through, hung for an instant by his fingers, and dropped.
His belly rose to his head, and then the ground seemed to explode under his feet. A pain brighter than any sun lit him up.
Someone tugged at him. Gilmer, again.
“Get up,” the small man said.
Leoff tried to answer, but he gagged on his tongue instead.
Artwair’s face appeared in the ruddy firelight.
“He’s broken his leg. Help me move him.”
They dragged him away from the fire, which had begun to spread. Darkness crept in with the pain, and Leoff lost track of what was happening a time or two. The next thing he knew clearly was that they were in a boat, on the canal.
“Stay with him, Gilmer,” Artwair said grimly. “I’ve two more to deal with. Then we can go.”
“Go where?” Gilmer said, and for the first time despair colored his voice. “My malend, my town . . .” He was weeping now.
Leoff lay his head back, watched the smoke rise against the stars as the boat rocked gently on the canal. He tried not to think about the pain.
“How’s the leg?” Artwair asked.
“A dull ache,” Leoff replied, glancing at his limb. It had been splinted tight, but even so, every jounce the wagon made in the deeply rutted road sent a throb up his thigh, even with the hay bales to cushion it. Artwair had hired the cart and the untalkative fellow who drove it.
“It was a clean enough break, and should heal well,” Artwair said.
“Yes, I suppose I’m lucky,” Leoff said glumly.
“I mourn for Broogh, too,” Artwair said, his voice gentling. “The fire claimed only