Chapter Twenty

Holding the raven-headed staff before him as if it were a half-pike, Reinmar charged without waiting for his assailants to come to a standstill. It was the right move; they tried to stop when they saw him coming but they had too much momentum and their efforts only made them ungainly. One stumbled and fell, carried forward in spite of himself by the momentum of his unwieldy club. The one who came on most recklessly of all, though, was the man with the cleaver, who raised it as if to strike Reinmar’s head from his shoulders.

He never got the chance. Reinmar slammed the head of the staff into his breastbone with all the force he could muster, and the priest was stopped in his tracks. The cleaver flew from his hand and soared harmlessly past Reinmar’s left shoulder to rebound from the cavern wall.

Reinmar immediately swung the staff around so that its blunter end thumped into the midriff of his third opponent, and bought just enough time to turn and pluck up the cleaver from where it had fallen.

No one was shouting any longer, and the echoes that had resounded from the ceiling of the underworld a few moments before were silent now. Reinmar used the cleaver to slash at the throat of the man he had winded. He expected the blade to shear right through the soft flesh, but it was nowhere near sharp enough. It stuck and stuck fast, and as the man fell his weight wrenched the weapon from Reinmar’s hand. He still had the staff, but he was well aware of its limitations.

While his two remaining opponents struggled to recover from the blows he had already struck, Reinmar finally found the opportunity to use his skilled right hand to loose the knot that held his own blade in place. He drew it from its scabbard just as they came forward again.

Had they been fighting men, they would have known what to do, but they were not. It was absurdly easy, even for a man who had never killed a human being before that day, to inflict mortal cuts on both of them. Reinmar struck one about the head, the other full in the chest—and it was fortunate, as it happened, that the first blow was so effective, for he had to put his foot on the second man’s rib-cage and heave with all his might to free his blade again.

Then there was silence, and an appalling stink.

Marcilla was rising to her feet, her eyes full of horror. She was dumbstruck, but her hands were fluttering. At first, Reinmar thought that she was reaching out to him. Then he realised that she did not know who he was, and was trying, ineffectually, to ward him off.

He loved her, and she did not even know who he was. She had said once before that she had seen him in her dreams, but she did not seem able to remember that now.

“It’s all right, Marcilla,” he assured her, surprised by the hoarseness of his voice. “I’m a friend, and these men were your enemies. This way!” He caught her right wrist in his left hand and drew her towards the shadowed covert and the candlelight within. She resisted, but only for a second; it seemed that she took the decision to trust him, perhaps by virtue of the kindness in his tone and perhaps because she remembered, dimly, that she had seen him before.

When he first saw that the space within the covert was a blind cave, with no means of egress from the underworld, Reinmar felt a stab of fear in his belly—but the fear was quickly overwhelmed by wonder as he realised what the covert was.

Five stone vats were arranged in a rough arc against the right-hand wall of the space. These, it seemed, were the mortars which partnered the pestles that the two monks had tried to use as dubs. Three of them were brimming with wet pulp, but the other two were less than half-full. At the rear of the cave, near the ceiling, a spring of water gushed from the rock, the waterfall descending to a shallow pool. The overflow from the pool ran into a crack that carried the excess water away into the bowels of the underworld, but water had been drawn off into a number of large open barrels. There were more barrels positioned near the vats, with huge filter-funnels set atop them.

Reinmar had no difficulty deducing that when the pulp had been crushed in the mortars it was filtered into these barrels, producing a solution. There was no sign of yeast, either physical or odorous, and he concluded that although the filtered solution was probably a mere substrate, the process by which the wine of dreams was made did not involve orthodox fermentation.

The wooden shelves that skirted the left-hand wall of the cave were not entirely full, but they were laden with various small sealed casks and stone jars, and a considerable number of glass bottles. Many of the bottles were empty but some were not, and what they held was a dark fluid whose odour could not be entirely confined, and whose sweetness overwhelmed the much more delicate scent of the pulp in the mortars. There were also a number of smaller phials, set in a position of privilege in a covert-within-the-covert. All but two of these were empty, or nearly so, but those last two were nearly full.

Reinmar picked up one of the phials and carefully removed the stopper. The perfume that rushed into his nostrils was so incredibly powerful that he immediately replaced the stopper, and then had to stand stock still while his head cleared. His eyes had begun to weep, and he felt utterly helpless—but once the fluid was safely confined again he recovered soon enough.

This, Reinmar realised, was where the wine of dreams was actually made. The substances dissolved from the pulp obviously gave it some of its texture and some of its complexity, but the eventual product was obviously highly diluted—and the most active ingredient of all was that which was kept in the phials and added drop by drop to the bottled liquor. He was sure now that it was the nectar of the uncanny flowers, patiently gathered by the monks.

Luther’s assumption that the making of the wine of dreams must be subject to the same seasonal cycle as any other vintage was quite wrong, Reinmar realised. Here there was probably no alternation of day and night, let alone an alternation of winter and summer. That was why Almeric had said that the monastery could supply wine three or four times a year—but the process by which the nectar was produced must be slow, for this store was far nearer empty than full.

Marcilla had drawn back against the unadorned wall to the left of the entrance, but when Reinmar dropped her hand she made no attempt to run, or even to move further away from him. He took off his stolen cloak and gave it to her so that she could cover her body. She hesitated, perhaps because its skirts were so liberally stained with blood, but she put it on regardless.

“I’m a friend,” Reinmar said again. “Stay close to me, and I’ll defend you with my life. Only trust me, and we’ll win through.” In the meantime, his gaze flicked back and forth along the row of vats and the huddled masses of the barrels, and he wondered what he ought to do now. Had the vats been made of wood he might have been able to overturn them, but they were stone, and he knew that even Sigurd would have laboured in vain to upset one. Even the laden barrels were too heavy to be easily overturned—but the bottles were brittle as well as light, and the phials were lighter still.

No more pursuers had followed him as yet, but Reinmar knew that he only had a minute or two to spare if he hoped to make his escape. He had to get back to the entrance before it could be sealed. With luck, though, a minute or two ought to be enough. He put the phial he had already opened into his pouch, and threw the other full one, unopened, into the rock where the stream made its way into the further depths. It vanished from sight, and he had no doubt that it was irretrievable. He followed it with two other phials which still had a few drops of fluid in them.

The crack in the rock was too narrow to accommodate a bottle, but he was not afraid of the scent of the diluted wine. All he had to do to reduce the stocks of the final product was to race back and forth along the shelves on the left-hand wall, tumbling bottles, flasks and jars from the shelves, letting them smash upon the floor as they fell—and that is what he did.

It only required fifteen seconds of running amok, picking up any stone jars that would not consent to fall and hurling them this way and that, to wreak utter havoc in the storeroom. The odour of the spilled wine quickly became strong enough to intoxicate, but it was nothing like as strong as the perfume of the pure nectar, which had threatened to immobilise him. The giddiness he felt only made him wave his arms about more furiously, until there was nothing left on any of the shelves and his feet were surrounded by shards of broken glass. The floor of the cavern was sticky and sweet, but the spilled wine was already draining towards the exit-hole into which he had cast the phials.

The thrill of destruction was delicious, and the rising odour of the wine of dreams merely served to make it more piquant still.

“What have you done?” Marcilla whispered, finding her voice at last.

“I have revenged you,” he told her, trying to keep his own voice firm and level. He kept on talking, hoping that it would help to calm his thundering heart and painting breath. “I have taught these unholy monks a much-needed lesson as to the proper price of human flesh and human souls. Now, we must go. We must find Vaedecker, and the way out.

“You killed those men,” the gypsy whispered.

“So I did,” he admitted. “But what I have seen of this vile world below the world would drive any virtuous man to murder—even one who did not love you. If ever there were men who deserved to die… Come with me now, I beg you!” So saying, he took Marcilla by the wrist again, as if to draw her out of the cave—but she was a little stronger now, and she resisted.

“Please,” he said, softly. “You do not know me now, but I love you. If you cannot trust me, we are both doomed.” He looked deep into her lovely eyes, hoping that she could measure his worth accurately, and know him for what he was. She lowered her head, and stopped trying to pull away from him. Perhaps she had remembered, at last, that she had seen him in her dreams. He drew her towards him, and hugged her tightly, hoping that the gesture would reassure her.

“We must go now,” he said. She seemed to have understood that necessity, for she made no effort to hold him back. They departed from the storehouse of the wine of dreams without a backward glance at the wreckage they left behind.

Once out of the covert, Reinmar began to move rapidly but stealthily along the wall of the underworld, in the direction which, he hoped and trusted, would bring them to the spiral stair. Mercifully, although there was no path, the way was fairly clear. Marcilla followed, not needing to be hauled along. The coldly glowing wall was to their left. To their right, great ebon bells hung down from ivory stalks—enough of them to make a carillon. As they passed along the subtly curving wall, though, the black blossoms gave way to pink, and then to pale blue, and then to black and white in combination. Reinmar watched them all the while, fearful that if a single style should extend like a sinuous tongue from any one of those huge hoods to coil itself about his neck or any part of Marcilla’s person then he might have a far sterner fight on his hands than the cadaverous monks had been able to offer.

It seemed, though, that the flowers were lost in some dream of their own. If they were capable of caring about anything at all, they clearly did not care about the loss of Marcilla, even though she had been chosen for their use and called to their service. Reinmar sent a silent prayer of gratitude to Morr -whose wrath, he now felt sure, must have aided him considerably in his desperate rush to snatch his beloved from the jaws of a fate far worse than death. The success of his mad dash now seemed evidence enough that Morr was severely displeased by these heretic priests and their macabre garden of lost souls. When he had finished his prayer of thanks, however, Reinmar was quick to send another, imploring further help. He knew that he was not yet safe, and that there was ample time for further intervention in this adventure. As soon as he had made this further plea his heart leapt, for he saw another breach in the shining wall of the cavern and recognised it as the gateway through which he and Vaedecker had entered the underworld.

The monk knocked unconscious by Vaedecker still lay unmoving, and alone, at the tunnel’s entrance. This sight renewed Reinmar’s strength. Gladness surged through him as he passed beneath the last of the awesome blooms and was suddenly among the man-made confusion of barrels and bottles, ladders and tables. He regretted that he had sheathed his sword when he heard rapid movement behind him as soon as he had passed into the antechamber. But when he whirled about he saw that it was Matthias Vaedecker hurrying after him, bloodstained sword in hand.

The soldier’s expression was grim. “You should not have moved away from me without my signal,” Vaedecker said, angrily, “and after having moved, you certainly should not have hurled yourself upon them without so much as a sideways glance. Are you mad?”

“Are there any left to chase us?” Reinmar asked, ignoring the rebukes.

“I think not—no thanks to you,” Vaedecker growled.

“On the contrary,” Reinmar told him. “I did my share, and none can say otherwise.” As he spoke, the memory of the man with the cleaver stuck in his throat came back momentarily to haunt him, but he was too tired to shudder and far too wrathful to feel ashamed.

“You had better pray that they are even worse fools than you,” Vaedecker told him. “If even one has had the sense to run to the stair instead of racing to meet our blades, then we’re done for. Our only hope is to be up and away before anyone on the surface realises what has been done down here.” He knelt down as he spoke and put his fingers to the throat of the unconscious monk, checking for a pulse. “He’ll sleep for a while yet,” he opined. “I suppose I should slit his throat, but he’ll be no threat to us if we move quickly. It appears, Master Wieland, that I underestimated you. I did not think you the kind of man to start a war so recklessly. We came here as careful spies, not a two-man army set to run amok.”

“You were the one who came as a spy,” Reinmar reminded him. “I came to save Marcilla, by any means necessary. It seems to me that the war began as soon as the monsters in the hills became real. I started nothing.”

Vaedecker shook his head, but not unsympathetically. “The war began in Marienburg,” he said. “I’ve been on the march with von Spurzheim ever since—but if our battleground had not been decided already, you’ve probably determined it now. Had we contrived to slip away we might have brought the fight here while they did not expect us, but whichever evil god has made this place will surely take it amiss that we have slaughtered his servants. Whatever is waiting for us at the head of the stair, and however quick a getaway we make thereafter, there will be a full gathering of our enemies now—and those half-humans who attacked us before will likely be the least of the assembled army. You have no idea what you have done, Reinmar Wieland.” The sergeant was trying hard to be censorious, but the grudging approval beneath the criticism was obvious. Vaedecker might have come here as a spy, but he was a warrior first and foremost.

“No,” Reinmar replied, “I have no idea what I have done—but I could not stop at half-measures when I saw what they intended to do with Marcilla, and I did not.”

“You killed the three who went after you, then?

“Oh yes. And I did what I could to spoil their harvest. I found their storehouse, and I spilt the wines within. I doubt there is a single flask, of glass or stone, that is still intact.” He said this proudly, expecting to earn a further increase in the soldier’s esteem, but Vaedecker only knitted his brow. Clearly, he had little or no idea what the consequence might be of any interference with the monks’ own supply of the wine of dreams, and he did not ask for further details of what Reinmar had done.

“Well,” the sergeant said, “sometimes the recklessness of youth has the advantage over the skill of the tactician, even though shrewd tacticians usually live longer than hot-headed heroes. Since we are committed, I suppose we must do as much damage here as we can.”

Having said that, the soldier went into the tunnel to fetch out one of the candles set to light it, and applied the flame to the leg of one of the tables. Given the untidiness of the various objects heaped around the entrance, it was obvious that a fire would spread quickly, and would not be easily extinguished. There was no way to judge whether its spreading fumes would be able to hurt the horrid flowers, but they would certainly help to prevent any pursuit from the underworld.

“Now,” Vaedecker said as soon as the fire was well and truly alight, “we must tackle that stair. If we get trapped halfway, the blood we have so far shed will seem a trivial thing. Are you ready?”

He spoke the last words over his shoulder as he looked back to make certain that Reinmar and the girl were behind him. They were close on his heels as he moved swiftly along the tunnel—Reinmar certainly did not want to linger while the smoke was billowing in every direction.

“I’m ready,” he said, and meant it.