"Nothing remains disturbed, in the fortification's construction, except one wall in a blockhouse guarding its main entrance," Forkbeard observed smartly. "And it seems to me that part of the stockade was torn down intentionally."
While all three men deliberated locations of the missing treasure, Landregal shifted uncomfortably on a stiff wooden bench. The book, hidden beneath loose fitting garments, created a bulging entanglement in his cloak. He defended its detection with quick-witted discernment.
"What of that demon's lair?" Chin Le asserted. "Its narrow entrance was too tapered to descend yet I suspect there is something in that den that the viperous creature was left to guard."
"Perhaps you are right," Forkbeard concurred. He cast a singularly threatening look in Landregal's direction then moved from the indurated position that he procured for himself in the middle of the room. "We will find out, in due time, what is at the bottom of the feral soul's shelter beneath the castle's walls," he expounded further.
Contemplatively, to his partners, Saoel Forkbeard schemed, waiting for his compatriots' judgments on the bearings of the wealth that had once adorned the castle's mansion. Thoughts of the missing assets spurred a quick moving impetus of insatiability in all four men as they dawdled over the prospect of riches. In the room, which now seemed depleted, of all its glamour and affluence, the men tarried in a malingering state of dispassion until a singularly judicious notion dawned on their leader. The hunter Landregal, Forkbeard reasoned, with a protracted purpose, was to become used as a burrower to dig beneath the surface of the earth beside the moat. Naked, the captured Viking, Landregal Waterhunter, would plummet in darkness----far as possible, into the dark domain of Lardock's refuge and inspect the cave. If anything of prominent value proved to become contained therein, the provisional slave Landregal would return to the top with it; he was a man of great determination.
"Come along," Saoel motioned to the three men in the room, "I have an idea to explore our venomous looking friend's hollow bellow this manor's barricades."
Forkbeard lead the squad of inquisitive adventurers to the drawbridge and instructed Utanba, again. "Lower the gate." All four men lowered themselves, cautiously, from the overpass onto the tight foot path that merged with the base of the castle's pretentious barriers. While the chill of autumn penetrated his unclad skin, Landregal began to clear away an opening to Lardock's hideaway. He left the hidden book of magic on the ground by the tunnel, wrapped in his protective burnoose.
The shaft, a narrow tunnel, too small for a man as large as the hunter to crawl through, extended horizontally beneath the huge limestone emplacements. With a heavy wooden rod, which had once been the base of an abandoned flagpole, Landregal began to dig. He quickly removed loose dirt and stones from the sides of the tapered tunnel. Pummeled debris became passed, by a leather pouch on the end of a rope, back out the cave's entrance. Eventually the aperture became widened enough that the hunter was able descend several feet below the surface and see into the chamber below the blockhouse. "Fetch me some kind of light," he instructed Utanba Tu.
The darkened adventurer returned with some burlap rags for a torch, lit them with his flint, and passed the fire down the sullen passageway to the hunter. Landregal dropped burning fragments of the coarsely woven cloth fibers into the lair in an attempt to get a glimpse at what awaited him below the earth's surface. Reflection of the castle's abundance shown back elegantly. Amid fleeting illumination of the depths it glittered. In the abject gloom of the blackened cavern, with a heightened sense of motivation, Landregal hastened in his digging.
Frigid silver, biting from the metal in Hel's necklace, hung coldly against Forkbeard's neck. While Landregal dug beneath the castle's walls, Saoel could feel its powerful capabilities threateningly begin to overcome him. Power from the destructive ansate cross began to embrace him with a dominating strength as it touched the bare skin beneath his wool undershirt. Influenced by the handled cross' hypnotic magnetism, motion and activity of Landregal's digging began to take on an almost surreal view to the group's leader.
To Forkbeard, holder of the magic intaglio cross, Hel's sphere of non-existence and eternal suffering empowered him slightly with the slowly widening ripples of its coiled magic. As though he was dreaming, fantastic imagery, in incongruous juxtapositions----effigies of dead men, their lingering souls waving transitionally before him, jumped startlingly at Forkbeard from Lardock's tunnel to greet him. Unexpectedly, repulsing its hallucinations, Saoel fought off the necklace's radical mirage inducing potency to regain his serious stature. A final resolute stare at the darkened passageway, into which the hunter had descended, became heartened by an excited yell.
"It's here," yelled Landregal excitedly! "It's here----all of it!" He strained, in darkness, to get a better look at the stacks of elaborately ornamented boxes; all had become filled with ornate riches from Lardock Lagarias Trappler's estate. Chests of rarity, along with cherished resources, adorned solid walls of the cavern, buried beneath the castle's blockhouse. In the fading light of Utanba's dimly burning torch, Landregal gasped at the stuffed enormity of that room's wealth. He hastened the excavation until he was able to crawl into the secret chamber. With great excitement, he opened an elegant strongbox and tore at its contents with his bare fingers.
Beneath an upper layer of elaborate silk banners and flags were trays of silver. Under the round metal trays were several smaller boxes. Landregal grabbed one of the smaller boxes, opened it too, and felt its valuable contents. Several large, heavy, metal coins slipped between his fingers and he gave out another cry. "It's gold. I swear it is gold! It is really here, all of it!"
The other three men, Forkbeard, Utanba and Chin Le Tang, gathered about the tunnel's entrance. They peered into the inky depths of Lardock's lair, each with simultaneous, burning curiosity. As they watched expectantly, light from Utanba's fading torch cast the burrow's contents into unlit darkness.
"Don't be coy now hunter," Forkbeard ordered. "Put some of what you've found in that pouch and let us have a look at it."
Landregal placed one of the smaller boxes in the leather pouch and passed it up to the three men who waited for him above the ground. Leaden weight of the gold told him that what the box contained might, indeed, be a part to the treasured contents of the abandoned manor. With aroused elation, Chin Le eyed the container and hastened, with agitated excitation, as he opened it. He was right. The trio of men was surprised. Upon discovery of the small box, unprecedented stock from the rest of the castle's rare cache of belongings, excitement rose among the men. They were soon, all three, fanatically digging side by side, on the ground with their bare hands, in anxious anticipation of bringing out more of the wealth.
To gain further access into Lardock's lair, beyond the opening partially widened by Landregal Waterhunter, Chin Le Tang, smallest of the three men, emptied handfuls of loose dirt and rocks into the leather pouch. He continued to push them back up to the surface. Soon the aperture into the storeroom beneath the castle's blockhouse was large enough to pass down a well lit torch. An adequate look at the fortress' treasure told the four men that it was more than what they had expected: possibly the conglomeration of riches from a sizable portion of Aboregale. The larger items: suites of armor, elaborately decorated weapons, works of art, heavy boxes containing clothing and jewelry, would have to be abandoned for transportable quantities of precious metal. At most, the men would carry off only a fraction of all the available silver and gold stored in that room.
With meticulous effort the men removed the most excellent tokens of Aboregale's wealth from Lardock Trappler's hiding place under his estate. Painstakingly, extraneous valuables were ignored in favor of only the purest materials of monetary importance. Crates of silver goods were disregarded in favor of items made from the finest gold. After the men brought to the surface all they were sure they could carry on their horses, Saoel Forkbeard ordered the tunnel's entrance carefully camouflaged. "Half the wealth of Aboregale, wrought from the labor of its poor people is stored in that cave, enough to furnish a private army. Be sure that the entrance is carefully hidden. that we can carry back to Trome on horse back is but a mark of the bounty hidden in that storeroom."
"And if we had the men and steeds to cart it all back to Trome we would be wealthy until ancient age caught up with us," agreed Chin Le. "With another hunter and a dozen more horses we would fill Feydor Volki's vaults with the other half of Aboregale's bounty. But now that winter is about to set upon us, we will be hard pressed to make it south before the first tempests of the cold season hit us with a contemptible storm."
"You may be right there," Saoel generalized about the weather. "Fair skies of today are but a waning reminder of this deteriorating season. Gales from the north will bring snow to the lowlands in a matter of weeks I fear."
The men piled gold ingots and boxes of precious coins on the draw bridge and readied their horses for departure. Landregal carefully readjusted his robe, making sure the book on magic was secure beneath his loose fitting garment. The warriors and their slave then began to follow their own tracks, the discord between them appeased by wealth, back to Trome. Each man carried very nearly his own weight in treasure. Their horses faltered under an added burden of the golden bullion.
What did I tell you about Saoel Forkbeard," Utanba told Landregal as they resolutely rode together behind the other two men.
"Would you rather we stayed in Aboregale and froze to death than go back to Trome," asked Landregal? He was quiet as the stout African spoke to him, speculating over his fate once the men arrived in that Southern kingdom.
"Don't worry, I was in the same position you are now facing twice before and found I had only to maintain my fighting spirit to be successful at regaining my freedom. Show your force as a fighter and they will place you in the ranks of Volki s army. Eventually you will enjoy the same status the three of us share if you are willing to fight. Commit yourself to battle when we arrive in Trome. Tell the chancellors in charge of the prisons there that you wish to fight for Volki and you will be well accepted; argue with them and you will be cast into prison, worked to death, and at the sympathy of no one. Utanba Tu gave Landregal a last lingering glance indicating his irrevocable conviction as the two of them made slow progress to the south. He hoped Landregal would see the wisdom of his advice. The party stopped on the road side just before nightfall to rest and let the horses graze.
As the men secured their horses to flimsy saplings by the roadway a frightened hare sprung from cover beneath a stubby clump of bushes nearby. The formidable Scandinavian, Forkbeard, strolled off into a wooded area not far from the diligent party of men to pursue it. "Wait here, start a fire and watch the slave," he ordered Chin Le Tang and Utanba.
The men gathered kindling. Utanba worked his flint, a fine-grained bit of quartz, with patient diligence. Striking the crystalline rock angularly, with a sharp metallic bit of iron, the granite stone threw off a single, bouncy, white hot spark. It rolled onto the ground amid a pre-positioned pile of dried leaves. Utanba rocked on his knees, fanning the cinder with his hands and blowing on it. At the end of the awkward proceeding, he nourished a small blaze.
As Saoel walked off he could feel the penetrating coldness of the handled cross beneath his shirt. It bore against his skin the distinctively sinister fascination of a particularly subversive reminiscence. Memory of the illusion in front of Lardock's tunnel perplexed him. Engravings, in intaglio design, on the silver souvenir warned of the ill effects of its power. To the proprietor of the ansate