Page 75 of The Dungeon Book

For you, I would square my shoulders (if I had them), clench my fists (if I had them) and march on with grim determination (grim determination I can furnish, marching’s harder when you’re a skull). For you, I’ll tell this part.

It began with rumours.

Young Neb was gone from us, but we got news through Mistress Clove. She sometimes walked down the hill to the village to beg for necessities the Dungeon could not provide. There’s coin aplenty in the Dungeon; chests of gold and silver, more statues with jewelled eyes than you can shake a ten-foot pole at. Bait had brought Neb a king’s ransom in gold and treasure over the years. But it’s hard to buy, say, a chicken or a new shoe with a gold coin that’s worth more than a village might see in a lifetime, and even if the poor village accepts the coin in trade, such wealth attracts adventurers who quite correctly ascertain that it’s easier to loot treasure from dead peasants than living monsters. Most of Neb’s gifts ended up buried in a treasure trove in Gyul’s garden, where they remain to this day.

She returned with snippets of rumour. Clove had little interest in the wider world. To her, the kitchen of Dunshelm Keep had been kingdom enough. But, with Bait away on her subterranean expeditions, my own appetite for news grew. Clove and Only-Sister would natter away, chewing over trivial bits of gossip from Dungeon or village, and I was left to piece together fragments into a patchwork. I could hardly make my own way down the hill – one can only roll so far – so this is what I assembled from her snippets.

Of course, you know what happened better than I.

In tea leaves of limbless veterans and a fresh crop of deserters-turned-brigands, I deduced that the Chancellor’s Great Northern War had gone sour. He overextended his reach, and the rebel barons took advantage of this weakness by rising up again, this time with more success. In the prayers offered in the churches, in the critiques about the sermons of the village priest, I deduced that King Arus’ illness had worsened. As the Princess Aldebara had not yet come of age, the Chancellor now had to divide his time between his duties as royal physician to the crumbling ruler and de facto ruler of the crumbling realm.

Then – in the sudden doubling of tithes and taxes, in the abrupt demands for food and drink and all manner of comestibles, I guessed that Sir Rudyard had guests. The word went forth that the king was departing for the border marches – not, of course, because of the rebel threat, but because his physician declared that fresh country air would do the king good. Little Dunshelm, the threadbare sock on the toehold of civilisation at the edge of the wild, was now host to the royal court of King Arus. Black bread and bacon and tea was not the sort of fare to delight cultured courtiers – though, with revolt spreading, that was all they could expect and more than they deserved.

I ground my teeth, thinking of what this might mean. I hoped Bait would return soon.

The RATS got to me first.

Royal Antiquarian Tunnel Surveyors.

Such a bland title. It conjures images of scholars discussing abstruse points of history over tea and crumpets, does it not? Sages with ink-stained fingers poring over great leather-bound ledgers of learning, Bait’s little Dungeon Book all grown up. All the secret places of the kingdom, all the marvellous strange nooks and ruins catalogued so that they might be preserved and studied. Let history be exalted and exhumed, let the wisdom of elder days be brought to light.

I can imagine the Chancellor proposing it in the same way we used to hawk cure-alls from the back of a cart.

There was some truth to it, of course, a few genuine scholars like Nala, a few impressive ledgers to be presented to the king, so he could turn the pages with his feeble fingers and squint at the sketches. Look here, your majesty, and admire this illustration of a dragon’s skull, very like the one that incinerated your late wife. Is it not much better to have such things flayed on parchment, to have their bones cast into bronze trophies?

The RATS who stormed the upper levels were of a different sort from the poor doomed adventurers of previous years. They came prepared: unsporting maps of the Dungeon; weapons of cold iron that could wound the liquid form of nixies; silver-edged swords to cut wraiths; spears and nets to fight manticores; hammers to smash our few remaining gargoyles; iron helms to guard against spikers.

Now, I have never known an adventurer who was wholly sane. In this I make no judgement; I’ve never known an interesting person who was wholly sane, either. But to be an adventurer takes just the right mixture of desperation, curiosity and courage. Ordinary people fear the unknown, but adventurers are drawn to the dark like moths to flame. Yes, there’s treasure in dungeons, but there are safer ways to make one’s fortune. It is something else – a desire for glory or knowledge, the lure of the subterranean abyss. To know what’s around the next dark corner.

These new intruders had none of that. They were veterans of the Great Northern War, and they entered the Dungeon like soldiers. No wary exploration, no cautious tap-tap-tap of the ten-foot pole, no sense of wonder. Hatred of Dungeon-kind consumed them. Some Denizens they killed, others they captured. The rattle of chains echoed through the halls.

They entered through the ruins of the old Entrance Hall, squeezing through the rubble to reach the old stair. Then, they descended level by level, room by room.

Click went goblin traps. Bones broke, flesh bled, RATS fell – and more came.

The halls echoed with the roaring of angry trolls. The intruders did not quail. Spears they set, fire and acid they brought, and the trolls fled.

Room by room, closer and closer.

Nithscalpa’s botched claim to be Master of the Dungeon had cost us dearly. Even in the old days, when I was Master at the height of my power, flush with new-found magic, and all the Denizens bowed to me, the Dungeon would have been hard pressed to resist this assault. Now, with so many of the big beasts of the upper levels slain, it was a slaughter.

I lay there on my plinth, unable to do anything except listen. A crash – that would be the east door of the Gallery of Flints. Stirge-birds nested there, and I imagined I could hear the frantic beating of their wings as the flock took flight, long sharp beaks like stilettos thirsting for blood. Then, a series of thumps. The Gallery of Flints no doubt had an annotated entry in some RAS ledger, noting the right weapons to bring to that fight. Heavily laden weighted nets brought the stirge-birds down.

Another crash as they broke down the west door. Closer still.

I remember looking around my tomb at the remnants of my second life. The sarcophagus where that wretched slime had sucked my bones. The footstool where Clove sat. The scrapes left in my plastered wall by the horns of the minotaur. And, most of all, Bait. Her ragged blanket in the corner, the fading charcoal writing on the wall from long-abandoned lessons, her little collection of treasures from above and below. She’d brought life to my tomb.

They took a sledgehammer to my door. Each dolorous blow cracked chunks from the plaster. Antiquarian Survey, indeed! Brigands and looters, the lot of them.

Then they were in.

They stuffed me into a sack.

I would say “all went dark, and I knew no more”, as a dramatic way to end this section, but, as you know, I can see in the dark. But there was very little to see in there, and the thick fabric muffled all sounds. So, all went sack, and I knew no more.

Bait was deep in the Dungeon, in regions where no living human had ever trespassed – and she would have argued fiercely, then, that she was no living human anyway, she just happened to look like one. It took a long time for word of the assault to reach her. One of the new goblins – a particularly frightful young spawn named Fuglog, found her in a red-litten chamber with walls of jacinth.

“Bait! Bait!”