The Dark Cycle - Chapter Three

Chapter 3

The Bell Tower

“This is bad,” whispered Stephen. “We have to get out of here.”

“Out of where?” Raeffe snapped. “You said it yourself, this storm wants to kill us. What, then, is the point?”

But Stephen ignored him, breaking into a jog as he returned to the kitchens. A moment later, he returned with a pail of water. “We need to warn everyone.”

“Oh drat, oh drat, oh drat,” Grey whined, wringing his hands. “Stephen, what if we don’t have time?”

Raeffe shuddered. There was already a moist chill in the air, and his skin crawled. “My brother has a point.”

“Then take the charger, and go,” Stephen commanded, as he flicked water on the faces of the unconscious mercenaries. “I will stay and save as many as I can. They cannot know what is coming for them.”

Raeffe hesitated. In his silence, Grey exclaimed boldly: “We cannot let you do that alone! As scions of the noble d’Piers family, we have a duty. Very well. Let’s warn everyone.”

“Yes, but slowly,” Stephen cautioned. “We don’t want to raise a general panic - ”

But his wisdom came too late. Grey was already racing through the kitchens, his limp growing more dramatic in his haste. He tore past the tables, flailing his limbs in panic, upsetting stacks of dinnerware and fly-infested hunks of meat.

Raeffe and Stephen watched him for a moment, then glanced at one another.

“He’s fourteen years old,” Raeffe said, as though that explained everything. When Stephen shook his head, Raeffe went further: “He gets overstimulated.”

“Ugh. Try and rouse them,” Stephen said, shoving the pail into Raeffe’s chest, before running after Grey.

After he had gone, Raeffe stood alone with the bucket for a few seconds. He thought of dipping his fingers into the water as Stephen had done, but he could see the slime bobbing on the surface and decided against it. Instead, he dumped the entire pail onto the head of the nearest mercenary and shouted: “Wakey-wakey!” before beating a hasty retreat.

Meanwhile, Grey had reached the center of the tavern and, forsaking Stephen's advice, screamed: “There’s a massive storm coming, you lugs! We all need to run!”

The reception that greeted this advice was more lethargic than Grey had anticipated. Following about ten minutes of battling, the Crooked Arms crowd customarily adopted semi-recumbent postures, draping themselves over the remains of the furniture. A few rogues and serving-wenches had been picking through the pockets of the fallen, and upon seeing Grey, stiffened up and stared at him with wide eyes, like raccoons caught in a beam of light. One of them dropped to his stomach and began crawling toward the door.

“What are you doing?” Grey asked in horror, to a man who appeared to be cutting off locks of people’s hair and stuffing them into his pockets.

“It’s good luck,” the man mumbled rather unconvincingly, before moving onto his next victim.

Even those who were conscious, and innocent of such acts of knavery, did not appear to be interested in what Grey was saying. One man toasted him with a tin cup and muttered: “A storm’s coming, you say? My wife finally found out where I am, then? Heh-heh-heh.”

“Good one,” said another man, who was laying on the floor and smoking a pipe.

“Don’t you say another word against my wife, you villain, or I’ll kill you,” said a completely different man. “She’s a cow, but she’s a good cow.”

“That she is,” yet another man wailed, gripping the sides of his cup with shaking hands. “I’m not good for her! If only I could leave this life of dissolution and drink!”

And with that, the whole room began to sing in a multi-keyed falsetto, without further prompting or coordination:

I’d drink a cup of nails for my lady,

The sword or the lance I would use.

For her, I would traverse the world, but -

I can’t put down this bottle of booze!

“Good heavens,” said Grey, tearing up a little himself, once their warbling was finished. “If you all love your wives so much, why don’t you stop drinking?”

“There are questions, Grey, we will never get the answers to,” Stephen said, coming up from behind him. Stephen then paused, and surveyed the room. “What did you say? Why, are they crying?”

“Right,” Grey said, clapping his hands. “Lads. There is a terrible storm coming. You all need to get away from this place. And you haven’t much time!”

“Aw, leave them,” Raeffe said, joining Grey and Stephen. “Bunch of drunks. I say we take a few horses from the stable and get southward as fast as possible.”

“Ah-ha. So now you are in support of horse-thieving?” Stephen asked.

“It is only what Grey and I are owed, as lords of this area. Do you really think this riff-raff pay their taxes?”

“No,” Stephen said firmly. “This will not do at all.”

He noticed the tavern-keeper was entering, his tired eyes taking stock of the damage to his establishment. “Not as bad as last week,” the tavern-keeper said to one of the serving-wenches. “Or the week before, when that fellow calling himself Bernard the Bad Badger came in with his thugs. I thought they would strip the place bare.”

“Or the earlier in the season,” an older serving-wench agreed. “That was the night we had all them weird, western mercenaries. You know, the ones that call themselves the Cockroach Colonnade. Real biters they were, liked to chew on the furniture.”

“My lord!” Stephen called out to the tavern-keeper, who waved at him. “May we speak to you a moment?”

As the tavern-keeper approached, Raeffe murmured: “I see you do know your proper titles. I was beginning to get worried.”

Stephen answered: “If you think I am ever calling you ‘my lord,’ you can get stuffed.”

“Oh! Well, then. That sounds like a challenge. Challenge accepted.”

The tavern-keeper finally picked his way over a pile of planks that had once been a table and approached the boys, rubbing his hands together. “What’s the trouble? You young ones want a room? I would recommend it - feels like a storm coming.”

“That is just the thing,” Stephen said, looking at Raeffe. “Tell him.”

Raeffe was a little unnerved - why did Stephen want him to speak? But Raeffe duly cleared his throat and began: “A few days ago, our village was reduced to rubble by a storm.”

“A storm?” the tavern-keeper asked, disbelieving. “You mean, like a sea-squall?”

“No, our village was too far inland.” Raeffe took a deep breath. “It was such a storm, the clouds blotted out the sun. One moment, the day was fine, and the next - well. It bore down quickly, and came on the wings of terrible winds. We think that same storm is approaching this tiny village, and we need your help to sound the alarm.”

The tavern-keeper continued looking at them a moment, his expression unchanging. He blinked. But once that moment of contemplation was over, he shrugged and said: “I suppose you could ring the village’s warning bell.”

“Good!” Stephen exclaimed, sounding relieved. “There is a signal bell in this town?”

“Aye, head moonside, and just past the row of thatched cottages, there is a tower. But you’ll find the bell-keeper to be a dissolute, difficult sort of fellow.” The tavern-keeper wrinkled his nose and shook his head. “A foreigner, you know. From the Kingdom of Braxton. So I don’t know how much help he’ll be.”

“Then we will ring it ourselves,” said Stephen. And then, with a valiant stride, he made his way to the door, rolling up his sleeves.

By the time he reached the door, he realized neither of the d’Piers brothers were following him. Grey was looking at Raeffe, who was, in turn, looking intently at Stephen.

“We need to get out of here,” Raeffe said. “We don’t have time!”

“I’m terrified!” Grey shrieked, the words bursting out of him. “I’m too young to die! I’ve never even kissed a girl!”

“It’s not so great,” Raeffe assured him. Then, he began to fish something out of his pocket. He then held out his fist to Stephen, glancing uneasily at the drunks in the room. “I can reward you. I have something. I’m not saying it’s money. But it might be.”

“I don’t want your gold,” Stephen said. “But the bell will be too heavy for me to ring alone. Help me, and I will make sure you both escape the coming storm.”

“Sounds fair enough to me,” said Grey, gratefully running to Stephen’s side of the room. “Raeffe says kissing a girl is not so great, but I don’t believe him. I don’t think he’s ever kissed a girl, for they all despise him. One time, he asked the castellan’s daughter to marry him, but she declared she’d rather marry a root vegetable.”

Stephen found this very funny, but tried not to laugh. Raeffe was glowering as they crossed the courtyard toward the bell tower, his hands in the pockets of his cloak. Stephen suspected that, if the little nobleman heard Stephen laughing at him, Raeffe would become even more unhelpful than ever, which seemed impossible, but one never knew.

They all arrived together at the wooden bell tower. Stephen could already feel the wind whipping his tunic about. The horses across the yard could sense the coming storm; they whined softly in their pens. But Stephen tried to keep his thoughts on his mission. He banged on the tower door with a closed fist.

“Anyone up there?” he shouted, trying to shout above the growing rushing of the wind. “We seek the bell-ringer of this village!”

“He’s not home!” came the answer.

“Then who are you?” Stephen demanded.

“The bell-ringer of this village of course. But I’m not home.”

Stephen took a deep breath. “Right then,” he said, looking at Raeffe and Grey, who were standing behind him. “I am going to break down the door.”

“With your shoulder?” Grey asked, disbelieving. “You’re just going to have a run at it?”

“I guess.”

“You’ll lose your teeth! That sort of heroic stuff never works like in the stories.”

“Oh, let him try,” Raeffe sighed. “Anything to get out of this wind. And if he fails, we’ll get a good laugh.”

“Here we go then!” Stephen called to the bell-ringer. “There is a reason for alerting the people of this village and the surrounding farms. In their interest, I order you to let us in, or I will break down this door!”

When there was no answer - except a gargled murmur that sounded like, “your fat mother couldn’t break down this door” - Stephen gave a war-cry and threw himself against the door.

But the door didn’t budge. Not even a little.

Raeffe screamed with laughter.

“It must be - it must be double-locked! Triple locked!” Stephen exclaimed, even as he felt his cheeks burning with laughter. “Why don’t you try, brat?”

“What, and soil my tunic?” Raeffe laughed. “No, keep trying. Oh, but look Grey, it’s so sad.”

Stephen was concentrating so hard on his subsequent attempts to break the door, he completely missed the sounds of the locks unlatching. He was in the middle of careening at the door when it was thrown open, and Stephen went barreling into the building.

What followed was a terrible crashing: the sounds of broken pottery, glass grinding against the floor, and the rather hilarious and unexpected addition of a chicken’s offended screech. Raeffe observed all of this with a bemused expression, then went to the threshold to meet the man who had opened the door.

“I am Raeffe d’Piers,” he told the man, extending his hand. “We need your help.”

“Nice to meet you,” said the man, taking his hand and pumping it weakly. “Got a bit of a limp handshake there, lad. Gee, but your hand’s like a wet fish. Are you well?”

“Not really,” Grey said. “Are you the bell-ringer? Because if you are, there is a terrible storm coming, and you need to warn everyone.”

“My ribs…” Stephen groaned. He had landed in a corner of the room, and was now picking himself carefully off the floor. The chicken he had displaced was bobbing its head and glaring at Stephen with her beady eyes, occasionally lunging in for a peck. “What - what - ow!”

“That’s only Gertrude,” the bell-ringer explained. “She doesn’t like people, so you’ll just have to put up with it.”

When the bell-keeper said this, he winked at Raeffe, who could only make the stranger out through the clouded moonlight and occasional flashes of lightning. The bell-keeper was an older man, near the age of Raeffe’s father, but with a boyishly weak chin and unmarked complexion. There were puffy bags under his eyes and deep laughter lines on either side. In one particular burst of light, Raeffe could tell the man’s eyes were watery, and blue.

The man also seemed interested in Raeffe. “You are not an ordinary boy,” he finally concluded. “What is going on here?”

“What is going on,” Grey said, “is that you have to ring the bell.”

“Listen up, laddies!” the bell-ringer bellowed, in a voice that was punchy with drink. “I don’t ring the bell for run-of-the-mill storms. That bell is reserved for armies of ill-intent, such as the Knights of Oblivion or whatever the evil in the world is calling itself these days. The people of this village have seen a hundred storms, and they will see one hundred more before their sorry lives are over.”

“This is no ordinary storm,” Stephen cautioned him. “It destroyed our entire village.”

“If you don’t believe us,” Grey said, “go up and look.”

For a long time, the bell-ringer was silent, and they were all afraid that he was angry, or had not heard them properly. The silence revealed the chaos of what was happening outside: the boards of man’s house rattled and the uneasy cries of horses reached them from the tavern’s stables. After this time had passed, the bell-ringer reached down and whirled a piece of tarp from atop a lamp. The man’s hands trembled as they gripped the lantern, causing the light to shudder.

“Then, let’s go have a look shall we?” he asked, in a mocking voice.

As they all followed the bell-ringer up the stairs, Raeffe grabbed Stephen’s arm. “If he kills us, I’m going to blame you.”

“What makes you think he is going to kill us?”

“I don’t know. He just seems crazy.”

Stephen shrugged off Raeffe’s arm and did not offer a reply. The bell-ringer did seem a little strange, though. The man spoke with the polished accent of a noble, but he had the simple tunic and bad manners of a country farmer. Stephen couldn’t decide which one he was.

The staircase to the tower circled around for several flights before they reached the top. As they wound their way up, Stephen saw the bell: cracked and covered with dull copper paint. It was as tall as Stephen’s own father, and wide as a horse. The wailing of the wind did not cause it to sway in the slightest.

They made their way to an open platform at the top of the tower, which only had a tarp for a ceiling. Grey led the way, jogging over to an enormous leather curtain that concealed the sky. The canvas was heavy, but Grey managed to drag it aside, revealing the wickedness of the stormy sky. In the occasional flashes of light, the clouds were approaching, red and roiling.

“Good heavens,” whispered the bell-ringer. “That does not look like any storm I’ve ever seen. Indeed! The sky is festering with low clouds. You said you’ve seen this before?”

“It attacked our village,” Grey answered in a sober voice. “You need to warn the people.”

“Yes - yes!” the man exclaimed, wringing his hands. “But you don’t understand, I have never rung these bells. Never! I don’t even know how it all works!”

Stephen made a frustrated sound - something like ‘harumph!’ - and he marched over to the nearest coil of rope, attached to the top of the tower.

“Help me!” he commanded Raeffe.

He was sure Raeffe was going to make some kind of argument: either his gloves were too fancy, or perhaps his shoulders were twinging from carrying the bucket earlier. But surprisingly, Raeffe came over and held the rope taut while Stephen uncurled it.

“Let it drop,” Stephen commanded as he wound the rope around his right arm, “and then pull up.”

“Go on!” Grey cried, clapping his hands. “I’ve never heard a proper bell ringing before! Not since I was born, I suppose.”

Raeffe nodded at Stephen. Then, together, they swayed with the rope. The clanging of the bell was so loud, Stephen felt the blood rush into his ears. The muscle and bones within his head began to feel hot. Grey clapped his hands over his ears and shouted against the clanging: “I think you’ve got it!”

But suddenly, Stephen didn’t have it.

The Wood and ropes holding the bell in place began to creak and snap with their old age. Then the bell totally came loose from and started to fall down the staircase of the tower. The rope pulled Stephen forward, driven by the weight of the bell. He could not escape the falling giant - his arms were tangled in the ropes. Stephen went stumbling forward, then sliding across the floor. He screamed as he felt the burning in his legs. He was flailing, with nothing to stop him. He was about to go over the edge and disappear into the spiraling staircase - Raeffe had let go of the rope!

Stephen’s muscles felt raw and ripped. His legs had already gone over the edge when he felt someone grab his hand.

The rope that had held the bell went twirling down into the bottom of the tower, where the bell was wreaking havoc, and crashing all the way down into the tower’s cellar. But Stephen was safe. He looked up into the weary eyes of the bell-ringer, who had saved him.

“You’re a good sort of kid,” the bell-ringer said, the light from the storm sparkling in his eyes. “I expect we can’t have you dying. Not just yet. Name’s Lyle Cullen by the way. Now let’s get you up to the safe-and-sound.”