Sample: Narrative fiction

It feels like they've been trapped for days. Well, they have been. But it feels longer.

Patrick stretches and stares at the four stone walls around him. Mari and the girls have finally fallen asleep. Zaros is still sunk into his trance, Kielsen and Gareth are both out cold.

He hates this room, he hates the stink of magic and the stink of death. He hates the periodic whinings and scratchings as the Scourge patrols pass them by. Last night, Gareth crept onto the roof and gathered rainwater from a clogged gutter. It tasted like heaven. It was the last bit of clean anything they'd found - enough for a swallow for each of them, two for the girls. His mouth is dry now. The food Kielsen brought in was bitter-tasting, fouled already by whatever that damned fog had been. He'd have tried it anyway, but Zaros had forbidden them to eat it. He'd argued that poisoning was better than starving, and Zaros had just looked at him with those cold, grey eyes and said, No, Patrick, it isn't. And he'd thought of the corpses moving and his Ma dying of the plague and all the horrible things that had happened since then and he'd been ashamed, ashamed he'd even said such a thing.

He hates this room.

There's no light here but the flickering magelight at the end of Zaro's staff. They can't have fire, not even a lamp, not in a sealed room with no airflow. He starts as the echoing comes from below, the scratching and sloshing of the Scourge patrol. With neither sun nor moon, their days are timed by it. It builds slowly, the jangling and mumbling and hideous noises, crests just underneath them, lingers a moment (was the sound different? have the wards held? Do they smell us?) and fades slowly, down the tunnel to silence. He eases out a trembling sigh. He hates Zaros, with his snotty attitude and mageborn airs, but his wards are strong. They've kept Mari safer than his swords or Kielsen's armor ever could and for that alone he is grateful. But they can't get out of the city. They have to get out and they can't. Zaros said he couldn't raise a portal, and the walls are guarded and the gate is guarded and the tunnels and the sewers are all guarded and there has to be a way out there has to be a way -

There is sudden thunder at the Trapdoor - someone is pounding on it.

"In the Name of the Light, Let me in!"

Patrick's thoughts shudder to a stop. That voice... it can't be. His voice frames her name even as he knows it is impossible.

"G-Gerd? Gerd!"

The voice that answers his is hoarse, unbelieving, childlike in its innocence. "Patrick?"

In an instant, he is down on the floor, calling to her through the thick-timbered trapdoor.
"Gerd! Gerd, stay there! Don't move, I'm coming!" He fumbles with the latch at the end of the heavy crossbar, a rough-hewn log that lies through four wrought-iron bands linking floor and aperture. His hands are trembling, shaking so hard he can barely get the key into the lock. She's alive, his sister is alive. He has so many questions, so many -

Rough hands tackle him from behind, slamming him brutally onto the floor. The bar bruises his ribs painfully. For a wild moment, he thinks the Scourge have broken in, then Gareth's voice roars in his ear. "What are you DOING?" He twists, unthinking, and slams his fist into the older man's jaw. He is crying, his face slick, his thoughts a-jumble -

"Gerd, It's Gerd! it's my sister she's alive she's ALIVE..." His hands reach for the lock again and they are both on him now, Gareth and Kielsen are pulling him away from the hatch and he kicks and bites and screams her name over and over -

Kielsen looks up at Zaros, his voice shaky. "Is it true?"

Zaros, risen to his feet, looks down at the struggling men, his voice a terrible whisper. "No."

Under the press of bodies, Patrick shudders and sobs, unwilling to hear the older man's sentence, but Zaros continues, remorseless. "...There are no other living things within the walls. That has been true for three days." His eyes are terrible and cold, frost clouding his breath even though the room is warm with the heat of their bodies. "I am sorry, Patrick." The pity in his voice makes it worse.

There is a muffled sob from the other side of the door. "Patrick? Patrick, what's happening?"

"NO! That's a LIE!"
Patrick surges to his knees, makes a lunge for the mage. "You cowardly bastard! You're LYING! You didn't even want to go back for Mari, you -" The others bear him down by sheer weight, but he is young and strong and desperate. He curses at the mage raggedly, thrashing and striking at his companions. Gareth grunts as an elbow takes him in the stomach, but holds on grimly.
Kielsen looks up at the mage again, desperate for guidance, but Zaros' face is abstracted, unseeing. "Zaros.."

On the cot in the corner, Mari sits upright and still, eyes like a frightened fawn. Her daughter clings silently to her, mirroring her look. Even the swaddled baby is silent. Zaros speaks, his face lost and searching. "...One of the wards must have failed, hours ago. I didn't even sense it. So tired..."
Patrick kicks and thrashes, lands a lucky punch against Kielsen's chest. Gareth roars and bears him down again, twisting one burly arm in a headlock and forcing the boy's face towards Mari.

"Look at her, you idiot. Look at her!"

Patrick meets Mari's wide-eyed stare and flinches away.

"I don't know about your sister," Gareth continues, "..But my sister is ALIVE. And if you open that door, you'll kill her." He wrenches Patrick's head around again, feels the boys' thrashing weaken. Mari gazes at him unspeaking, her eyes pleading. "...You'll KILL HER. You'll kill all of us. Do you understand?" Patrick gulps air into a sob, his resolve fading. The room falls into silence.

(On the far side of the door, a reedy whisper. "Patrick...")

"Don't listen."

Mari turns away, comforting her daughter. Patrick squeezes his eyes shut, face a rictus of misery. Gareth looks down at him, relaxes his grip. "Now, do you see - "

(A soft gasp, a scratching. "Patrick. Patrick, they're coming..." )

In the distance, a soft susurrus of echoes. The tunnel is no longer silent. The voice suddenly rises to a scream, raw and terrified. Fists pound on the wooden door. "Patrick, PLEASE! Let me in! PAAATRIIIICK!"

Within Patrick's mind, something snaps. He lets out a bull roar and surges to his feet, throwing Gareth off like a rag. He steps into Kielsen's charge, and his fist connects to the older man's jaw with an audible crack of breaking bone. Gareth rebounds off the wall, colliding with Zaros and knocking him off balance. Mari draws breath for a scream and clutches her children tightly. Patrick falls toward the latch, turns it, slides the bar halfway through. His voice is an agony of hope and terror.

"GERD! I'm coming!"

(On the other side of the hatch, the Little Master smiles in amusement, and speaks one word that echoes through nine skulls.

"Pull.")

Dead hands haul at ropes suddenly taut, the iron hooks strain and the trapdoor explodes downward in a rain of shattered wood, the massive crossbar yawing upward wildly as the far half of it is pulled down into the tunnel. The boy spills forward into the sudden darkness with a cry, and Gareth flinches away from the sight. There is the sound of tearing meat.

Mari's scream never comes, just a sobbing hitch of breath where sound should be. Gareth stumbles to his feet, hand reaching for the sword that is, in such a small space, easily within reach. The noises from beneath them hardly register in his mind as anything but silence. The sounds within the room, of his charges, is too important to be drowned out.

Over them, nearer, he can hear Zaros whispering. The temperature of the room drops to a bone-chill.

(In the tunnel, the officers squeal and push, fighting to be the first into the room. Spiderling and Shanks rush forward eagerly, bony claws scrabbling at rungs suddenly rimed with frost. Ratling looks up, mouth still thick with blood, her thoughts too sluggish for warning.

The Mage, remember the Mage!

Blue light blazes outward from the hatch, blinding her. Her sept-mates' shrieks are cut off suddenly, and she sees the thick encrustation of ice that covers them, blocking the gateway. Above, she can hear a hasty scrabbling, the heavy thunk of steel. Spiderling's thought-bond flickers out, gone. Shanks' mind flares once in rage and indignation - no, the prey is so clo - There is another brilliant flash of light, a roll of thunder. The air crackles, as lightning crawls lazily along the scorched rungs of the ladder. The smell of burnt flesh is incongruous with the arcing cold that stings her nostrils.

Greenteeth strides forward, hefting a broadaxe. It only takes a few swings to clear most of the obstruction. He tugs at a leg, triggering an avalance of ice and meat. He squints into the passageway, hissing.)

Zaros's whispers fill the tiny room, his brow furrowed in agonized concentration. Gareth realizes with a start that thick strands of grey are crawling through the mass of dark hair, whitening in front of his eyes. The wizard grips his staff with hands suddenly crabbed by age and gusts a final syllable. The air rends slowly, a flash of light irising open; a window, a door edged with a rippling haze.

Gareth speaks, his voice shaky. "You said you couldn't make a portal."
Zaros mutters through clenched teeth. "Said I couldn't make one out of the city. Get through, I can't hold it long."
Gareth pulls Mari roughly to her feet, breaking her paralysis. As she stumbles toward the portal, she whispers, agonized, "Kielsen." Gareth looks. Her husband is splayed across the floor, unconscious. "I'll get him. Go." His eyes meet Zaros, in a silent plea. Zaros nods, a fraction. Gareth edges around the shattered timbers of the hatchway.

(In the tunnel there is furtive motion, a hiss of interest.)

Behind him, Zaros steps through the portal. It flickers and sways, beginning to shrink slowly. He knows Zaros will keep it open as long as he dares, a few more moments.

Kielsen moans and stirs, flings one arm over the trapdoor lintel. Gareth lunges toward him with a cry. A massive iron-shod paw surges up, pulls Kielsen down into blackness. The thing pokes a helmeted head and rusted iron pauldrons above the door lintel and grunts, swiveling its eyeless head back and forth. Gareth raises his eyes to the portal on the far side of the hatchway. It is still there, flickering like a candle, shrinking slowly.

It will be a bad death.

He takes a shuddering breath. Ice crystals swirl in front of his mouth, lodge in his beard.
Gareth hefts his sword and roars. Greenteeth whirls to face him, widening its grin in welcome. He spikes his sword through the massive helmet, bearing down on the thing with all his weight. Greenteeth grunts again mindlessly, and is torn from the ladder. Gareth follows, riding the ruined armor down to his fate.

In the empty room, the flickering portal gutters, winks out into nothing.