I peeked around the corner and—sure enough. Below me, down a short flight of stone steps, was the “baronial feasting hall.” Insofar as that term can be applied to something which bore a closer resemblance to a bears’ den. Off to my left, set into the stone wall, was a very large fireplace. Logs within it were burning lustily.
The Baron himself, clearly enough, was the man seated in a large wooden chair at the base of the steps. I deduced he was the Baron because his chair was at the head of the table and was the largest of the eight chairs gathered about. It bore a vague resemblance—very vague—to something you might call a “throne.” The fact that the servant had stopped by his chair first to proffer the platter of meat added further evidence to my surmise.
“Table” I said, but the arrangement was actually more complex. Two tables—heavy, clumsy wooden things—had been abutted in an inverted “T” shape. The shorter of the tables made the base of the “T,” and it was at the foot of that table that the Baron sat. On either side of that table sat one of his retainers. His chief lieutenants, I assumed. I recognized the man sitting to the Baron’s right. He was the one who had led the party which captured the two girls.
The table which formed the crosspiece of the “T” was longer. Five chairs were positioned at that table, each of them occupied by one of the ruffians who passed as “feudal retainers” in the Baronies. One man sat at each end of the table, the other three positioned along its length facing the Baron.
As for the girls themselves, the older one was standing in the middle of the long table at the end, engaged in what you might call a “striptease” if the term weren’t too repulsive for the event. She was practically nude by now, her face tight with fear and resentment, being rowdily encouraged by the men at her table.
The younger sister’s state of disapparel I could not determine. She was perched on the Baron’s lap, most of her form hidden from me by the back of the chair and the Baron’s own figure.
I couldn’t see the Baron’s face, a fact which mattered to me not in the least. I was far too busy gauging the position of the Baron himself, his armed retainers, and their state of inebriation. One man against eight called for a battle plan of some sort.
In my favor were three things: the fact that the men in the feasting hall were not expecting to be attacked, were seated and thus not in good position to resist an attack, and were obviously well on their way toward a drunken stupor. So far along, in fact, that I was sorely tempted to wait until they were comatose from liquor. But . . . before they reached that state, the girls would have been badly abused.
Against me were also three facts: first, that the men were all armed; second, that however crude they might be, they were accustomed to physical mayhem; and, finally, that I was not too well armed myself and had no armor of any kind.
By the time I finished my assessment, the servant had placed the platter of meat on the table and was returning toward the hallway in which I lay waiting. I decided to begin with that happy circumstance, and moved silently back along the stone corridor and into the alcove. There I waited, in full shadow.
The servant scuttled past, his head down and paying little attention. As soon as he moved around the next bend in the hallway, I emerged from the alcove and hoisted the sack and easel back onto my shoulders. Then, I followed him around the bend in the hallway. I would call it a “corner” except that the term would be somewhat ridiculous. Whoever had designed and built that castle, centuries earlier, had obviously never heard of either a plumb bob or a level, much less a T square.
He was not hard to follow. His crude footwork—wooden clogs held onto his feet with leather strips—made quite a racket clumping along the rough stone floor.