Harvey climbed toward the top floor, then took the water-operated elevator toward the kitchens, hoping to fool his pursuer. Ryan heard the familiar creaking noise of the ropes, cables and gears and darted to a spinning staircase with narrow, worn treads. He was within two turns of the bottom when he heard the grille of the ele-vator slamming shut.
Now the noise of the boars was much louder.
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“The night’s come and the land’s dark,” an eldritch voice shrieked from somewhere ahead of Ryan, beyond the storage rooms that fed the kitchens. Harvey was going ever deeper, singing to himself in a wild, cracked voice.
There were other knives and axes in the kitchens, and Ryan considered getting a better weapon, electing in the end to stick with the hunting dagger that felt right to his hand.
Now Ryan knew where his brother was going. The pas-sage was damp, the walls slick with moisture. A ramp led up to the right, slippery with wet mud and animal drop-pings. It went in a great winding bend to come out in the courtyard and was the way that the boars were brought in and out of the ville. The sound of the ravening creatures was stifling.
And Ryan remembered. On the occasions that his old-est brother Morgan had stood up for him against the bul-lying of Harvey, the middle brother had often gone cowering into the bowels of the ville, where he fled now.
Twice more he glimpsed the scurrying shape ahead of him, and once Harvey turned and fired the pistol at him. Ryan ducked back, bullets sparking off the walls. He lis-tened until he heard the familiar click of a hammer fall-ing on a spent cartridge.
“No more bullets, brother!” he shouted, feeling his whole body racing with tension and the anticipation of pleasure.
There was one more doorway.
It stood ajar and Ryan, ever-cautious, eased himself through it. His nostrils filled with the ammoniac stench of the pigs, his ears bombarded with their squealing.
Harvey had made changes down there since Ryan had lived in the ville. The boars were milling together in a cir-cular pit, a barred door at the bottom showing how they
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were moved. The sides were of slimy granite, fifteen feet high. A balcony, six feet wide, ran around the top of the pit, with a low wall as its parapet Harvey and any of his guests who wished to could come and admire the crea-tures from a position of safety. Apart from the entrance door where Ryan waited, accustoming his eye to the dim light, there was no other way out.
Except into the boar pit.
“You’re dead, Ryan! Been dead for twenty years! Go back to the grave, Ryan!”
“Gonna kill you, brother,” Ryan called out.
He could make out Harvey now, on the far side of the room, wrapped in the tattered cloak, holding the empty pistol. His face was in deep shadow, only the eyes gleam-ing like tiny chips of molten gold.
Ryan glanced down into the pit, seeing better than a dozen of the animals jostling one another, all of them looking up at him. They were at least five feet tall at the shoulder, weighing several hundred pounds. They all had ruby eyes, and curling ivory tusks that ended in needle points.
Now, in a way that sent a chill down his spine, they stopped their squealing, and the basement pit fell silent, except for the shuffling of their hooves in the wet straw.
“This is the end, brother,” Ryan shouted, holding the dagger up as though it were a holy relic. “Gonna cut your throat with this.”
“No, never, no, my dear little brother.” Harvey’s voice was calm and gentle. Ryan recognized the style. Harvey had used it when he was attempting to fool Ryan into something, or trying to con him. Or when he had some unsuspected trick up his sleeve.
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“All these years, Harvey, and now it’s you and me. Like I dreamed, hundreds o’nights. At last I can do it and get on with living.”
Harvey moved from behind a pillar, aiming the hand-gun at Ryan. “Got a fresh mag for the blaster, brother. Never thought of that, did you?”