Galen Beknighted (d2-3) by Michael Williams

Author:Michael Williams [Williams, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy

*****

It was almost a week before Bradley, one of the castle engineers, inspecting the foundations and cellars of the castle for flaws and damage the earthquake had wrought, stumbled across the gap in the dungeon.

It was not a large opening, he insisted to an alarmed Bayard and a half-dozing Sir Robert, but dangerous enough. For the great well that lay under the castle, subject to strain and pressure through the extraordinary rainy season, was no doubt brimming and bubbling in the deep recesses of rock, where only a sudden twist of the earth could unleash a flood through the floors of the towers and leave them awash in their own cistern.

To Bayard, it was still a question of plumbing. He soothed himself, thinking, I shall attend to this later. Until the young engineer added that beyond the opening lay a network of runnels.

Now he was far more concerned as to the state of the castle, for there was no telling what vermin or darker thing neither wedged himself in some remote underground cranny nor caused a cave-in or rockslide due to his high spirits. Sir Andrew promised that Robert was "in good hands."

Bayard Brightblade was not assured.

Comprising the rest of the group were servants- linkboys and bearers. There were two men trained as sappers, whose talents Bayard thought he could put to less military use. There was also Gileandos the tutor, who hovered about Sir Robert and Sir Andrew, prattling about the differences between stalactite and stalagmite and how one remembered the difference, until Sir Robert suggested that the scholar carry a lantern and make himself "useful for once."

All in all, there were nearly twenty of them-"a small army," Bayard muttered, a little resentfully, because his visions had been of adventure-of a solitary Knight, or at most a band of two or three or four, off into the bowels of the earth, where unknown peril awaited them.

With his group, the numbers were stacked against the lurking dangers. And Bayard admitted he was disappointed by the odds. His followers pressed together around him until he felt like a schoolmaster or a governess off on a jaunt with unruly children in tow.

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