Even Hell Has Knights (Hellsong) Read Free Page B

into one of the walls.
    But he had been through this chamber before, perhaps a thousand times. He remembered playing with Galen by that pillar as a child.
    My mind is playing tricks on me. It’s because I’m afraid.
    If Rick had known how badly this trip was going to go, he probably would have forbid it. Arturus allowed his breathing to slow. It did not take long for his fear to play itself out, and when it was gone, he felt he was one step closer to the person that Galen had trained him to be.
    He knew the way, so he pressed on towards the Kingsriver.
    The rooms became smaller, and the stone dulled from the soft blues to a red which reminded Arturus of dried blood. Light ceased to come from the floor and took on its normal ethereal and sourceless quality.
    After a few more minutes, he came to the road.
    Halfway there!
    The road was a series of rivets cut into the stone. Another type of rock, which Galen called rustrock, had been laid inside the grooves. It was a brown stone, almost black in color.
    Arturus began to follow the road.
    Galen had told him that if you spent the time to pry out the rustrock, then the rivet would heal in a few decades. Arturus didn’t like to think of stone healing. He had argued about this with Galen. Galen had taken him to a wall in his own chamber and made a chip in it with a few chisel strikes.
    “Tell me boy, in three years’ time, that I have lied to you.”
    Galen hadn’t been lying.
    Arturus adjusted the pack on his shoulders. It was almost completely full. He wished that Rick hadn’t given him so much latitude in the trading, both because it was heavy and also because it gave him plenty of excess to be cheated with.
    They don’t have to know how much you have.
    The riveted road forked, and a large violet stone, about two feet tall, was lying along one of the paths. Arturus thought that it might just be his imagination, but the air from that path felt cooler. Perhaps there was a river down that way. Violet stones such as this one had been placed by Rick, he knew, to warn travelers on the road not to take this fork. Paths marked by such stones led to the Carrion. Arturus knew better than to go near there. The place was thick with devils, and any man who survived in such a Hell was not likely to be friendly. Rick and the people of Harpsborough had spent many years barricading most of the main pathways that led to the Carrion, but Galen had warned him that there were still many more open.
    “You cannot block out a whole region,” Galen had told him. “Always there will be a hidden passage, perhaps a corridor or door which you missed. The enemy might go high or low or left or right, but they will find a way.”
    Arturus hurried past the fork, taking extra care to make sure that his footsteps were silent.
    He felt much safer after he put a couple of turns and stone walls between himself and the Carrion path. In fact, the farther he traveled down the road, the more comfortable he felt altogether. It was secretly thrilling to be traveling the wilds of the labyrinth on his own. He imagined that this must be how Galen felt on his many long hunts.
    His sweat was making his clothes stick to his body and his own movement through the air gave him a ghost of a chill, even in the temperate labyrinthine air. He stopped when he realized that the village’s guards would be in the next chamber.
    I made it!
    He remembered that he needed to hail them before he entered. Arturus didn’t think that they’d fire at him, but Rick had been pretty worried about it.
    “It’s Arturus, don’t shoot,” he said, his voice sounding high even to his own ears.
     

 

     
     
    He rounded the bend and saw two Harpsborough guards leaning back against the stone wall that stood by the village chamber’s entrance. Set against the wall beside them were two model 700 Remington rifles, which Arturus knew was the weapon used by most of the Harpsborough hunters. One of the two wore a hoodie, and the other had his