The landgraf’s men had already established a small foothold inside the gatehouse of Willowridge. A few guards positioned just inside acknowledged them with a silent nod, keeping a lower profile for the time being until the bulk of their force was ready to press inward. Passing through the gatehouse, Elaina and Resius entered the darkness of the outer bailey, which was relatively small compared to the rest. The space between the curtain wall and the middle bailey was a killing ground, a place for soldiers to get hung up during an attack so defenders could pick them off from the walls.
“Keep an eye on those towers,” Resius whispered gently, motioning briefly up at the stone structures that stretched high into the night sky, “Let’s stay out of their line of sight as much as we can.”
Elaina nodded her silent agreement before moving up to the wall so they could walk along it to the next gatehouse. She was tempted to move at a brisk jog, but each time she began to pick up her pace, Resius would reach out to take hold of her arm to ease her back. Though he wanted to move quickly, his idea of it appeared to be at a swift sneak.
The sound of something large scraping against stone along the wall walkway above them caused Elaina to freeze in place, the hair on the back of her neck now standing on end. She looked back at Resius behind her, who had pressed himself as flat as he could against the stone. Without speaking a word, she gave him a distinct look that asked, “What the fuck,” without breaking their silence. He said nothing, of course. Instead, he leaned out, craning his neck to glimpse what it could have been. He shook his head, unable to make anything out from this angle.
They waited for a few minutes, completely still, for any indication that what was there would be moving again---nothing, not a sound. Then, Elaina carefully resumed creeping along the wall until they reached the next gatehouse. Here, there could have been anything waiting inside to ambush them. This, at least, was something that Elaina had explicitly prepared for. Reaching down to one of the pouches on her belt, she pulled out the spying glass, which Resius recognized after a moment of squinting dumbly at it.
Elaina pressed the glass to the wall, closed one eye, and peered through it with the other. If the glass was successfully seeing through the thick stone, she couldn’t tell. Everything was completely black. She realized it would still have to be lit to make anything out if she saw into a room. The glass allowed her to bypass barriers but not to see in the dark. Still, it was better than nothing, and she continued to check the wall periodically as they approached the main entryway of the gate itself. Elaina peeked around the side but saw no indication that something was waiting there for them.
“Looks clear,” Elaina whispered almost inaudibly back to Resius, who moved forward to see for himself before darting across the entryway to the other side. At this new angle, he didn’t seem to spot anything new and indicated as much with a quick shake of his head. Regardless of the angle, though, neither could see anything inside the arrow slits that ran along the inside nor the murder holes toward the end. The portcullis was raised, just as it had been with the outer gatehouse, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t something waiting to shut it behind them and rain death down upon them.
Unable to remain where they were, the two silently agreed to move on along the walls of their respective sides. Each time they arrived at one of the arrow slits, they were careful to duck under it, just in case something was inside waiting. Elaina paused under one of them to use the spying glass but, again, found that even what little light came in from the slit itself was not enough to allow her to see what was inside. Finally, when they reached the portcullis, Elaina could see that it hadn’t been left open but was stuck with how it sat at a slightly crooked angle. How this happened, she didn’t know, but it meant extra caution was warranted as they each passed under it to slink out into the middle bailey.
The middle bailey itself was much larger, with a lot of open ground that would be dangerous to cross. The keep loomed silently on the other side. Elaina didn’t make a move, content to remain in the shadow of the gatehouse and examine the other buildings set into the walls themselves. Now that she was standing there and not merely looking at a schematic, the prospect of reaching the inner bailey on the other side of the keep seemed dubious. But the idea of entering the keep and making their way down to the storage cellars wasn’t appealing either. Resius looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to make the next move. She waved him off before holding up one finger, letting him know to be patient and wait.
The more she stared into the courtyard of the bailey, the more unsettled Elaina became. It felt similar to the feeling she had experienced while fighting on the bridge but much less intense. It was the difference between being jabbed with a blunt stick and having it slowly pressed up against her. Her eyes continued to dart between walls and towers, but she couldn’t make much out with how dark it was. Everything was covered in thick moss, and there was a faint foul smell that she could only barely detect when the gentle breeze shifted slightly. It smelled rotten. A shrine was attached to the wall far to their right, briefly causing Elaina to wonder what had become of a former holy site in a place filled with demons.
Careful to move slowly and quietly, Elaina bent down at the knee and picked up a piece of stone debris that had come off the wall long ago. She checked the heft of it in her hand before she tossed it as hard as she could into the center of the bailey. The stone vanished into the dark almost immediately, taking a moment to collide with something hard there with a surprisingly sharp clatter that echoed off each wall. Then, out of the corner of her eye, she detected movement up along one of the walls. Reflexively, Elaina shrank back into the opening of the gatehouse, and Resius followed suit. Elaina’s eyes strained to make sense of the movement, which appeared to be feathered wings rustling on a large, hunched form. After the wings shook out, the creature leaped from the wall and glided down to the ground of the bailey.
The creature was roughly man-shaped with the head of a vicious bald vulture, its dark blue skin making it difficult to see in the night. Its eyes gleamed with a malicious hunger as it scratched and scrabbled around in the stone debris at the center of the bailey with claws and talons to locate the source of the noise it had just heard. Though hunched, the creature easily stood eight feet tall with a large enough wingspan that it could have easily carried either Elaina or Resius off if it got a hold of them. Elaina’s horrified gaze shot over at Resius, who merely held a finger up to his lips and then pointed up toward the parapets of another wall. There, another one of the creatures could be seen leaning over the side, stretching its long neck out silently to get a better view of what its kin might find. All around the bailey, Elaina could make out the faint movement of creatures stirring as they silently moved into attack position. Beyond her field of vision in the dark, she imagined many more, all waiting with bated breath at what could be an opportunity to feast.
The whole of the bailey was a hunting ground for these winged demons, by the looks of it. The only movement from either Elaina or Resius was the redhead chewing her lip anxiously. The creature continued to move in long slow movements, remaining silent as it surveyed whatever it was that Elaina had struck with the stone earlier. It remained on the ground for several minutes, though it never so much as glanced in their direction. The breeze that moved through every so often carried the scent of the demon toward them, which reeked of carrion and foul unwashed bird feathers. This meant that whatever they smelled like wasn’t being brought back toward it. Though, at this point, Elaina wondered if they would smell even remotely like something it would think to hunt.
Losing interest, the creature gave a mighty beat of its wings as it leaped into the air, returning to its perch along the wall. The others, that which Elaina could see anyway, similarly lost interest and skulked back to where they had been laying in wait before the first of their number had attracted their attention. The two remained motionless, where they were for several minutes after. Elaina finally relaxed when they were confident that the creatures had all departed.
There was no way that they could make it through the bailey itself, not with such creatures waiting to jump on them. The keep felt leagues away despite them being closer to it than they ever had been before. Elaina needed to devise a way to direct their attention elsewhere, to exploit their need to investigate the things they heard while remaining completely out of sight. She considered creating such noise back in the outer bailey but dismissed the idea as quickly as she had it. The fact the flying creatures had yet to detect their camp further down the rugged slopes was a small blessing. One that would be undone if she lured them to the outer bailey.
The gatehouse itself was the only option. Each end of the corridor within it had a raised portcullis that could be dropped, but the second one had been jammed. If she could clear the jam, it would be possible to lure the creatures into the corridor and close them in. Elaina waved Resius over to her position, which he crept over too quickly without making a sound. Once he was right up next to her, she whispered her plan to him, which he listened to impassively. She couldn’t tell whether he loved or hated the plan, but he agreed to it all the same.
“How do we clear it?” Resius whispered, glancing back at the jammed portcullis, “Do you know what’s jamming it?”
“Probably something jammed in the track,” she speculated, “I’ll take care of it. There’s a door around the corner on the side you were just on. Go in there and find the winding mechanism. It should look like a large winch with handles on it. Pull the gate up just a little bit, but do it slowly.”
Elaina paused to get Resius’ full attention, “Slowly, alright? We don’t want to make too much noise before we’re ready. It should only need two or three turns, then hold it in place while I clear the track on the side.”
Resius was ambivalent; it was written all over his face. But they didn’t have many options and were running short on time. He squeezed her shoulder gently with one hand before he skulked off to carry out his part of the plan. Elaina crept back to the jammed portcullis and examined it while she waited. Whenever it had been dropped, it hadn’t got very far before jamming. There wouldn’t be a lot of room for the portcullis to be raised from where it currently sat.
Through one of the arrow slits in the wall, she could hear Resius searching carefully for the winch, so she moved into position. When the portcullis moved, it did so with an almost painful slowness that kept it from making noise above a barely audible scrape. Elaina reached into the track along the side, her hand feeling around for what might have been holding it up. Her hands moved over a long thick, rusted bar that felt like it had been inserted straight up so that when the portcullis was dropped, it slid into an oblique angle to prop it up. However, without the proper momentum of the drop, the portcullis weight couldn’t overcome the leverage offered by the bar propping it up.
Elaina grimaced as she wrapped her fingers around the bar and began to pull, but the slight bend in its length when it became wedged made it difficult to do. The bar wouldn’t budge. Suddenly a wave of nausea washed over Elaina from seemingly nowhere. A strange sort of weakness overcame the muscles in her arm for just a moment before she pulled her arm back quickly as though it had been burned. The swordmage opened and closed the hand a few times, finding it difficult to do at first before the weakness passed.
Reaching back into the groove along the wall, Elaina again tried to wrench the bar free, only to find that the feeling returned after just a couple of tugs. It didn’t make any sense to her. If it had been enchanted to prevent tampering, she would have been able to feel at least a slight residual hum of magic within, but there was nothing. It was just rough and cold. Resius wouldn’t be able to hold the winch in place for long, so trying to puzzle out a clever way of freeing the large metal bar was out of the question. Elaina would have to summon the strength needed to free the bar.
Elaina shook her hand out quickly to return the strength to it before positioning her feet against the wall on either side of the track. Instead of reaching into the dark with one hand, she went in with both. Once she had a firm hold of the bar, she pulled not just with the strength in her arms but her legs as well, bracing herself against the wall to give it everything she had. Almost immediately, the feeling of weakness began to overcome her again, much faster than before and in both hands this time. But Elaina was determined. She couldn’t afford to waste any more time. Taking a deep breath and giving it another mighty heave, the bar moved perhaps half an inch before catching on something else. Lightheaded now, Elaina felt like she was moments from blacking out. She gave it one final heave, pulling the bar free of whatever it was caught on, and tumbled backward with the heavy metal bar with her.
The bar hit the stone path underneath her with a deafening clatter, which echoed off the gatehouse’s stone and out into the baileys.
“Nine Hells,” Elaina spat as she scrambled to her feet, the sound of wings and scratching claws and talons from a dozen or more of the creatures causing panic to rise within her. The swordmage raced out to where the door she’d directed Resius to earlier was, throwing it open and sliding inside frantically.
“The fuck was that?” Resius asked in what was essentially a stage whisper. Elaina responded with an aggressive waving of her hands as the flying demons descended on both sides of the gatehouse to investigate the commotion within.
Not wanting to risk being seen through one of the arrow slits by the creatures, Elaina fished the spying glass back out and pressed it up against the wall to view the corridor. The hunched creatures sniffed and scratched as they occasionally spoke in shrill rasping noises to one another. Elaina held a hand out toward the occultist holding the winch, signaling for him to hold it a bit longer. Glancing over, she could see how much he struggled with keeping the mechanism in place while the feathered demons took their time filing in. One after another, the creatures entered the corridor, seemingly disagreeing with each other’s ability to make a determination properly.
One of the creatures picked up the long rusted metal rod, turning it over in its large claws curiously. Another observed briefly before searching for where the rod may have come from. This new search caused the rest to stop and do the same, with one of the creatures lingering outside the gatehouse on the middle bailey side. Resius’s grip was beginning to slip, despite the frantic silent waving from Elaina to hold on just a little longer. She needed the final one to step inside before they could drop the portcullis.
There was no more the man could do. As he began to lose his grip and his footing, the suspended portcullis dropped an inch or so before he managed to catch it. But the sound and movement had been enough to alert the creatures. With no other option, Resius released the winch before immediately kicking out the locking mechanism for the second. Both of the heavy portcullises descended, sealing in the creatures that had been too slow to respond.
Elaina briefly caught sight of one of the demons being caught under the spikes of the falling mass as it tried to escape before she broke into a run for the door.
“Go, go, go!” she yelled as Resius came up hot on her heels. The creature that had remained outside the gatehouse hesitated only momentarily before it turned to see the two of them sprinting across the bailey toward the keep. Abandoning its companion that had been impaled under the portcullis, it ran after them, using its wings to give it extra speed and close the distance quickly.
A cacophony of screeching wails rose from the gatehouse, joined by the creature just behind Resius. The sound hit both of them like a vibrating wall of force, rattling Elaina’s teeth as her body went stiff and fell heavily onto the ground. No matter how much the redhead tried to will herself back onto her feet, her body would not respond. Behind her, at the edge of her vision, she could see her friend struggling with the same problem. The creature closed the remaining distance with a couple of small hops, its head tilting one way and then another in a distinctly bird-like fashion.
“What’s the matter fuck face,” Elaina grumbled defiantly, “Can’t decide which of us you wanna eat first?”
“Something like that,” the creature’s voice scratched along the inside of her skull. Its mouth had not moved, but she somehow knew that the source was the creature and that it was speaking directly into her mind. Around her neck, the amulet gifted to her by Resius hummed as the magic within it struggled to resist the effect.
“You can talk?” Elaina coughed, the feeling beginning to return to one of her hands. It wouldn’t be enough to draw her sword to defend herself, but it was a start.
“When I see fit to do so, child,” Elaina could feel the malice and hunger from the creature invading her mind, poisoning her thoughts. Much of the amulet’s power was focused on protecting her from the psychic poison the creature exuded, allowing much of its speech to slip through unabated.
“It is less which of you I shall eat first and more what I might leave for my kin to fight over. You two are now mine by right, and I see little need to share the spoils with those so easily fooled by simple creatures such as you.”
Elaina’s hand fumbled with the coin pouch on her belt, loosening its strings to get at least one finger inside, “We’re doing insults now?”
The demon uttered a raspy cackle, “As though anything you could say to me would matter! Your presumption is almost insult enough, faeling.”
Elaina managed to get a hold of one of the coins, lifting it from inside the bag as carefully as she could, “I can think of one thing to say that you’re definitely not going to like.”
The demon lumbered closer to her, its eyes narrowing at the challenge in her voice, “And what, pray tell, might that be, meat?”
“*Leym bon,”* Elaina **cried as she snapped the coin from between her fingers, infused with the magic Resius had taught her. The flash dazzled the demon briefly before the coin sank half an inch into its skull. The pained shriek it let out as it stumbled back away from her was almost enough to render her completely helpless again.
Elaina lashed out with one hand to take hold of her friend’s, channeling all of her stubborn will into keeping hold of him as she kicked at the ground beneath them, dragging him along a little at a time. The more distance she managed to put between them, the more strength seemed to return to Resius and herself.
Before she could even think to celebrate, though, the demon plucked the coin from the flesh of its brow. It squinted at the small piece of copper held between two claws before casting it to one side irritably, its vicious gaze leveling on the pair of escapees.
“That didn’t work quite as well as I had hoped,” Elaina admitted as Resius began to move under his own power, both of them scrambling to their feet.
“That’ll teach you for being cheap, I guess,” the occultist quipped as the fiend gave a mighty beat of its wings to hurl itself at the two of them.
