(continued from Ch 13, Night Terrors)

The Chronicles of Rapina
Chapter 14, The Noble Jaws of Death


The giant Norse man stood off to one side.

There was a hesitation in the crowd. The captain's speech had set the record straight, but the men had the hollow look of terror written all over their faces. They were trapped on the isle of the dead, and they'd already had a taste of its bitter medicine.

Brackston was the first in the crowd to stand and walk to Pike's side. I'd sooner die makin' a difference than cowerin' behind th' wall of a fort."

The diminutive pirate approached the Norse giant, "Could be ye'll need a man who can climb inta tight spots an' handle locks an' mechanisms.

"Could be," Pike smiled.

The elf was feeling much better after partaking of the elven mixture Arzeal had prepared for him. Though still very weak he could at least stand up by himself. Doanthalas stood fighting off a wave of dizziness and spoke, "I will go."

"You might need someone who can read runes," Rapina said.

"That proved handy last time," Pike grinned.

"I'm in too. I have to...for Kent..." Drake said.

Edgar stepped forward and cast a meaningful look at Drake, "Hell. Ya'll know that I'm always up for kickin' ass."

Several other pirates including Trevor stepped forward to reserve their place in the assault party. When all the members were assembled they were hastily outfitted with provisions and equipment enough to last half a week on the trail, and torches for caverns and tunnels. Some of the men also carried ropes, grappling hooks and spikes for climbing. As soon as the first hint of light appeared on the horizon the assault party led by Doanthalas headed off towards the caverns of the dead.

While the others were getting ready, Rapina stole an intimate moment in a supply tent with Beck, Jake, and Jonas. All of them knew this might be their last time, and they were happy to be doing something life-affirming, if only for a few precious moments. For her part, Rapina felt a little bad taking as much from them as she did, but she was careful to go to the men she knew had iron constitutions. Rapina left the tent fully healed with a little something to fall back on. She gave the quite appreciable amount that remained of the captain's potent healing potion to Pike. He had seen two battles in the last twenty-four hours, and even as skilled as he was, he had not escaped battle without wounds.

Every step was sheer agony for the elf. He was still weak from the loss of so much blood, but able to carry on because of Arzeal's elven elixir. Where Arzeal learned how to prepare it he didn't know. He'd have to ask the half-elf if they survived. Elixirs like that were closely guarded secrets of the elven people. Doanthalas was glad that Arzeal knew how though, it had saved the elf the trouble of making it himself.

Doanthalas leaned heavily on his walking stick for most of the way. Pike had to help him scale the cliffs to reach the cavern. Eventually they arrived at the entrance. Sitting down on a rock the Elf glanced at the party. He saw Rapina advance along with Drake, Grom, Edgar and Yanosh.

This time, Rapina made sure she made it to the cave first, and recited a prayer to Mortaebius, god of the dead. Then she opened the gate and let the warriors in to check the place out. The first room was as they had left it. Buck and Rage wedged stout timbers in the first doorway as Rapina took a deep breath, crossed the room and pressed the studs on the pentagram carved in the wall as if signing the sign of man. When she pushed the last stud, the inner-door slab groaned and slid upwards. Buck and Rage rushed forward to set timbers in the new door.

As the inner door slid open the party was assaulted by a quick rush of air strong with the smell of decay. The faint outline of a statue was barely visible towards the front of the room.

Outside in the sunlight, a pirate named Rebel stood guarding the timbers set in the first doorway while the others gained access to the hall of eminence. He heard a sound like a few stones rolling off a burial mound, but the outcropping of rock in front of the doorway to the mausoleum cave blocked his vision. He stepped out to get a look. He saw a pirate who'd run during the battle with the fifty skeletons last night. Brad!

The pirate hissed and a long tongue came out of his mouth. One scratch from the new ghoul and Rebel froze. From nearby mounds, two more ghouls cowled in dark robes, emerged and followed Brad into the tomb. Brad cut Rebel's throat with a claw as the other two ghouls quietly removed the timbers from the doorway.

Meanwhile, the pirates advanced into the room with the statue, and took out a few more torches. Rapina entered behind most of the men, her mage-light illuminating the front of the statue.

"It's Mortaebius, god of the dead, Rapina said."

Ah, so what, it's 'is gold I want, not 'is name.

The mean yellow dog sniffed the air and growled.

Rapina blinked. She could swear she saw the statue's eyes move, but now they seemed to be staring straight ahead, right at her.

"I could swear I saw the statue's eyes move," Rapina said.

"Look mates, that statue's robe is buttoned an' chased w' real gold an' is ring is set w' a ruby! Flint whipped out a chisel and went to pry.

"Defilers!" The statue of Mortaebius shouted.

Somewhere on the other side of the room doors opened and skeletons began pouring out.

"Retreat back past the doorway to the first room!" Pike said running for the doorway. "They die easy if only one or two can come at ye abreast!" Pike ran back into the first room and took up a position just inside next to the doorway. Brackston slipped to the other side as he ran in and prepared to slaughter the bone-brains. The other pirates ran between their mates, trying to get back into the first room before the skeletons from the second reached them.

A loud rumbling could be heard coming from the entrance to the outdoors. By this time, most of the pirates were back in the first chamber or running through the doorway. On the other side of the hall of the dead a slab slid over the entrance cutting the shaft of sunlight leaking in to nothing. Three ghouls charged towards the pirates hissing.

"Aye Doanthalas! We got ghouls back here by th' entrance," Skitch hollered.

Doanthalas ran through the door from the room with the statue. The elf shouted as he fished through his pouch for the flasks of oil he had brought.

"Spearmen, Doanthalas, back there on the double," Pike ordered.

After reentering the entry chamber, Rapina had made her way to the Southeast corner. She had been looking at the statue and had been one of the first to retreat as Pike ordered. She realized that, previously, weight in the top coffin-tunnel had opened the door. Rapina hastened to climb up into the tunnel to see if she could reopen the entrance.

The last pirate ran through the doorway from the statue room.

"Brace up Brackston, here comes a flood 'o bones, an look what's behind 'em. Our own walkin' dead!

Brackston growled as he realized that the zombies were all pirates he once knew. Some of the bodies from last night's battle had evidently been spirited off just before dawn.

The skeletons advanced but exploded to pieces as they were hit by Pike's mighty ax and club from one side, and the sword and club of bloody Brackston from the other.

"Demolition! We got 'em licked, Pike!"

Rapina scowled, her weight was no longer triggering the reopening of the entrance. Somehow, the mechanism had been jammed elsewhere.

Doanthalas found the flask of oil he was looking for and stuffed an oil soaked rag in the end of it. He lit it on one of the remaining torches and hurled it into the oncoming group of ghouls. The flames were spectacular as the ghoul Doanthalas nailed burst into flames and the others flanking him suffered from splashes of burning oil.

Doanthalas fought with every ounce of strength that he still possessed, hacking at the head of the ghoul on his right as Vanosh and George attempted to hold the flaming ghoul at bay with spears.

Edgar ducked the ghoul's claws and simultaneously launched a leg-breaking kick at the creature's knee. As it staggered backwards Edgar opened the creature's guts with his sword.

Brad, the flaming ghoul spun his way between the two spears, nicked Yanosh's chin, and poked George in the eye. Both men froze in magical terror. Still flaming from Doanthalas' oil Brad jumped on the elf who had just decapitated the ghoul next to him. If he was to be destroyed by fire, he would take his destroyer with him.

Rapina was climbing back down from the upper coffin tunnel in the Southeast corner of the room when she heard Pike bellow to Brackston as they fought at the doorway to the statue room, or the "Hall of Eminence," to quote the runes on the wall.

"What the hell? Back Brackston, It's a ghoulified Kent, an' he's swingin' a cresset full o' burnin' oil!" Pike bellowed.

Brackston shattered a skeleton and jumped back as the cresset arced over the heads of the skeletons and zombies bunched around the doorway and flew through it into the entry room.

Rapina saw the cresset from the corner of her eye as she watched the flaming ghoul jump on Doanthalas and knock the both of them into the path of the flaming cresset. There was a clang as the cresset deflected off the ghoul's shoulder and showered the pair of combatants with burning oil.

Trevor skewered the remaining ghoul through the eye with a spear as it fell from Edgar's kick.

Edgar swung his sword chopping into the ghoul's chest, laughing mightily. "That wasn't so hard. Fear is the ghoul's real weapon. Get past that an' they're nothin'"

Rapina felt a tingling up her spine, and then she heard deep laughter coming from the statue in the other room.


Suddenly the conflagration that had enveloped Doanthalas and the ghoul blackened as a cloud of choking black smoke billowed forth from it. In seconds the room was filled with smoke and half-blind coughing pirates. The smoke just kept getting thicker.

Whoever had sprung this trap knew how Pike and the scouting party had retreated into the narrow entryway to defeat the skeletons before, and knew that Pike would retreat beyond the doorway to use that trick again. Now the entry room was filling with smoke fast. It was already so choking it made speech difficult for the coughing and filled the eyes with tears.

Into the statue room! Pike surged through the oncoming skeletons, weapons cutting a swath of destruction before him. The Norse giant swung steel and wood like a maniac for a second before he suddenly hit flesh - the zombies; they were not so easily destroyed. They were the cork on the bottle. No doubt they had been instructed to remove any obstructions in the doorway as well. Pike wasn't about to let them get near it.

"Defend a path out ta the left o' the door, concentrate our forces. Brackston, cover me right flank, we have ta hold the doorway and keep these monsters from removing the timbers before we're ready.

Bloody Brackston sprung through the door and fought beside the Norseman. Thumper tore chunks of meat off the zombies as he helped his master.

The tiny pirate was one of the first to race through the door. He dodged and wormed his way around, through and between the legs of the zombies. Once through, he got to the statue in a hurry. Originally he had brought the hammer and chisels in case he had bad luck with a lock or needed to place a piton. Now he hopped up on the pedestal and the statue's feet, stood on his tip-toes, put the chisel to the statue's eye and slammed it with the hammer. The wily pirate heard a startled yelp when the chisel struck the socket, but he did not know if he had driven it in hard or fast enough to kill who or whatever was hiding inside.

"Sound off as ya get through the door!" Pike ordered. "I need to know when we're all in here. Rapina stay by the opening studs an' give me a hand with the count!" the Norseman bellowed.

One by one the pirates called out their names: Brackston, Skitch, Trevor, Grom, Flint, Gape, Henry, Buck, Rage, Edgar, Drake and Rapina.

"That's all of us but Doanthalas, Pike. The others are paralyzed or worse!" Rapina hollered.


"One last good flurry friend and we step aside and hope they remove the timbers for us." Pike said to Brackston.

Brackston pushed himself to the limits, then stepped aside as he heard Pike yell.

"Timbers away. Nothin' we can do for Doanthalas, he's part o' the fire," Pike ordered.

With tears in her eyes from more than the smoke, Rapina fought her way along the left wall of the statue room though the press of zombies. Luckily, Pike was right next to her.

The stupid zombies, followed their instructions to the letter. While a few of them continued into the entry chamber, a couple of others pulled the timbers from the doorway into the hall of eminence. They capped their trap even though only three living pirates -Doanthalas, and the paralyzed pirates Venosh and George, remained within the entry chamber. The door slab slammed into place. The cork was on the bottle, but most of the grasshoppers had sprung.

The pirates fought a fast and furious battle with heavy losses, for they had thrown caution to the wind. They fought half-blind using every ounce of their strength to get by the zombies who had tried to cage them in the room of smoke. Grom was the first to fall followed by Flint and Henry. To his credit Trevor fought bravely and took many zombies and skeletons with him before succumbing to their onslaught.

"Back against the left wall, and keep that steel moving! Hurry, if we can get into the room where some of the skeletons came from, we'll have areselves another doorway an' this one likely not a trap!

The party was able to make it to the door with few lost. Because of an altercation with a particularly tenacious zombie, Drake and Edgar were the last two to reach the door. As Drake turned to see if Edgar was coming he froze. Standing directly behind Edgar was Kent. Or the bloated and drowned body of what used to be their friend Kent. Edgar had an odd pained look on his face. When he didn't rush for the door it became obvious to Drake that his friend was paralyzed. A sick feeling washed over him as he watched the Kent-ghoul traced a line across Edgar's neck with a claw. The light in Edgar's eyes faded just as quickly as the blood flowed from the fresh wound in his neck.

Drake stood paralyzed, not by the touch of the ghoul, but by grief for two friends lost. The screams of Doanthalas did nothing to alleviate this feeling. in fact Drake was really beginning to understand what true fear was for the first time in his life...

Tears flowed from Rapina's eyes as she tugged Drake through the doorway. Pike and Brackston were standing on either side of it ready to demolish the first zombie to try to breach the opening.

[Click here for a sketch of the tomb. The entry chamber is the same room in which the scouting party first met and fought skeletons, but the side/coffin-tunnels are not pictured.]

The room the pirates entered was some sort of family mausoleum. It was richly decorated. Tapestries adorned the walls and six suits of bronze plate mail equipped with halberds or two-handed swords stood around the periphery of the room on small stone pedestals. On the west side of the room were two stone sarcophagi, each had a lid with a relief sculpture of the way the occupant had looked in life. The corners and trim of the sarcophagi were solid gold, and the likenesses were chased with gold leaf. Bronze candelabras adorned the walls. On the East wall were many bronze plaques, some with lettering on them. On the South wall was a large coat of arms with a plaque beneath it. Parts of the coat of arms were studded with gems.

"Nobody move, This looks to be some noble family mausoleum. I know ye see some booty around ye, don't touch it till we kill our enemies. That's the way Backster set off a trap in that first room. Buck, Drake, help me an' Brackston at the doorway here, we still got plenty o' customers, just that this time we got 'em one at a time through the doorway. Rest of you Cluster aroun' Rapina and keep an eye out 'case of shadows. Rapina, patch wounds while we got the time," Pike ordered.

Rapina worked as rapidly as she could, and by the time Pike and his warriors were through demolishing the last zombie, Rapina had patched the wounds of the other warriors.

"All right, lets check this room out. The zombies and skeletons that came from this room and the one next door had to have gotten in here somehow. Could be they came from somewhere else, or it could be there is a secret exit out of one of these back rooms.

Rapina began to read the various plaques. The ones on the east wall were probably entrances to coffin-sized side tunnels wherein corpses were stored. The plaque on the Southern end of the room talked about the noble deeds and lineage of the baronial family whose remains rested within the room.

As the men started opening the plaques on the east wall, Rapina looked at the sarcophagus in the Southwest area of the room. The carving on the lid depicted a woman. Rapina looked at the runes on carving.

"This was the first baroness of the family Le-"

Rapina's line was cut off in mid stream. The lid of the sarcophagus suddenly hinged open. Inside were the skeletal remains of a woman, and laying next to her was Kent, who tossed the dead baroness' golden ring into the room as a part of the motion of grabbing Rapina just below the breasts and pulling her into the sarcophogus.

Rapina had hardly managed a startled screech when Kent's claws pierced her tunic and a hideous paralyzing fear surged through her body, stiffening every muscle.

Drake felt a ring bounce off his back.

The six suits of armor standing around the room suddenly raised their weapons as the brainless minds of the skeletons within them perceived treasure, in the form of the Baroness' ring, being removed from the room's deceased occupants. Each swung its sword or halberd at the nearest pirate.

Once he pulled Rapina into the sarcophagus, the goulish Kent activated the lid-closing mechanism with one foot, while he activated the mechanism that lowered the panel in the East side of the sarcophagus with the other. The sarcophagus only seemed to be separate from the wall, it was actually attached to it. Kent rolled Rapina and himself Eastward as the East wall of the coffin slid into the floor. Once in the area within the room's East wall, Kent pushed a stud with his finger. The East wall of the sarcophagus lifted back into place and the stone beneath him and Rapina tilted. Down they slid. At the bottom of the short slide, Kent pulled a lever and the slide hinged back up.

The ghoul then opened a door and ran out of the room for a few minutes. He returned, hoisted Rapina off the floor and carried her across the small room at the base of the slide to a door. He opened the door and carried her into a narrow, low-ceilinged passageway that went North and South. Kent closed the door and shot home a bolt, then took a few large reaching steps Southward. He carried Rapina South up a very long flight of stairs to a room. In one corner of the room three shadows cowered, disliking Rapina's mage-light. The room also contained a few skeletons and several chests.

Two of the skeletons bore a litter. Kent placed Rapina on the litter then opened one of the chests. He took some granite-colored grey robes with a heavy hood and a black lining from the chest and put them on. The litter-bearing skeletons were dressed in identical attire. Kent then left though a doorway in the other side of the room that led to another staircase up. The two skeletons followed carrying Rapina between them. Kent pushed open a trapdoor at the top of the staircase and cringed as the light hit his robes.

The daylight stung Kent's eyes and made him feel weak in spite of the protective cowl. The ghoul struggled along a trail that ran atop the granite cliffs into which the tomb was carved. The ghoul and his entourage fled south and followed the curve of the island's cliff top as it went gradually Southwestward. The path was well concealed from watchers in the interior of the isle, for it usually ran through the lowest area in the center of the cliff so that there was stone between watchers from the water or land and the path.

At first Rapina could do nothing but be afraid, but after a while she struggled to get a hold of her mind. If Kent was going to kill her, she reasoned, he would have done it by now. She was not sure where he was taking her, but it seemed likely that she would soon be meeting the chief of the undeads. Rapina supposed it could be some even more horrible undead monster, but clung to the hope that it would be a living priest or magician - a necromancer.

Kent struggled through the sunlight for what seemed like ages. About every quarter hour he scratched Rapina in the arm with a claw. The walk was a mile and a half. It was nearly an hour before it took him along the base of some even higher cliffs that towered above the cliffs he was on and the rest of the isle.

Just when she thought things were getting a little better, Kent jumped on the litter with her.


"Go that way," Kent rasped and pointed for the bone-headed skeletons, then he squirmed around on top of Rapina and licked her face with his hideous long tongue.

The breath stuck in her throat, Rapina was terrified but she couldn't scream. Kent smelled dead, he even looked dead. She could not move a muscle, but she wanted to escape in the worst way.

Kent directed the skeletons into a hidden fissure in the Southern rock face. He jumped off the litter about ten feet into the fissure. The narrow crack led downward and eventually forked Kent stopped the skeletons then walked into the fork on the left. Rapina briefly heard the grinding of stone on stone such as a hidden door might make and Kent was gone for close to fifteen minutes. When he returned he jumped back on the litter with Rapina and directed the skeletons to proceed down the other fork of the fissure. It opened up into a much wider fissure - a canyon some fifteen to twenty-five feet in breadth. Daylight was visible far above, but the ghoul felt better because the deep canyon afforded much shadow. The skeletons carried Kent and Rapina South along the canyon floor.

As time went by Rapina had to force herself to keep her eyes open so she had some idea of where she was being taken. She was a woman, an oddity among pirates. Perhaps she was being captured because the lord of the isle felt she was at least as much a victim as a collaborator, having been abducted by the pirates, or perhaps he was just hungry for female companionship. Rapina shuddered, if the necromancer was undead, she might just be a dainty meal. She would have to try to keep her wits about her in spite of her terror.

The skeletons zigzagged along with the canyon in a generally southerly direction. When they reached an area familiar to the ghoul, Kent reached down off the litter, took up a large rock from the canyon floor and directed the skeletons to the cliff edge where he bashed the rock against the stone wall. Had he not known exactly where he was, the ghoul would not have known what to do. Even the ghoul could see no difference about the walls of the canyon from his vantagepoint at its bottom. From Some sixty feet above him hidden from view by a natural outcropping in the wall of the canyon, a boom swung out. On the boom was a large wicker cage. The cage was lowered. Kent opened a door in the cage and led the skeletons bearing the litter inside. Kent closed the door and struck a cowbell attached to the inside of the cage, with a metal rod dangling from a chain. The cage began to rise quite rapidly.

When the cage struck the boom, it was swung inwards and the cage was lowered a foot or two to rest on the floor of a room cut into the face of the granite cliff. One wall was open to the canyon but the room was invisible from below because of the narrowness of the canyon, a natural outcropping just below where the room was carved into the cliff face, and the height the room was above the canyon floor. There was a slit-like window in the south wall of the room.

Kent opened the cage door and led the skeletons out.

A skeletal hand grasped Rapina's chin and turned her head from side to side.

Rapina was so terrified she shut her eyes. She was sure the lord of the isle was undead, and she would soon be as well.

"Excellent work, my servant," a smooth baritone voice spoke to Kent.

Rapina opened her eyes. The face of a middle-aged man stared assessingly down at her. The man was neither hideous nor handsome. He was actually rather plain. High on his forehead was a bandage. Otherwise, he would not have looked out of place behind the counter of a library, but for the intense look in his dark eyes. Those eyes were the one thing that marked him as a man of great cunning and intellect.

"You have a reward coming." The man Removed Rapina's bow and quiver, then undid Rapina's weapons belt and took it and her weapons from her. He hung her things on a skeleton that wore a steel breastplate and was clad in wax-boiled leather. The necromancer then removed the mage light from around her neck and raised an eyebrow as he placed it in a pouch on his belt. After that he frisked her, found the sheath knife on her calf and removed it.

The necromancer spoke to Kent as he worked, "Although the battle did not go as well as planned, you played your part flawlessly and accomplished this extemporaneous task as well. I realize the daylight must have caused you great pain and weakness, but I have just the thing to replenish your strength for this evening. One of the pirates we captured has no tongue and is thus useless to me, yet I think you'll like him, he's a fat one."

The necromancer commanded the skeletons to open the stout oak door in the East wall of the room, the one opposite the canyon. Two of the breast-plate wearing skeletons led the way and four others followed. After a short distance, the party came to a "T" intersection. The corridors were lit by an eerie red glow that emanated from large crystals that hung at intervals from the ceiling.

"Take the girl to the door to my chambers and keep her there. You three guards, see that she does not try to wander off." The skeletons bore Rapina Northwards while Kent and the necromancer went in the other direction.

Rapina thought about trying to escape. Had she not been paralyzed, she felt sure she could outrun the skeletons. Even if she could, where would she go, certainly not back to the cliffside room? There was no way down to one who could not control the wicker cage. Abruptly Rapina's muscles eased. She felt sore all over. She directed the bit of energy she had gleaned from her morning's tryst to her back and limbs.

Suddenly she sprung from the litter and sprinted down the hallway to the South. It took a second for the skeletons to react, but Rapina heard the rasp of steel as the skeletons drew swords and clattered after her. They were fast, astonishingly so, but Rapina was terrified and had a head start. Doors punctuated the hallway at intervals. Rapina opened one and saw rough-hewn shelves with various armaments and equipment but no way out. She snatched a rusty broadsword and rushed down the hallway again. She passed several doors on her way down the hall. One, an iron door was just slightly ajar. She avoided that one and pulled on the door at the end of the hall. It would not open but she could see no lock!

The three guard skeletons were already near her. Rapina jumped to the left and saw the skeletons veered to the left as they ran towards her. At the last minute, Rapina jumped right and sprinted. She felt the wind from a sword blade close to her neck as she passed the boney trio. The skeletons were astonishingly fast. She already felt winded. In desperation Rapina ran to the iron door, opened it, jumped in and slammed it as the impacts of three sword blades rang off the other side of the door. Rapina saw a keyhole but no bolt on her side of the door. Remembering how light the skeletons in the mausoleum cavern had been, Rapina braced herself against the door.

There was a second identical door ten feet East beyond the one she held, but she was sure that the skeletons would just keep bashing the door with their swords forever. She was wrong. Something started pushing on the door. The force doubled and Rapina made a dash for the next door. She slammed that one shut as well. She found herself in some sort of guardroom with a stout table and four chairs. She could reach one of the chairs with her foot. She snagged it and used it to wedge the door shut.

There was a ring of three keys hanging on a peg on the other side of the room. Rapina dashed for it, grabbed it and got back in time to keep the chair from slipping away from the door because of the force being applied to the other side. Rapina tried all three of the keys in the lock but none of them worked. On the other side of the room was another door. This one had a barred window. Rapina ran for it, snagging another chair on her way by the table. She had the third door shut and wedged before the last door grated open. Rapina tried the shorter of the three keys on the ring and the lock turned.

The door Rapina had just locked was at the head of a hallway. There were six other doors leading off the hallway, three on the right side, and three on the left. The door to the cell on the right near the hall's other end was ajar. Rapina looked through the barred window of the nearest cell on the left. Inside shackled to the wall was Jonas.

"Jonas?," Rapina asked.

Jonas looked up. "Rapina? How in hell did you get here?"

"I got paralyzed by Kent. He's a ghoul. How about you?"

"There were some skeletons stained black; they were collecting the dead bodies and the ghouls were collecting the living. I spooked when those skeletons attacked us and before I knew it, some ghoul jumped out of nowhere. It dragged me to a black litter borne by skeletons and I was brought here. What happened to the others?"

"Pike and Hock rallied the troops and they fought off the skeletons. I'm not sure what they're doing now, either fortifying and staying or trying to raft out, one or the other."

"Quick, get me out of here, maybe we can free the others and escape."

Rapina tried the next longer key and opened the cell door.

"Lets skip the escape scene, shall we?" said the necromancer's voice.

Rapina froze. At the end of the hall stood the necromancer, and next to him with blood all over his face, chest and grossly bloated belly was Kent, still chawing on a fat human leg. They had come out of the cell at the end of the hall on the right. Rapina nearly threw up as she realized that Kent had been eating Piggy, the mute cook that Rapina had worked for when she'd first joined Red Jack's crew.

Now that she was standing, Rapina got a better look at the necromancer. He was about average height and build, only an inch or two taller than she was. He was partly bald, but had hair on the sides of his head. He was dressed in black robes with a black leather bandoleer crossing his chest from his left shoulder to his waist on the right. He wore several bone-handled daggers on his belt and the bandoleer held a dozen or so crude bone darts with metal spikes on both ends.

"Drop the blade. Be reasonable, you have no chance to escape. There is only one way out of here and that is through those doors and the three guards. The necromancer chuckled, "You must be a fast runner or I'd be trying to piece your skeleton back together at this moment."

Rapina tossed the keys through the partly opened door to Jonas and advanced towards the necromancer.

The necromancer grinned. "Guards," he said. Three leather-clad breast-plated skeletons came out of the cell the necromancer and Kent had previously been in. "Surely you do not want to try to face these three. Have you not yet realized that these skeletons are superior to the others? The necromancer smiled. They are double-animated, once by the power of my magic, and once by the power of Mortaebius, god of the dead. They are stronger, faster, and a little bit smarter than the average skeleton."

Rapina held her ground but eyed the skeletons now standing in front of Kent and the necromancer.

"Surrender now and I will go easy on you, otherwise, you'll pay dearly. Shards, orbit her."

The crude bone darts left the necromancer's bandoleer and flew down the hallway, orbiting Rapina at a distance of about three feet. Rapina shuddered. The bone parts of the darts were made of what Donal had named "singing bones," the ones that flew through the air. How could she hope to defeat flying bone spikes and three double-strength skeletons plus a wily ghoul and a necromancer? Rapina reluctantly layed down her rusty blade.

"Retrieve the blade," the necromancer bid one of the skeletons. The skeleton snatched up the blade. Now, girl, stand back against the guard room door.

Rapina backed up.

"You two, the necromancer pointed to a couple of the skeletons, guard the girl. And you, open that cell door. Kent, I think the prisoner needs calming."

Kent grinned and bounded into Jonas' cell.

"Aaaaiigh! Jonas screamed.

"Kent, put him back in the shackles and take the keys," the necromancer ordered.

In a minute or two Kent came out of the cell and tossed the keys to the necromancer. "Very good, I will talk to you again this evening. Enjoy your meal."
-------

This ends The Noble Jaws of Death, Chapter 14 of The Chronicles of Rapina.
The story continues in, Chapter 15, Death Battles the Living.

Copyright 2001 by Rapina