The Cellar Beneath the Cellar (Bell Mountain) by Lee Duigon

say, had Wytt not stayed in hiding under Ellayne’s coat.
    They went their separate ways. “I wonder if they’ll be all right,” Jack said.
    “As long as they don’t run into a Heathen raiding party,” Martis said.
    They were relieved when the great green mass of the forest loomed up in the south, and even more relieved when they actually entered it. Only Ellayne voiced some misgivings.
    “I don’t like to think about all the outlaws in this country,” she said. “I felt safe with Obst: most of the outlaws were his friends. But what are we going to do if we run into a gang of them?”
    “Some of them might show respect for a servant of the Temple,” Martis said. His clothes had suffered badly during his travels, but he still bore his Temple insignia. “Of course, they might show more respect for weapons.”
    With his dagger as his only tool, he spent some hours fashioning weapons. He sharpened some nicely balanced sticks for throwing and shaped a stout staff for closer fighting.
    “Have you killed a lot of people?” Jack asked.
    “More than would please God, Jack. I killed because my master commanded it. Now I’ll kill only to protect the two of you.”
    Ellayne wondered about it. Her hero, Abombalbap, slew robber knights and werewolves, giants, witches, and evil barons. But it was all so different when it happened in a story! Remembering the outlaw Wytt killed, and how he lay sprawled under the stars, she shuddered.
    The forest was greener than they’d left it and alive with birdsong. Their first night in camp under the trees, they were almost deafened by another kind of music.
    “Ho! The peeper-frogs are out in force already,” Jack said. “There must be thousands of them. Hop-toads, too.”
    “I don’t see how we’re going to be able to sleep with all that racket,” Ellayne said.
    “Shh!”
    Martis jumped up, staff in hand, and waved them to silence. Their campfire crackled. Jack hadn’t heard anything but that and the frogs.
    “Whoever you are,” Martis called into the night, “if you come in peace, show yourself!”
    Jack was about to ask what all the fuss was about, when there was a noise in the underbrush and a man stepped out of the shadows into the firelight: a small, fidgety man in ragged clothes, with burrs and leaf-litter stuck to his hair. He held up empty hands.
    “I mean you no harm,” he said. “It’s just that I saw your fire, and I hoped it might be honest folk.”
    “What are you doing, walking around at night?” Martis demanded.
    “Just trying to save my skin—that’s all, I swear. I won’t do you any harm. I’m all alone. If I might come and sit down … and if you have a bit of food to spare …”
    The only weapon he had was an ordinary woodsman’s knife in a sheath on his belt. Martis nodded, and he joined them at the fire, holding out his hands to it to get them warm. Wytt picked up his sharp stick and slunk behind Ellayne, making not even the ghost of a noise. The newcomer never spotted him.
    “Give him those scraps of squirrel we have left over, Jack,” Martis said. The man wolfed them down as soon as he took them from Jack’s hands. “Now tell us about yourself, stranger.”
    “Not much to tell,” said the man, as he gulped down the last morsel of meat. “The whole forest’s all topsy-turvy, isn’t it? I’m not the only one running for his life.”
    “Running from whom?” Martis asked; and Jack was suddenly glad Martis was with them. He, too, remembered the man who’d tried to sell them into slavery.
    “Latt Squint-eye has done some kind of a deal with the chiefs of the Heathen,” the visitor said. “It’s going to be a different kind of war, this one. They mean to go all the way to Obann—maybe all the way to the sea. But it seems they don’t want to trouble themselves about Lintum Forest. They’ve got Latt for that. With him on the warpath in the forest, they won’t have to worry about the government handing out pardons and raising