"Yes, sir," Lee said quietly.
Cimar led the way down the hill toward the keep, making certain his sword could be easily drawn if necessary. He'd come prepared to roust bandits or burn the remains of plague victims. He had not come prepared for a mystery.
The wind picked up slightly as they reached the valley floor, and Cimar gagged at the stench it brought: death, decay. Not really a shock that everyone was dead, but according to what he'd been told, these people should have been dead for months. Their bodies should be frozen, unable to leave much in the way of stench until the spring thaw.
"This grows increasingly ominous," he said. "Let's ready our bows."
Lee immediately stopped and swung his pack down, swiftly untying the bows he'd secured to it and digging out string from one of the many pockets. He handed one length to Cimar and used the second to string his own bow.
The wood didn't like the cold, but Cimar paid well for his armor and weapons, and these bows had been specially treated to endure extreme climate. They'd be stiffer and slightly more prone to breaking, but in expert hands they'd do well enough, and neither he nor Lee was an amateur.
Lee favored a short bow, which broadly was more useful. Cimar, though, had grown up learning the long bow and had never been able to part with it.
When their arrows were unpacked and in the quivers at their hips, they resumed walking.
"What do you think it could be?" Lee asked. "How could the smell be that strong? Surely there aren't any people or animals around in enough numbers to be that… fresh."
Cimar's jaw tightened as he weighed possibilities, but only one stood out bright and sharp in his mind. "I don't think it's the bodies that smell that way. I think that stench emanates from the problem itself. If I am correct, Castle Bone has been overrun by a lindworm."
"Well. Fuck."
"Precisely."
As they drew closer, the stench grew so bad that Lee had to pause to throw up, and he remained a sickly green the rest of the journey to the castle.
They stopped several paces shy of the drawbridge, and it took everything Cimar possessed not to throw up his own breakfast.
Lindworms were ravenous beasts, gigantic serpents with a seemingly bottomless appetite that preferred their food to be alive when it was swallowed. They were covered with thick, nearly impervious scales that were a deceptively beautiful silvery-white, with a head that closely resembled that of dragons to the untrained eye. They had bloodred eyes and venomous fangs that paralyzed victims so they'd go easily into the gullet, where they'd be slowly digested.
The worst thing about lindworms was that they had once been human. Shifters who got stuck in their shifted form and went mad, or otherwise corrupt, and began to shift again, growing and shedding and growing until all that remained was a monster.
Someone in the castle had been a shifter, and something had happened to turn them into a lindworm, and in their ravening they'd consumed the other inhabitants, all the people they'd called peer and friend and family.
"I've only ever read about them," Lee said, voice shaking slightly. "Never thought I'd actually encounter one. Do you really think that's what we're up against?"
"Unfortunately, I do. One of the tell-tale marks is that they smell like rotting corpses." He didn't bother to elaborate that most of that stench came from the fact lindworms perpetually had bodies rotting inside them. "The complete lack of anything living is another tell." He handed Lee his bow and extended his left arm, where he wore the leather bracer. He whistled sharply, high and piercing, and far above them Valor gave an answering cry as she made her way down. "Get a message ready."
A few minutes later Valor alighted on his arm and accepted the food he offered. While she ate, Lee got the message affixed to her leg.
When she was done eating and the message secure, Cimar launched her back into the air and then gave the series of whistles that ordered her to return home. An answering cry, and then she was swiftly lost to the sky.
"That's that," Cimar said. Lee held out his bow, but Cimar shook his head and first reached up to remove the white collar around his throat. He always felt strange without it, but there might not be time enough to remove it later. Everything else he wore, armor included, would give way to the shift, but the specially made leather collar risked choking him if it wasn't removed ahead of time.
Stowing the collar, he took back his bow. "Hang back a few paces, Lee. Keep our rear covered but be prepared to run the moment I tell you. Let's work our way around the castle, see if we can get in through a side passage, find some high ground. Our only advantage right now is that lindworms are large; it won't be able to just slither through most of the hallways around here."
"Could slither up a column though," Lee muttered, but fell into step a few paces behind him as directed, keeping his bow at the ready, though arrows would be useless unless they struck its softer underbelly or right in one of its eyes.
They found entry by way of the kitchens, though Lee puked again at the pile of remains scattered there, bits and pieces of people and livestock in various stages of decay.
"I always thought I had a strong stomach," Lee said miserably.
"This is infinitely worse than anything you'd see on a battlefield or even a plague-felled city. No one should ever have to bear witness to this level of… gleeful, ravening violence. Now be silent, unless the matter is urgent. Lindworms aren't known for their hearing, but they aren't deaf either. Worse, they have an acute sense of smell."
Lee nodded and nocked an arrow.
They pressed on, the stench growing worse with every step. Never in his life had Cimar wanted so badly to be anywhere else in the world.
When he found a set of stairs, he swiftly climbed them, Lee behind him. They traveled the hallways slowly, frequently gagging. Bodies were everywhere—lords, servants, livestock, pets. It was clear a great many of them had been injured, either by the lindworm or in an ensuing panic, and died of their injuries up here where they couldn't be eaten. A blessing of sorts, but still a cruel and miserable way to die.
If they managed to survive this, the rest of the challenge would be laughably easy, though frankly he thought defeating a lindworm should qualify for an automatic win.
They'd be fully within their rights to retreat and come back with a greater force, but he also wouldn't put it past His Majesty to still use the retreat as an excuse to call the challenge a loss and see he was awarded no points. Cimar would be damned before he let that happen.
He just wished his quest had been a little bit easier than this.
As they turned a corner, he could see the rafters and tapestries of the great hall. So this was the mezzanine. Signaling to Lee, he crept up to the balustrade—and barely choked back a scream.
"Oh, god," Lee said on a sob, sinking to his knees and clinging to the balusters, head pressed against them as he bit back the rest of his sounds.
Cimar had to wipe his own eyes on the sleeves of his tunic before he could take a second, more thorough look at the devastating nightmare below.
Nothing remained of the great hall but ruins—and corpses. So many corpses. Livestock. Knights. Women. He had to turn away for a moment after spying children. It was like the lindworm had lost its mind, fallen into a frenzy, and been more interested in the killing than the eating. Or maybe it was an outlier and preferred carrion to fresh meat. Whatever the reason, the results would haunt Cimar's sleep for the rest of his life.