Wintercraft Read Online Free

behind the wall was a lot smaller than she remembered. She shuffled forward a few knee-steps and scrabbled around, making room for Edgar to squeeze in behind her.
     
    ‘Move up,’ he whispered.
     
    ‘There’s no more room.’
     
    ‘What about Artemis?’
     
    But Artemis had already tucked the dead lamp inside the door. ‘Whatever happens, you two stay in here until they are gone,’ he said. ‘After that, I want you both to leave Morvane and don’t look back. Do you understand?’
     
    ‘But!’
     
    ‘It’ll be all right, Kate. Do you remember how to get out?’
     
    Kate nodded nervously.
     
    ‘Good. When it is safe, go. Don’t worry about me. Nothing is going to happen to you. I promise.’
     
    Kate could not see Artemis’s face when he closed the door, but she heard the scratchy sound of a key turning in the lock and suddenly she was afraid. The tiny room felt a lot smaller, its walls pressing closer around her body as she knelt in the dark. She was touching the wall in front of her, reassuring herself that there was still plenty of air to breathe, when a quiet whimpering sound started beside her.
     
    ‘Edgar? What’s wrong?’
     
    ‘We’re locked in,’ said Edgar, sounding even more terrified than Kate felt. ‘I don’t like this. We have to get out. We have to. Artemis!’
     
    Edgar thumped his fist against the door and Kate grabbed his hands, forcing her own fear aside as she tried to calm him down. ‘It’s OK,’ she whispered. ‘Listen to me. You have to be quiet. If they hear us—’
     
    ‘I can’t breathe. Kate … I can’t …’
     
    ‘Shh. Yes, you can.’ She held his hand and pressed it against her chest. ‘You feel that? I’m breathing. You’re breathing. We’re going to be all right.’
     
    Edgar fell quiet and small scraping noises bumped against the door as Artemis quickly stacked boxes against it. Then Kate heard the sound of metal rattling against stone and a cold key fell into her hands. The eyeholes! Her fingers reached up to feel out the thin spaces in the wall. How could she have forgotten the eyeholes?
     
    ‘Stay quiet and don’t come out,’ said Artemis. ‘I love you, Kate. Remember that.’
     
    Kate walked her fingers along the stones and found a flap of leather pinned a little way below the ceiling. It was dry and curled with age, but when she pushed it aside, she could see through a carefully cut slit between the mortar of the wall and one of the old stones. She moved Edgar’s hand up to a second leather strip and together they looked out.
     
    At first they couldn’t see anything, just deep darkness. Then there were voices, quick footsteps and a loud slam as someone forced open the cellar door. Two black-robed men burst on to the staircase, flooding the room with light from a lantern that cracked hard against the wall.
     
    One of the men had a crossbow trained carefully down the cellar steps and the other held the lantern up high, straining to keep hold of a long leather lead with a vicious dog panting at the end of it. Kate’s mind threw up visions of the great beast sniffing them out, snuffling its jaws into their hiding place and dragging them out with its sharp yellow teeth, but those terrors were soon buried under something far more important.
     
    Where was Artemis?
     
    ‘Search it,’ said the bowman, and the warden with the dog scuttled down the steps, letting its nose investigate, hunting out its prey.
     
    The dogman dragged full boxes aside as if they were empty, scouring every cranny for signs of life. He pulled handfuls of paper out of the storage chests, rapped his knuckles on the walls, and dug his long fingers into every crack, leaving nothing unchecked. Closer and closer he came to the little door, until a sudden scrabbling noise in the wall made the dog lower its head and snarl.
     
    ‘Here,’ the bowman said. ‘What’s that in there?’
     
    Kate froze, but the wardens were not looking in her direction. They were