Hero Risen

The young man smiled weakly. ‘I may be useless at drugging someone, but I have spent so many years acting in one way or another that I’m not sure if I can do anything else. What do you want?’

Brann chewed his lip, gathering his thoughts. ‘People in here recognise you. If you are directing us, explaining loudly about things as if we were guests of the Duke and you have been asked to show us out, it would be good. The more you look to draw attention to yourself, the less people think you don’t want them to look closely. They just get irritated and hope you go away quickly. Or at least, I hope they do.’

Sophaya grunted. ‘Only one way to find out. Now can we go? There may not be much to this little one, but she’s not made of feathers.’

Gerens made to reach for the snuggling girl, but she just pressed harder against Sophaya, who shook her head briefly. He nodded in acceptance, but stepped close, loosening a large knife in its sheath. No one would harm either girl while he could still move.

Brann took a deep breath. ‘Yes, we should move, but one more thing, Philippe. Eloise is downstairs. In the guard room.’

His eyes widened. ‘You only thought to tell me this now? Why have we dallied here?’

He made for the door in a rush, but Brann restrained him.

‘I’m sorry, but we came for a purpose and could not leave without it. And to rush without thought would be to rush to death, and we cannot help her if we are lying bleeding on a stairwell.’ He gripped him tighter. ‘Can you do this?’

Philippe stared at him for a moment, before the actor returned to his eyes. He straightened. ‘I can. But we do it now.’

No more words were needed. They followed his abrupt exit. No more words on that matter, but Philippe had already slipped into the overbearing conversation of one who looks to show off their petty importance. ‘If you follow me, I’ll show you the guard room, as the Duke requested of his most trusted servant.’ He turned and said in a low voice. ‘If people think you are going somewhere else inside, they won’t think about you heading outside. Do you think that’s right?’

Brann wasn’t sure it was necessarily so, but nodded with a smile. It did no harm to encourage Philippe, and the main thing was that he kept talking. As Philippe continued his guided tour, each proclamation more strident and pompous than the last, Brann ran over in his mind the layout the young man had described to them. A single winding stairway ran from top to bottom, wide enough for three men abreast and with a landing at each level. Below the Duke’s chambers on the top two floors were the late captain’s rooms, and then the kitchens situated where they could serve those above and below equally as quickly. The next floor down housed storerooms: half for the cooking staff and half for the guards’ equipment, while the level below that held sleeping quarters for guards and servants. At ground level were more sleeping rooms and the main guard room, and below was a cellar with half-a-dozen cells around a central area where prisoners could be questioned in view of those awaiting the same fate.

They passed the captain’s level quickly, Philippe averting his eyes from the interior as they did so, and approached the kitchens. ‘I will show you the guard room as agreed,’ Philippe pronounced even more loudly than before, his words audible over the work of those servants preparing for the next day. ‘But if you care to look into the kitchens on the way past, the Duke said that you would be welcome to do so.’

At the sound of the reference to the Duke, Brann noticed the heads of the servants stare down, every one wishing to avoid being noticed. That was fine, it suited them.

The store level was passed quickly, but, as they approached the upper sleeping quarters, three drowsy guards stumbled into the stairwell, roused by the shouting outside.

‘Quick!’ Philippe yelled, his voice filled with panic and his hands grabbing the first soldier and propelling him down a few steps. ‘There has been a most terrible accident! The Duke! A fall! The garden! Oh my, we must all help, we really must! Please hurry!’

Clearly dreading the consequences of not being on hand to help the Duke in his time of need, the men almost fell in their haste to run down. Brann and the others followed fast – who would question anyone rushing in the company of guardsmen?

They reached the ground level and Philippe cut past the front entrance and flung open a door with clearly no consideration of his own safety. They piled into the guard room behind him with weapons drawn – and stopped.

Alone in the room, Eloise crouched in a corner. She had managed to retrieve a shift from the pile of her clothes on the floor, but had dressed no more, as if she only had the energy for the minimum to cover herself. Her hands were pressed to her lap, where the pale material was stained red, and she turned a face to them that was swollen and cut beyond recognition of the girl who had left them on the street outside. It was her eyes that struck Brann hardest, though. As a child, he had been at a friend’s house when old Rewan, who tended the ailments of villagers and animals alike, arrived to end the misery of a working dog that was too injured to recover. The animal had seemed to know Rewan’s purpose, and Brann now saw the same look in Eloise’s eyes: a cornered fear, a shrinking from the inescapable, a desperation for mercy.

Philippe cried out as he rushed to her. His arms wrapped her into him, and he rocked, singing a soft tune into her ear, a melody Brann could only guess had seen the pair through times both hard and lonely. He looked up at them, his own eyes stricken, his voice a whisper of horror. ‘How could you let her face this? How could you leave a girl to face them?’

Brann couldn’t answer. He was asking himself the same questions.

Grakk knelt beside the pair. ‘It was beyond our power,’ he said softly. ‘All we thought, all she thought, was that she would dally by them at the gate, turn their eyes to her. When they took her inside, when she went with them, what she did – it was bravery on a par with anything I have seen on a battlefield.’ He put a hand on Philippe’s shoulder. ‘She did this that we might help you.’

Philippe looked again around them. ‘Those last words do not exactly make me feel better.’ But the anger left him in a long sigh, leaving abject acceptance in its place. ‘We both knew something like this can happen; does happen. Everyone in our… our line of work knows that. You just have to think it will not happen to you or those you love, or you could not carry on.’ He smiled weakly, humourlessly, grimly. ‘I know, that sounds stupid.’

Brann walked over. ‘Not to a fighting man, it doesn’t.’

Philippe nodded, and drew strength into him with a slow breath. ‘Eloise, my darling, we need to go.’ He leant in close and spoke into her ear, and his words gradually had effect. She unwound her body to stand, leaning on her brother.

‘Yes,’ she said, her tone as flat as her eyes. ‘Go. We must get go. Away from here. Far, far away.’ She looked at him. ‘Take me away.’

Konall lifted a cloak from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around her as she passed, while Gerens took her free arm, supporting her at that side as well.

Brann glanced around the room. His attention had been so caught by Eloise that he hadn’t noticed a large opening in the floor: a stout wooden hatch lying open and allowing him to peer cautiously over the edge. Steps led down and, as Brann moved to a better angle, he could see a wide square room, the central features a slab of a table with metal restraints set into the wooden top stained with blood old and new and, around the sides, barred cells.

Memories stirred at the sight of the cells, and he pushed them away. Approaching footsteps indicated that another room lay beyond his vision, and he held his breath, reaching for the hatch. When the three guards came into his vision, though, they walked across the way, never thinking to look up the stairway. It was the prisoner held between two of them that caught his attention and stayed his hand on the hatch. A young woman, her build athletic and strong, her hair the colour of the summer sun and framing a face golden of hue and heart-shaped, who moved as can only a dancer or a warrior. When pale blue eyes turned to meet his, he knew she was no dancer.

On impulse, he slid the knife from the sheath strapped to his right forearm, and reached down to set it on the step at the extent of his reach. A slight frown creased the space between her eyebrows, then a nod was the last he saw of her as the guards continued their way to a cell. He suspected that his knife would be put to use before long, but whenever it would be, they would be gone by that time. Still, it pleased him that it would be put to use by her.

His intention had been to close the hatch and bolt it to trap any guards below, but instead he rested it back open as he had found it. If events in the cells reached the conclusion he was sensing they would, there would be no guards able to exit in any case.

The others were already out of the guard room and he ran quietly to catch up. They moved as quickly as Eloise could manage, down the steps at the front of the tower and straight for the gate.

Brann looked around. The courtyard was empty – all must be around the rear of the tower, at the Duke’s body. There was certainly enough noise and consternation echoing from that direction. He fixed his eyes on the gate.

Thirty paces. Twenty. Ten.

It was at five paces that two guards ran around the corner of the building. They saw the bedraggled group and veered away from the tower entrance to face them. They stared at each other.

‘Philippe,’ Grakk said from the corner of his mouth. ‘How many guards are there here in total?’

‘At least two dozen, maybe more,’ he said, his voice starting to tremble.

‘We can’t engage these two without them raising the alarm,’ Brann said. ‘And we can’t take on all of them without at least some of us dying.’ He looked at Eloise. ‘And we can’t outrun them.’ The men were coming towards them, shouting across questions. ‘So maybe we need to wrong-foot them.’

He waved his arm frantically, urging the guards to hurry over. ‘Please, hurry! There is someone else hurt. We need to get them to a healer.’

The guards stopped, one with his spear lowered, the other with a sword held warily. They both eyed the four armed men before them. ‘What are you talking about?’ one said.

Brann automatically ran his eyes over them. A spear thrust would come across the attack line of the swordsman, hampering his movement forward. Neither had a shield. The distance could be closed in moments. They were not even wearing helmets, dishevelled hair as if they had just woken all that lay between a blade and a blow to the skull. Their eyes moved nervously…

He paused. The faces seemed familiar. The hair… as if just out of…

They were two of the three men they had run into in the stairwell. They had just been roused from sleep. They knew nothing about Eloise’s arrival at the tower. It opened up a possibility.

‘It’s this young woman,’ he said, pleadingly, indicating the figure hanging between Philippe and Gerens. ‘She seems to have been brought in for the Duke. We don’t know what happened, but she is in a bad way. She needs help.’

The guards looked at each other, and one nodded at the other. ‘Well, it’s not as if the Duke has any need of her now.’ The spear lowered and the sword was sheathed.

The older of the two, a bearded man, smiled slightly. ‘Look, friend, I have no idea who you are, or what the Duke wanted of this girl, though I could come up with a few suggestions. But he’s not in a position to want anything any more and some would say that’s not a bad thing. Probably best for all if we open the gate to check the street outside and you just go about your business. Better for us, better for you and,’ he looked at Eloise, ‘best of all for her. Take her as far from this tower as you can.’

Brann relaxed. ‘Thank you.’

The man shrugged, unbolting the gate and swinging one half inwards. ‘Sometimes straightforward is as complicated as life needs to get.’

They all breathed a little easier.

Then Eloise lifted her head. She did not see the faces. She had not heard the words. But she saw the tabards, and the Duke’s insignia. She shrieked and hurled herself at the nearest guard, Gerens’s knife in hand. Before he could react, she had sliced across his throat, blood spraying beneath a face frozen forever in disbelief. She launched herself at the other, who had stumbled back in shock, his spear coming up in defensive reflex. The point took her in the chest but her momentum took them both down, the spear ripped from his hands in the fall. Amid screams and snarls that turned to coughs, she stabbed three, four five times into his chest and throat and horrified face. She stabbed for the few short moments that she had left to live, then lay still in the shared mess of their blood.

Grakk and Brann reached her just as she stilled, Gerens and Konall casting around for danger with weapons drawn. Sophaya kept the child’s head turned from the bloodbath. Grakk bent over Eloise and checked the obvious, then shook his head to confirm it. Philippe was on his knees, hands held in supplication, eyes struggling with comprehension, every part of his face straining, a silent scream tearing itself from his soul.

‘So what now?’ Konall said.

Brann took a last look at the scene, as Konall hauled Philippe to his feet.

‘Now we run.’

Chapter 3

When he had ruled, the world came to the Emperor. Now it seemed that some things had relaxed.

Arrogance that relaxes standards will build complacency from indolence just as easily as it builds dismissiveness from pomposity. Either forms weakness, and weakness offers less resistance to pressure.

A cracked wall will never again be truly strong, no matter the patches. In some cases, a wall will, weakened, still serve its purpose, for the pressures it will face are less than even the reduced strength of the wall.

But when the wall faces strong and repeated pressure, even the smallest cracks will spread and widen and fracture and bring the wall to rubble. When even the first small cracks appear, one remedy alone will suffice: tear down the wall and build one anew; the only question being when, not if. But the new wall must be completed before the old is destroyed, for even a weakened wall is better than none.

Such is the wall of an Emperor’s power.

He had known it, had maintained an Empire on it. Set the minimum standard at the highest level, and tolerate no relaxation.

Those who ruled now did not know it. They governed for their pleasure, believing they governed efficiently, never knowing that they benefited from the decades that had come before. Place the running of the Empire before all, and the pleasure will come in its wake; rise each morning with the first thought of your own contentment, and the source of the contentment will be pulverised by inattention.

The wall will crack.

A guard’s rap at his door heralded the entry of the current incumbent of the throne. He slumped in his chair and fixed a bland ghost of a smile to his lips a moment before the Emperor strode in.

He mumbled pleasant inanities in response to the eloquent and almost-believable claims of successes and assertions of wise rule that followed the cursory enquiry after his well-being and were intended, he was sure, to bolster the man’s own self-belief as much as the ostensible purpose to reassure a venerated elderly relative that all was well with the world.

As soon as the door closed, renewed determination drew his posture straight once more. He moved to his desk and drew up rapid notes in handwriting that few could read and in a cypher that none but he could understand. To a reader, they were the scratchings of deranged senility; in reality, they formed architectural plans.

Plans for a new wall.

A wall already under construction.

The cracks were growing.

****

They ran.

Joceline saw them coming and started to ask, presumably about Eloise, but the question died on her lips at the sight of the stricken Philippe. Konall’s handful of tunic propelled him and horror and disbelief filled his eyes. She glanced at the small girl, now in Gerens’s arms, stronger as they were than those of Sophaya, but postponed any curiosity in favour of turning and lifting her skirts to allow her to match their pace, leading them through the winding streets with an assurance that defied the darkness of the hour.

Not for the first time, Brann tumbled on cobbles. Ignoring the pain, he glanced enviously at Gerens, the only one of them not to have fallen – a fortunate fact given his burden. Moonlight allowed the other boy to see his look.

‘The slopes around my home were rock, not nice smooth grass. Rock teaches you early on how to keep your balance… and that you want to learn it.’

Streets blurred into one twisting, slipping, frantic journey. At first, their footsteps were the only sound but, before long, bells began to ring their message of alarm.

Joceline half turned, gasping at them. ‘If we can stay ahead of their messengers, we should reach the gate you asked for before the various barracks near the walls know exactly why they are being roused.’

‘Good.’ Brann was panting as much as she was. ‘As long as the messengers don’t use horses, we should have enough of a start to stay ahead of the communication, and they won’t know that they are to look for us, or in fact search at all.’

Joceline stopped at the edge of an open area that lay between the last of the houses and the town walls, a killing ground perfect for archers should an enemy breach the defences. She pointed at the base of the wall, where they could just make out the darker colour of a door.

‘There,’ she said. ‘It bolts on this side, as does the door on the far side of the wall. As you wanted, the nearest gates in either direction are distant enough that you should be able to get enough of a start on any pursuers to see you away.’

Brann nodded. ‘And the size of the tunnel? And doorways?’

‘Small enough that nothing bigger than a man can fit through. Dogs, yes, but no horses.’

Sophaya frowned. ‘Not much use as a gate. Not many options.’

‘It will be a sally port, young lady,’ Grakk said. ‘Far enough from the gates that defenders may issue from it unseen to take unawares besiegers at those gates, or even sneak a messenger away to request help from elsewhere.’

‘Right, so they can’t chase us on horseback. Good,’ Gerens said.

Shouts broke out in the distance to their left, spreading quickly through the streets behind them. The pattern was repeated shortly after from the right.

‘It seems they can send messages on horseback, however. Maybe time to leave?’

Sophaya lifted the little girl from Gerens, and set her before Joceline. ‘This is Antoinette. Do you think you could manage to find her parents?’

The woman nodded, but the girl looked up with eyes that were as dead as her voice proved to be. ‘My mummy and daddy are dead. They shouted at the soldiers when they took us away.’

A tear started in Sophaya’s eye, but Joceline merely crouched and took the girl’s hands in hers. ‘Well, I will just have to take care of you, won’t I? We will find you work to occupy you and train you in skills you never imagined you could learn.’

Brann was shocked. ‘She is no more than six years! You don’t mean to bring her up as a…?’

Joceline’s glare cut him off. ‘The seamstress across from the inn has need of an apprentice.’

He was glad the darkness would hide his blush. ‘Good. Of course. We should go.’ He looked at her. ‘Thank you, for all of this.’

She shrugged. ‘Just tell me this: does the Duke still govern?’

‘Not in this world.’

‘Then the thanks are mine to give to you.’

Shouts drew closer. Without a word or a look back, Joceline took Antoinette by the hand and ran for the shadows. Brann looked at Philippe, who looked after the receding pair, almost out of sight already, and then turned back. ‘There is nothing here for me now but sorrow,’ he said. ‘If you will allow me, I would like—’

Brann’s answer was to grab his tunic and drag him with him as, without further hesitation, he bolted for the wall. The others, impatient to leave, needed no encouragement to run with them.

To expect to reach the cover of the door without being seen would have been pushing optimism too far, but they almost made it. A score of paces from their target, a group of men rounded a distant corner. The open ground and full moon gave the guards a view that was sufficient to show several figures behaving suspiciously, and to men already enthused by the chase, anything questionable became prey. The men began to shout and run in the same instant, although one lingered long enough to sound three blasts on a horn. Answering horns sent back single notes from at least four locations.

Brann thumped into the wall, his chest heaving, at the same time as the others. Gerens paused for nothing, hurling his shoulder at the door without missing a stride. The wood shattered inwards and the boy tumbled through, already back on his feet by the time the others piled in.

‘It may have been open, you know,’ Konall pointed out.

‘It definitely is now,’ Gerens said.

They hurried into the short corridor through the wall, barely more than a few hands of space to either side of their shoulders.

‘I dare you to do the same to the next door,’ Konall said.

Gerens grunted. ‘I don’t mind getting wet. Better than waiting to be stuck with a sword.’

Light penetrated no more than a few yards behind them into the passage, and they felt their way at a trot through the black, feet slipping on the damp stone of the floor. Brann strained his eyes for the slightest hint of light ahead but still discovered the door with his hands rather than his eyes. The others piled up behind him, then backed off slightly as his fingers found three large bolts and slid them free. He yanked at a handle, and old hinges groaned as he heaved it open at the second attempt. The moon was shining from the far side of the town, but outside was lighter than the tunnel and some little vision returned to them, the water of the moat a deeper black than what lay beyond. He knelt and felt in the darkness.

‘There should be a plank lying at the side of the tunnel,’ he called urgently. ‘Run it across the moat and we are away.’

‘I have it,’ came Grakk’s voice. ‘But it will not be our bridge. Wet floors and wood are excellent for rot, but not for strength.’

Brann cursed. There was no option. ‘Gerens, you will get your swim after all.’

The shouts behind were nearing the broken door behind them. Brann launched himself blindly into the moat, hitting the water and hearing the muffled splashes of the others doing likewise before he regained the surface. The distinctive taste in his mouth was expected – and welcome, under the circumstances – but had obviously come as a surprise to Konall.

‘What in all the hells have we jumped into?’ the boy spluttered.

Brann grinned. ‘Just don’t drink any of it.’ At least it meant that the others were waiting for them.

Grakk called to him. Brann saw his dark silhouette crouched at the doorway and was handed the bundle of documents. He took them in one hand while his other kept his head above the water, then watched in alarm as the gangly figure leapt wildly past him in the general direction of the others.

‘That was Grakk!’ he yelled above the sound of the splash. ‘Remember he can’t swim.’