he said absently.
William said, ‘‘Let us know if you find a light. This darkness is tedious.’’
James said vaguely, ‘‘You get used to it. Ah!’’
‘‘What?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘A door. Wooden. Closed.’’
A few seconds later, a spark was struck. ‘‘We have light,’’
James said, igniting an old torch he had found in the wall-sconce. Putting away his flint and steel, he said, ‘‘Let’s see what we have here.’’
The room was forty feet square and the walls were lined with empty weapons racks. Two racks stood in the middle of the room, empty of the long spears that had once waited there for a call to action.
‘‘If the armory is below . . .’’ mused James aloud.
‘‘Then this is where they kept spare arms close to hand,’’
finished Treggar.
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James returned the torch to the wall-sconce, and went to the door. ‘‘This should lead to the marshaling yard above.’’
He tried the door. ‘‘It’s jammed.’’ Examining it, he said, ‘‘Let’s try the hinges.’’
William and Treggar pulled out their daggers and worked at the ancient iron hinges. ‘‘If we had some oil,’’ said William,
‘‘maybe.’’
James said, ‘‘I’ll get some.’’
‘‘Where?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘Down there,’’ said James, moving back toward the hole in the floor.
‘‘You’re mad,’’ said Treggar.
‘‘Probably,’’ answered James as he ducked out of sight.
After he had left, William and Treggar looked at one another and sat down to wait.
Time passed slowly, then suddenly James’s voice sounded in the dark. ‘‘Give me a hand.’’ William hurried over and lay down, lowering his hand through the hole. After a couple of misses in the darkness, James seized it and came up.
‘‘Here,’’ James said, handing a jar to William. ‘‘Oil.’’
William said, ‘‘I didn’t even hear you until you spoke.’’
James replied softly. ‘‘You weren’t supposed to. A couple of disagreeable men were trying to find me, and once I shook them I didn’t want them hearing me climbing up here.’’
‘‘What’s it like down there?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘They’re into their second sweep. They probably have someone above at the top of the old well, and since no one came up, then they figure we must still be in here somewhere.
They probably think it’s your Pathfinder Edwin loose down here, killing their men. But sooner or later one of those bright 276
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lads is going to suspect there may be a passage up to this level and then they’re going to start inspecting every inch of ceiling.’’
‘‘Eventually they’ll find us,’’ said William.
‘‘Almost certainly,’’ said James. ‘‘Being caught was never my first worry.’’
‘‘If that wasn’t, what was?’’ asked Treggar.
James pulled out a heavy crowbar, two feet in length, and said, ‘‘Oil.’’ He nodded toward the hinges. As William poured oil on the upper hinge, James continued. ‘‘Getting caught before word got to Arutha. As long as we’re running around in here, those down below are going to be too concerned about catching us to prepare well for Arutha’s arrival. If everything works out, those coming back will have Krondorian soldiers hard on their heels, and will run right into a barred door, with those inside slow in getting it open for them.’’
‘‘That’s your plan?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘It’s the old plan,’’ said James. ‘‘If this door leads where I think it does, I have an even better plan.’’
With the oil and crowbar, they got the pins out of the hinges. Treggar inserted the bar between the door and jamb and pulled hard. A dull scrape sounded as the door moved a fraction, then stopped.
‘‘Whatever’s jamming it is holding it tight,’’ observed the soldier.
‘‘Captain, may I?’’ asked William.
The captain relinquished the bar to the broad-shouldered younger man.
William looked at the door, then moved the bar to a position slightly above his shoulders. He pulled hard, and downward, and the door moved. William yanked hard again, and 277
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the door moved again, and he fell backwards with the release of the bar.
James and Treggar leapt away as the door seemed to fly off the jamb, spinning as it fell with a loud crash to the stone floor. Clouds of fine dust filled the room, as thick as smoke, and the three men came up coughing.
‘‘Look,’’ said William.
The original room had been excavated just below the surface of the ancient fortress’s marshaling yard. Behind the doorway, a ramp led up to the surface, and at the top of the ramp, parallel to the floor, was a barred trapdoor. The release bar for the trap was set across it in such a fashion that it could be pulled free by two ropes or chains. The iron eyelets were still intact, but any ropes had long since rotted to dust. James inspected the trapdoor. ‘‘Clever,’’ he said at last. ‘‘It’s hinged here and there—’’ he pointed to the far end ‘‘—so that when it falls open it lands atop the ramp.’’
Treggar said, ‘‘Old Keshian trick. I’ve never seen it, but the old Knight-Marshal, Dulanic, once told us of a fight here in the desert where they took a fortification. As they crested the walls, it seemed the defenders were all dead. They got inside and set up camp, and that night the Keshians seemed to come out of nowhere.’’ He glanced around the room. ‘‘He mentioned we should always inspect for hiding holes like this if we found ourselves in a similar situation.’’
Treggar climbed the ramp next to James and put his hands up to examine the door. ‘‘There’s probably a piece of canvas and some dirt spread out over this old wood. Enough so that if you’re walking across it you’d have to be listening for the hollow sound to know that ramp is there.’’
‘‘Add to that a few centuries of dust,’’ muttered James, testing 278
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the weight of the door on the bar. ‘‘This isn’t moving unless we can tie a pair of ropes to it.’’
‘‘We’d need horses to pull that bar out with all the weight on it,’’ said Treggar.
James sat down. ‘‘Maybe.’’ He inspected the bar again and finally said, ‘‘Unless we can loosen those brackets.’’
William held up the crowbar and said, ‘‘I can give it a try.’’
He set to with purpose, and after a minute said, ‘‘This wood is very dry. It’s splintering easily.’’ He worked at it until the first of the two brackets fell away, striking the stone ramp with a loud clatter. He then turned to the second bracket and shortly had it free. The bar followed, crashing to the floor and bouncing down the ramp, causing James to have to leap over it.
William sprawled on his back, and Treggar leapt to the side.
William lay motionless for a moment, expecting the doors to swing down upon him, but instead nothing happened. He rolled and crawled a little way, came to his feet and then stepped to the bottom of the ramp.
‘‘Shouldn’t those doors have swung down?’’ asked William.
‘‘Supposedly,’’ answered Treggar.
He started to move back up the ramp, but James’s hand restrained him. ‘‘I wouldn’t. It could give way at any moment.’’
Treggar shook off the squire’s hand, saying, ‘‘I don’t think so.’’ He moved to what would be the closest edge of the opening where the door jamb met the door itself and inspected it.
He then pulled out his dagger and stuck it between the door and the jamb, and pried something out.
He returned to his companions holding out a sliver of something brown.
‘‘Mud.’’
?
??‘Mud?’’ asked William. ‘‘Here?’’
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‘‘It doesn’t rain much in this region,’’ said Treggar, ‘‘but it does rain. And over the years dust has settled upon that door, then gotten rained upon, and then the heat returns.’’
‘‘Brick,’’ said James, taking the sliver from Treggar. ‘‘The door is covered by a slab of this stuff, maybe two or three inches thick.’’
‘‘But what’s holding the door in place?’’ asked William.
‘‘Suction,’’ said James. ‘‘I’ve had to pull more than one heavy object out of the mud and if you don’t break the suction first, you’re doing it the hard way.’’
‘‘So we’re stuck?’’ asked William.
James looked around and said, ‘‘Not necessarily.’’ He moved to one of the large racks and said, ‘‘Help me lug this over to the bottom of the ramp.’’
They did so, and after it was where James wanted it, he said, ‘‘Now move that bar over here.’’ Quickly he had the bar jammed in to the bottom of the trapdoor, braced against the heavy rack. ‘‘This won’t prevent the trap from falling on top of me, but it should slow it enough for me to get out of the way if it starts to go.’’
‘‘What are you doing?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘I’m going to cut away some of this mud, enough so that any weight above it should release the door.’’
‘‘You’re mad,’’ said Treggar.
James said, ‘‘You’re only coming to that conclusion now?’’
He moved up the ramp and said, ‘‘Stand back. If this goes, I want a clear path down that ramp.’’
He worked diligently and carefully, and after a while William turned his attention to the hole in the floor, watching and waiting for them to be discovered.
After an hour, James said, ‘‘That should be enough.’’
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William glanced at James. ‘‘For what?’’
James smiled. ‘‘For it to give quickly when I want it to.’’
‘‘Another plan?’’ asked Treggar.
‘‘Always,’’ said James with a grin. ‘‘Now, do either of you have a good guess as to what time of the clock it is?’’
Treggar said, ‘‘I put it near midnight, give or take a quarter of an hour.’’
‘‘Good,’’ said James, sitting. ‘‘Then we wait.’’
‘‘For what?’’ William asked.
‘‘For the half a dozen men set to watching the well above to get bored and sleepy.’’
James hugged the wall between two large sets of shelves, trying by force of will to become one with the slight shadow between them. A single guard was stationed near the well, absently cutting the skin from an apple as he glanced around from time to time.
James weighed his options. He could chance a dagger throw, but the odds of it being a killing blow were slight. He could rush the man, but suspected there were others close by who would appear within moments of any outcry.
James had moved into the kitchen a few moments before the guard appeared and had ducked into the only cover at hand. He now remained motionless, hoping the assassin wouldn’t notice the shape in the shadows on the stone wall.
The man looked away and James reacted without further thought. He stepped across one of the shelves and walked around a large butcher’s block that stood between the shelves and the well.
The man glanced over as James moved casually toward him.
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James smiled. ‘‘Hello,’’ he said, the only word he knew in the Keshian desert dialect.
The man blinked for a moment, then replied, ‘‘Hello?’’ Then he asked a question in the language they had heard the assassins using.
James had a dagger palmed behind his wrist, and as the man repeated the question, James slashed him across the throat.
With a gurgling sound, the man gripped his throat and fell backward, into the well.
Voices coming from somewhere close by spurred James and he leapt on top of the well. He repeated his earlier feat of jumping up into the shaft and pulling his legs up, jamming his knees and shoulders into the walls of the ancient stone-lined tube. A slight gasp of pain escaped his lips as he discovered how bruised his shoulders and knees were from the last time he had pulled this stunt.
He shimmied up the well, feeling every inch of the ascent, until he was just below the lip. He knew he couldn’t stay there long, and the sky above was lightening, so he started up the last few feet.
James listened for voices and heard none. He peered cautiously over the lip of the well and found six sentries nearby, four of them obviously sleeping and the other two involved in a quiet conversation, their attention on one another, not the well.
James judged them to be ten feet or closer and knew that if he tried to climb out one of the two was almost certain to see him. He decided on a dangerous course.
He turned his back to the two men, and started slowly to snake his way over the lip of the well. Should either glance in his direction, in the dim pre-dawn light, they might miss the 282
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distorted form on the edge of the well. If they paused to look in his direction, they would certainly see him. He prayed they were convinced no one was coming up this way after all these fruitless hours of guarding it.
James got his shoulders over the edge of the well and let his own weight carry him slowly down behind the bricks. If fate was kind, Edwin should have found either the other Pathfinder or Arutha’s advanced scouts by now. If so, Arutha would be coming within the next day, two at the most. If not, James didn’t want to consider the chances of getting out of the area alive.
He put his hands on the ground and gently let himself down. With as silent a movement as he could manage, he turned, sitting with his back to the well. He drew his sword and took a breath, ignoring the pain in his back and knees, then he leaped up.
It took a moment for his presence to register on the two men who were talking and they both stood slowly, as James took off at a run.
One of them shouted and the others came awake, slowly, asking questions in sleepy voices. James ran straight to where he judged the trapdoor to be, listening for a hollow sound.
This proved futile, since the yelling from behind drowned out any sound from below, but he did feel the ground give slightly at one point. He stopped, turned and jumped backward a few inches.
The soil below his feet felt as if it had given slightly. He ran backwards for a few feet, then crouched as if waiting for the men who raced toward him. They began to slow, and he realized with alarm they were on the verge of fanning out to surround him.
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He turned and ran as if suddenly in a panic, and he heard orders shouted from behind.
Then a loud crack and a crash followed and James turned to see all six men falling through the trapdoor. He raced as fast as he could toward them. While holding the advantage for a moment, James and his companions were outnumbered two to one.
He reached the near end of the trapdoor and leapt, turning in mid-air so that he landed facing down the ramp.
The caked mud had prevented the left side of the door from falling fully into the ramp. The twisting ramp caused the men to fall, one atop the other. James found himself staring down into the darker interior of the ambush chamber, lit by only the one torch, as William and Treggar battled two guards.
Suddenly James felt his heels slip, and his feet went out from under him. He landed with a bone-jarring crash on the wooden ramp and slid a few feet, bowling over two assassins who were trying to rise.
James kept sliding, and saw that one of the enemy was trying to climb past him rather than fight. James slashed with his sword but missed as the man vaulted up the ramp past him.
James couldn’t lavish any
more attention on the fugitive, as another assassin sat up next to him, cutting at him with a backhanded blow from his scimitar. His only option was to throw himself backward on to the ramp, striking his head hard, as the blade cut through the air. Lying prone, James lunged with his sword, killing the man sitting next to him.
He sat up and found a black-clad back turned to him. Without hesitation, James struck it. His head pounded and he felt dizzy from the concussion he had just taken.
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Treggar stood over one dead assassin, while dueling with another.
William struck one man while he kicked out and backed off a second.
James leapt on the closer of the two facing William and knocked him to the ground, wrestling him down, while William killed the one he faced.
James shouted, ‘‘One’s getting away!’’
William shouted back, ‘‘I’ll get him!’’ He leapt over the dying man and raced up the ramp.
Reaching the top of the ramp, William saw the man more than a hundred yards ahead of him dashing down an incline leading to a gap in the rocks.
William started running.
James and Treggar killed the last assassin and appeared at the top of the steps in time to see William vanish down the eastern access. James said, ‘‘Go after him, and if he kills that man, then take him with you.’’
‘‘Where?’’
‘‘To find Arutha,’’ said James. ‘‘My original plan was to get back into the stable and hold the door while Arutha killed those trapped outside the door, then open the door and let him come inside to kill the rest.’’
‘‘And we three were going to hold the door alone?’’
‘‘That’s why I was trying to cut down the odds, captain.’’