by Robert Bevan
Stavros ran a finger along the edge of the hole. “Termites that eat through solid iron?”
Katherine shrugged. “Rust, maybe?”
“All I needed was one more minute. Is a single minute too much to ask?” Stavros continued to explore the edge of the hole in the door with his fingers.
Katherine raised her eyebrows at him. “Did you wash your hands?”
“Shut up, half-elf! When Lady Vivia is done with you, I shall spill my seed upon whatever is left of your corpse!”
“That’s kinda fucked up,” said Katherine. “Does Alessandro talk like this? Your weird fetishes might have something to do with why Lady Vivia prefers a man like him.”
“I told you to shut –” The rage vanished from Stavros’s eyes, and was replaced with fascination as one of his fingers caressed the bottom right corner of the hole. “Is this what I think it is?” His fingers found the corner of the hole, and he slowly peeled it off. Aside from the missing bar in the window, the door was once again whole.
“That’s mine!” said Katherine angrily.
Stavros smiled. “Not anymore, my dear.” He retreated from the window in the same direction he’d come from.
“It was a good effort,” said Captain Righteous. His voice sounded sympathetic. “I apologize for what I said earlier. Your mind is sharp and resourceful.” He glanced at the window. “For what it’s worth, none of us could have fit through that window even if you’d removed all the bars.”
“Is he gone?” asked Katherine.
The captain looked out the window, then spoke in a whisper. “He’s wandered off. I imagine he has some unfinished business to attend to. Why? Do you have another plan?”
Katherine shook her head. “I’m all tapped out of ideas.” She didn’t bother to whisper. “But I need to pee. Would you and Bingam mind turning around?”
“Of course, Miss Katherine.” Captain Righteous turned around to face his wall. Bingam did likewise.
“No peeking,” said Katherine. “Can I trust you to be gentlemen worthy of your station?”
“On my honor as a servant of His Majesty.”
“Okay. Stay turned around. I’m going to hang my cloak over the window in case that little pervert comes back. I’ll tell you when I’m decent again.”
“Very well, ma’am.”
Katherine peeled off her still-damp cloak. As dank as the air was in this place, it felt good to have some air against her bare skin. She hung the cloak by the hood on two bolts poking out of the iron band that ran across the top of the window, covered her private areas as best she could with only two hands, and walked to the filthy chamber pot at the back of the cell. As much as she really did have to pee, she couldn’t bring herself to squat over the pot just yet.
THUNK
“Unnnnnggggggg...”
“Miss Katherine?” said Captain Righteous. “Are you quite all right?”
“Just keep looking at the wall, buddy.” Katherine relieved herself in the chamber pot while she watched Stavros through the small square hole in the door, collapsing with the back end of a crossbow bolt poking out of his right eye socket. When she was done, she retrieved her cloak and got dressed again. “Fucking pervert.”
“I can assure you, Miss, that neither I nor Bingam so much as glanced at –”
“It’s cool. You can turn around.”
While Bingam was turning around, his gaze fixed onto the hole in the door. “What’s this?” He bent over to peek through it, then stood bolt upright. “I don’t believe it, sir. She’s killed the guard!”
Captain Righteous pressed his face to the window bars and looked down. “Incredible! Where did you... How did you...”
Katherine smiled. “It was a team effort. You’re a pretty good shot with that crossbow of yours after all.”
The captain puzzled through in thought until the pieces fell into place. “By the gods, I knew I didn’t miss you.”
“Very clever, Miss Katherine,” said Bingam, who finally seemed to be over his crying. “Now how do we get out of here?”
“Come on, guys. Team effort, remember? Maybe you could contribute to the next part of the plan.”
Bingam frowned. “So we’re really no better off than before. The only difference is that we’ve got a dead Drow with his cock in his hand lying right outside our cell.”
“Quiet, Bingam,” said Captain Righteous. “Get a hold of yourself.”
“We’re worse off than before,” Bingam continued blubbering. “You can forget about being ransomed. They’ll kill us now for cer–”
Katherine slapped Bingam lightly on the cheek, to which he responded with wide-eyed bafflement.
“Shut up. We need to think.”
Bingam stuck out his lower lip and looked more like he was concentrating on not crying than thinking of an escape plan, but at least he was quiet.
“You don’t think you could just bash through the door, huh?” Katherine asked Captain Righteous.
The captain shook his head. “With a weapon and enough time, I could chop through it, but the crossbar is too thick.”
Katherine squeezed her head through the gap in the barred window. Bingam hadn’t been kidding about Stavros. Sure enough, his dead black hand was firmly wrapped around his dead black dick.
To her left, she could see the Bag of Holding sitting on the floor next to a stool by the wall.
She pulled her head back into the cell and put her arm out through the window. She could just barely reach the crossbar with the tips of her fingers, but she wouldn’t be able to move it. The Portable Hole, as Captain Righteous had referred to it, was below the crossbar, well out of reach.
Even from inside the cell, if she’d wanted to risk having her hand fused together with the door by trying to peel off the hole from the opposite side of where it had been applied, her hand wasn’t quite slender enough to fit through the thickness of the wood.
Low on ideas, she turned around to examine their inventory inside the cell. Not a whole hell of a lot to work with.
“You claim to be a druid,” said Captain Righteous. “Can you not simply turn into a bird and fly through the window?”
Katherine put her hands on her hips. “Well fuck. Why didn’t I think of that?”
“No need for sarcasm. I merely want to exhaust any possibilities that come to mind. Have you any druidic magic that could be of use?”
Katherine thought about what spells she had prepared. “I could summon a monkey.”
Captain Righteous sighed. “A monkey would not be able to even reach the crossbar, much less have the strength to move it.”
A light went on in Katherine’s mind. “But it could grab the Bag of Holding!”
“Do you have anything in the bag that might help us escape?”
Katherine frowned. “I don’t know. Probably not. But it’s a step in the right direction, right?”
“It’s worth a shot, I suppose.”
Katherine pointed her finger out the window to ensure that the monkey would appear outside the cell. “Monkey!”
With a near inaudible poof of magic, a small white monkey appeared on the floor outside the cell. It stared up at Katherine.
“Go get the Bag of Holding,” Katherine commanded.
The monkey continued to stare at her.
“Shit. It doesn’t understand me.” She tried speaking more slowly and loudly, pronouncing her words as clearly as she could. “Go. Get. Bag.” She jerked her head to the side to indicate direction.
“Eeee! Eeee!” replied the monkey.
“Damn it.” Another idea occurred to her. She repeated the command in a British accent.
The monkey scratched its ass.
“What would lead you to believe a monkey could speak the Elven tongue?” asked Captain Righteous.
“It works with birds, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t... No, of course it doesn’t. Have you gone mad?”
Bingam resumed crying again.
“Shut up!” they both
shouted at him.
Katherine looked outside the cell again just in time to see the monkey disappear. “Goddammit, that spell sucks.”
Captain Righteous frowned. “Perhaps it is the will of the gods that we meet our ends here.”
“Fuck the will of the gods. We’re getting the hell out of here. Take off your cloak and tear off a few strips of it.”
“I will do no such thing. If I am to die, I shall die proudly as a servant of His Majesty, with my uniform in-tact.”
“Would it be more honorable to force me to tear my own cloak to shreds, knowing that I’m naked under it?” The captain’s answer would play a large part in how Katherine viewed this man’s character in the future.
“I suppose you have a point. The Drow will most likely desecrate it anyway.” He unhooked the clasp of his cloak and took it off.
“Even better,” said Katherine. “I’ll need the clasp as well.”
Three torn strips of fabric later, she had herself a nice length of rope with a hooked and weighted end. Tanner would be proud.
There wasn’t enough room to fit both her head and her arm through the window, so Katherine was forced to fish blindly. She swung the clasp around on the end of the rope a few times, then released it. Metal clanked against stone. She started pulling it back and felt no resistance, meaning she had not successfully hooked it on the drawstring of the Bag of Holding.
“You are indeed, creative, Miss Katherine,” said Captain Righteous. “But I’m afraid that this is a ridiculous waste of time. The odds of you successfully retrieving that bag are –”
“Twenty to one,” said Katherine, tossing her hook again and missing.
“I find that to be at the same time oddly specific and naively optimistic.”
“I've been forced to sit through a few sessions of this game. If you roll a 20 on any theoretically plausible attempt at anything, no matter how stupid, you’ll succeed.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but –”
“You’re from here,” said Katherine. Another swing and a miss. “This world, I mean. How often have you seen ordinary people do extraordinary things in desperate situations?”
“Often enough, I suppose,” said the captain. “Then again, I think I’ve seen competent soldiers stab themselves in the leg in the heat of battle just as often.”
“Mark my words, Captain. I’ll have that bag in less than seventeen more tries.”
She was wrong. It took twenty-three more tries, but statistics could kiss her ass. She pulled the Bag of Holding in through the window and turned around triumphantly.
“Impressive,” said Captain Righteous. “Would you care to check the inventory?”
“Fuck no.” Katherine had no intention of going back in that bag. “No disrespect intended, sir, but I don’t like the idea of being at your mercy, considering the rocky start of our relationship.”
“I feel the same way.”
They both looked at Bingam.
Bingam choked back a sob. “Fine.” He stood up and put his arms down flat at his sides.
“I’ll pull you back out after a minute. Tell us if you see anything useful.” Katherine pulled the bag down over Bingam’s head, and it swallowed him whole.
“I hope he finds some weapons in there,” said the captain. “If we can’t find a way through the door, we may be able to surprise our captors when they open the cell to retrieve us. And even if we do get through the door, we may still need to fight our way to the surface.”
Katherine shook her head and smiled. She was having a lot of Dr. House moments today. “Brilliant.”
“Thank you, Miss Katherine. But it’s the possibility of having to fight when escaping one’s captors is something I believe would occur to most people.”
“Not that, silly. Through the door.”
The captain frowned. “Again, the door of a cell is the most obvious point of entry and exit. It doesn’t take a military genius to –”
“Just shut up and watch this.” Katherine shoved the Bag of Holding through the gap in the window with her left hand, and squeezed her right hand through the remaining bars and into the bag. “Bingam.”
“Oomph!” cried Bingam as he tumbled out of the bag and onto the hard stone floor outside the cell. Tears streamed down his face as his cheeks shook with sobs.
“Bingam!” said Captain Righteous. “For the Light’s sake, what’s wrong with you?”
“Horse... parts... *sniff* floating... around me... *sniff* everywhere.” He looked up at the window and suddenly stopped crying, then jumped to his feet and pressed his face against the bars. “How’d you escape? Don’t leave me in here, uncle! I promise not to cry anymore!”
Captain Righteous flicked Bingam hard on the nose. “Stop your blubbering and let us out of here, you fool!”
Bingam’s eyes focused past his uncle, into the interior of the cell. Then he looked left and right down the hallway. “Oh.”
“Hurry!”
Bingam bit his lower lip and looked down. Katherine didn’t know what he was thinking about. She’d dealt with the wooden crossbar holding the door shut when she rescued Tanner and Chaz. It wasn’t all that complicated a mechanism.
Finally, he seemed to figure it out. He grabbed the beam by one end and tried to lift it with both hands.
“Hnnnnnnggggggg,” he groaned until his face turned red, but the beam didn’t move.
Super vampire strength notwithstanding, Katherine didn’t remember the beam being quite that heavy. If these skinny-ass black elves could move it...
“I can’t move it, uncle,” said Bingam. “I need your help.”
The captain shook his head. “My sister had to marry a bard.” He faced Katherine and put his arms flat by his sides. “Would you mind?”
A sudden feeling of fear and suspicion came over Katherine. She looked at Bingam, who was practically drooling with anticipation, then back at Captain Righteous. “How do I know you won’t just ditch me in here?”
“You have my word of honor as a captain in the Kingsguard.”
“I’d like to believe that means more to you than it does to me, but –”
“You don’t have much of a choice, Miss Katherine. The only other alternative is for you to go in the bag, after which there would be nothing to stop me from following you in there and having my nephew pull only me out on the other side... if I were an honorless scoundrel. I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me.”
Katherine found little comfort in the fact that the captain had so quickly come up with a plan for betraying her trust, but after having given the logistics of the plan some consideration, she determined it feasible. She really didn’t have much of a choice.
She could have pleaded with him not to leave her in the cell, but he might take that as a sign of weakness.
She could have threatened to hunt him down like a dog if he betrayed her, but if he was the betraying sort, she’d only provide him with smug satisfaction at her empty threat.
She could have reasoned that they needed her, but he might scoff at the idea of needing help from a half-elven woman, and leave her there just to show her otherwise.
Instead, she sighed and pulled the bag down over his head.
Holding the bag outside the cell, she pulled the captain out again.
“By the gods!” said Captain Righteous upon landing on the floor. “It’s horrifying in there. Sweet Melody. She was too good for this world.”
Bingam snatched the Bag of Holding from Katherine’s hand. “Let’s go, Uncle!” He started to run, and Katherine’s heart skipped a beat.
Captain Righteous, still on the floor, spun on his ass and kicked his retreating nephew in the shin. Bingam went down like a sack of dog snot.
The captain stood over his cowering nephew and shook his head. “We are not thieves and swindlers!” He leaned over, picked up the Bag of Holding, which Bingam had abandoned in order to shield his face, and ripped off the clasp of Bingam’s cloak. “And you are not fit
to wear this cloak.”
He turned to the cell and removed the crossbar without so much as a grunt. When the cell door swung open, he held out the bag to Katherine.
“Thank you,” said Katherine, accepting the bag.
“No need to thank me. What’s yours is yours, at least until I arrest you properly and confiscate it as evidence.”
“How generous of you.” Katherine peeled her Portable Hole off the door and slapped it back onto her cloak.
Captain Righteous looked away and cleared his throat.
“What?” Katherine looked down at the hole. The cloak had dried out a bit, and the fabric wasn’t clinging to her body anymore. Consequently, the hole didn’t recognize body and cloak as one unit. So instead of a square of dark emptiness that was camouflaged by the blackness of the fabric, she just had what appeared to be a normal square hole in her cloak showcasing the top of her right tit.
“Shit. Sorry about that.” She removed the hole and placed it lower on the cloak, down by her calf. “Now help me get this elf body into the bag.” She lifted Stavros’s lifeless head and slipped the lip of the bag underneath it.
“Why in the Light’s grace do you want to put a dead Drow in your bag?”
“It might come in handy.”
“For what?”
Katherine huffed in exasperation. “I don’t know. Use your imagination. What if we have to fight a dragon or something? Come on, man. Think.”
The captain reluctantly helped Katherine shove the rest of the body into the bag. “Very good. You are now the proud owner of yet another festering corpse. Now would you please lead the way to the exit?”
“Not before we go to the kennels. I’m not leaving here without Butterbean.”
“We’re in serious danger down here!” whined Bingam. “We’re not putting our lives on the line to rescue your pet wolf!”
Katherine whirled around and glared at him. “Butterbean is not my pet. He’s my Animal Companion.” Jesus Christ, she sounded like one of those PETA nutters. “You go if you want, but I’m not leaving without him.”
“It would appear the criminal is more honorable than some,” said Captain Righteous.
“Oh snap!” Katherine smiled at Bingam. “Should I cast a Create Water spell? ‘Cause you just got burned, son.”
