by AC Cobble
“What’s going on?” asked Jon, his eyes darting nervously around the street in front of them. “Where are we going?”
“Zaine is leading a group of men to somewhere near the keep,” answered Rew. “They’re hiding from Baron Fedgley’s soldiers, and they must have started moving shortly after the bulk of those soldiers departed and cleared the gates of the town. The men behind her are professionals, used to moving stealthily. Thieves’ guild, I can only assume.”
“But—But she’s not in the thieves’ guild, is she?”
Rew shrugged. Then, he nodded to the left and had them take a narrow alley that was dotted with open doors to small clothiers’ shops. The tailors and seamstresses were bustling about, lighting lamps outside of their doors or closing up, balefully eyeing the stone-paved street that recently would have been filled with potential customers.
With the scattered rain, it seemed everyone was headed for home. Another peal of thunder rang from above, and Rew saw a shopkeeper throw up his hands, snuff out the match he’d been about to light his lamp with, and storm inside his shop, closing the door behind him.
On the main street they’d turned away from, Rew had seen one of the men he recognized pausing, staring back the way he’d come. The others had streamed by him while he watched their tail. Professionals, no doubt. With the strange group covering their rear, Rew didn’t want to risk staying too close to them, but he suspected he knew which way they were headed.
From that point on the street, he could see all the way to the main gates of the keep, and Zaine was not there. She’d either gone inside somewhere nearby, or she’d turned. Several blocks away, there was a second entrance to the keep, one reserved for guests of the baron, where they could come and go without having to wade through the throng of commoners at the main gate. It was the gate that Rew had used the day before after leaving the arcanist. If Zaine and her men were not at that secondary gate, Rew doubted he would find her again, but he had a feeling she would be there.
They moved quickly through the empty, rain-splattered streets. After several blocks, Rew slowed their pace, and they peeked down a tree-lined boulevard that led from the wealthier enclaves of Falvar to the small, private gate that bored through the keep’s stout walls.
It was a massive oak door, bound with steel, and it rose twice the height of a tall man. Zaine was standing in front of it, banging on the door with her fist. A window set at head height slid open, and Rew could see a face peering between the steel bars that protected the peep hole. The ranger could not hear what was being discussed, but clearly, Zaine was presenting herself for admittance.
Rew couldn’t see the side street she must have emerged from or where the men who followed her were hiding, but they would be nearby. Zaine had spent several weeks traveling with Baron Fedgley’s children. She’d assisted them in their escape from Yarrow, and she’d been by their sides in Eastwatch’s jail. She’d traversed the wilderness with the pair. The Fedgleys owed her compensation for her role in their escape, or maybe they’d just agreed to an audience with someone they’d grown close to. It didn’t matter. It was plain enough that someone, likely the thieves’ guild, was using Zaine’s connection to get them inside of the keep.
The door swung open, and Zaine stood in the entrance, glancing around. Behind her back, she held up two fingers.
“She’s signaling the others,” hissed Rew.
There was a streak of motion, and two darts flashed past Zaine into the open doorway. Rew saw one of them land in the neck of an armored guard. The man held up his hand, a startled look on his face. Two of the plainly dressed men came running out of hiding and rushed into the doorway. One of them caught the guard and carefully lowered him to the stones inside of the keep. He gestured with his hand, and four more men came out of hiding and entered the keep.
Zaine stood in the entrance, trembling, staring down at the bodies of the guards. When the last man drew next to her, he slipped a hand beneath his cloak and lifted a truncheon. Without pause, he swiped it down, bashing Zaine on the back of the head with the short club. Anne gasped, and Jon looked on, stunned.
Zaine collapsed into the man’s arms, and he dragged her inside of the baron’s keep, tossing her down where Rew imagined they’d left the bodies of the guards. The doors swung shut, and Rew realized the entire breach had taken less than a dozen breaths. Professionals, no doubt.
“I don’t understand,” muttered Jon.
“Thieves’ guild,” said Rew, rubbing at his smooth scalp and brushing away the rain that was beaded there. “They must have found her when we arrived in Falvar and convinced her to show her face at the door to get the guards to open it. If these men are known, there’s no way they could make it into the front gate, and even if they did, they’d be surrounded by dozens of guards guiding them into the public areas. An attack in broad daylight, though, and they’ve already killed two guards… They’re not going in to pilfer a handful of silver candlesticks.”
“What do we do?” asked Jon.
“We go warn the guards at the main gate that they’re under attack,” said Rew. “Come on.”
They ran back through the streets of Falvar, headed toward the main gate, but when they got there, they found the gates were shut.
“W-Why would…” stammered Jon.
Rew shook his head. Minutes before, they’d seen the gates, and they’d been wide open.
A bell began to clang, and on top of the battlements, they saw soldiers hurrying, pointing out somewhere over the walls of the city. Rew spun and looked down the broad avenue toward the northern gates that led to the barrowlands. At the end of a long boulevard, through the shroud of heavy raindrops, he saw those gates had swung shut as well. The rain obscured anything beyond the walls, but it was clear. The soldiers scrambling about in their azure livery were preparing for an attack.
“I don’t understand,” said Jon, spinning in the street, looking from the keep to the city walls and then back again.
“Neither do I,” admitted Rew.
Denizens of Falvar were opening windows, peeking out, or stepping out into the rain to look up and down the street with the same confused looks on their faces as Rew and his friends.
A man, wearing the azure tunic of Falvar, raced toward the keep from the northern gate. He came to a skidding stop before the looming walls, wiped a hand over his face to brush his wet hair back, and yelled up to the guards on the wall, “Dark Kind, hundreds of narjags. Could be more we haven’t seen yet. We’re closing the gates and preparing to defend. Alert Commander Broyce and—Ah, he’s gone. Alert Baron Fedgley!”
The guards atop the walls of the keep conferred then shouted down, “You’re right. Commander Broyce just left an hour ago on an expedition out into the barrows.”
The messenger shifted, looking behind toward the city gate. “I know. I know. We’ve got minutes until the Dark Kind are at the walls. Captain Marsk is requesting all soldiers to the northern gate where he can position them to defend Falvar.”
Between the crenellations of the keep, Rew could see the soldiers shifting irritably.
“Come on, man!” shouted the messenger. “Open the gates and get out here!”
“Protocol is the shut the gates and keep them shut during an alarm,” said the soldier on the wall. “Only Commander Broyce and Baron Fedgley have the authority to open these gates and reassign our positions.”
“Well, go get the baron!” demanded the messenger. “We’re under attack. We’re outnumbered. We need more men.”
“We’ve sent someone to find the baron,” called the soldier from the top of the wall. “I—It’s protocol, you understand? You know as well as I do what happened to Eames just three days past for violating the baron’s orders.”
Seething with frustration, the messenger glanced back toward the city gates then tried imploring the soldiers on the wall one more time, “If we can’t hold the walls…”
“It’s protocol,” insisted the man up top. “If the baron decides w
e shouldn’t have violated protocol to open the gates, it’s my head, mate.”
Rew could see the crestfallen look on the messenger’s face. The ranger guessed that in the service of the baron, it was well understood the punishment for violating orders.
“Give us time,” said the soldier on the wall, his hand held over his brow to block the rain, looking out past the city walls were he must be able to see the approaching Dark Kind. “Tell Captain Marsk to hold, to buy us time. As soon as the bell started ringing, we sent a man for the baron. The messenger could return any moment now, and we’ll start cranking these gates open and send a company to assist.”
The messenger cursed and raced away, headed back toward the city gate. Watching him, the townspeople looked disgusted and scared. Nervously, they shuffled back inside, shuttering windows and barring their doors. The clanging of the alarm bell rang out over the city, and handfuls of soldiers streamed out from where they must have been resting in the city barracks to man the walls. The gates of the baron’s keep remained stubbornly shut.
“Should we yell up to them? Tell them someone snuck inside?” asked Jon.
Rew shook his head. “Zaine and her thief brethren snuck in the minute before the Dark Kind were spotted. That was an hour after half the town’s defenses disappeared into the barrowlands and out of earshot for the alarm bells. It cannot be a coincidence these events happened in that order. Whatever they are doing inside of the keep…”
“You’ll stop it?” asked Anne.
Rew glanced to the closed northern gate. They might be able to slip out the southern gate, if it was still open. That was the way they should return home anyway, taking the roads rather than the difficult crossing over the Spine, but he doubted those gates would be open. They would have been closed as soon as the alarm rang just like the others. Until the Dark Kind were dealt with, no one would be leaving. And even then… Blessed Mother, what were the thieves doing inside the keep? If they were planning an assassination or some other terrible attack…
Smacking a fist into an open palm, Rew growled, “There’s nowhere else to go. We can’t leave, so we may as well help.”
“How do we get in?” asked Jon.
They were surrounded by locked gates, locked doors, and a handful of citizens running through the streets, rushing toward their homes. The keep was four stories of tightly mortared stone with a wide avenue circling it to prevent anyone from scrambling over from the nearby buildings. When guarded with a full complement of soldiers, it would be nearly impregnable to any attacking force that didn’t come with the necessary siege equipment, but at the moment, the soldiers on the walls were clustering along the battlement, pointing and gesturing to what must be the growing presence of the Dark Kind north of the city.
“We could wait until they open the gate,” suggested Anne.
Rew shook his head. “This was well planned. The thieves are probably to Baron Fedgley by now, if that’s where they were headed. The soldiers won’t be opening the gate unless some officer disobeys orders. Let’s go around back, away from prying eyes, and find a way inside.”
Fifteen minutes later, Rew rolled over the top of the battlement. He removed a rope from his pack, grateful Jon had bought the length in the market following the last climbing adventure. He looped it around a crenellation, cinching it tight and dropping the tail toward Jon and Anne.
With the rope, they climbed quickly, and in moments, they were throwing their legs over the edge of the battlement. The section they were on was clear. All of the soldiers on the north side were looking out to where the Dark Kind must be assaulting the walls of the city now. The din of battle rose, but so far, it wasn’t the panicked screams that would sound if the Dark Kind had found a way inside. The soldiers had gotten the gates closed in time, and with only crude tools, narjags would have a hell of a time battering their way through.
Dark Kind, for all of the danger they posed, were fairly ineffective at siege warfare. They had little skill with crafting. They weren’t particularly smart, and they were frightfully impatient. Once a gate was shut, during the wars of years passed, they would bring crude ladders if they were prepared and giant trunks of trees if they were not. They would attempt to bash down the gates, but unarmored and poorly lead, their casualties could be catastrophic.
It gave mankind an advantage when they were able to crouch behind their walls, but the danger was what the Dark Kind would do outside of those walls. They were vicious and offered no quarter. Anyone caught outside the walls would end up in a narjag’s belly, screaming as they were torn apart and then eaten. And if the narjags did breach the walls, they would go into a frenzy, and even trained warriors would tremble in the face of a frothing pack of them.
Luckily, it seemed the Dark Kind had struck from the north, the same gate that Rew and their party arrived through. If the Dark Kind realized that there was an unprotected settlement to the south… Rew could only hope the soldiers would act and race to defend their exposed citizens instead of leaving them unprotected in their hovels by the river. He could only hope the untested mercenaries had the leadership to fend off ladders or a battering ram. But for now, he could not worry about any of that. They had a keep to assault.
He led the trio down the stairs into the interior of the keep, telling his companions, “Act like we belong here. Word is out that the alarm is for Dark Kind, so no one should be particularly suspicious of us, but the less we have to do with the soldiers, the better.”
“We shouldn’t simply alert them?” wondered Jon.
“We could have done that from outside the gate,” mentioned Rew. “No, I think there’s too much going on here that we don’t understand. The thieves slipping in? That’s one thing. The bulk of the town’s forces being diverted away, the thieves slipping in, and an attack by an army of Dark Kind? This is something else, and we won’t know who we can trust until we figure out what is happening.”
Jon grunted, and Rew led them into the inner hallways of the keep. There were two people who might be able to do something about the attack on the city and the thieves that slipped inside the keep—Baron Fedgley and Arcanist Ralcrist. Rew hoped the soldiers were already with the baron, convincing the man to open the gates and to protect the city walls, so he headed toward the chambers where he’d met Ralcrist. The arcanist had known they were under threat, and Rew guessed the wily old geezer had prepared. Seeing no one but panicked staff, they raced through the corridors.
The tapestries, carpets, and sconces that dressed the halls of Baron Fedgley’s keep were in stark contrast to the madness happening outside of the place. Stately, refined, all of it carefully put in order until they reached the arcanist’s rooms. The door hung open, its oak surface scarred with twisting lines of char. One of the plainly dressed thieves lay in the entryway.
“He’s dead,” said Anne, studying the man from a dozen paces away.
Rew didn’t respond. Instead, he hissed for his companions to be quiet and cautiously approached the open door. He jumped when he heard a sizzling crackle inside followed by a shriek of agony. There was another shouted command that was unintelligible outside of the room, and then the sounds of a struggle. Rew rushed inside.
In the center of the room, the giant cerulean crystal was still there, pulsating with subtle light, suspended in the air above the table and the wire framework. On the other side of the crystal, two bodies lay on the floor, black, acrid smoke drifting up from them. Near them, the arcanist was wrestling with the remaining three thieves, trying to wrench a gold-capped staff from their grip.
As Rew raced into the room, he saw one of the thieves draw back a blade then stab forward, slamming the weapon into Arcanist Ralcrist’s stomach. The thief ripped it out violently, disemboweling the old man. Ralcrist cried out in pain, gasping for help. His voice barely a whisper, he cried, “Don’t let them—The staff, Ranger! The staff!”
The thief turned to look at Rew and his party. He barked, “Attack them!”
Two of the thieves
split up and began circling the table, blades held confidently in their hands.
“Take the left, Jon,” instructed Rew, trying to quickly evaluate which of the killers was deadlier. There was no time to decide, and he could only hope the young ranger could defend himself.
Longsword already in hand, Rew approached his own foe, one eye on the man in front of him, the other on the thief who’d stabbed Ralcrist. That thief had collected the arcanist’s staff, though he made no move to advance on either of the rangers with it.
The thief facing Rew looked nervously at the senior ranger’s longsword then flipped his dagger in his hand and whipped it back to throw.
Rew didn’t give him time. He lunged forward and stabbed with his longsword, taking the thief square in the chest. The man squealed a gurgled cry and fell back. Rew turned to the leader of the thieves, but instead of attacking with the arcanist’s staff, the thief thrust it into the crystal on the table.
Lightning crackled and danced along the length of the staff. The man let go and jumped back, but the intricately carved shaft of gold-capped wood remained stuck in the crystal, sticking up from it, snapping with incandescent bands of light. Thick, white smoke billowed out of the crystal and filled the room. Rew raised a hand toward it, but hesitated, unsure what would happen if he grasped the staff. Then, the crystal shattered.
Rew cringed, holding up a hand to shield himself from flying shards of the broken gem.
Jon cried out and stumbled back against the wall of the room, clutching his chest. The man he’d been facing was lying face down on the floor.
Laughing, the surviving thief turned and lunged for Ralcrist’s open balcony. Rew ran after the man, but nimbly, the thief jumped onto the balustrade, leapt out to catch a branch of a fruit tree outside in the courtyard, and shimmied down it as nimbly as a monkey.
Rew sheathed his longsword and was about to follow, but he heard Anne exclaiming at Jon’s injuries. Cursing, Rew ran back and knelt beside the empath. “How is he?”
