Oath of the Outcast

by C M Banschbach

  The low hooting call signaling all clear, floated back to them, and Bryn gave the nod to begin crossing. They angled north and west again, moving further from the paths that sprang from the crossroads. The horses slowed in response to whispered signals, picking their way carefully through the pine forest.

  Rorie and Jes rode in front, guiding the way to the place they’d camped while waiting for the Baron the first time. A scout whistled a warning of a patrol, and as one the horses stopped, standing still without so much as a flick of a tail. The Cairns waited patiently, as motionless as their mounts.

  Bryn cast a searching gaze in the direction of the whistle, but the forest screened them from the road. Only the sound of marching feet and gruff conversation from the soldiers announced their presence.

  Five minutes later, another low hooting signal sounded. All clear here too. Bryn waved his hand forward and the horses stirred to motion again.

  Not ten minutes later, another patrol passed without even knowing that their forest had been invaded by the Cairns.

  Jes fell back beside Bryn.

  “There are more soldiers out than last time.” A faint crease of worry deepened around Jes’s eyes.

  Bryn nodded. “War is certain now. As soon as we camp, scouts will go back out.”

  As much as it galled him to keep waiting, they needed to know the lay of the land before they could try to go for the Baron.

  Jes moved away, the same tense understanding in his face. The crash of waves against the unyielding cliffs began to sound over the steady clip-clop of hooves. A breath of tangy salt air brushed by on the breeze. They were close.

  Rorie trotted forward, returning moments later to wave them on. The Cairns followed him into a dell tucked in among the trees. Outgrowths of rock protected one flank, and the thick trees the rest.

  Bryn saw to his horse before making the mile trek that would bring him to the edge of the forest that faced the castle walls.

  He halted in its shadows, staring out over the salt-crusted grass to the looming castle. The ocean boomed against the cliffs, erupting in sprays of foam, echoing like laughter at the impossibility of their task.

  “How do we get in?” Natan appeared beside him.

  “You’re the thief.” Bryn fingered one of his knives strapped to his chest. “You tell me.”

  Natan gave a short laugh. “We don’t.”

  “You’re a ray of sunshine.”

  “Aye, well, it’s a castle for one thing, and they aren’t as easy to break into as people would like you to think.” Natan leaned against a tree in a relaxed position, but his eyes scanned the walls and turrets. “There might be a way in, but Barkley is preparing for war. There’s soldiers crawling all over the place. We get in, but getting out with the Baron?”

  Bryn caught the hilt of the knife with his thumb, sliding it in and out of its sheath. “Figure out a way then. Or have you just been lying about how good you are?” He raised an eyebrow in challenge.

  Natan’s smirk faded almost as quickly as it appeared. “Aye, but I got caught. How do you think I got my brands?”

  “Sure it wasn’t from being pessimistic?”

  “Big word for a petty thief.”

  “I’ve been around Jes too long.” Bryn sheathed his knife for the last time as Natan chuckled. “Find a way in.”

  Natan flicked a lazy salute. “Yes, sir.”

  ✽✽✽

  It took a shorter time than Bryn expected for Natan to find something. Those Cairns not on scouting or guard duty were preparing for another cold meal when Milo came into camp helping an injured Rake. The Cairns stood as one, expecting some sort of trouble, but Milo waved them off. Rake sat down, nursing a swelling wrist.

  “What happened?” Bryn demanded.

  Milo gave a little smirk and gestured to Rake, who scowled back.

  “Well?” Bryn was already losing patience.

  “I was scouting about a quarter mile south, when I fell through rotted wood into a pit.” Rake’s glare dared anyone to laugh.

  “What did you hurt besides your pride?” Rowen, the Cairns’s healer, pushed up with an expensive leather satchel confiscated and repurposed for his uses.

  “I sprained my wrist and bruised my knee.” Rake glanced up at Bryn. “Natan wanted you over there. Turns out it’s an entrance to some sort of tunnel. He thinks it might lead into the castle.”

  Bryn almost throttled him for waiting to disclose this information.

  “Milo, where’s this tunnel?” he asked instead.

  Milo jerked his head, indicating him to follow and headed back into the forest. The woods grew thicker and the ground gave a noticeable swell into low mounds. Milo whistled a signal and another answered him seconds later.

  Bryn rounded the wide girth of an oak tree where tangled growth cleared aside to reveal shattered slats of wood framing a dark hole at the base of the tree. Red flashed among the foliage and a Cairn stepped out, returning his red-fletched arrow to the quiver.

  “Alec. Where’s Natan?” Bryn asked.

  “Been down there a while.” Alec nodded at the hole.

  Milo signed something to Alec too fast for Bryn to try and puzzle through. He’d never been able to figure out Milo’s language, unlike the Baron who’d started learning it almost as soon as he’d met Milo and Alec.

  The archer brushed invisible dirt from his scarlet shirt sleeves and shook his head. “Nah. He won’t get lost. Thieves need a good sense of direction.”

  “First smart thing I’ve heard you say,” a disembodied voice echoed from the ground.

  The three outlaws turned their gaze down. Natan’s face found the light and he held a hand up. Alec hauled him from the hole.

  Natan took a drink from Milo’s water flask before sitting down on the oak’s proffered root. He held up a hand to forestall any questions and dug out a carefully wrapped piece of charcoal and parchment. He went to work, mapping out an array of lines, murmuring to himself, closing his eyes from time to time to get the turn correct.

  Bryn found his patience being tested for the second time that day. Milo squatted down and watched in fascination as the results of Natan’s exploration came to light. Alec nibbled at his thumbnail and waited with his frustrating patience. Finally, Natan took another drink, tilted his head from side to side until his neck cracked, and then stood.

  “It’s a way in,” he said. “Tunnel goes straight to the castle where it splits three ways. I only had time to look at two, but I found the cellars to the left, and main tunnel goes up into the walls. I didn’t follow it all the way.”

  “Can we use them?” Bryn demanded.

  “Aye. But it’s a maze in there. Give me some time to map it out and I think I might be able to get us out by the dungeons.”

  “How long?”

  “By tonight.”

  “Need help?”

  “Send Cam. Alec and Milo can keep watch. But from the looks of things, the passages haven’t been used in a long time. I doubt anyone knows about them.”

  “Still, be careful,” Bryn said. “I’ll tell Fulke.”

  Natan saluted and dropped back into the tunnel. Bryn hurried back to the camp. Finally they had a way in. Now it was time to get the Baron out.

  Chapter 37

  Rhys had no strength left. The tiny flame that had been his will to live had all but died, the embers kept alight only by the falcon that appeared in his dreams every time he closed his eyes. It would hover above him, trailed by mist while Sean’s voice whispered again and again that his men were coming.

  But light came and faded through the cell window three times and nothing happened, except Eral coming to torment him as punishment for harming Deronis’s faithful. They didn’t even care to try and pry information or more blood from him, just pain.

  He tried to move, but his body barely cooperated, shifting sluggishly and sending a wave of lightheadedness through him. A soft cry escaped against his will.

  He couldn’t last much longer.

&
nbsp; But the rawness of the re-opened bond between him and Sean assured him that Sean was still free, still safe. The druids hadn’t carried through on their threats yet. That was all that mattered.

  The cell door rattled, and Alisher stepped through in the company of guards and another druid. New dread tickled at Rhys’s mind. In the days since Eral’s first visit, it had only been the druid that had come to torment him. Alisher didn’t look to be in a kinder mood.

  Alisher looked down on him in contempt. “Still alive?”

  “Go to the flames,” Rhys croaked, turning his face away.

  Alisher clamped his good hand over Rhys’s jaw and wrenched him back around. “I won’t, but you will. Deronis has a special place reserved for you.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You will.” Alisher’s eyes were almost black in the dim light as he leaned closer. “I’ll send you to him myself.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?” Rhys challenged.

  Alisher released him and straightened, his hand hovering above the sling that bound his injured shoulder.

  “The new moon tonight. When we drain your body of the remainder of your blood, we need the darkness to purify it. Then you will die, and we will have more than enough blood to conquer the Seer’s dreams.”

  Alisher’s calm threats of blood sacrifice and magic held a deeper weight than Eral’s screams. Rhys almost believed they could use him to get to Sean.

  Alisher took a needle and raised that nightmarish doll again. Rhys ran his tongue around his mouth to clear it of dried blood.

  “But until then--” Malice twisted Alisher’s face into a sneer.

  Pain encased his shoulder as Alisher stabbed the needle into the doll and twisted. Another scream tore at Rhys’s raw throat. Moisture dribbled from the corner of an eye as the invisible blade punched through his back.

  “Beg!” Alisher screamed at him, twisting harder.

  Darkness threatened his vision, and his arm died.

  He couldn’t take any more. Pleading words were on the tip of his tongue when warmth nudged his other shoulder.

  “They’re coming for you!”

  “Sean?” he gasped.

  The touch came again, this time harder and frantic, pushing him to pay attention to it instead of the pain.

  “What did you say?” Alisher hauled him up by his face.

  Relief swept through Rhys at Sean’s faint connection. He didn’t even mind knowing that Sean was praying for him at the moment. Stubborn idiot.

  “Give me the Seer!” Spittle flew from Alisher’s mouth. “I know you’re connected to him! I need his power!”

  Rhys summoned his last bit of strength and looked Alisher square in the eye.

  “No.”

  Alisher threw him back down. Sparks leapt from flint, igniting a flame in the small bowl that the other druid now held. Fire and agony consumed him, driving to his core, searching for the thread connecting him to Sean.

  But Sean’s voice had reawakened a small kernel of hope in him. Rhys clung to that hope with his last ounce of strength, pushing back against the stabbing force that would have stolen his life with renewed strength.

  His vision blurred, mercifully obstructing the leering faces of the druids. As his eyes slid closed he heard the wild shriek of a falcon and the echo of Sean’s voice.

  “They’re coming.”

  Chapter 38

  An hour before midnight, Bryn dropped to the tunnel’s earthen floor, followed by Natan and Luca. Musty darkness stretched out in front of him, barely broken by the faint light from the tunnel entrance. Natan took the lead, one gloved hand holding a small lantern pilfered from the town earlier that day. They left behind a forest full of anxious and restless outlaws.

  Eventually the tunnel divided three ways. Natan continued straight, digging a paper from his tunic and holding it up to the bobbing light as they reached another split. Earth shifted to stone beneath their boots. The thief muttered under his breath to himself as he navigated them through the maze of tunnels towards the exit that Cam had found earlier. Bryn flicked Natan’s shoulder to make him stop mumbling, the noise grated on his nerves. He’d lost all sense of direction in the darkness.

  Bryn kept his feet as silent as possible. Stone surrounded them, but even dusty forgotten stone echoed. He didn’t know if Ilan would consider the prayer of someone like him, but he prayed anyway.

  Please let this work. The Baron’s been here for too long.

  “This is it,” Natan’s whisper reached him. He held the lantern higher, running a hand over the stone until he found the latch, no more than a nick in the rock. They stepped through into a room full of rich mahogany furniture lined with gold-etched tomes coated in a layer of dust. A faint mustiness and chill lingered in the room.

  No fire. Good. It meant no one used this room.

  “Book room, indeed,” Natan snorted at Cam’s description. “This is a dialan library.”

  “Think any of them are valuable?” Luca asked.

  Natan held the lantern closer to a shelf. “Probably. That’s real gold in the spines. But we’re not here for books. Dungeon shouldn’t be too far,” he said to Bryn.

  Bryn crept to the door and inched it open. The hallway was deserted. For now.

  “Luca, guard the door. And don’t touch those books or they’ll know we were here,” he added as an afterthought.

  Luca frowned but nodded his intended obedience. Bryn wished he’d brought either Rorie or Jes along, but a Highlander and a Gedrinian would stand out too much in the castle if they were stopped. Luca was dependable with a knife. As long as he didn’t try to think too much for himself.

  He slid into the empty hallway with Natan on his heels. A green and gold tapestry hung opposite the door, depicting a young woman reading a book with fawns at her feet. Bryn committed it to memory before moving on.

  A curtained alcove sheltered them from the first patrol, but five minutes later they weren’t so lucky. Two soldiers came around the corner behind them. The hallway stretched out with nowhere to hide.

  “Halt!” a soldier cried.

  Natan reached for his knife, but Bryn stayed his hand as he turned.

  “Sirs.” He nodded.

  “Who are you, and what are you doing down here?” the man asked suspiciously.

  “We’re with Lord Ainsley’s men. One of our mates had a bit too much to drink and fought the wrong castle guard. He’s down in the dungeons. We were sent to fetch him.” Bryn kept his hands away from his knives.

  “It’s almost midnight.” The guard frowned.

  “Aye, that’s what he said.” Bryn jerked a thumb over his shoulder to Natan. “But orders is orders. I can’t explain everything that goes on in an officer’s head.”

  The soldier’s nod bespoke a hearty agreement. “Lord Ainsley you said?”

  “Aye, just got here yesterday.” Bryn passed along information picked up by their scouts.

  That seemed to do it for the man. “All right. Serves your mate right for fighting one of us though.”

  Bryn forced a laugh. “Aye, well he’s an idiot on his good days.”

  The man laughed and shouldered his spear. “Well you’re going the wrong direction. Head back down the hall and take a left. Should take you right down.”

  Bryn tipped two fingers to his forehead in a salute. “Thanks, mate.”

  Natan let out a relieved exhale as the guards passed around the next corner. Bryn ran a hand over his chin to quiet the nervous energy that churned inside him.

  “Let’s go.”

  Bryn and Natan picked up their pace in the opposite direction, their boots rebuking their fast pace against the stone floor. The surf boomed from somewhere on the other side of the walls. Natan pointed ahead where the hall branched left.

  Torches flickering in sconces were the only signs of life in the corridor, until another sound cut across the rhythmic pulse of the waves.

  Bryn caught Natan’s arm and hauled him to a stop moments before
more guards came around the corner. They stared in surprise at Bryn and Natan, but Bryn only had eyes for the Baron supported between two of the soldiers. His head hung forward, and he barely kept his feet. Patches of dried blood coated his torn clothes, and a faint wheeze accompanied every labored breath.

  “Who are you?” the lead soldier’s gruff voice jerked Bryn’s attention away from the Baron. Anger flared through Bryn, drowning out any response.

  “We’re with Lord Ainsley’s men,” Natan butted in, keeping a casual tone that brought Bryn back to the task at hand. “One of our captains sent us to find some more ale. But we got a little turned around.” He shrugged.

  Bryn raised a hand to hit Natan’s shoulder. “Aye, I told you we needed to turn right back there.” He looked back to the soldier and jerked a thumb at Natan. “Can’t trust him to find his way through a door this one.”

  The Baron raised his head slightly.

  The soldier relaxed a fraction.

  Bryn held up a hand to forestall the man’s next comment. “And yes, I know it’s midnight. What did I say, mate?” He turned to Natan, tipping his chin up in a slight nod.

  “You can’t explain what goes on in an officer’s head. ‘Specially a drunk one,” Natan supplied, facing the soldiers with a grin. “Sod’s likely to have already collapsed by the time we get back.”

  The soldiers holding the Baron cursed as his legs buckled, dragging them to the ground. Bryn pulled a knife free and leapt toward the first soldier. He left his knife in the man’s chest and drew another. He sprang over the body at one of the soldiers that held the Baron, smashing the hilt into the man’s head as he tried to rise. Natan wiped his knife and stood from the body of the third, and final, soldier.

  Bryn shoved the bodies away and pulled the Baron free. His eyes were closed, and pain creased his bruised face.

  “Stormagh.” Natan had nothing else to say. Bryn flicked a hand down the hall, signaling him to keep watch.

  “Baron!” Bryn gently shook his shoulder.

  The Baron’s eyes flickered open and it took a few moments before full recognition brightened.