It looked as though every Knight stationed there was lined up outside the fortress, standing side by side in clean rows. The warriors stood completely still and might have been empty suits of armor for all Klye could discern. After remaining motionless for several minutes, the Knights uniformly adjusted their stance.
“What in the hells are they doing?” Plake asked. “Running drills?”
Klye didn’t answer. He had no answer.
Beside him, Othello said, “Someone is coming from the east.”
Klye squinted into the sunlight, where, sure enough, three riders traveled the road at a hurried pace. Two Knights broke away from the ranks of would-be statues and stepped forward to greet the riders.
“It would seem that the Knights are receiving some important guests,” Klye mumbled.
With so many Knights outside the fort—there were at least forty men standing at attention—it was the perfect time to make their move. But curiosity kept him from giving Noel the order to cast the spell that would take him, the midge, and Lilac to where Scout was being held.
And it was these words that changed the plan altogether:
“That must be Prince Eliot.”
Noel, who was perched on a low branch of an elm, almost fell out of the tree when he glanced down and saw eight pairs of eyes staring straight at him.
“What?” the midge demanded, his big, blue eyes popped open even wider than usual.
“What was that you say about Prince Eliot?” Horcalus prompted.
“Oh, that,” Noel replied, looking much relieved. “The reason the Knights are all outside is because the Prince of Superius is here. He must be one of those guys on the horses. I forgot he was coming today. Maybe we should come back tomorrow.”
Klye felt the others’ gazes fall on him. It had taken a lot to convince them to trust Noel. None of them had said more than two words to the midge during their early-morning hike through the foothills and across the plain. Now they were all waiting for their Renegade Leader to decide what to do with this information.
“Prince Eliot? At Fort Faith?” Klye didn’t bother to mask his incredulity.
“Uh-huh,” Noel said. “Colt’s been busy preparing for his visit, though nobody really knows why the prince is here. Colt thinks Prince Eliot is upset with him, and it might be my fault, though I don’t see how because I only came here to help, and I did help when—”
“Noel, are you absolutely certain that that’s the Prince of Superius out there?” Klye asked.
“Well, I don’t know who else it could be,” Noel snapped. “I guess we’ll just have to break Scout out of jail tomorrow. Or better yet, we’ll wait until Prince Eliot is gone. I don’t want Colt to get into any more trouble.”
Klye said nothing, allowing his mind to follow the paths of reason. He had never known Noel to lie. Sure, the midge exaggerated every now and then, but Klye couldn’t recall Noel ever being intentionally dishonest. As crazy as Noel’s tale sounded, he had no cause to believe the midge was lying.
“And who’re those two with him?” Plake asked Noel. “The Emperor of Huiyah and the Duke of Korek?”
“Shut up, Plake,” Klye said.
The rancher looked taken aback. “You don’t actually believe—”
“There’s a change in plans,” Klye announced, taking another look out at the throng of Knights. The three riders had dismounted and were being led into the fort.
“No rescue today,” Noel said decidedly.
Klye did not meet the midge’s eyes. “Not exactly.”
* * *
His hands folded beneath his chin, Colt sat behind the desk inside his office, the fort’s war room. Staring at nothing, he replayed his exchange with Prince Eliot over and over in his mind.
The prince had been unimpressed by the showy welcome that had been arranged for him, and if Eliot Borrom had noticed how much work the Knights had put into restoring Fort Faith to its former glory, he had shown no sign of it. At this point, Colt wondered if the prince was even capable of uttering a minor compliment.
Prince Eliot had seemed annoyed from the start, accepting the Knights’ welcome with all the warmth of a snowstorm. When Colt had offered to give the prince a tour of the fort, he had declined, asking—nay, demanding—to be taken to his room post haste. And when Colt made a comment about the feast he had planned in the prince’s honor, Eliot Borrom replied with a noncommittal grunt before shutting the door in his face.
Even the prince’s bodyguards made Colt feel uneasy. The two men seemed always to be watching him, which wasn’t so unusual, he supposed, except their hard expressions made him feel like their enemy. Or prey.
Colt sighed—he had been doing that a lot lately—and reached for a quill. He had to get his mind off of the prince. Dinner was still a few hours away, and if he allowed himself to obsess about Prince Eliot, he’d surely drive himself mad. He dipped the quill in a well of ink and brought the point to parchment. Yes, he would write a letter to Commander Calhoun, thanking the man for his forewarning about the Renegades and to inform him of all that was happening at Fort Faith.
Before he could complete the first line of his letter, however, the door to the war room burst open, and Colt found himself once more in the company of Prince Eliot. The bodyguards, their hands lingering near sheathed weapons and their eyes boring into Colt’s, came to stand on either side of the door. Prince Eliot stormed up to the desk.
“Commander, are you aware that there is a midge scurrying about your fortress?”
The words hit Colt like a punch to the gut. He hadn’t seen Noel in nearly two days. Optimistically—and perhaps a bit irrationally—he had hoped the midge had moved on.
When Colt finally found his voice, he managed to say, “Ah, yes, that’s Noel. He arrived a week or so ago, and despite my own reservations and against Lieutenant Petton’s advice, I allowed him to stay.”
“You should have listened to your lieutenant,” Prince Eliot said.
Colt cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, I did not want to…offend…Noel, and since the midge are members of the Alliance of Nations, I did not want the Knighthood to appear ungracious to their new allies. Besides, there was no real harm in letting him stay…”
The way the prince’s eyebrows came together told Colt he didn’t agree.
“Noel has proven quite helpful,” Colt continued, unable to stop his mouth from moving. “None of us here are fond of magic, mind you, but Noel did apprehend a Renegade who was spying on the fort.”
Colt fell silent as the prince’s pinched expression eased into one of curiosity. But while some of the tension seemed to leave the room, Colt felt anything but satisfied with himself. He had not wanted to tell Prince Eliot about Scout, even though he knew he should—and even though Scout’s capture was sure to make Colt look like less of a failure.
“I want the midge apprehended, bound, and gagged,” Prince Eliot said after staring into Colt’s eyes for what seemed like hours.
“What has he—”
“The little bastard barged into my room. Not that I need any justification when it comes to issuing orders. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, my prince.” The words tasted like bitter wine.
“Tell your men to keep an eye out for him,” Prince Eliot added as he turned his back to Colt and took a few steps toward the door.
“Of course, my prince.” Colt could barely keep from grimacing.
Eliot paused before the doorway. “And I will have a few words with the Renegade in your custody tonight after your little feast.”
Colt felt a tingle run the length of his spine. Before he could reply, Prince Eliot slammed the door behind him. Left alone with his worries, Colt prayed that the gods would give Noel the wisdom to find a good hiding place or, better yet, to leave Fort Faith once and for all.
And as for Scout, well, he wouldn’t trade places with the rebel for anything.
* * *
Arthur’s stomach had been in knots ever since he h
ad awoken to find a midge in the camp. Throughout the day, with each bit of news getting harder and harder to swallow, his bowels kinked and twisted anew. He didn’t know what should worry him more—that Klye planned on using magic to rescue Scout or that Klye was friends with a midge to begin with.
Although they had spent much of the day taking step after uneventful step, Arthur felt as though everything were happening at a dizzying speed. Before he knew it, they had stopped at the edge of the woods with Fort Faith in plain view.
Klye had asked only Lilac and Noel to accompany him into the fort itself, but the sight of the stony bastion was still intimidating. For a moment, Arthur couldn’t catch his breath, and he feared he would vomit then and there.
But all at once, things seemed to slow down, and all discomfort—physical and emotional—fled his being. He couldn’t even remember when Noel had left the group…or why.
“I know it sounds crazy,” Klye was saying, “but I need you all to trust me on this.”
Klye had said the same thing about the midge just that morning. Klye was not afraid of the midge, but Arthur was. He recalled with unnerving vividness the violent stories Plake and the pirates had told him the night Scout first brought word of the wandering midge.
“We won’t get another opportunity like this,” Klye continued, looking at all of them in turn.
Arthur only half listened to the Renegade Leader’s words. He knew the band would follow Klye Tristan into the Crypt and back should he but ask it. For one thing, they were all past the point of no return. To back out now would be to admit that they had been wrong all along.
Perhaps none of them, not even Klye himself, could trace back along the path of their descent into desperation to find that single point in time where the path curved away from sanity and sped, ever onward, toward this deranged destiny. But Arthur could.
The consequence of his jealousy and spite had doomed him for what felt like years. He had killed a fellow human being, and for that, he too must be killed.
Arthur knew the Renegades would do exactly what Klye asked. It was not all due to downhill inertia or even the fact that it was always easier to make poor decisions in large numbers. Maybe the others would accept their own deaths—for that surely would be the result of this folly—without suffering from guilt. As long as there was some hope, it wasn’t technically suicide.
And hope was what Klye always provided. He never made promises. Because hope was enough—enough reason to step forward into death’s embrace.
“None of you are obligated to follow me in there,” Klye said.
This notion of backing out was more moot. They were all committed to following Klye into Fort Faith for their own reasons. Maybe the others weren’t afraid of whichever hell they were bound for. Arthur could see why someone like Dominic Horcalus wouldn’t worry for none of this was the knight’s fault.
But Arthur knew he himself would end up beneath the waves of fire and brimstone. What did it matter if he got there sooner rather than later? Could eternal damnation be worse than the waiting?
“What about the midge?” someone asked.
Arthur wasn’t worried about it. Klye would think of something, or maybe Noel would put an end to it all before they even got started. The myriad possibilities no longer concerned him. There was no point to being nervous or scared.
No, he didn’t care about the midge any more. He was getting antsy, tired of waiting for this nightmare to end. But he did wonder how Klye would handle the midge, who wouldn’t want to cross Fort Faith’s commander.
Not that Arthur would put his curiosity into words, not when Lilac or Horcalus or even Plake could do so for him. With an apathy borne of acceptance, he would let others speak for him, would contentedly follow their lead. Why should his actions leading to death be any different from those throughout his life?
“Let me deal with Noel. I’ll get us in there. I don’t like having to lie to him, but this is more important than us…than any of us.”
The words sounded hollow to Arthur, but the others, especially Horcalus, seemed to take some comfort in them. Only in looking at Horcalus did Arthur find any reason to feel anything aside from numbness. He would probably never see him again because Dominic Horcalus was not going to hell.
When Noel appeared in the midst of them, heralded by a flash of bright light, Arthur didn’t jump to his feet as the others did. The pirates had their hands on their weapons, ready to kill the midge if it came down to it.
“You’re just in time, Noel—”
It must have been a fool’s errand, some flimsy excuse that had sent Noel away so that Klye could construct the plan that would simultaneously free Scout and capture the Prince of Superius.
“The prince is evil!” Noel shouted.
“What are you talking about?” Klye demanded.
It was like watching a play at the harvest fair.
“I saw him using a magical mirror, and somehow he knew I was there even though—”
“Slow down, Noel. So what if he owns an enchanted mirror. He’s a prince. He can afford all manner of magical trinkets. And if he was holding a mirror, he probably saw your reflection in it.”
“He’s eeevil! He cast a spell at me!”
“Well, maybe he knows a little magic.”
“Klye, the Prince of Superius is not a spell-caster, of that I am—”
Noel interrupted Horcalus. “It wasn’t magic. It was…something else…something much darker.”
Arthur watched Klye’s reaction, wondering if the Renegade Leader believed Noel, wondering if the midge had planned a trick of his own, and knowing that it didn’t matter if he had.
“I tried to tell you that we weren’t the bad guys,” Klye told the midge. “Now I need you to cast a spell that will take us all inside the fort.”
“Why?”
“You are going to take Horcalus and some of the others to where Scout is being held while I go and meet this evil prince.”
The midge paused to consider his options, but Arthur thought those few seconds were a waste of time. Like the Renegades, Noel was already under Klye’s spell, a confidence-borne glamour that dangled hope like a carrot before a donkey. Noel would cooperate. He would provide the Renegades with a way through the very gates of Thanatos’ Crypt if Klye asked.
“All right, I’ll do it.”
* * *
The sound of silverware scraping across plates filled the space where conversation was wont to dwell. Commander Crystalus had attempted to engage the prince in discussions on various topics only to be rudely rebuffed on all fronts.
Petton could not understand why Prince Eliot held Saerylton Crystalus—and apparently the rest of Fort Faith’s Knights—in such low esteem. He supposed the prince and his father had a right to be angry with whomever they wished, even though they had done nothing to earn the royal family’s displeasure.
Perhaps Petton could forgive the prince his hasty judgement against their meager progress at Fort Faith, but he could not excuse the man’s complete lack of manners, the absence of the very poise that supposedly elevated a nobleman above the common rabble.
Lieutenant Petton sat beside Saerylton, sharing in the uncomfortable silence that followed each of the commander’s attempts at civil conversation. For his part, Prince Eliot seemed immune to the effect his conversational barricades had on his host, an honorable man who had done everything in his power to make the prince’s welcome as cordial as possible.
Saerylton half-heartedly poked at his food. Petton likewise was finding it difficult to enjoy the meal. He wanted nothing more than to hoist Eliot Borrom up by his collar and shake some decency into the young man—prince or no prince. Of course, he could do nothing of the sort. Assaulting the prince would not only end his career, but also cost him his life.
The two guards positioned behind the prince, not eating but dutifully scrutinizing each and every Knight present, landed their gazes on him every now and then. To Petton, it seemed as though their narrow
ed eyes were taunting him, daring him to make even a single questionable move.
He met their stares without flinching, taking another bite of venison and chewing the richly seasoned meat but not tasting it. With his eyes, he told them, “I won’t make the first move, but I would be all too happy to knock those self-righteous smirks from off your faces if you give me an excuse.”
The dinner was taking far too long, Petton thought, but in truth he had lost track of time. They might have been sitting there for only a few minutes. The absence of speech, of civil debate and friendly banter alike, stretched the very seconds so that he might take three bites of bread between the ticks of a clock.
Petton, who had never been accused of being prolix, was surprised at the mounting frustration he felt at each clank of a cup, at every clink of a fork. The noises of eating, chewing, even breathing stirred in him an acute and irrational anger. This farce must end! his mind screamed. Someone must speak, or I shall surely lose my mind.
And then someone did speak, cutting through the noisy silence like a blade through bread.
“Tell me, Commander,” the prince said in a sing-songy tone of false sincerity, “just how many miles do you suppose the local Renegades have covered while you and your men made minor repairs to this crumbling fort…and while your cooks squandered your rations on this pathetic meal?”
Saerylton’s pallor lost what little color it had possessed. The commander’s mouth moved, but no words came out. Colt looked utterly defeated.
Before he could stop himself, Petton rose to his feet. He did not know what he planned to say, but Eliot Borrom had gone too far. Damn the consequences, the spoiled son of a bitch was going to get an earful. The twin bodyguards looked stunned for a moment, but quickly positioned themselves between Petton and their charge. Prince Eliot merely looked amused.
Then Saerylton stood up and, placing a reassuring hand on his shoulder, gave Petton a look that said, “It’s not worth it.”
Rebels and Fools (The Renegade Chronicles Book 1) Page 42
