The Agent

by Brock E. Deskins

  Garran lunged forward, grabbed the rat just behind its head, and snapped its neck. “What now?”

  “I need to get some of its blood.”

  “I don’t suppose you have a knife?”

  “No. Maybe there is something we can use around here, a broken shard of pottery or some such,” Adam said and began searching the floor of the dank chamber.

  “The things I do for God and country,” Garran muttered with a sigh.

  He clamped his teeth into the skin on the rat’s back, gnawed, and opened a large gash. Adam turned away and heaved the contents of his stomach out onto the floor.

  “Oh, God, why did you do that?”

  “Expediency, now hurry up. I’m getting a bad feeling that we don’t have much time.”

  “Or maybe you are feeling the first symptoms of rabies.”

  “Hm, I am thirsty all the sudden.”

  Adam took the rat from Garran, dry heaved a bit, and dabbed the blood onto his face with a finger. He began muttering the strange language of magic once again, this time sending his consciousness out into the passageway and other rooms in search of a blood connection with the rat.

  “I found another one,” Adam said minutes later.

  “Can you control it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. Send it into the room next to this one. The key should be in the straw beneath the window.”

  Adam forced his will onto the rat. Looking through the rat’s eyes was a very disorienting experience and deeply unpleasant. It took time to get his bearings and find the room to which Garran was referring.

  “I found it! I can move it, but it’s really heavy.”

  The rat appeared beneath the door moments later, dragging the large key with its mouth. Garran reached down, took the key, and then stomped on the rat. Adam cried out, fell to the floor, and vomited once again.

  “What the hell?” Adam croaked as he writhed on the floor.

  “That’s good,” Garran said. “Keep that up for a minute.”

  “Oh, you bastard!”

  Garran stood on the waste bucket, stretched his arm through the bars, and sought out the keyhole on the other side. He stabbed blindly at the door until he finally managed to find the hole. The lock withdrew with a click. Garran removed the key and pushed the door slightly open.

  “You sonofabitch!” Adam wailed from the floor. “Why did you do that?”

  “It was a rat.”

  “You could have waited until I was out!”

  “I need you to act like you are in distress and your acting ability sucks. Just keep squirming and whining.” Garran shouted toward the outside door. “Hey, fatso, we need some help in here! The Prince is dying!”

  The outer door screeched open and the jailer waddled in. “What are you two up to?”

  “Nothing,” Garran replied through the bars of his cell. “You need to get in here. Anton is not going to be happy if his royal prisoner dies.”

  “I’m not opening that door for any reason.” The man’s pudgy face filled the barred opening and peered down at Adam. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “He’s got a bad case of virginitis,” Garran said.

  “Huh?”

  Garran threw himself against the door, slamming it into the guard’s face. The jailer stumbled back until he hit the wall a few feet behind him. Garran lunged through the opening and punched him repeatedly in the face and head until he stopped moving.

  He dragged the unconscious guard into the cell. “Are you ready to get out of here now, or do you want lie around and whine a little more?”

  Adam got to his feet as he shook off the empathic pain from the rat’s brutal death and glared at Garran. “Go to hell. I’ll get you back for this!”

  “Just thank me for giving you the opportunity when you do.”

  Garran locked the cell door behind them. An arm jutted between the bars set in the door of another cell a few paces away.

  “Hey, buddy, let me out!” Phil begged.

  Garran strode to the door. “Why should I let you out?”

  “Come on, we’re the same you and I. Just leave me the key.”

  Garran held up the key. “This key? Do you want this key?” He pulled the key away when Phil reached for it. “You have to stretch farther than that. Come on, Phil, you can get it.”

  “Garran,” Adam shouted, “stop teasing the rapist and let’s go!”

  Garran tossed the key into one of the empty cells and stepped close to the bars. “We are not the same! You should be ashamed of yourself!”

  “So should you!” Phil retorted.

  “Most days I am!”

  “Garran, let’s go!” Adam pleaded.

  Garran ignored the Phil’s expletives and led the way out of the dungeon room and into the antechamber, closing the outer door behind them. His foot touched the first step when he heard voices echoing down the stairs. He grabbed Adam by his sleeve and pulled him into the dark recess near the bottom of the stairs. Adam began using his god-touched powers. Garran stifled a curse when he recognized the man with King Anton and the two guards.

  Garran nudged Adam with his elbow and tapped his ear.

  “They can’t see or hear us,” Adam whispered.

  “Shit!” Garran hissed. “That’s Victor Law.”

  “That’s Victor? Shit. Can you fight him?”

  Garran held up the truncheon he had liberated from the jailer. “Not with this and, if I’m being completely honest, not with anything else either.”

  The group paused just feet away and stared at the antechamber door.

  “That’s odd,” Anton said. “There should be a guard here.”

  “I think it’s Olin down here tonight, Milord. He probably went up to the kitchens,” one of the soldiers said.

  Victor drew his sword. “You two go check the cell—carefully,” he ordered the two guards.

  The men leveled their crossbows and one edged forward and opened the door. Seeing no one in the short hall beyond, they both crept into the passage. One peered through the bars of the cell.

  “I see someone lying on the floor,” the soldier called out. “It’s just one, and it’s pretty fat. I’m guessing it’s Olin.”

  “You just missed that bastard!” Phil shouted. “If you hurry, you can catch him.”

  Victor sniffed the air. “I know you’re close by, Holt. I can smell you. Come on out from wherever you’re hiding. There’s no use fighting the inevitable.”

  “You think he’s smelling the cheese?” Garran asked.

  “Probably both, but mostly you. They are a rather similar odor.”

  “I took a bath!”

  “Your stink is like layers of paint. It would take days of scrubbing with a potent solvent to remove it all.”

  “Damn it.”

  Garran gripped his cudgel tighter, called upon his transcended powers, and lunged. In Adam’s eyes, he was almost a blur, covering the few yards between them in a second. To Garran’s mind, he felt sluggish, his body still protesting the powerful tranquilizer with which Anton had drugged his wine. How slow he was became clear when Victor spun and slapped Garran’s club aside.

  Garran dropped his shoulder without breaking stride, plowed into both men, and sent them sprawling into the next room with enough force to trip up the two soldiers halfway down the corridor. He slammed the antechamber door and threw the iron slide lock.

  “Time to go!” he shouted to Adam and raced for the stairs.

  A dull pounding rattled the door behind them. “You can’t run from me, Garran!” Victor shouted.

  “Oh yes I can!” Garran yelled back as he fled up the stairs.

  Adam and Garran emerged from the short, winding staircase and bolted down the hallway in what they hoped was toward the outside. Their feet beat a rapid staccato on the floor as they stumbled to a halt at an intersection of corridors.

  Adam looked furtively down the intersecting halls. “Which way do we go?”

  A guard stepped through a door
way halfway down the hall to their left. “Hey, what are you two doing?”

  “Nothing, just trying to find the way out,” Garran answered. “Care to point us toward the exit?”

  The man grabbed the hilt of his sword and began drawing it out. “I think you both need to come with me.”

  “I think you need to focus on the more urgent matter at hand,” Garran countered.

  “What urgent matter?”

  “Putting out the fire.”

  The man looked behind him then back at Garran. “What fire?”

  Garran grabbed the burning oil lamp from the wall and hurled it toward the guard. “That fire.”

  The glass globe shattered against the wall partway between them, soaking a large tapestry in oil a split second before igniting it.

  “What the hell are you doing, you fool?” the soldier cried as he tore the tapestry from the wall and began beating the flames with his surcoat.

  “Burning this mother to the ground!” Garran shouted, his eyes wide and psychotic.

  The soldier’s outcry echoed down the halls, and others quickly took up the clamor as they emerged from different rooms and spotted the fire. Garran ran toward another lamp and threw it at a knot of three guards and a member of the castle staff who were running toward them from the hall to their rear. The oil ignited, bringing the group to quick halt.

  Garran grabbed Adam by the elbow and propelled him down one of the two remaining passageways. Shouts and pounding feet echoed behind them as they ran. Garran lashed out at a lamp with his truncheon as they sprinted past, shattered the glass, and set fire to the oil splashed across the wall and floor.

  “Gah, my stick is on fire!” Garran cried as he waved the flaming club before him.

  “I’m sure a trip to the physic will clear it up. I imagine they all keep a steady supply curatives on hand just for you.”

  “Now you develop a sense of humor?”

  Two more guards burst into the hall ahead of them. Garran lowered his head and charged, waving the flaming brand and screaming like a lunatic. Taken aback by their natural fear of fire and Garran’s frantic assault, the two guards drew up short and backpedaled. Regaining their courage, they raised their weapons and surged forward. Garran ducked below the first one’s wild swing and slammed him into the wall. The second guard raised his sword high and made to cleave Garran’s head in twain.

  It was the mistake of an amateur swordsman. Garran, while still pinning one man against the wall, stabbed out with his flaming stick.

  “Gitcha, gitcha, gitcha!” Garran crowed as he needled the impromptu torch into the second attacker’s crotch, setting his tabard on fire.

  The soldier reeled back with a hellish shriek, dropped his sword, and began slapping at the flames. Garran twisted back to the man he had pressed against the wall and kneed him half a dozen times in the groin until his legs collapsed and he fell to the floor.

  Adam glanced over his shoulder as they fled down the hall once again. “Good God, Garran!”

  “Hey, fighting is about who lives and nothing else. Anyone who tells you different is on a countdown to his own funeral.”

  Garran brought them to a stop next to a small postern door, yanked it open, and passed through into a tiny courtyard created when a somewhat recent addition to the castle abutted the defensive wall. He grabbed a shovel leaning against the wall, slid the handle through the iron ring set into the door, and turned it so that it ran counter to the doorframe, effectively barring it closed. He then crossed to where the newer building attached to the defensive wall and grabbed a handful of ivy.

  “Do you think you can climb up with those girly arms of yours?”

  Adam looked at his arms. “They aren’t girly.”

  “Please, they couldn’t be any less manly if you had vaginas for elbows.” Garran began climbing.

  Adam gripped the vines and braced his feet against the intersecting walls as Garran had done. He was not weak. Monastic life involved a great deal of physical labors along with their studious pursuits, but climbing walls was not one of them. He quickly discovered that it was a feat of skill as much as strength, one that required him to fight his instincts and to lean away from the wall as he climbed. It took him twice as long to make the short ascent, but he managed it.

  “Can you give me a hand?” Adam asked, his feet braced near the top of the wall as he leaned back almost parallel to the ground.

  Garran began clapping.

  “You are such a prick. Need I remind you that people are looking for us right now, one of them being the most dangerous man in the world?”

  Garran got on his hands and knees, braced one hand against a crenellation, and reached out with the other. “Here, you big baby.”

  Securing his grip on a thick stalk of ivy, he snaked a hand toward Garran, who grabbed his wrist and pulled him onto the wall.

  “How do we get down,” Adam asked as he looked over the other side at the ground fifteen feet below them.

  “I’m going to hang from the wall. You climb down my back and drop to the ground. Then I’ll drop onto your shoulders.”

  “That sounds like it could be painful for me.”

  “I would drop down first, but I don’t think your arm vaginas are strong enough to hold me.”

  “I do not have arm vaginas!”

  “Fine, then you hang from the wall while I cling to your back.”

  Adam glanced at the ground once more. “You go first.”

  “That’s what I thought.”

  “Shut up.”

  Garran sat on the edge of the wall, flipped over, and lowered himself over the edge. “Climb down.”

  Adam got on his hands and knees and cautiously scooted backward until his feet dangled above Garran’s head. He tried to lower himself gently over the edge, but his elbows gave out, and he dropped heavily onto Garran’s shoulders.

  “Be careful!” Garran snapped.

  “I’m trying!”

  “Try harder before you knock us both off the wall and I break my legs and you rupture your hymen.”

  “I do not have a hymen!”

  “See, I was right about your priests.”

  “Just shut up!”

  Adam braced his feet against Garran’s hips and tried to climb down to his waist. His feet slipped and he fell. He latched onto Garran’s belt to arrest his fall. Adam managed to hang on, but the belt slipped, and he found himself staring at Garran’s bare backside.

  “You have got to start wearing underpants!”

  “Never! But feel free to keep shouting into my ass.”

  “Damn you!”

  Adam extended his arms and made to lower himself down. Garran’s belt gave out, and his trousers dropped around his ankles. Adam found himself dangling just two feet off the ground, so he released his grip and dropped the rest of the way.

  “Good job, now catch me.”

  Adam looked up at Garran. “No, wait!”

  It was too late. Garran released his hold on the wall and fell. His feet glanced off Adam’s shoulders and only slightly slowed his descent. Garran’s exposed backside collided with Adam’s face, and they both fell to the ground in a heap.

  Adam pounded his fist against Garran’s hip as he released a muffled cry. “Get off!”

  “I really don’t think we have the time, but thank you for the offer.”

  “Get up!”

  “Oh, right.”

  Garran rolled off Adam’s face and hitched up his trousers. Adam gagged, spit, and drew in several deep breaths.

  “You did that on purpose!”

  “I did no such thing.”

  “Liar!”

  “True but irrelevant at this point. Head toward the southeast side of the city and meet me about a quarter mile outside of the gates.”

  “You’re leaving me?” Adam asked, his voice rising in fear.

  “Relax. Just stick to the alleys and don’t do anything that looks suspicious. If you see a patrol, lean against a doorway or something as if you b
elong there and have nowhere to go.”

  “Why don’t you come with me?”

  “One person is less likely to fraw attention than two. I also need to get my blades. With Victor after us, it’s the only chance I have if I fight him, and our room is the first place they will look for us.”

  “You can’t just find a sword or something like a normal person?”

  “Firstly, I do not like that you imply that I am somehow abnormal. And, no, I cannot fight with a sword. Not very well anyway.”

  “Why the hell not? Isn’t that something they teach as part of becoming an agent?”

  Garran raised his arms and dropped them back to his sides. “I don’t know why. Why do pigs have half-hour long orgasms? It’s just one of those things that defy explanation.”

  “Do you know what I think?”

  “Lucky damn pigs?”

  “I think, like most things you seem to have done in life, you chose the easy route instead of challenging yourself.”

  “Do you know what I think?” Garran asked.

  “Lucky damn pigs?”

  “Well, yes, but also that now is not the time for psychological profiling mumbo jumbo.”

  “I thought you believed in psychological profiling?”

  “I do—for other people.”

  “But not you?”

  Garran shook his head. “Nope. Doesn’t work on me. I’m too unpredictable.”

  “You think you are unpredictable?”

  “Totally. I bet you didn’t think I was going to do this.”

  Adam caught his wrist, thwarting the attempted backhand aimed for his crotch, and held it firm. “Yes, yes I did.”

  Garran jerked his hand away. “Go meet me outside of town!”

  Adam grinned and loped off into the darkness.

  “No one likes a smartass!” Garran called after him.

  Garran did not like sending Adam off on his own, but he would be fine as long as he did not draw attention to himself. Brolla was a sizable city, and it would take time to put together a concerted search. Garran could not leave without recovering his weapons, especially now that Victor had entered the game.

  Victor’s arrival compounded the odds against them by a factor Garran did not want to contemplate. He had always known that Gregor or Gordon would send the agent against him at some point, but seeing his face drove reality home like a knife through the heart, and reality was not something Garran liked to face—at least not sober.