by Dan Decker
“How long ago did you send your man over to Laor?”
“Maybe half an hour.”
“Were you able to start the interrogation?”
“I didn’t get too far with it before I received a messenger that Briggs had showed up.”
“Did Briggs have a chance to talk with--?”
Tere cut him off. “Nope, I made sure that he was kept waiting at the Inner Wall gate. We didn’t even let him onto the base. I had the guards set out a few chairs and he sat there with his men while I started poking around. He left pretty quickly when I told him what had happened.” Tere paused. “Briggs was calm during my interactions with him, but I’m telling you now, he was hiding something.”
“I just got back from the Paroke base,” Adar said, “you’re more right than you know.” He relayed to Tere the events of the night and the precautions he’d taken to keep both Semal and Nelion safe.
Tere was shaking his head by the end of it. “How many times have I said that you should have reported that incident outside the bar with Helam? We wouldn’t be in this mess now if he’d been court-martialed.”
“You already know why.” Adar wished that he’d never told Tere about it. He didn’t regret his decision not to report Helam. It would have been dangerous for Adar to look like a complainer or even worse, a weakling. Even though Adar had been drunk, he didn’t need everybody in Rarbon knowing that Helam had taken advantage of him and given him a scar that covered half his chest.
“I need irrefutable evidence,” Adar said. “Or we’re going to have to handle him ourselves.”
“Hold on.” Tere waved his hands, as if to get Adar’s attention. “I recognize that look in your eyes. Slow down. You’ve already pushed your luck once today by executing those men. If you start thinking about solving this problem with Helam in your usual way, it’s going to end badly. For everybody involved.”
“He made it clear that he will do whatever he can to keep me from becoming Ghar. He said those words to me where others could hear them. That’s something that he’s never done before; it was almost as if I’d pushed him over the edge. But that can’t be right though, I’d just showed up. There is something else going on with him. Perhaps Maual will come back with something useful.”
“Maual?” Tere asked.
Adar kept from frowning as he explained to Tere the assignment he’d given to Maual, he hadn’t intended to tell Tere about that quite yet but he didn’t want Tere to know that he’d been planning to keep it a secret. Adar was too agitated and starting to slip up. He needed to take control of himself.
“Are you serious? You sent Maual to spy on a general. I’m not saying that spying on Helam isn’t a good idea, but to do it so brazenly with a large group of men is asking for trouble.”
Adar didn’t have a response and wasn’t going to waste words defending his actions to Tere, who was right, of course. It was risky but something about the whole situation spelled out the need for urgency. He couldn’t explain it. Maybe it was the way Helam had been acting earlier. Perhaps it was the fact that the Kopal had raised their heads again. He didn’t know.
Tere and Adar both looked over at the sound of boots, two men were heading their way. Before the men reached them, Adar recognized that they were two of the soldiers he’d sent to relieve the guards keeping an eye on Nelion.
“She’s been taken,” said the first as he came to a stop, despite the hard run, his breathing was normal. Adar couldn’t say the same about the other who gasped for breath. “We found two of her guards dead and the other unconscious.”
“Walk with me,” Adar said, motioning for Tere to join him as well. “Where are the others I sent with you?”
“I had two take the wounded man to the healers, two I left at her place, one I sent over to Professor Bray’s, and the others are canvassing her apartment building and the street to see if they could find any witnesses to the event.”
There was little hope that they’d turn up anything useful because of the lateness of the hour.
Adar didn’t respond as he increased his pace and refrained from giving into his urge to run. By the time they reached the Inner Wall gate, Adar had decided what he was going to do.
“I need you to take twenty men…” Adar trailed off as he spoke to the soldier who was in better shape. “No, take double that number. Go to Semal and keep him safe.” He looked at Tere. “Rouse all the men you can without raising the alarm. Have them ready to fight.”
Adar cursed under his breath. They only had five thousand soldiers on base and he wondered if perhaps he should transfer more in from the outposts. It wouldn’t do him much good tonight, but the words he’d spoken to Tere earlier in the evening about the biggest challenges coming from within Rarbon were proving to be true.
He discarded the thought because the outpost encampments were already stretched thin as it was. He should work on recruiting more from within the Rarbon territories. Most of the armies relied on Rarbon and the general recruitment efforts but it wasn’t unheard of for an army to do its own recruiting to bolster its numbers.
Adar glanced over at Tere and realized that he was thinking something that he wasn’t saying because the other soldiers were nearby. Tere was careful to avoid criticism or unasked for advice when others were within earshot. There wasn’t time for such niceties.
“Out with it.”
“You can’t take Helam on alone.” Tere earned a hard glance from one of the soldiers; the other was too busy breathing to notice anything unusual. “If it comes to that. His outposts are undermanned because he keeps more of his soldiers here. He may have close to fifteen thousand soldiers on base.”
“It shouldn’t come to that,” Adar said, hoping that he was right, but knowing it was best to take precautions if he could. The question was how to go about doing that when he still didn’t have any evidence that Helam was behind any of this.
As they approached the gate at the Inner Wall a man passed through at a dead run. When he saw Adar, he headed in their direction. Adar wondered if something had happened to Semal as well, but he didn’t recognize the soldier as one of the men he’d sent to Semal earlier.
“Maual sent me.” The words were out of the soldier’s mouth before he’d even come to a stop. “Helam just left the base with a host of fifty men and we followed them into the city.”
Adar turned to Tere. “How long will it take for you to round me up two hundred soldiers?”
“You still want to avoid raising the alarm?”
Adar frowned. “Yes, for now.”
“I’ll have two hundred of our best ready to go in seven minutes.” Tere took off at a run.
Chapter 12
Nelion sat tied to a chair with a hood over her head and was unable to make out anything her captors said because they had moved out of earshot. Their indistinguishable voices made her imagine all sorts of terrible things they were planning to do to get her to talk. She stifled a snort because she didn’t know much that would be of use to them. Once they figured that out, she’d be out of time.
Sweat trickled down her forehead and into her eyes. She blinked in an effort to ease the stinging, but it didn’t go away. She tried reaching for her head to wipe around her eyes, but the rope keeping her to the chair held her hands fast as well. The side of her head throbbed and her shoulders were sore from where they had tried to rip her arms out of her sockets while tying her down.
She took a breath, held it, and then released it. Panicking was the surest path to death. She needed to think.
The evening had ended and Nelion was thinking of sleep when it had happened. One moment her apartment was serene and peaceful, the next it was overrun with hooded people. If she wouldn’t have let her guard down, she and the city guards might have done better, but it had been a long day that she’d thought was over.
She had grabbed her sword from where it hung on the wall and attacked the closest man, scoring a slice across his chest. Her next
swing would have taken him in the gut but a blow to her head from the side stopped her short and her sword was ripped from her hands. The next thing she knew, she was on the floor and the man she’d wounded was kicking her in the head.
The invaders ripped her up from the floor, shoved a strip of cloth into her mouth, and tied it behind her head. Before the dense woven hood was pulled over her eyes, she saw that at least one of her guards was dead and the other two had serious wounds. Three against six were bad odds. One against that many was even worse.
She had been grateful that General Adar Rahid had requisitioned guards to protect both her and Semal but she couldn’t help but feel responsible for what had happened to them. Either way, she would have been kidnapped. She could have done without the additional weight of guilt that came with them being hurt and killed.
As they dragged her from her home, she remembered that General Rahid had been planning to send his own soldiers to relieve the city guards. She’d hoped that they were close, but it galled her to think that she needed to be rescued. It was better than the alternative, however.
At one point, her captors discussed what to do about a city guard patrol that had turned onto the road. A blade was pressed to her side and she was told to be silent. As if she could have said anything anyway with the filthy tasting rag in her mouth. A moment later there was a laugh and one of her captors sounded relieved when he spoke with the guardsmen.
More Kopal, she had thought and fought the sinking feeling she had in her chest. Any hope she had of rescue had evaporated by the time they stopped moving and tied her to the chair.
Nelion wasn’t aware of how much time had passed since her capture, but she guessed it had been at least an hour. The events of the evening had helped her keep from thinking about Kyson or the man she killed, but now, her fear for her own safety wasn’t enough to keep her thoughts from turning to them. She pushed aside thoughts of the Kopal man she had stabbed in the back. She’d do it again if she had to, but she wasn’t ready to process that yet.
She tried to avoid thinking about Kyson, but was unable. It wasn’t the first time that someone Nelion had known had died. She’d lost her father at a young age and she’d lost friends while in Korew army. Unlike so many things in life where the more you did something the better you became; dealing with grief never seemed to get any easier.
Kyson had been a good man that she hadn’t known as well as she would have liked. She had noticed and appreciated his quiet unassuming manner, but she couldn’t go so far as to say she was interested. This wasn’t saying much because she didn’t find many men attractive. While some might have preferred a handsome face or a broad set of shoulders, she wanted a man like her father.
He had had a quality of inner strength and control that her mother was fond of talking about, still years later after his death. It wasn’t that he was physically talented or charismatic; instead, his pride hadn’t usually got the best of him.
In Nelion’s experience it wasn’t just a rare characteristic in men; it was rare in everybody and perhaps why her mother had never remarried. Her father had always given Nelion his full attention and talked to her as if she was an adult, even when she was a small child.
While she hadn’t known Kyson well enough to be interested, in some ways Kyson had reminded her of her father. He’d never tired of answering questions and had kept her needs in mind. One time, after they’d both stayed late at the archives, he’d insisted on walking her home.
Nelion had been both amused and curious at the offer. As a former soldier, she was more than capable of handling any trouble she might run into and between the two of them, Nelion was the one that went around armed. If Kyson kept any weapons on him, she had never been able to detect them.
The closer they had gotten to her place, the more she’d wondered about his intentions. Would he try to steal a kiss? Perhaps invite her to do something? At the door to her apartment, he’d given her a smile and disappeared into the night. She’d been surprised at the disappointment she’d felt when she realized his intention was to only see her home.
The images of the arrow skewering him came to mind and she fought back tears and anger. Her wrists hurt. She realized that she’d formed her hands into fists and her bonds were cutting into them. It was bad enough that she’d made a fool of herself before General Rahid; she didn’t need to do the same before her captors. She took a breath and relaxed her hands.
Panic, tears, and anger were her real enemies. She continued to breathe at a slow rate, emptying her mind.
She had to keep her wits about her.
When the scratchy hood was removed from her head, Nelion recognized it as a bad sign that some of her captors hadn’t bothered to hide their identities. She refused to let the concern touch her.
Altogether, it looked like she was surrounded by a group of about twenty people, five of whom had their faces uncovered and were conversing several feet away from her. The rest wore cowls and masks; similar to the man she’d killed earlier at the Paroke Army archives.
They had dragged her up some stairs and she’d been tied down. While she hadn’t thought to count each step, she believed they were on the second floor.
The room was spacious and musty. A lantern had been set on a table nearby, giving light to the tables scattered throughout, most of which had chairs set upside down on top of them. She was in either a tavern or a meeting hall; it was hard to decide in the poor light.
She could see that it was still dark outside through a couple of windows along the far side of a wall. She didn’t recognize any of the dark buildings on the outside but that wasn’t a surprise. Rarbon was a big enough city that she didn’t have to go far to venture into unfamiliar territory. She was far enough away from the windows that it wasn’t likely that anybody would notice them from the outside. She wondered if anybody would be able to hear her if she screamed.
That would be a last resort, but when the time came, if it indeed came to that, she’d scream herself silly or until they knocked her unconscious.
Or worse.
It was ironic that the most dangerous situation she’d ever encountered hadn’t happened during her time in Korew army, but when she was working as a scribe. She remembered thinking when she took the job that it would be a great deal safer than the life of a soldier. She repressed a snort of dark laughter.
Once her utility to them had passed, her body would be found in an alley or floating face down in one of Rarbon’s canals. Or even worse, perhaps she wouldn’t be found at all. The thought of her disappearing without her mother knowing what had happened caused her to tighten her mouth and push down the panic.
She had to keep them thinking they needed her. She’d hold out through the interrogation as long as possible until she figured out something she could tell them that would make them want her alive.
As the group of un-hooded people talked just out of earshot, she twisted her arms, looking for any give or weakness in the knots keeping her secured to the chair. None were apparent.
Not wanting them to see her looking, she instead shifted in her seat to see if they might have missed one of her daggers. A shift to either side showed that they’d gotten the dagger she’d carried on her waist, but that wasn’t much of a surprise as it had been fastened to her belt. She then lifted her feet off the ground with small movements and was sad to see that they’d located the daggers in her boots as well.
She fought to keep from panicking as she tried to come up with something to do next. It wouldn’t be much longer before they started asking questions. She focused again on steady breathing.
There was a break in the group’s conversation; one of the women approached with a man who held a knife. He was tall and looked familiar, but Nelion was unable to place him. The woman wore a grim but determined smile. She was shorter than the man and had blonde hair. Nelion knew that she’d seen her before. It was there, just out of reach in much the same way a word might feel on the tip of her ton
gue.
“You’ve killed one of my men tonight.” The woman slapped Nelion. “Stabbing a man in the back. What would your mother say?”
Her stinging face hardened Nelion’s resolve. It was a ploy, to get her to give up something. Her mother wasn’t well enough known that anybody would have taken note of Nelion. This woman didn’t know who she was.
Nelion saw the next slap coming and twisted her head with it, to ease the blow. The woman noticed what she’d done and followed it with a solid fist. Nelion saw stars, the hit had landed on the same place where she’d taken a blow when they’d captured her.
“Where is your honor?” The woman asked, following it up with another blow. “Radim don’t kill from behind.” Her eyes reddened and her face was becoming heated. Her ragged expression was in contrast to her fine clothes and expensive jewelry. If Nelion hadn’t been in so much pain, perhaps she would have figured out who this was. Nelion had killed somebody important to the woman. She could use this. Nelion could make the woman mad to see if she’d give up useful information.
Nelion shrugged, preparing for the beating. “No honor is required when slaughtering swine.” The woman’s face twisted as a shriek escaped from her mouth. Nelion smirked. “He squealed like that too.”
The woman howled as she slapped Nelion repeatedly. Each blow was painful, but Nelion was beginning to feel numb. She embraced that feeling and focused on sucking in air. The woman pulled out a dagger from somewhere that Nelion didn’t see. Nelion braced for the blade. She would give up something Nelion could use; it was just a matter of time.
“Enough,” said the man, grabbing the woman by the arm and yanking her off Nelion. He twisted her arm until the dagger clattered to the floor. “We can’t question a corpse.”
