by Guy Antibes
They threaded their way through alleys and hurried across streets until Harrison brought them to a narrow lane that ran into the street Sam recognized. The constabulary was a few buildings down.
“Unfortunately, there is no alley next to the constabulary,” Harrison said. “We will have to make a run for it.”
They leaped onto the wooden sidewalk and ran towards the constabulary. Guards poured from a few of the businesses. The residents ran into the street and to the other side, and Harrison, Sam, and Emmy fought to defend themselves.
A constable exiting the constabulary saw the fight and disappeared. Sam tried to fight against the guards, but their numbers were overpowering, He was about to surrender when constables ran from the constabulary, swords in hand, along with a few crossbows.
Sam didn’t pay attention to them as some of the guards continued to fight. Someone cut his hand. His grip was quickly blood-soaked, but he had to fight on until he faced a constable, who nodded to him. Sam collapsed into his arms, his duty done for now.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
~
A CONSTABLE HEALED THE CUTS ON HARRISON that he couldn’t reach, and then Harrison tended to Sam’s hand and the rest of the injured constables. The healer stepped outside to work on the fallen guards.
Bentwick brought them into the Chief Constable’s office. Sam and Harrison gave Bentwick the reason for the fight.
“So Lager and Plunk are together in this,” Bentwick said.
Harrison nodded. “It appears that Plunk has the upper hand.”
Bentwick pursed his lips. “A lot of birds are going out in a few minutes. If Lord Lennard would go so far as to attack you out in the open, he’ll have archers ready to shoot birds down. I am not without resources in this town,” Bentwick said. He took a fistful of small slips of paper and wrote a message on three of them. “You two can get to work duplicating this. I’ll work on the message to General Torrent. He has units only a few days away.”
“You believe us? We didn’t give you hard proof.”
Bentwick gave Sam a tight smile. “One, I believe what Harrison has to say, and two, guards don’t fight constables, at least not during the day when neither of them are drunk.”
The Chief Constable left while Sam and Harrison worked on their messages. Sam heard a lot of shouts and running in the foyer.
Bentwick returned. “We have enough food for a week. This constabulary is as strong as a keep. I expect Lennard Lager and Plunk will join forces again to rid Mountain View of the king’s men.”
“Can they be that stupid?” Sam asked.
“What?” the Chief Constable of Mountain View said.
“The leader of the rebellion is going to stay here in Mountain View while an army trundles down from the mountains and obliterates him? How many men do you think Lord Lennard and Bannon Plunk have in Mountain View right now? Do you even know if all the guard is on their side if you arrest Lord Lennard? Plunk is a common crook, in my opinion, but he seems to be a smart one, smarter than his sister,” Sam said. “If you hunker down, you will just invite him to exercise his muscle. You should send out these birds and declare Lord Lennard a traitor to Toraltia and raise up the citizens against him. If they don’t know what happened to Shovel Vale, then you should tell them. It’s just like bullies in school. If you are defensive, you get hurt.”
Harrison smiled, more of a smirk really. “And what happened to you when bullies attacked?”
“I was defeated by superior numbers. There were three times as many of them as there was of me. Do you really think that is the case in Mountain View?”
Bentwick smiled. “Schooled by a school boy.”
Sam pressed his lips together, wondering if he had gone overboard, but he didn’t like turning the constabulary into a siege. Even he knew it was a mark of weakness.
“Ask the other Chief Constable. He hasn’t been in on our discussion anyway.”
Bentwick grinned. “Another lesson, and that one is more painful.” He left, and brought the constabulary leadership who were in the building into the room. He gave a credible rendition of Sam’s tirade.
As the men began to throw information at one another, it was clear that the constabulary had more friends than Sam realized.
“Now we need a strategy,” Bentwick said. “Our goal will be to push the rebellion into the keep and then bottle them up until the advanced unit of Torrent’s troops arrives. We will wait a day to see how Torrent reacts to our messages.”
Sam did not have any experience planning for what the constables plus Bentwick and Harrison discussed. Constables left the room, and others arrived with more messages.
~
The birds had all been sent the day before. The messages attached to them were unchanged. Torrent was less than a day away by bird, whereas they might have to wait three or four days for a reply from Baskin.
“What if they have a pollen-artist among them?” Sam said. “The arms in Lord Lennard’s dining room might have been made by that person. The wards in the woods that I eliminated were more of the invisible kind.”
“Not invisible to you,” Bentwick said.
Sam shook his head. “Spectacles did it, not me,” Sam said.
“Then not invisible to those wearing spectacles.”
“I have two others, in my bag,” Sam said. “Others can use them along with my spyglass. They can use with gold tipped wands to decommission the things.”
Once a bird came in from Torrent authorizing him to depose the town lord, Bentwick ordered constables to distribute notices that Lord Lennard had thrown in with the rebellion, and Bentwick had outlawed him on his own authority,.
A message was delivered to Jarmane Singlestraw, the Mountain View chief constable. “Four guard units have come over to our side. That now puts us in a majority position, according to what we know.”
“And we haven’t enlisted the citizens,” Harrison said.
“It’s time to take the keep,” Bentwick said.
“What about Plunk’s house? Shouldn’t you try to arrest him? If Lord Lennard and he are confederates, won’t Plunk try to join up with the town lord? Won’t it be simpler to fight two weaker opponents rather than a single stronger force?” Sam said.
“Where did you get this kid?” Singlestraw said.
Harrison shrugged. “He is just thinking things through. I think that is a great idea, but if we go there, Sam and Emmy will have to accompany us. He can see Plunk’s expert wards better than anyone, with or without spectacles. The other two dogs also like him. I know, I’ve seen them lick his hand.”
“Then let’s hit Plunk’s house first. If we put men around his place, maybe we can get him before we tackle the keep,” Bentwick said.
Sam thought that was a good strategy. Once the wards were neutralized, the mansion was just a large house without any defenses. He felt that Plunk had a weakness for relying on pollen magic. Perhaps that was a bias that Sam alone felt.
Bentwick asked Harrison and Sam to draw a plan of the house. Neither of them could complete much of the place, but they had enough to definitely attack the house from the side where Sam had entered.
Sam left with a few constables to begin to remove wards from the woods. He wondered why no one else carried gold-tipped wands to remove wards. Perhaps wards weren’t that common, but if they weren’t, then why were they taught in school? He hadn’t stayed long enough to know. Torrent would have ward-makers in his army, along with golden-tipped poles, if Glory had been truthful about her brother. He cast those thoughts out of his head. The mission was clear; remove the wards, and remove the pollen lock that Harrison had so skillfully replicated if they weren’t challenged.
As he made his way through the woods, Sam had the constables put pollen blazes on the trees that indicated the clear path through the wards. He moved the gold tip through each ward in a zig-zag pattern to make it decompose more quickly. Emmy sniffed the ground and took off towards the house.
Sam couldn’t follow and f
inish his task. He obliterated two more wards before he heard a howl. Emmy had never emitted such a sound before. He had to continue to clear a pathway until he reached the edge of the woods. Emmy’s sisters lay dead, their bodies dragged to the dirt just past the turf that ran around the house.
They could have been killed due to Sam sending them back to harry their pursuers when he rescued Harrison. Whatever the reason, Sam felt sad and even sadder for Emmy, who pawed at the bodies.
An arrow zipped past the dog from an open window. Sam called Emmy back into the woods. The dog still lay down with her two deceased sisters, whimpering.
“They are shooting at your dog,” one of the constables said.
“Can you throw some armor on her?” Sam asked as he withdrew behind a tree.
“Sure.”
Sam watched the two men spinning pollen like a spider made a web, laying on layer after layer of pollen on Emmy. An arrow plunged into the pollen, but not before the constables did their jobs.
“I’ll stay here,” Sam said. “Bring the others.”
Sam didn’t know what other plans Bentwick had made for assaulting the house, but he had come on the sad side. Emmy still whimpered until another arrow struck her armor. She stood and shook the covering off as she ambled to Sam’s side. He noticed a spot of blood where the tip of the arrow had penetrated the armor. The window closed where the arrows had been shot, so he retrieved Emmy’s armor and looked at the gold-painted tip of the arrow.
Harrison brought twenty constables and a contingent of ten guards, all wearing red tunics, to just inside the tree line.
“They have archers,” Sam said. “The two other Great Sanchians are dead. Emmy mourned them in her own way.”
Harrison pursed his lips. “They helped us escape. At least the dogs died on the right side.”
“They didn’t know the right side from the wrong side, but they were Emmy’s sisters, and didn’t deserve to die.”
“Others will when we attack the house, Sam. Does that make the dogs sacrifice better or worse than a constable or one of the town lord’s guards not making it out of the conflict?”
Sam didn’t think they had time for philosophizing. “They are both hard to take when they happen,” he said. Sam took a deep breath and held up the arrow so the others could see behind Harrison. “Gold painted arrows. Make sure your armor is thick.”
Harrison made armor for himself and then did the same for Sam. “We are ready,” he said.
Sam had left his steel helm in Harrison’s cottage at Cherryton. Harrison made a pollen version. Sitting on his head, Sam didn’t expect it to last very long, but he drew his sword and his wand before the group charged the house.
Harrison must have had his men pick up rocks because they started to pelt the windows while Sam ran to the side door. He worked feverishly to get the pollen lock off. It seemed like an hour, but he had the lock off before the last rock was thrown.
“Stand aside,” Harrison said. He opened the door to arrows whizzing past them, hitting nothing but the empty lawn.
“Now!”
The constables, with the thick shields held in front of them, flooded through the door and headed to the basement. They would pass where Harrison was imprisoned and run up the stairway to the main part of the house.
Sam had to rush to keep up. Wards had already been placed along walls and invisible ones on the stairs. One of the constables moved past him and clutched his leg. “It burns!” he said.
Harrison slapped the man’s skin up with a poultice from his medical bag before they moved farther. He urged Sam ahead. They encountered more wards, but they were easily defeated. It seemed the wards being established were hastily made.
They passed a doorway that opened when half of Harrison’s force had already passed. Plunk’s men rushed into the corridor but were quickly cut down, not knowing they had barged in between the two groups.
Sam heard fighting at the top of the stairs and saw constables fighting others.
He took off his spectacles and pointed to disguised fighters. “If they are disguised, they might be important,” he said.
Their opponents didn’t surrender, but all fought to the death. Sam figured they all were taking the sheep pollen version of the podica-mendica drug.
The fighting settled down. Sam had stayed on the periphery, watching the enemy. He kept his spectacles off and noticed a man, fallen to the ground, pull something off his face. It must have been his disguise. Sam walked up to the man and pointed his sword.
“Stay where you are,” he said.
It seemed that the emotionally-charged battle had finally stopped. Sam walked through the house, seeing pockets of the dead and injured. Most of them were Plunk’s men. Whenever he noticed a casualty that looked different when he wore the spectacles, he dragged the body to a wall and removed or dissolved their mask. He was surprised that some disguises were merely masks, and others were sophisticated disguises.
He separated them into groups, since he didn’t know what Plunk looked like, and it was likely that the master of the house would wear one of the sophisticated disguises. When he had finished, he toured the house and inspected the servants, finding only one disguised manservant. Sam sought Harrison and Bentwick.
“Plunk isn’t here,” Bentwick said.
“I concur,” Harrison said. “They lost a lot more men than we did. Fewer gang members to battle at the keep. I suppose that Plunk went there.”
“What if he just left Mountain View?” Sam said. “If he has the right disguise, what would keep him from getting past the guards?”
“Nothing,” Bentwick said. “Plunk will have to start from scratch, and the king won’t permit that. Plunk is an outlaw at this point. If he isn’t found at the keep, he’ll turn up eventually.”
Sam didn’t say anything. If Plunk was the real leader, he doubted the man would die with his rival, Lord Lennard, who it appeared was stupid enough to take refuge in the keep. Bentwick had seized the house with a small loss of men, but the person he had sought had eluded them again.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
~
“O N TO THE KEEP. WE FOUND ANOTHER WAY IN,” Bentwick said. “An older constable knows of an even older bolt hole. Lager might not even be aware of it.”
“There might be fifty men inside, and we have more than two hundred, counting the home guard who showed up,” Singlestraw said.
Sam wasn’t very impressed. Bentwick had extracted five hundred of the home guard at Mount Vannon, and that didn’t include the Mount Vannon constables.
Bentwick led the group that would use the bolthole. Their guide stared at a blank wall.
“I’d swear it was here,” he said.
Sam took off his spectacles. He could plainly see the door, but he suspected a ward might be covering the camouflage. “Wait,” he said.
He scraped the gold-end of the wand on the door before replacing the spectacles. The disguise began to distort. The bricks were no longer stones but swirls of shrinking color. The door had a large pollen lock, which quickly softened when Sam plunged the wand’s tip into the mass.
Harrison drew a knife and peeled off the soft pollen. “Is everyone ready? Since this door is warded, Lord Lager or Mister Plunk is aware that this passageway exists. Do not plan on our arrival being a surprise.”
Bentwick ordered one of the constables to pull the door open. Sam withdrew behind the constables with his dog. They were bigger than he and wouldn’t be squashed inside the long corridor that led down and under the keep wall.
Emmy licked Sam’s hand while the door opened. Sam saw the glimmer of a ward and yelled “Stop!” but not before there was an explosion, throwing back the constables. An arrow nicked Sam’s head, coming from behind him, and stuck in the armor of a constable.
“It’s a trap!”
Bentwick and Harrison helped the injured men back. Sam turned and ducked behind his pollen shield. He put his hand to his head and looked at blood. Emmy turned and ran at two arche
rs, nocking new arrows, but Emmy slammed into both men. Sam followed his dog with his sword raised and helped subdue the archers. He didn’t kill them, since they needed information.
Sam had to slap Emmy on the rear to get her to stop her attack. One of the archers didn’t survive, but the other did.
Harrison pushed his way past the on-looking constables and began to treat the fallen archer. Bentwick stood over the man.
“Who ordered you to shoot at us?” the chief constable said.
“Bannon Plunk. He is running the keep,” the archer said.
“What about Lord Lennard?”
The man didn’t respond to the question.
“Dead probably,” Harrison said. “Are we sure there isn’t another exit?”
Bentwick looked at the constables, who shrugged.
Sam thought there had to be if Bannon Plunk was inside. “We should have the city gates watched.”
Bentwick nodded and pointed to a constable. “Get the word out that Plunk is likely to escape with a disguised face. Get the description of his body out to our guards controlling the gates.”
“There is nothing more to do here,” Bentwick said.
Harrison nodded. “I’ll secure the door to keep those inside from escaping and get the injured constables prepared to be moved.”
Chief Constable Singlestraw nodded. “What a mess.”
Sam sighed as Harrison gave him a pollen cloth to press to the wound on his head.
“The arrow could just as easily have killed you,” the healer said to Sam.
“But it didn’t happen.”
Sam walked back to the constabulary, head hanging low. He’d need his head stitched when they got back, and then the constables would return to the keep. What else could he do? Sam didn’t know. He felt defeated. How would they ever catch Bannon Plunk? If Sam knew what the man really looked like, he could station himself at one of the gates.
“Has anyone met Plunk?” Sam asked Singlestraw.
