Tyrant's Throne

by de Castell, Sebastien

  ‘You bet on the wrong Warlord, yes, I heard you. But what happened to all your tricks? Your magic? Couldn’t you’ – I waved my fingers in the air – ‘cast a spell or something?’

  She laughed. ‘Please, Falcio, never talk about magic again. It makes you sound like a child. I’m not a mage. I can’t “cast spells” as you put it. Those tools I’ve used in the past were secured the old-fashioned ways: I either bought them or stole them.’

  ‘Great,’ Brasti said, ‘so she’s no good to any of us. Can we kill her and move on?’

  ‘Actually,’ Kest said, ‘we may need her.’

  When he saw the two of us staring at him he said, ‘What? There are only three of us and the boy and we’re surrounded by hundreds of warriors in enemy country. In all likelihood, we’re going to need her help to escape. For better or worse, we’re allies now.’

  Brasti went to stand by the iron gate. ‘That’s a thought that’s going to freeze my balls at night.’

  ‘Your balls will have to sort themselves out on their own,’ Kest said. ‘The guards left a moment ago to go on their rounds. Based on the last time, I estimate that they walk the perimeter of the lower floor of this fort twice every hour, and each circuit takes them roughly ten minutes.’

  I joined the two of them at the gate. ‘So we have about nine minutes to work out the details of our escape and then wait for the next cycle.’

  ‘There’s no guarantee that they won’t leave at least one guard watching us, Falcio. This is the first time they’ve all left at once – this may be our best chance.’

  ‘How?’ Filian demanded from inside his cell. ‘The gate is locked and far too strong to break. How can you hope to open it without tools?’

  ‘We’re the Greatcoats,’ Brasti replied. ‘You think this is the first time we’ve ever been beaten to within an inch of our lives, stripped of our weapons, deprived of our coats and locked up in a cell? The Tailor practically included a pet rat with every coat just to keep us company in situations like this.’

  Sadly, he was only mildly exaggerating.

  There are, for those who make a study of this sort of thing, three basic ways to break out of a prison. The first – and generally the best – is to bribe the guards. If you happen to be a powerful noble, or have one or two nearby who owe you a favour, this has an excellent chance of success. Alas, that solution was unavailable to us since we were in a foreign country with no allies, not to mention the fact that Trin’s efforts to bribe one of the local Warlords had resulted in that poor bastard’s death as well as her current incarceration inside this fort.

  The second method for escaping a cell is to somehow get the guards to open the door and then overwhelm them. Unfortunately, despite the many and varied ways in which prisoners have, throughout the ages, sought to lure their captors into opening the cage, few of them tend to work – I mean, your average guard might not be a genius, but nobody’s actually dumb enough to fall for the old ‘help-he’s-choking-on-his-food’ trick. No, the only way this approach works is if you’re being transported from one place to another, or when the guards happen to be drunk when they’re coming to feed you, beat you up for the hells of it or kill you because it turns out you don’t have a rich uncle who likes you enough to part with sacks of gold just to return you to the bosom of the family.

  The third method of escape – and the subject of many a delightful literary romp – is to slowly, over the course of weeks, months or even years, find the single flaw in the prison’s design and work away at it until you can effect your escape. Unfortunately, while Avarean hospitality was turning out to be no worse than anyone else’s these days, I was fairly sure that our relationship with the Magdan was only going to go downhill once he realised we weren’t going to kill Trin for him, which meant we were unlikely to have time enough for Plan C.

  ‘We’re going to die, aren’t we?’ Filian asked from inside his cell, sounding as if he was trying to summon the courage to face his end. The idea that there’s some virtue to bravely facing death is another literary device best left to Bardatti romances. Besides, I had no intention of letting a damned traitor like Morn – I mean the Magdan – take my life. Not until I’d killed him first.

  Did I say there were only three ways to break out of prison? Actually, there is a fourth: arrange your escape before they lock you up. That’s why I’d dropped my rapiers in the snow and goaded the Magdan into beating me up with his fists: I’d needed to get close to his pockets.

  Morn was a Greatcoat, so of course he knew all the tricks and tools we kept in our coats, and there was no way he was going to leave Kest, Brasti and me with ours. So while he’d been busy pummelling me a bit more, I’d taken a couple of small tools from my own pockets and dropped them into his. Then in the hallway outside, when I’d thrown myself at him one last time, I’d retrieved what I could.

  See? I’m not always a reckless idiot.

  ‘What did you bring?’ Kest asked.

  I reached down to the corner of the floor just on our side of the gate and lifted up a set of three small, flat pieces of shaped steel attached to a narrow ring. ‘It’s only the small set of lockpicks,’ I said, ‘but there’s a rake, a hook and a double-ball.’

  ‘I thought I saw you placing something else in Morn’s pockets,’ Kest said.

  I nodded. ‘A caltrop. Couldn’t get it back out when I jumped him, though.’

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t figure it out,’ Trin said from her cell. ‘It all sounded rather theatrical from in here, Falcio.’

  I smiled. Many of our former fellow magistrates used to chide Kest, Brasti and me for what they called our ‘childish antics’. People like Morn thought we were trapped in the past, trying to emulate the Greatcoats of legend rather than dealing with the dark realities of the present. But there are times when a fast blade simply isn’t enough.

  ‘So what did you bring to the party?’ I asked Brasti.

  He knelt down and picked something up from a pile of dust and dirt. ‘Amberlight,’ he said. ‘Managed to toss it there when I threw my hands up in what I feel was a highly underrated performance of “just look at the mess Falcio’s got us into this time”.’

  ‘Not bad,’ I said. ‘A shame we don’t have some kind of knife, though.’

  ‘I have one,’ Kest said. ‘The rope blade from inside the left cuff of my coat.’

  ‘Where in the world did you hide that?’ Brasti asked.

  Kest opened his mouth and extended his tongue. Sitting there was a narrow black blade just under two inches long. It might be small, but those serrated edges were razor-sharp.

  ‘How in hells did you manage to keep that there without cutting yourself?’ Brasti asked.

  Kest carefully removed the blade from his tongue. ‘You just have to concentrate, that’s all. Actually, I’d almost forgotten it was there.’

  ‘You really are a freak of nature, you know that?’

  ‘All right,’ I said, ‘so while Kest uses the blade to cut Filian and Trin free, Brasti, you get to work on the gate.’

  He knelt down and inspected the lock. ‘It’s not complicated, but the mechanism looks heavy. I should be able to do it in about ten minutes.’

  ‘We need it done faster.’

  He shrugged. ‘Complain to the Magdan.’

  ‘Okay, just get started,’ I said, turning over options in my head. ‘We’ll need to take out the guards. There’s four of them, so we’ll want a moment when they’re distracted, then we boot the gate open as quickly and forcefully as possible.’

  Brasti was already at work on the lock. ‘It won’t work. When the lock is open, the bolt is retracted. If I open it before they get here they’ll see that the gate is unlocked.’

  Hells. Hells. Hells. Why must everything be so damned complicated?

  ‘Then it’s hopeless,’ Filian said. The boy appeared to have a finely tuned sense of
the poetically tragic.

  ‘We could always go back to my plan,’ Brasti suggested.

  I glanced over to check on Kest’s progress. He was nearly done cutting through the boy’s ropes.

  ‘What was your plan?’ the boy asked.

  ‘We kill you and Trin and then let the Magdan throw a feast in our honour,’ Brasti replied.

  ‘You will not—’

  ‘This works faster if you aren’t pulling at the ropes,’ Kest said. Once he’d freed Filian, he moved into Trin’s cell to work on her bonds.

  I knelt down next to Brasti, who was humming a tune as he worked. It took me a moment to recognise it. ‘Are you seriously going to sing that fucking “Seven for a Thousand” song while we’re trying to escape Avares?’

  ‘I don’t know. Are you seriously going to berate me for my choice of music while I’m trying to pick a lock that can’t be picked in the time I have?’

  He had a point. A thought occurred to me. ‘Do you think you can get the first three pins on the lock and then ready the pick on the fourth?’

  He pulled on the tiny rake and I heard part of the mechanism shift. ‘I suppose so – but what good will that do? Won’t the guards wonder why you’re holding a little piece of metal against the lock of the gate?’

  Trin emerged from her cell rubbing at her wrists. ‘More importantly, how do you plan to get us out even after we escape from this cell? There are four hundred men and women in this compound and it won’t take long to rouse them. There are guards outside too – and even then, we’re miles from the border.’

  ‘That’s my job. You just be ready to do yours.’

  She curtsied. ‘And what would my job be, First Cantor?’

  I walked back over to the iron gate and stared out through the bars at the Magdan’s display of weaponry, and those damned cannons.

  Hells. Hells. Hells.

  I went back and took the small blade from Kest and handed it to Trin. ‘Once Brasti has the gate ready, you’re going to help me with the distraction.’

  There’s really no feeling quite like knowing you’re about to put your life in the hands of the woman you hate most in the world.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  The Daring Escape

  As terrible plans go, it began not too badly.

  Through the bars to our cell I could just about see the guards coming down the hall with food and drink for us, laughing to each other as they took turns spitting in our bowls. There’s precious little difference between a grown-up prison guard and a particularly mean-spirited six-year-old.

  Brasti was holding the last pick in place in the lock; I carefully closed my fingers around it as he removed his hand and stood up.

  As he let Trin pass by he whispered, ‘It’s been nice knowing you.’ He slipped into the shadows of the nearest cell.

  Trin smiled and held up the little blade, ever so lightly tapping the serrated edge with the tip of her finger. ‘It really is wonderfully sharp, isn’t it?’

  As the guards approached the gate, Trin placed the edge of the blade against my throat.

  The guards caught sight of us and started shouting in Avarean – I don’t know what they were saying but I’m guessing it was something along the lines of, ‘Goodness, that Tristian must be truly, truly stupid to have allowed this woman to get out of her bonds and put a knife to his neck.’

  ‘Damn you!’ I shouted to the guards. ‘You left her in here with a knife?’

  Trin gave me her best lunatic smile. ‘I’ll kill him here and now if you don’t get the Magdan here. Tell him my terms are—’

  ‘Terms?’ the guard laughed. ‘No terms. You kill Greatcoat, we kill you, then we say Greatcoat did it. Everybody happy.’

  ‘That’s pretty much what I thought,’ I said, then with my left hand I twisted hard on the pick and felt the lock click open. ‘Now!’ I shouted.

  Brasti leaped out from the shadows behind me and kicked hard at the iron gate, smashing the bars into the face of the nearest guard. As he fell back, the others tried to get around him to push it back closed, but Trin had already removed the blade from my neck and she, Brasti and I shoved hard together, pushing the gate all the way open, leaving a path for Kest.

  He was halfway down the hall and had started his run forward just as I’d unlocked the gate. Now he used that momentum, building up so much force that when he jumped up and kicked out at the nearest guard, the man stumbled back several feet.

  It wasn’t a bad start to an escape, but of course, we still didn’t have any weapons.

  ‘Now!’ I said, this time to Trin.

  She tossed the two-inch knife to Kest, who caught it neatly out of the air with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand and as the third guard began to draw his sword, swept the little blade across the man’s wrist, sending blood spurting in the air and the man scrambling to stop the flow. Kest reached down and drew the man’s weapon. Although he was grimacing at the pain touching a sword brought him ever since he’d stopped being the Saint of Swords, there was no hesitation as he slashed it across the shoulder of the next man.

  It was largely chaos after that.

  We’d counted on other guards being near enough to hear the commotion, and prepared for it. The moment Kest had a weapon in his hand he used it to take out another two of our guards, while Brasti and I overwhelmed the fourth. Now we all had swords, although they were the heavy kind I’ve always disliked; they don’t have the elegance of the rapier, or the manoeuvrability. Trin took a dagger from one of the fallen guards and motioned for Filian to do the same.

  ‘I estimate two minutes, Falcio,’ Kest said.

  Two minutes? Saints, that was worse than we’d anticipated. Our next problem was going to be one of increasing numbers: the rate at which people heard the racket and came running would speed up quickly and soon we’d be overwhelmed – which meant we needed a bloody big distraction.

  Fortunately, the Magdan had provided us with the means.

  With my free hand I took the amberlight out of my pocket and raced over to the cannons. ‘Quick now,’ I said to Filian. Somewhat against my better judgement, I’d given him a job to do and now he grabbed one of the great stone balls whilst Trin was pouring pistol powder into the tube. I was pretty sure the Avareans would keep the wicks separate and we didn’t have time to search for them, so instead, I carefully jammed a sliver of amberlight down the wick hole.

  On my signal, Filian rolled the ball down the tube, leaving Trin and me to push it into position so it was aimed at the front gates of the fort. She handed me the blade and I was just about to strike it against the exposed amberlight when Kest kicked aside one of the two Avarean warriors who had arrived and were going for him and shouted, ‘The angle’s too high!’

  He dropped his stolen war sword, grabbed a shield from the wall and took the first attack on its rounded front, then after driving the edge into the throat of the other man, he began weaving through his opponents, dodging attacks where he could, deflecting them when he had to. ‘Three inches lower,’ he added a moment later.

  I didn’t bother wondering how Kest could possibly have had the time to calculate the exact angle at which to position a cannon in order to hit a door some thirty feet away, let alone how; it’s just how his mind works. We dropped the barrel by three inches and at Kest’s approving nod as he drove his right elbow into a guard’s stomach, I sliced across the amberlight with the little blade.

  It started burning with a bright, sparking flame. Okay, either I’m about to fire my very first cannon, or this escape is going to rapidly come to a sputtering, humiliating end. Either way, I had a few seconds on my hands, so I grabbed my own stolen sword and ran to help Brasti.

  A broad-shouldered Avarean woman was in the process of wearing him down, her powerful blows making his parries ever more desperate. I brought my war sword down hard on her back, feeling
a little guilty at my unfair attack – but what the hells, it’s not as if anyone was offering us a fair chance to duel our way out.

  A crack of thunder, louder than I’d have thought possible, reverberated through the hall and just about made my heart stop. Fortunately, it had the same effect on everyone else. When I turned, I saw smoke and chaos, and through the gloom, not only the main doors but most of the supporting wall of the fort lying shattered in front of me.

  ‘Time to go!’ I shouted.

  ‘Hate to think what that’ll do to our armies if we do end up at war,’ Brasti remarked as he ran past me.

  Kest and I followed, Trin close behind me. We were almost at the gap where the doors had been when I heard her scream, ‘Filian—? Where’s Filian?’

  For a happy moment I thought we’d lost him, but then I caught sight of him through the swirling fog, running towards us with something bundled in his arms.

  ‘What in all the hells—?’

  ‘I thought you’d want these, First Cantor,’ he panted, proffering our coats and smiling with such . . . I don’t even know what the word would be, but it broke my heart a little because it reminded me so much of someone else.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  The Trusted Friend

  A successful escape requires four things: the right plan, the right tools, a willingness to die, and a little bit of luck.

  It’s that fourth part that’s always been the problem for me.

  ‘Saint Bog-who-shoves-hot-needles-up-his-own-arse,’ Brasti swore as he padded lightly back to where the rest of us were hiding behind a row of outdoor privies.

  ‘Saint “Bog”?’ Kest asked. ‘You’re not even trying any more.’

  ‘What’s the point in making up a proper Saint when you’re going to die before you can trick anyone into believing in him?’

  ‘The stables are guarded?’ I asked.

  The one part of our getaway we couldn’t plan for was horses. The chaos we’d set off in the armoury had been an effective enough distraction to get us this far, but it was only a matter of time before someone got up a coordinated search for us. What we needed now was transport. Normally in a camp this size someone leaves a few horses tethered somewhere accessible, but apparently not in this damnably organised compound: warriors and workers littered the place but there wasn’t single horse outside the stables.