“Crossbows!” a guard yelled below him.
Pulling up onto the narrow edge, he saw one of the horsemen drop a bolt into his bow and take aim. Having no time to see what was on the other side, Tayan threw himself over the wall and landed on a fishmonger’s cart.
The cart collapsed to the surprised cries of those around it. Amid the wreckage of wood and fish, Tayan struggled up then slipped and fell. A balding man cried for the guards as he got to his feet and took off.
In a limping run, he kept going the way he thought was north. Between hitting the wall and landing on the cart, his right leg was stiffening up. Fear kept him going as he turned down another street then turned again at the next intersection. Whistles sounded as unseen voices called out his description. In the poorer part of the city, very few had jackets laced with gold or silver threads down the sides of their pants. The guards were not going to have any trouble spotting him.
The next alley he ducked down was empty and ran all the way to the other street. Spying a ramshackle stable, he made for it. He didn’t slow as he approached but grabbed the corner post and flung himself into a stack of hay just inside the opening.
Through the noise of his rasping breaths and his heart pounding in his ears, he listened for the guards. He heard a horse gallop down one street; then the sound of a whistle went by. Another horse slowed and turned into the alley. Pulling hay over himself, he lay still and tried to slow his rapid breaths.
The dry smell of hay filled his nostrils as he listened to the horse slowly pass the stable then stop. In his mind, the dead girl still gazed at him pleadingly. He tried to shut this vision out, but she wouldn’t go away. He had killed her just as surely as if he had been holding the chair leg that impaled her. A small voice in his mind cried out for him to give up. Just get up out of the hay and surrender to the guards. He was guilty of murder--he didn’t even think now they were the ones who had captured him. He didn’t see how a poor city wizard and his daughter could possibly arrange such a plan. He’d made a big mistake. The conditions of that cellar should have told him he wasn’t dealing with professional wizards. He hated that man for getting his little girl involved and despised himself for killing her.
A voice at the end of the alley called out, “Hey, down there, I think we got him!”
This was it. Maybe it was best if he didn’t make it. At least Amber wouldn’t find out what he had done. He would die as a brigand, but at least the memory of him would not be tarnished with his loved ones. Ready to surrender, he lifted his head up to see the mounted guard trotting away. Where was he going? Almost disappointed at not getting caught, he stumbled out to see the rider gallop into the street.
Spying an old, wide-brimmed cattlemen’s hat, he put it on then threw on a dusty old oiled cloak. His lower legs and shoes still showed, but if he kept in the crowds, they wouldn’t spot him.
Mingling in one of the knots of people on the street, he saw five guards drag a man out of a building. Behind them, six other people costumed in wealthy attire spilled out, crying out the man’s innocence. In their haste to capture him, the guards had raided a troop of performers. As the rest of the troop convinced the guards the man had been performing all day, Tayan crossed the street. He left the growing number of gawkers and slipped across the street to make his way to the elven district.
Moving with throngs of people, he got into the walled inner city, stopping long enough to swipe a pair of tall boots to cover the lower parts of his legs. The boots were so loose his feet slapped around inside them, but at least he could walk along without fearing discovery. At the corner of the street Lady Salinthia’s estate was on, he paused to make sure no one was actively looking for him. Here and there, guards talked with elven men who wore the dark-blue-and-silver uniforms of Elrad East. By the closed gates to the courtyard, the only guards were on the other side. If he had to make a run for it, there was plenty of room. Walking out as if taking an afternoon stroll, he headed for the gates.
He didn’t recognize either guard as he came to a stop.
One guard looked at him curiously. “Can we help you, sir?”
“I am Lord Tayan Montara, and I need to speak to Lord Parnal immediately.”
The elf’s eyes widened. “Of course!” Making a show of lifting his arm to itch an ear, he said, “Right away, M’lord. Wait right there, we’ll go get him.”
“Yes, just a moment,” the other elf agreed, itching his ear as well.
“Could you let me in?” Tayan asked heavily. He’d had a rough day and didn’t have time for foolishness.
“Who did you say you were again?” the elf asked.
Tayan grabbed the gates and shook them. “I am Tayan Montara, now let me in!”
He noted the elf was looking past him. Turning around, he saw guards had come out of the buildings across the street to make a solid line that quickly made a semicircle to surround him. As he searched for a way out, he was grabbed and pulled back against the gates.
“Lord Tayan is in his study and has been most of the day,” one elf hissed.
Suddenly, it all made sense. Whoever kidnapped him had put a duplicate in his place. They’d set up that poor wizard, knowing he would get free. No one was going to see him as Lord Tayan--they would see him as a murdering impostor.
“Your Lord Tayan is a fake!” he cried.
In the tightening trap, several guards lifted loaded crossbows on him. One with a pair of silver bars on his shoulders called to the elven guards, “Thank you for your help, brave elves. We wish you luck in Elrad,” To Tayan, he growled, “Try to escape, I dare you!”
This was his last chance to convince the guards holding him he was who he said. Wracking his brains for something the fake would not know, he said, “I have proof. Jeni Redman is my father’s wife. Her child, my sister, is named Erica.”
Behind him, the elven guards laughed as they let him go. “Everyone knows that!” one chuckled. “And you can call her Lady Redman!”
He turned to tell them that Odif was his sister, only Jeni knew that. Before he could say anything, his face was pushed into the gates and his arms pinned behind his back.
“This is what liars and murderers get!” a guard hissed, and punched him hard in his lower back.
As he slipped down with a cry of pain, a deep, loud animal roar shook him to his bones. One of the guards crashed into the gates a bloody mass. Screams filled the air as the gargoyle ripped into the guards, pitching them away with long swipes of its huge paws. He focused on it in time to see it bite the head off one guard then rake another with a claw that tore his armor off and let his guts spill out.
His mind screamed as the beast ripped apart men who were too terrified to flee. Beside him, the gate opened to let in a pair of screaming guards to save them from the beast. On the street, the guards who could run did, dropping their weapons as they fled for their lives. The gargoyle saw no one else close by to kill, so it lunged at the gates, smashing through the iron bars as if they were wooden sticks.
“Nooo!” Tayan screamed as he got to his hands and knees. The beast swung a claw at a guard cowering against the inside of the remaining gate. The blow crushed the man and ripped the gate off its hinges to send it flying into the street. One elf, shaking so badly his knees quivered, tried to stab the beast with his spear. The weapon didn’t even penetrate the gargoyle’s skin. The gargoyle slapped a paw down on him, and blood shot out from under it as the paw hit the ground. The remaining elf fled into the guardhouse and slammed the door as the gargoyle swung its paw, pieces of elf stuck to it, into the last city guardsman and killed him.
Choking back the bile in his throat, Tayan did the only thing he could to save the men cowering inside the guardhouse. He turned and fled as fast as his feet would take him.
A few streets later, he no longer heard the gargoyle. He slowed, because his vision kept clouding up as tears ran down his face. He cried for the men who were butchered, he cried for the girl whose face haunted him. He cried for the brave elv
es who were going to march under the banner of a fake. He dimly noted troops of guards and knights heading past him. They were rushing to face a threat they had no chance of winning against. Their only prospect for survival was for him to get away from here as fast as he could. Part of him wanted to go back and expose whoever was pretending to be him, but he knew he could never go back there--the danger to others was just too great. All it would take was for someone to hit him and the thing would begin killing again. His only option was to disappear and pray that someone found out the truth.
His mind in a fog, he somehow got to the mid-city bridge and crossed the river. No one stopped him as he left the walled portion of the city. When he started into the poor eastern section, he found a shop where he traded his clothes for some coin and more common garments. The light-brown shirt and breeches were worn, but now no one would recognize him before he managed to leave the city. He got a whole twelve silvers for his clothes, though the man would sell them later for that much in gold once he washed the fish smell out of them.
Slowly, the buildings got a bit shabbier, and the people looked a bit plainer. By the time the sun was down and night was starting to paint the sky, he was in what had to be the worst section of the city. He was on the outskirts; ahead were the tents and lean-tos of the very poor. Searching down the last street, he found an unpainted wooden building that declared in faded letters it was an inn.
He went to the boards set on barrels that served as a bar. Behind it, a woman who was aged by poverty wiped out tin cups as she eyed him. The blouse she wore had long ago lost any color and was threadbare enough to show she didn’t have a proper undergarment to conceal her pendulous breasts.
“I’d like a room, please,” he sighed and laid a silver coin on one of the boards.
Eyeing it, the woman cracked a grin. “Rich fella, huh?”
“I don’t want anyone to know I’m here,” he told her quietly.
“Yeah, pretty boy?” she asked. “Make it two.”
He set down a second coin. She waved towards the stairs. “Take the third room on the right. Ain’t no locks, so either sleep against the door or wedge it shut. If anyone’s in there and gives you a hard time, come on down. I’ll get one of the boys to boot him.”
He nodded blankly. “Got any food?”
“Yeah, got some leftovers, but the bread’s all gone,” Walking towards what had to be the kitchen she tapped the bar with her finger. “Bowl stays down here. Try an lift it, the boys’ll bust your arm.”
“Right, ma’am.”
Settling down on one of the boxes that served as stools, he braced his feet so it wouldn’t tip on him. A moment later, the woman came out and put a wooden bowl of colored water in front of him.
“No spoon?” he asked dryly.
The woman planted a fist on her hip. “Look, pretty boy, it’s late. I told you the bread’s all gone. If you’re too proud to slurp down some gruel then go find somewhere else to eat.”
Looking at the bowl, he figured he deserved no better. He didn’t want to think about all the people who had died today, but he found himself tallying the numbers. There were sixteen men he knew of, and that girl who still stared back at him in his mind.
“This will do,” he said.
The water was hot, though he was hard put to place a flavor on it. He drank his gruel then made sure she had her bowl before he went up to find his room. The hall was littered with trash and a ragged man was propped up in the far corner.
His room was empty, literally. Besides a pile of rags, a piece of a leg off something and a single shutter that covered half the open window, there was just him and his conscience. Settling down onto the rags, he stared out the window, feeling as hollow as this room. Evil had done its work on him. He didn’t have an army or any influence to help King Alderlan or Lord Zodiac. He didn’t even have Amber to comfort him.
As he thought about Amber, the vision of the girl impaled with the chair leg came again. Her eyes had been light blue and had radial gray lines. Those pretty eyes looked at him as if to ask him why she was dying. Why hadn’t he taken the time to study his surroundings and know that she was not a powerful sorcerer? He didn’t have an answer for those eyes, and he knew damn well he didn’t deserve any comfort. He lay there, wondering why his leg wasn’t any more painful than it was.
Morning brought an old man with no teeth poking his head into his room. “Hey!” the old man wheezed, “This is my room!”
Tayan propped himself up on one elbow. “I paid for it.”
“Me, too, six coppers!” the man insisted.
He didn’t look like he had a single copper to his name.
“How about if we go talk to the lady downstairs?”
“Don’t need to go gettin' all proper,” the man wheezed as he hobbled in. “How about this--I’ll watch it for you during the day then you’ll watch it for me at night?”
Tayan gave a sigh. “Why not?” He got up and motioned to the rags. “I was getting up anyway.”
Sporting a toothless grin, the old man clapped a frail hand on his arm. “Just you an’ me, partner.”
Forcing a grin, he said, “Sure, just you and me.”
Going down the stairs, he was mildly surprised to smell the pleasant aroma of freshly baked bread. The common room was full, every rickety table and every shaky stool at the bar. A graying man behind the bar helped serve, along with two other, younger men and a girl so thin Tayan though she might be elven. Her ears and face, however, showed that she was human, only frail. Her dress was a sack with head and armholes cut in it, bound with a rope around her middle. The boys were in similar states, though each had a club tied to a rope at his waist.
The man behind the bar noticed him and pointed to the kitchen. “Go on in, Marla’s got your breakfast in there.”
He thanked the man and went in to what looked to be the remains of a forge. Over the fire pit, a pair of small metal boxes served as ovens. The workbench had a cloth over it and was now a table for preparing the bread. The base where the anvil had stood now had a round board over it. On the board was a large bowl of gruel and a good-sized chunk of bread.
Marla stopped kneading the dough long enough to point at the makeshift table. “You eat in here, mister. If you don’t want to be seen, come down before the crowd comes in, or after they leave.”
The gruel was the same colored water as the night before. Marla’s bread, however, was the best he had ever tasted. He watched her as she worked. Her hair was dark but, like her face, poverty had taken away the luster, making her look older than she was. By the time he finished his humble meal, Marla had taken out another loaf with a pair of old but clean forge tongs and slid in the next batch of dough.
“You make really good bread,” he told her.
She eyed him then went back to cutting the loaf into chunks with a saw-toothed dagger. “I take it you want more?”
“I was just saying it was good. Really good.”
Marla gave a snort. “Look, pretty boy, we only get so much. There’s lots of hungry people out there and very little coin to go buy flour.” Waving her dagger at a sack of flour, she said, “There’s your silver coin. That’s gonna have to last a week, unless you plan on staying longer.”
“What about all those people out there, don’t they pay?” he asked. There had to be at least fifty people in the common room.
“However they can, yes,” she told him. “More often than not they pay by bringing in soup bones, vegetables or whatever they can find that we can use. As long as they got something to trade, I won’t let them go away hungry.”
He noticed that the woodbox by her “ovens” was filled with various bits of furniture and a few actual small logs. “I take it flour is hard to come by.”
“Can’t trade with the mills, they want hard coin,” she sighed. “Guys like you are what save us. I know you’re on the run from something, hasn’t been one of you yet who wasn’t.” Putting the chunks of bread on a tin tray, she grabbed a few bowls in
the same motion then went over and dipped them into the iron pot to fill them. “So, how long you stayin’?”
“Not sure.” If his few silvers could help feed the poor people here then he’d stay until his silver ran out. At least he’d be doing someone some good.
Marla cast a glance at the flour sack. “You’re silver’s good for five days; after that, it’ll be two more.” She put the bowls on the tray then opened the door and hollered for Betty.
Betty was the skinny serving girl. She came in with a stack of empty bowls and put them down beside the tray. He studied her dark hair, made up in pigtails. When she turned to look at him, he noted her young face was already being sapped of beauty by her environment. She eyed him long enough for Marla to come up behind her and give her a smack on her bottom.
“Betty!” Marla snapped, which made the girl jump. “Git that tray out there!”
“Yes, Mum,” she said with a blush aimed at him. Turning to push the door open with her behind, she gave him a shy grin.
Marla glowered at him. “Don’t you go thinkin’ that my daughter’s a tramp. All you git for your silver is your room and your meals.”
He shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking anything like that.”
“Uh-huh. Breakfast is over,” she stated. “If you’re still here, dinner is at dusk.”
Her pose also told him that this conversation was over.
“Yes, ma’am.” He got up and headed for the common room.
Not sure what to do with himself, he wandered the litter-filled streets. The people around him ignored him as much as he ignored them. Not once did he run across a guardsman or anyone who looked like they were trying to keep order. Here and there, shady people made deals in alleys, and a couple times he heard a scream that was cut off abruptly. He tried not to think as he walked along; he concentrated only on putting one foot in front of the other. Common sense told him to go back to his room and rest his aching leg, but it still wasn’t hurting enough.
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