by Lee Ramsay
“Don’t know her. Don’t trust her. Don’t like her.”
“You’re trusting me.”
“Don’t like you either, but I know you.” Groush bared his teeth in a grin as Tristan glowered at him. When the young man squinted down the connected corridors once more, he sighed. “Are you lost?”
“No. I recognize this area. I didn’t notice when I was coming from where I left her.”
“That was stupid. Can you be sure she’ll let us back into the tunnel? Should have brought her with you.”
“Brenna will open the door when we are close. If she was caught or killed, I wouldn’t have a way to open it.”
“Could have shown you how.”
The young man scowled when he realized the bull was right. “Should we get moving, or do you want to mock our plan some more?”
“This is a plan?” Groush asked, his eyebrows lifted. “Let’s find the girl. We’ll be found faster if we stay still too long.”
Tristan's footsteps were uncertain as he turned down the right-hand corridor. “This way.”
“You sure?”
“Would you prefer I lied to you?”
“You’re lying now.”
The Hillffolk lifted his eyebrows when Tristan glowered at him. Lips pursed, the young man sighed. “We’re going to free some of the prisoners. We can’t save them all, but we can save a few.”
“Are you stupid?” Groush asked, his footsteps stuttering. The bull lengthened his stride to catch up as the young man strode away. “Should have kept lying to me.”
Tristan led on, moving up a short flight of stairs and around another corner, then down three risers and into a corridor that curved to the left. Nervous sweat rose on his skin, and for a moment he thought he might be mistaken about the direction.
The passageway gradually brightened with the light of another torch illuminating a door. Handing Groush the one he carried, he took the keyring from his pouch and fumbled for the correct one. The teeth scratched at the keyhole as he tried to find the correct one.
The lock opened with a dull clank. Hinges squealed as the young man swung the door open, drawing with it the stench of sweat, sex, lye, and human waste. The bull’s nostrils flared as the scent swept over them, and he made a disgusted rumble in the back of his throat as he covered his nose with a broad hand.
The stench was more pungent than Tristan remembered as he ducked through the arched doorway. A dozen bodies rested on the floor at odd angles, prevented from laying down by the chains suspending manacled wrists over their heads. Torchlight turned pale skin sallow and glittered in fearful eyes. Broken voices begged for mercy as the prisoners cringed away from the brightness.
“What is this place?” Groush asked, holding the torch higher to reveal the iron tub and chair at the front of the room. The silver shield and black raven of Ankara’s coat of arms glittered over the bed in the back of the chamber.
“One of the rooms where I was held,” Tristan said, his words clipped. He leaned his hatchet against the wall and knelt beside the first of the prisoners. The young woman shied away as he turned the key in the lock securing her right wrist. “It’s alright. I’m here to free you.”
The woman stared at him, then started to laugh.
He clapped his hand over her mouth to stifle the sound, leaving the keys dangling in the manacle. As her breath snuffled against his palm, he swept his gaze at the eleven sets of eyes blinking back at him. “Do I look like a Dushken or one of the guards? I used to be in this room, and others like it. If you want to stay, I will leave you be. If you’re willing to risk getting caught in a try at escape, keep your mouths shut and hold out your hands so I can unlock them.”
He turned his green eyes back to the girl beneath his hand. Her wild laughter had subsided, and she stared at him with a mixture of wariness and hope. Indecision warred in her eyes for a moment, and she gave a sharp, jerky nod.
Groush pressed his back to the wall and peered out the door. “Hurry,”
It took time, but Tristan managed to unlock all the manacles. Brenna had not been lying about their using the same key. He wondered how she knew, but pushed the thought aside as unimportant. There was little to be done if she was another piece in Ankara’s game. Perhaps in numbers – particularly with Groush beside them and armed – they might stand against the Dushken.
He pushed his way through the people crowding the door and dropped the keyring back into his pouch before collecting his hatchet. He took the torch from the bull and flung it on the bed at the back of the chamber. Flames caught on the black satin draped over the feather mattress, sending up a cloud of smoke.
“What in all hells are you doing? The smoke will give away where we are.”
“Reclaiming a piece of myself,” the young man said, his voice hard. Flames glittered in his eyes and those of the other prisoners; their lips pressed together in a satisfied line.
Groush grunted and pushed his way through the door, an uncomprehending but accepting scowl on his bearded face. Tristan followed; the freed prisoners bare feet whispered as they trailed behind the pair.
They paused at each intersection, listening for approaching Dushken. Not a sound came from any direction.
“I don’t like this,” one of the young women fretted from behind Tristan and Groush. “It’s too quiet.”
“What do you mean?” Groush demanded.
“You can usually hear someone screaming,” one of the men muttered.
“Gashan’s right,” another woman said.
“Where are Rasha and Brevean?”
“They slipped off one or two passages back,” another man said.
Other than a sharp gesture for silence, Groush ignored the prisoners. His black eyes met Tristan’s. “Where are we going?”
The young man pressed his lips and shook his head. “I think I took a wrong turn.”
Groush snarled and muttered something in a language Tristan did not recognize. The prisoners fell back with a nervous whimper as the wildman shouldered them aside, and he could not fault them for their wariness. The Hillffolk may have looked closer to being human than Dushken, but his bared teeth quickly dispelled that illusion.
The bull sniffed, then thrust his chin back the way they came. “This way.”
It did not take long for Groush to find the passage they should have taken; Tristan had missed it by one turn. Unfortunately, five guardsmen were coming down the hall. Their startlement at seeing so many prisoners showed them to be free of the rishka. Shaking off his surprise, the leading soldier reached for the sword slung at his hip.
Groush did not bother going for his weapon. Fists balled and sharp teeth bared, he roared and charged.
The bull grabbed the man by the throat and pivoted on the ball of his foot; skull met stone with a wet crunch, leaving a bloody smear on the wall as the body dropped. Before the corpse had fallen, the Hillffolk sprang over it with his arms spread wide. He ducked the swing of a broadsword and sidestepped the thrust of a second. Broad hands gripped one of the soldiers by his coat and flung him into another guardsman. Both men collapsed in a heap.
Groush fell back as the next soldier lunged, and snarled as the sword’s point dug a bloody line in his shoulder. One hand grabbed the man by the wrist, and the other closed around his neck. The soldier’s boots rose from the floor as the Hillffolk used his greater strength to smash him against the wall. A wet gurgle rose as Groush’s jaws closed on the soldier’s throat; flesh tore as the bull’s head thrashed.
The move left Hillffolk’s back open to attack from the last guardsman, who shook off the shock of the brutal attack and yanked his sword from its sheath. The man charged with his sword lifted for a killing strike.
Shaking off his own shock at the sudden and vicious attack, Tristan leaped forward with a two-handed swing of his hatchet. Bone cracked as the blow caught the soldier in the chest. Steel clattered as the sword dropped from the guardsman’s strengthless hand; an uncomprehending look crossed his face as he slid t
o the floor.
Something in Groush’s rumbling growls answered the roiling fury in Tristan’s breast. His boot thumped the dead man’s chest, and he wrenched his hatchet free. Gone was any squeamishness over murdering another human. These men were, in their way, no better than Ankara and Sathra. They deserved to die, and his conscience would rest easy.
He ignored the sound of the other prisoners falling on the two dazed men left from the Hillffolk’s initial attack. Gore pattered the floor as he shook the hatchet clean. Groush’s black eyes met his as the bull spat out a mouthful of ripped flesh in his teeth.
The two men watched the Anahari murder the guardsmen with nothing more than their hands and feet. The bull met the younger man’s eye as he wiped gore from his bearded face. “When they’re done, we’ll strip the guards of anything we can use.”
NOW CONFIDENT OF WHERE he was going, Tristan led the group through the hallways. The adrenaline from the fight was fading, leaving his muscles shaky.
The other escapees were in a similar condition, their fury fading and nervousness returning despite having acquired some clothing and weapons. Four of the women had taken the guardsmen’s shirts, not caring about the still-warm blood on the fabric, while the men donned britches too large for their companions. The padded gambesons went to the remainder of the women, providing them not only with protection but warmth. Only two sets of boots were usable, the rest being too poorly sized to the escapees’ feet to be worth taking.
Groush alone carried a sword, as he was the only one among them who knew more than the basics of usage; the rest of the blades hung from the Hillffolk’s shoulder by their sword belts. The daggers, however, had been handed out to whoever wanted one.
As they hurried through the passages, Tristan wondered what Brenna would make of the other escapees. Unable to ignore his suspicions that she was a spy for Ankara, he figured returning with ten additional people would make betraying them more difficult. In fairness, he had to concede that his decision to do so would complicate their escape if the woman was honest in her intentions.
The number of people would also complicate matters once they escaped the castle. Ragged and malnourished as they were, it would not be difficult to identify them as escaped prisoners. Added to that was the difficulty of acquiring more practical and less conspicuous clothing and feeding the extra mouths while remaining unseen.
Provided this is not a trap orchestrated by Ankara. Familiar with the grand duchess’s games, he feared the entirety of the escape was a ploy to heighten the prisoners’ hopes before smashing them entirely.
Recognizing the dead-end passage he found himself in, he whistled the agreed-upon three notes. A faint click came from the wall at the end, accompanied by the soft grinding of stone as a section swung open. Brenna’s pale face glowed in the light of her tallow candle, and her eyes widened on seeing the cluster of people trailing him. He ignored her angry scowl and beckoned the others to hurry toward the hidden tunnel.
A louder click came from his right as a small, irregular stone sank into the wall. Brow furrowed, he stopped as the others hurried past him. A section of the façade swung inward on silent hinges. Clad in a black silk robe and with her braided hair spilling over her shoulder, Ankara stepped out of the darkness beyond the opening.
The grand duchess stopped, her downcast gaze rising from the toes of Tristan’s booted feet to meet his hard eyes. Her eyes widened in surprise, and her arms rose with her fingers splayed. The emerald pendant on her chest burned with its own fire as she sucked a breath and began a chant. Jade fire danced in her lifted palms and danced across her fingers as her sleeves slipped down her forearms.
Terror and rage combined to drive Tristan into action. Shoulder muscles tore as he heaved his hatchet in an instinctive backswing. The emerald pendant shattered into dozens of shards as the bit thumped into her chest.
An enraged, pained shriek rose from the sorceress’s throat an instant before the enchantments set into the pendant exploded in a roar of magic. Emerald flames gushed from the fractured gemstone, preceded by a blasting heat. Caught by a concussive wave, the young man lifted from his feet and tumbled through the air. Pain blazed through his shoulder as he ricocheted off a wall and slid across the floor. His vision grayed as he came to rest, his scraped cheek pressed to the passage’s rough stone floor.
Crushing pressure rolled over him in the wake of a secondary explosion, causing his ears to pop as he tried to suck air from the near-vacuum behind the blast. Spasms curled his muscles, and he blacked out as he labored to breathe.
Chapter 44
Water dribbled across Tristan’s face, followed by a series of stinging slaps. His skull throbbed and the abused muscles in his shoulder protested as he groaned and made a clumsy wave to ward off another blow. Nausea churned his gut as the gesture unleashed a fresh wave of pain to swamp his senses, and consciousness scuttled from his grasp.
“Wake up,” a muffled voice said, followed by more cool water splashing on his face.
The weak light of a tallow candle illuminated Groush’s bestial face as his eyes fluttered open. He lifted his left hand to scrub his face and grimaced at the ache radiating through his shoulder. “What happened?”
“Quietly. You killed the bitch is what happened. Don’t you remember?” the bull murmured, pressing a hand over the young man’s mouth. When Tristan shook his head and pushed his palm aside, the Hillffolk sighed. “A pity. Not sure what happened, but there was an explosion. You went flying through the air, and dislocated your shoulder when you hit the wall. I put it back in place, though.”
That explained the throbbing pain. Gritting his teeth against the joint’s sickening tenderness, he probed the raw scrape on his cheek. Blood’s iron saltiness trickled down his throat as he examined his swollen nose.
“You slid on your face and broke your nose; I set that, too. A worse injury happened to one of the boys. Gashan is his name, I think.”
“What happened?”
“You smacked into him. He landed wrong and tore his knee. I had to drag you past a woman’s body and into the tunnel. The others got in first, and a girl closed the door behind us – says her name is Brenna. Is she the one who freed you?”
Tristan nodded.
Groush rolled to his hands and knees with a grunt. His bulk blocked out the light of the candle as he started crawling. “Come. They went ahead. You were too awkward to drag.”
Eyes closed, he lay on the tunnel’s floor. The cool stone soothed the knot on the back of his head and felt good on his throbbing shoulder. After a moment, though, the walls pressed uncomfortably close around him. No light came from chinks or cracks in the tunnel walls. He put his right hand out in front of him in the darkness, and the wave of irrational panic clawing his throat eased as his fingers failed to touch the top of the tunnel. From what he could remember, it was taller and broader than the secret passage in his cell, though close enough to prevent him from standing. He rolled to his hands and knees he started crawling.
Blinded by the darkness, he smacked his face against a wall. A fresh wave of blood flowed down his throat, accompanied by faint lights popping in his vision. For a moment he thought he might faint. When sweet unconsciousness did not come, he groped about and turned his body into a tunnel angling to his right.
The crawl seemed interminable as the passage twisted and turned – sometimes in gradual curves and sometimes at right angles. The floor sloped upward before leveling off. At times the walls pressed in, squeezing his shoulders until he thought he would be stuck behind Groush’s sturdy frame – especially when the ceiling pressed down until there was hardly any room to slide through.
Awareness of tons of stone overhead threatened to rob him of his breath, and he fought against claustrophobic panic.
The tunnel opened up into a wider space at last, which Brenna’s and Groush’s tallow candles lit. Mopping sweat and dust from his face with his sleeve, the young man wriggled free of the cramped passage and leaned against the wall.
He was not the only person in a poor state. Two young women sported black eyes and bruised faces; one of the young men cradled a sprained wrist. Gashan lay on the floor, his pinched face haggard; the leg of his stolen britches had been hiked up, revealing a swollen and twisted knee.
Lip raw and bloody in the candlelight, Brenna crawled toward him with a scowl darkening her features. “What were you thinking? I planned on four people sneaking out of here, not fourteen. I couldn’t steal enough food and other supplies to last us more than a few days. That’s going to be strained further now.”
“Is there anything to drink in that flask?” Tristan asked, taking a battered metal container from her hand. He unscrewed the top and sniffed it, then swallowed a mouthful of warm water. “I couldn’t leave them behind.”
“Do you know any of them?”
“No, but you didn’t know me when you rescued me.”
“You could have gotten us all killed.”
Groush liberated the flask with a snort and took a long swallow. “The day is young.”
Brenna leveled an unamused glare at the Hillffolk before fixing her watery blue eyes on Tristan again. “You took longer than I expected, and I worried that you had been caught. I thought I heard footsteps, then fighting. I almost gave up on you making it back.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“As I said before, hope is a dangerous thing,” she said with a shrug. “I should have run, but I wanted to believe you could make it. Then you whistled, and I saw...”
Brenna glanced away, and Tristan’s eyebrows knit. Groush’s black eyes flicked between the pair. “That was who I think it was, yes?”
His fogged memory was clearing, leaving the young man with fragments of what had happened. He leaned his aching head against the wall with a slight nod. “It was.”
“With the grand duchess dead, they will be hunting us harder than they otherwise might,” Brenna said. “We have to move fast. They will search the whole of the castle, which keeps us from finding more supplies.”
