The Greater Challenge Beyond (The Southern Continent Series Book 3)

by Jeffrey Quyle

  Hours later, Grange heard the clanging of a distant door, and the steps of approaching feet. They were the first sounds he had heard during his new imprisonment – no one else was being held in the corridor of prison cells where he was held.

  Torch lights cast an increasing amount of light outside his cell door, and Grange stood expectantly, his legs protesting the exercise after the long hours of inactivity in the cell and in the wagon. His arms were free – the ropes around him had been cut when he was placed in the cell. There was a pause, and the glow of the torches stopped on the opposite side of his door – the door was mostly solid wood and metal, with a small rectangular window in the upper half.

  Keys jingled, the door opened, and a half dozen men moved into the cell. All of them wore silver and blue trim upon black uniforms, except for a broad-shouldered older man who was at the center of the group, an older man whose hair was touched with silver that perfectly match the silver trim on his uniform and the silver chains he wore around his neck. He had a noble face.

  He spoke in the Southgar tongue, studying Grange’s face as he spoke.

  “You’re the spitting image of Ragnar when he was young, before he took the throne,” the man said in the common language to Grange after studying him for several seconds futhter.

  “There’s no doubt of your heritage. I don’t know who your mother was, but I can tell you about your father. He was not a bad man, just too weak to hold the throne,” Grange was told.

  “And he was brighter than whatever idiots in the Bloomingian camp put you up to this foolish adventure,” the man added.

  “I’m not a Bloomingian. I’m not involved in Southgar politics. I’m a traveler from Yellow Spring, trying to find my past. Your Earl Goala was mistaken,” Grange tried to explain.

  There was three seconds of silence.

  “Goala was not mistaken. I’m not mistaken. He and I were together when we slew your father in the battle on the shores of Lake Parime, as he was trying to flee to safety,” the man said.

  “Are you the king? Are you Magnus?” Grange asked.

  “This is his royal highness, and you’ll address him respectfully,” one of the others in the cell spoke for the first time, before the leader held his hand up for silence.

  “I am Magnus, the king of Southgar,” the man said mildly.

  “The fact that the Bloomingians have attempted this foolish scheme to send you into my court tells me that I’ve let them survive and fester in the wilderness for too long. It’s time we mount a campaign against them to wipe them out, or bring them back into the kingdom as loyal subjects,” he said as he turned to face the man who had chastised Grange’s speech. “Wring as much information out of him as you can, then dispose of him.”

  The King turned his back to Grange, and left the cell with a pair of guards, so that only two guards remained waiting in the cell with the prisoner. The man who had been left in charge spoke up.

  “I am Sweyn, the man the King trusts to do his most important tasks. You are going to tell me everything I want to know,” the man said in an ominous voice. He motioned to his two henchmen, who placed their torches in brackets built into the walls, then approached Grange.

  He studied them, knowing that he was about to experience the worst possible treatment. There might be a chance to successfully fight his way out now, before he was further attacked and weakened – there wouldn’t be any other chance, he knew. He tensed his muscles, waiting for the guards to come into range so that he could surprise them by launching his attack before they placed their hands on him.

  Both men had arms stretched forward, with just a touch too much ease and casual attitude, not expecting any great struggle from the injured outsider who couldn’t even speak their own language, and so was assumed to be inadequate as a fighter too. Just as the first fingers started to grasp Grange’s arms, he flung himself into action.

  He rolled forward and came up to his feet again, directly in front of the surprised Sweyn, and he swung his fist as hard as he could into the man’s midriff. The two guards were still waving their hands through the empty air that occupied Grange’s former spot in the cell. At least some of the stitches in his leg had broken open from the stress, Grange could tell, but his heart was beating so fast and his adrenaline was flowing so heavily that he felt little pain at the moment.

  Sweyn doubled over, and as he did, Grange pirouetted around him, to take a position behind the prospective torturer, then he struck downward hard onto the top of Sweyn’s neck, knocking the man to the ground. The two guards started to approach him, and as they did, Grange skipped backwards and out of the door of the prison cell. He swung the cell door shut, and prayed that it would lock itself closed as the metal clanged against the door frame.

  It didn’t. The door struck the frame, then rebounded open, and the two guards came lunging towards Grange, as Sweyn lay in pain on the floor.

  Grange grabbed the door and flung it closed again, causing the heavy portal to strike the two guards as they were approaching, and knocking them both to the ground. Grange ran at them and grabbed a sword from one’s scabbard, then stood over the two men.

  “Stop! Don’t move!” he commanded as he held the sword blade downward, letting it waver back and forth from the throat of one to the other.

  “Who has the keys?” Grange demanded.

  “I do,” a deep voice announced from behind him.

  He whirled to see a man dressed in black, barely visible in the flickering torch light, holding a sword as he stood in the doorway. “The King was warned by Oehla that you fight like a devil, so he told me to wait down here until it was sure that you were under control. That was a brilliant decision by the king, it appears.

  “Now, put your own sword down,” the man in the dark outfit commanded.

  “Why should I?” Grange asked. “I’m going to die either way. Better to die fast than slow,” he said bitterly.

  He felt terrible pain in his thigh. He dropped his sword and dropped to the ground, as he turned to see a knife sticking out of the back of his leg, and then he saw Sweyn sitting up, smiling an evil smile. The two guards on the floor rose up and brutally tackled him, forcing him back onto the floor and pummeling him.

  “Now we’ll begin to extract information from you,” Sweyn said as he came to stand over the prostrate Grange. “After we extract a little revenge first.”

  Chapter 9

  Grange endured three days of torture, the life seeping out of his body bit by bit. Sweyn came to inflict pain on him at all hours of the day and night. The torturer grew frustrated as Grange refused to reveal any of the facts or details that Sweyn expected. As Sweyn’s reports began to disappoint and frustrate the King, Sweyn came to feel his own status in the monarch’s eyes diminishing, and he redoubled his efforts to force Grange to confess the Bloomingian plot to infiltrate Southgar, and to reveal the details and location of the rebels’ settlement.

  Grange was alone in his chamber, chained to the wall, at an hour of the day that was meaningless to him, when he heard the sound of footsteps out in the hallway. Another round of torment was about to begin, he knew, surprisingly close to the end of the most recent beating. Sweyn seemed to know his business as a torturer; he managed to inflict a great deal of pain on Grange without disabling him severely. The pain was likely to go on for a long time, unless Grange could figure out some say to provoke Sweyn to kill him outright.

  The door opened, and three hooded figures entered, one holding a torch, one holding a sword, and one holding some bundle of cloth. They stood still looking at him, a contingent unlike any he had seen so far.

  “Look at what they’ve done to him,” a voice spoke softly from inside the shadows of one of the cowls.

  It was a woman’s voice. Grange’s battered eyes opened slightly at the new development, wondering what it foretold.

  “Is he worth saving at this point?” a man’s voice asked from the figure to the right.

  “I owe him, and Hope owes him, so we�
��ll do as much as we can,” the woman said. She pushed her cowl back, revealing her features to Grange.

  Jenniline stood in the center of the trio, holding a sword.

  “Do you know who I am?” she asked Grange as she stepped closer to him.

  “Jenniline,” he croaked from his parched mouth.

  “Are there keys available to unlock your chains?” she asked.

  “Sweyn carried them,” Grange answered. “Why are you here?” His state was a combination of confusion and relief and fear.

  “We’ll discuss that later,” she replied. She turned around to her companions, and nodded to the one who carried a bundle. The figure pushed his cowl back, revealing a young man’s face, then he set the bundle down on the ground with a muffled clatter, and opened it. From the recesses of the cloth he pulled out a clawed hammer, which he carried to Grange’s wall.

  The man drew back the hammer and let a blow fly at the chains connected to the wall, causing Grange to flinch in anticipation of being struck. The strike was true, as Grange heard a loud, ringing clash, and he felt the chains holding his arm drop precipitously, nearly wrenching his shoulder as the newly freed end fell to the floor.

  “Now for the other side,” the man grunted, and he struck the chains on Grange’s left side as well, releasing him from his fetters. Grange slid down the wall and sat on the floor.

  “Here,” Jenniline said, as she held up a wad of cloth from the bundle on the floor. “Can you put this robe on?”

  “I don’t think so,” he whispered.

  “Oh, for the sake of Acton!” Jenniline mildly cursed. “Elred, help me get him up and robed,” she said to the torch bearer.

  The man stuck his torch in the bracket on the wall, then helped lift Grange to his feet, while Jenniline slid the robe around him. “Can you walk on your own?” she asked. “You have to; we need to get you out of here in a hurry, without raising suspicion.”

  “How far?” Grange sighed. He was almost past caring. The specter of rescue was hard for him to grasp in his shattered state.

  “About ten minutes’ walk,” Jenniline answered. Her hands were on his shoulders and their faces were close together.

  “We need to get going,” Elred said nervously, as he wrapped up his hammer in a piece of cloth.

  “We do; we know,” Jenniline agreed. “You lead the way.

  “Come on Grange. It’s time to go,” she took control of him, not giving him any choice as she placed her arm around his shoulders and made him begin to limp out of his cell, behind the other two rescuers.

  They walked down the corridor that Grange had tried to escape through once before, then slowly climbed a set of stairs.

  “Put the torch out,” Jenniline called to the leader, as they approached the top of the staircase. She was walking last in the procession, following closely behind Grange, pressing him forward when she thought he needed encouragement, assistance, or bullying.

  The stairs grew pitch black, but they continued to climb up to a landing, where they reached level flooring, and immediately turned left. Their surroundings were still dark, but faint spots of light were visible at regular intervals.

  “Someone’s coming!” Elred’s voice excited whispered.

  “You two take off. I’ll get him to safety,” Jenniline immediately responded. “I owe him,” she said in a much softer voice, one that Grange suspected was not meant to be heard by anyone.

  “Step in here, into this doorway,” Jenniline commanded Grange, pulling him backwards into a shallow alcove, as he fleetingly saw the two shadowy figures of his other rescuers slip away.

  Jenniline backed herself into the corner, then pulled Grange tightly against her, so that their faces were in touch. “Hopefully, the patrol will just think we’ll lovers and leave us alone,” she whispered.

  “Why did you come rescue me? How did you find me?” Grange asked, his lips pressed against Jenniline’s cheek, but his ability to feel embarrassed utterly absent.

  “Skore sent a message to Hope, telling her you had been sent here. He apparently believed your story, and felt bad about the way you were treated. Hope came to me, and I confirmed everything she said you had told her, plus a bit more,” Jenniline explained.

  “We both wanted to find you, so we did some snooping. She’s not a bad little girl at all; that’s the first time I’ve ever spent much time working with any of my sisters like that,” Jenniline reflected.

  “Here now, go get a room, you two,” a man’s voice spoke from immediately behind Grange, making him start in surprise.

  “Yes captain,” Jenniline said. “Esberg had a little too much to drink tonight,” she told the watchman as she stretched an arm beneath Grange’s armpits, then wheeled him around and pressed his face down on her shoulder, as she began to drag him away.

  “If he can’t satisfy you lass, come back looking for me,” the guard spoke lustfully.

  “Keep an eye out for me,” Jenniline eased her exit from the guard’s company by offering him hope of a later encounter, and she quickly dragged Grange away from the scene.

  “We need to get out of the palace and into the city. Can you walk on your own?” Jenniline asked as soon as they rounded a corner.

  “I will if I have to,” Grange answered. He was coming back to life, coming to realize that he was truly on the verge of escaping from the torture he had endured.

  Good – that’s the spirit,” Jenniline said appreciatively. She opened a door, and suddenly they were in the fresh air outside, and Grange saw that the sky was dark overhead.

  “There’s the gate ahead,” Jenniline pointed after they went a little further. “You just start walking towards the gate, and go through it, no matter what. Twenty yards outside the gate there’s an alley on the right. Go down the alley, then up the wooden stairs, and wait in the room at the top. It may take a while, but be patient.

  “Do you have that?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Grange acknowledged.

  “Alright, then go,” the princess gave Grange a gentle shove, and sent him forward. “And remember, don’t stop for anything – nothing at all.”

  Grange gulped, trying to remain calm as he approached the guarded gate that was only yards in front of him. The guards at the gate were facing directly towards him, obviously watching him, and some tiny, perverse thought in the back of his consciousness wondered if the whole apparent escape plan was merely a plot to let him be captured and killed while seeming to try to escape.

  “You come back here!” Jenniline’s voice called harshly when he was just more than half way to the gate.

  Grange slowed down, despite Jenniline’s insistence that he keep going.

  “No man’s going to sneak out of my bed before dawn!” her voice thundered.

  She was walking towards him now, stalking him, he saw as he glanced back over his shoulder.

  She was virtually naked. She had shed the robe, and instead wore only a sheer negligee that barely covered her feminine aspects. And she was coming after him with a sword in her hands.

  Grange picked up his pace as he walked towards the gate, and he saw grins on the faces of the guards who were watching him.

  “Oh no you don’t!” another voice called out from his left side.

  Hope was steaming towards him, covered only slightly more modestly that her sister.

  “Is this where you’ve been all night while I’ve been waiting – with that hussy?” Hope shouted. She veered from her path, turning to intercept Jenniline instead of Grange.

  “Stay back or I’ll let you have it!” Jenniline turned to face her sister, brandishing her sword. “He picked me over you!”

  “You give him back to me!” Hope shrieked.

  Grange heard the sound of Jenniline rapping the point of her sword sharply on the paving stones.

  “Let’s see how well he fancies you after I cut one of your ears off,” the elder princess threatened.

  “Guards!” Hope shouted with terror in her voice. “Protect me!�
� she motioned to the two guards, as Jenniline appeared to threaten her.

  “You better run for your life, old chap,” one of the guards murmured to Grange, as the pair abandoned their post and went to protect Hope from Jenniline’s anger.

  “And come back and tell us some stories someday,” the other one added as he passed Grange too.

  The gate stood open and unguarded directly in front of him.

  Grange heard squeals of anger and fear behind him, but he didn’t turn. He simply increased his pace and walked through the gate, trembling with excitement.

  He spotted a darkness to his right, an absence of anything between two buildings, and he limped rapidly towards the alleyway entrance. As soon as he entered it he was lost in darkness, but he carefully shuffled forward and bumped into the wooden staircase Jenniline had told him to find. He trod up the creaking steps as quietly as he could, then opened a door, and found a small room with a bed and a tiny oil lamp burning. There was a bottle of wine and a glass on a table by the bed.

  He sat down, drank a glassful of the wine, then laid back, and tried to convince himself that it was true, that he was actually freed from further torture.

  Chapter 10

  Grange collapsed on the bed in his new-found cell of freedom in Southgar. He was only a few yards outside the walls of the palace where he had been held and tortured, but he was breathing free air, thanks to his unexpected rescue, and despite his physical pain, he felt as though he were a hundred miles from the dark cell beneath the palace where he had been mistreated.

  There was a small window in the room, Grange discovered, as he uneasily dozed on the bed, and intermittently watched a patch of the wall turn light with the arrival of dawn. He snuffed out the tiny lantern, then rested easily for hours, until there was a knock on the door, and a man immediately entered.

  “How are you?” the man asked.