The Silver Crown

by Joel Rosenberg

  Karl me boy, I sure hope that you're every bit as good as everybody else thinks you are.

  Granted, the defense had the edge in this kind of warfare, but it wasn't an insuperable one. Everything really depended on how many of the Holts were moving on Furnael Keep. Or had moved on Furnael Keep; it could actually all be over by now. Come to think of it—

  Whoa. Methinks you'd better get your mind back on what you're supposed to be doing, Walter me boy. You're doing with your mind what Henrad is doing with his eyes.

  Despite the silent complaining, he was pleased with how things were going, so far. Though it was obviously bad for morale for someone in authority to gripe openly, a constant stream of silent complaints helped Walter keep himself sane. Relatively sane, at least.

  Besides, being impressed with his own abilities was something he still hadn't gotten over. In the old days, he had been large and reasonably well coordinated, but it would have been difficult to think of himself as terribly graceful.

  Spiderman, watch my smoke, he thought. Then: Walter, Walter, remember Slovotsky's Law Number Seven: Thou shalt always cover thy ass.

  The castle guard wasn't set up badly, but whoever had set out the guards had been more capable at maintaining order than security: two-man watchfires were scattered evenly on the outer ramparts, touring sentries only on the inner curtain wall.

  It didn't take a military genius to deduce a manpower shortage; the main gate on the outer wall was only lightly manned, and the northern bastion wasn't manned at all.

  Still, that wasn't surprising, Walter decided. The bastion was supposed to be a strongpoint for an active defense of the castle, not a lookout tower. Pirondael—or the commander of the House Guard, more likely—expected to know in advance about any attack in force, and would man the bastion when appropriate.

  Slovotsky nodded his approval. The commander of the House Guard was right; any large force would have been spotted long since.

  On the other hand, the ramparts overhead were silent and empty, which pleased Slovotsky as the four of them crouched in the dark at the base of the wall. Overhead, the massive stone merlons at the top of the wall stood invitingly.

  Ahira beckoned to him. "Ready? Or do you need a rest?"

  Slovotsky shook his head. "We human flies don't need rest."

  "Eh?"

  "Do it, Ahira, do it."

  While Walter slipped into his suede climbing gloves, the dwarf reached over his shoulder and unfastened a long braided-leather rope from his rucksack. Ahira measured the merlon by eye, adjusting the size of his loop.

  He swung the rope several times around his head and threw.

  The loop settled raggedly around the stone merlon; Ahira twitched at the rope to settle it into place, then pulled it tight.

  "You're on," the dwarf said, taking a strain on the rope.

  The trick to climbing up a rope was to let the feet and the leg muscles do as much of the work as possible; only the foolish relied on the weaker shoulder muscles any more than absolutely necessary.

  Walter Slovotsky swarmed up the rope like a squirrel up a tree. At the top of the wall, he lowered himself to the stone walkway and listened. That was one of the tricks of the trade: At night, the ears were every bit as important as the eyes. The whisk of a leather sole on stone could carry hundreds of yards through the dark.

  Halfway around the jagged curve of the outer wall was the main gate, and there a fire blazed orange against the night. Walter closed his eyes, held his breath, and listened.

  Perhaps the wind brought him faint murmurings of the distant guards' voices. Perhaps not. In any case, there was nothing closer, nothing except for the night sounds of insects, and the distant sound of voices from the village shacks.

  He reached over the merlon and tugged on the rope three times, waited a moment, then tugged twice again. In a few moments, Ahira was at his side. After pulling up the rope, and rigging a sling on one end, they lowered it and pulled Henrad up, then Furnael.

  "What next?" Ahira said, as he coiled the rope and lashed it to his belt.

  "Stay here for a moment," Walter whispered as he slipped away from the other three. It was still well before midnight, and there were hours of darkness left; best to use that darkness liberally, safely.

  He found a stone staircase only a few hundred feet away, then went back for the others and led them to it, down the stairs, and into the tall grasses of the outer ward.

  The slope was steep as they climbed quietly through the night toward the inner wall, slipping into the shadows.

  Walter decided that Karl had been right: This would be a difficult slope to fight up. The defenders wouldn't even have to kill you to stop you; all they would have to do would be to get you to lose your balance and you'd roll down the grassy slope to the bottom. Certainly it would be nearly impossible to set up siege towers or ladders at the top of the motte.

  Walter beckoned to Henrad. "Are you getting anything yet?"

  The boy shook his head. "Nothing. I don't think there's a wizard in the area. Except for me."

  Ahira snorted. "Don't put on airs, Henrad."

  The absence of Pirondael's wizard surprised Walter for a moment, but only a moment.

  Actually, it made sense; Furnael's wizard had deserted at the start of the war. Most wizards seemed to be abject cowards when it came to physical danger, although they often weren't. It was just that in any kind of combat situation, the other side's having an active wizard was such a huge disadvantage that any successful strategy necessitated killing the wizard.

  That tended to discourage all but the more powerful wizards from getting involved in combat situations, and usually the more powerful wizards were far more interested in augmenting their own abilities than in using them.

  "Henrad," Walter whispered to the boy. "Be sure you're ready to zap the hell out of any group of guards before they can raise a cry."

  "Zap?"

  I just plain gotta remember to persuade Andy to teach these people more colloquial English. "Be ready to put them to sleep, then. Understood?"

  "Yes, Walter Slovotsky."

  The inner wall was a different sort of problem than the outer wall had been. Not only was its circumference studded with manned guard towers, but Walter could hear the slap of sandals as a guard walked his tour above.

  This was one of the times that Walter almost wished Karl Cullinane were running this one instead of him.

  He sighed. No, it was best this way; keeping Furnael Keep intact wasn't something that Walter would have wanted to try. Besides, Karl wouldn't have done this right—he would have tended toward silencing a guard or two, hoping to make it down the wall and into the fortress itself by speed alone, expecting to power his way through any opposition.

  That would have been suicide here. This wasn't like a typical slaver camp, where the guards would usually sit in one place, waiting for eventual relief. That sort of thing was easy: All you had to do was hit an outer guard station just after it had been relieved, and you would have scads of time to get set up and move in.

  This was different. It was like planning on jumping through the blades of a whirring fan without being cut into bloody little slices.

  Not getting cut into bloody little slices is, after all, the key to a sound plan, he thought, suppressing a chuckle.

  He told the others to wait at the foot of the wall, then slipped off into the night. Maybe the inner gate was up; perhaps they could slip in that way.

  No good. The portcullis hadn't been lowered, but the whole area around the gateway was lit by dozens of smoking, flickering torches—too well lit. He could probably slip in, but that was too much to expect of the others.

  Damn.

  Ahira, Furnael, and Henrad were waiting where he had left them. Above, he could hear the slap of the sandals of an approaching guard, walking his tour on the ramparts.

  Walter put his mouth to Ahira's ear. "Can't use the gate," he whispered. "So we've got to do it the hard way. The timing's going to be c
ritical here. Get out the rope."

  Unless he missed his guess, a guard walked by this part of the wall at least every fifteen minutes, which left barely enough time. Assuming, of course, that there weren't extra sentries posted, or that a soldier on duty in the nearest tower didn't happen to step out into the night to clear his head and spot them. If that happened, Henrad's Sleep spell wouldn't do them any good, not after one quick shout.

  As the guard's footsteps vanished in the distance, Walter nodded to the dwarf. "Do it."

  Again, the dwarf unfastened the long braided-leather rope and adjusted the size of his loop. He whipped the rope several times around his head and threw.

  It missed. Slovotsky raised an eyebrow. Missing when it counted wasn't what he was used to from the dwarf.

  "Better do better, Jimmy me boy," he said.

  Ahira glared at him and threw again. This time the loop settled down around the jutting merlon as though God Himself had slipped it on. One quick tug and it was tight.

  Slovotsky swarmed up the rope and slipped to his belly on the rampart. Nothing.

  Again, he tugged on the rope, rising to help Ahira up, then the two of them pulled the other two up. He led the others down a staircase and into the shadow of the wall of the inner courtyard.

  Well, that's the easy part.

  "Henrad," he whispered. "Locate her—and be quiet about it, boy."

  "Yes, Walter Slovotsky." The apprentice wizard nodded. "Consider it done," he said, a trifle too smugly. Still, a short-distance Location spell wasn't supposed to be terribly difficult, not when the object of the search was already well known to the wizard.

  As the boy quietly murmured the harsh words that could only be heard and forgotten, Walter glanced down at his amulet, which was hardly flashing at all.

  Still, it was flashing, and there was no need to ask for trouble; he unlooped it from his neck and tucked it into an inner pocket of his blousy black pantaloons.

  "She is . . . in a suite on the second story of the keep, directly opposite a guardroom. Beralyn is . . . awake, and irritated at the noise the guards are making across the hall. . . . There is a female servant in her outer chamber, although she believes that the woman is sleeping on duty."

  Walter turned to Furnael. "Do you know where this suite is?"

  Furnael nodded, his face grim. "Yes. What are you going to do about the guards? Even if Karl Cullinane's accusations against Prince Pirondael are true, they're not to blame. It would be—"

  "I'm not after their blood." Did you say "Prince Pirondael," Baron? You're not calling him "my prince" anymore, eh? Good. It looked, more and more, as if Furnael was accepting Karl's accusations against Pirondael. "Besides, they're essential to the plan—I can't kill them. Have some faith." He nodded to Ahira and Henrad. "Let's go."

  * * *

  After all the difficulties getting over the walls, getting into the residence tower itself was almost an anticlimax.

  They waited in the shadows until nobody was in sight, then simply walked in through the arched front door and made their way quietly up the dark stone staircase.

  Walter kept one of his throwing knives ready in his hand. Though he wasn't after any innocent's blood, if they were spotted, blood would be shed in any event.

  And if somebody's going to bleed, I'd just as soon it not be little ol' me. It was only fair, after all: The rest of the universe consisted of millions and millions of people who collectively had millions and millions of gallons of blood; Walter Slovotsky had only his meager few quarts, all of which he continually put to good use.

  The tower was quiet. That was the advantage of doing this in the middle of the night, after all: As long as they avoided anyone who could sound the alarm and wake the soldiers in the adjacent barracks, all they had to worry about was those few guardsmen on duty.

  They reached the second-floor landing and crept into the hall. The door to Beralyn's suite stood open, the entrance room lit by a single oil lamp. The room across the hall was well lit. Walter could make out several voices talking quietly; there were at least four soldiers talking in the room, perhaps as many as eight.

  He nodded to Henrad. "Once more, Henrad," he whispered, then turned to the dwarf. "Watch your timing, Ahira."

  The dwarf raised an eyebrow. "Nervous, are we?"

  "No, I'm not nervous," he whispered back. "What the hell do I have to be nervous about? I'm really calm about sneaking around inside a castle that's next to a barracks, both of which are inside two separate walls, all of which means that if anybody—anybody—raises an alarm I'll be dead within minutes, if I'm lucky. So what the hell do I have to be nervous about?"

  "Damned if I know."

  Henrad knelt on the floor, murmuring the words that could only be heard and forgotten, the rough syllables that vanished on the ear like a sugar crystal on the tongue, leaving behind only a vague memory.

  As Henrad completed the spell, Ahira, his speed belying the shortness of his dwarf's legs, dashed around the corner and into the room.

  Walter shuddered, waiting for the clamor of steel on steel or steel on stone that would alert someone, somewhere, that something untoward was going on, but . . .

  Nothing.

  He walked around the corner. Ahira had already relieved the seven sleeping soldiers of their swords and quietly stacked the weapons in the corner of the room. As the dwarf spotted him, he flashed Walter a quick smile.

  Whew! Walter leaned back against the wall. That was out of the way. Next . . .

  He beckoned to Henrad. "Help the dwarf tie them up, and bring them into position. Now it's Furnael's and my turn."

  The dark archway into Beralyn's suite beckoned to them. Walter slipped inside, opening his pouch and removing several strips of cloth from it.

  This was almost too easy. The serving girl was sleeping over by the window, starlight streaming in and splashing over where she sat back in the chair, fast asleep, her mouth open. He wadded a fistful of cloth into a gag, then beckoned to Furnael, pointing at the door beyond.

  Furnael crept through the doorway and vanished from Walter's sight into Beralyn's sleeping room.

  Walter rubbed his fingers together as he crumpled the cloth tight, then carefully pushed it into the serving girl's open mouth. Her eyes flew open; she gathered in a quick breath for a scream. He punched her in the solar plexus; she folded over like a blanket.

  Within five seconds, she was fully gagged and tied.

  John Norman, eat your heart out, he thought, then instantly regretted it. The poor girl was scared stiff; if this hadn't been necessary, it would have been an inexcusable thing to do to her. As it was, he wasn't terribly proud of himself.

  Furnael pushed his way out through the curtains of the other room, carrying a lamp. "Beralyn is dressing; she will be along directly."

  Dressing? Damn all women. This was something that could be done in pajamas, or whatever the hell Beralyn wore to bed. "Wonderful. She can come on up with Ahira." He hefted the bound form of the serving girl to his shoulder and walked out through the door.

  * * *

  The stairs up to the third floor waited for him. Walter hesitated for a moment, gathering his nerve.

  Ahira tapped him on the shoulder. "If you need help—"

  "Then we're already dead meat." He shrugged. "I don't have the slightest idea what you ought to do if you hear fighting sounds from upstairs, but make it good."

  He crept up the stairway toward Pirondael's sleeping chambers, Furnael following along behind him. He peered out of the shadows. Two fully armored soldiers stood in front of the door, each with a spear in hand. They stood at full attention, although their eyes were glazed over, their shoulders stooped just a trifle.

  Damn. Walter ducked back and hefted a throwing knife.

  "No," Furnael whispered quietly, laying a hand on his shoulder.

  There wasn't time to argue. Walter pushed him back and stood.

  Pain sparked through his head like an explosion; the world went gray as he felt s
trong fingers prying the knife out of his hand.

  No, he thought, I can't—

  Through force of will alone, he kept himself from slipping away into the darkness.

  He could hear Furnael rise and walk down the hall.

  "I am Baron Zherr Furnael," Furnael said in a firm voice. "You will awaken Prince Pirondael and tell him I am here to see him."

  "How—"

  "Now, fellow."

  Walter pushed himself to his feet and peered around the corner. One of the guards had vanished into the sleeping chambers, but the other, not looking at all sleepy anymore, stood between Furnael and the doorway.

  Damn you, Furnael. Walter lifted a throwing knife, moved out into the hall, and threw, all in one smooth motion.

  Later, he couldn't decide whether or not he had done it on purpose, but the hilt of the knife caught the guard directly between the eyes with a solid thwack; he collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.

  Walter caught his spear before it could clatter against the wall, and lowered it to the ground, then quickly tied and gagged the guard before he paused to glare at Furnael.

  The baron looked back at him impassively. If this can't be done honorably, his look seemed to say, then it shall not be done at all.

  Up yours, Walter thought, resolving—assuming they got out of this alive—to spend some time with the baron and a baseball bat, before his own self-honesty made him admit that in the relief of getting out of this alive he'd surely be more glad than anything else.

  Besides, where would I get a baseball bat?

  Footsteps sounded from inside the room. "The prince will see you shortly," the other guard said, as he stuck his head out through the curtains.

  His eyes grew wide; his mouth opened—

  Walter caught him in the throat with a backhanded slap, then clapped both hands on the soldier's naked ears. Leaving the collapsing soldier to Furnael, he dashed through the curtains, already drawing another throwing knife, praying he wouldn't have to use it.

  The prince, dressed only in a nightshirt, was fumbling in the dark, trying to load a crossbow, when Walter rushed in.