“What in the hell could they be doing out in the middle of the night!?”
Tarc shrugged, “Robbing someone maybe?”
“Are you sure about the men downstairs?”
Tarc nodded.
Daum suddenly sucked in a hissing breath, “Can your ghost reach all the way down to the cellar?”
There was a brief pause as Tarc reached out, then he shook his head.
Daum said, “Let’s go down the stairs to the main level. From there you should be able to check. They may be rifling the cellar.”
Feeling somewhat naked, Tarc said, “I think we should get our knives and put on our clothes before we go down.”
Daum slumped a little, “You’re right, it may be dangerous. I’ll get dressed and go down, you stay here.” He turned and went back into the room he shared with Eva.
Tarc went back into his room. With his ghost sense he was able to put on his knives and dress quickly even in the dark. When Daum came back out in the hall, Tarc was waiting. “We should go together,” he said. “I’ll be able to tell where they are before they even know we’re there.”
“No!” Daum reacted. But then he paused. After a moment he said, “Sorry, you’re right. It’ll be safer for all of us if you come along. Thank you.”
Quietly, they descended the stairs. Without a light it was so dark that Daum had to hold on to Tarc’s shoulder like a blind man. As soon as they reached the main level Tarc said, “They’re not in the cellar. Or anywhere on the main floor for that matter.”
In a puzzled tone Daum said, “What in all the hells could they be doing out in the middle of the night?”
Tarc said, “I surely don’t know, but I don’t think it’s something good. I’m still betting that they’re robbing someone. Shall we go see if the strangers in the stable are still there?”
In the darkness, only Tarc’s ghost sense showed him Daum’s head rotating toward him, “You think they might have gone with these guys?!”
Tarc shrugged, then realizing his father couldn’t see it, said, “I’m betting they did.”
A few minutes later Daum and Tarc approached the side of the stable. A half-moon lit the yard so that Daum no longer had to be led. Tarc reached out and put his hand on Daum’s shoulder. “They’re gone too,” he whispered. Then, “They took their horses.”
Daum let out a muffled curse. “Those bastards are up to no good!” After a moment’s thought he said. “I’m going to go down and roust out the deputies at the station. You go back and tell Eva and Daussie what’s going on. Then all of you lock yourselves into your rooms.”
“Uh,” Tarc said, thinking of the lightweight doors on the rooms, “those guys could break into the rooms pretty easy. If you think they aren’t safe there, they should hide somewhere. Like the cellar or something.”
“You’re right. You guys hide in the hayloft in the stable until we know what’s going on.” Daum turned and headed out to the street.
Tarc ran back into the tavern and up the stairs. Eva was awake when Tarc opened her door. Tarc burst into speech, telling her the strangers had left and that he and Daum were going to roust the deputies for fear the men were robbing someone. Leaving, he shouted that Daum had said for Eva and Daussie to hide in the hayloft.
Now completely comfortable in the stygian darkness, he ran back down the stairs using his ghost to know where to put his feet. He heard his mother calling after him, but didn’t slow to hear what she was saying for fear she was telling him to stay there at the tavern.
Daum was nearly to the deputy’s station when he heard someone running lightly up behind him. Thinking it might be one of the strangers, he stepped into a doorway and pulled out his knife. The runner slowed and stopped a few feet from the doorway.
Daum steeled himself for a fight, but then Tarc’s voice said, “Dad?”
Daum’s tension slumped out of him and he whispered harshly, “I told you to hide in the hayloft with Daussie and your mother!”
“Yeah, but if I’m with you no one can sneak up on you.”
For a few moments Daum stood, warring with himself. Then, acknowledging once again the truth of his son’s statement, he said, “OK, but if we do meet anyone, you stay back.” He turned and continued quietly down the street.
When they arrived at the Deputy’s station Tarc tugged at his father’s sleeve, stopping him. “Wait, something’s wrong!” he hissed.
“What?!” Daum whispered back.
“There are people in there, but they’re lying down! And… they aren’t as warm as, as they should be.” He paused, then continued in a choked voice, “There are puddles of warm stuff around them… I think they’re… dead.”
“Shit!” Daum said. “Is anyone else around here?”
Tarc shook his head, then realizing his father might not notice the motion in the moonlight, quietly said, “No.”
Daum said, “We should ring the alarm here, then go warn them at the deputy’s station at the main wall gate.”
“Shouldn’t we make sure they’re dead first?”
“Yeah,” Daum said grimly. He knocked on the door of the station, waited a moment, then opened it. “Hello. Anyone here?”
There was no response. Daum stepped inside and called out again. There weren’t any lamps lit. Tarc didn’t know for sure, but thought that a watch station should have a lamp lit at all times so that they would be able to respond quickly in a crisis. He felt around with his ghost and realized a faintly warm spot above and to his right likely came from a lamp that was still cooling. As he focused on it he recognized that the box next to it probably held some matches.
Because matches were expensive Tarc had a natural reluctance to using them, “Dad, there are some matches next to the lamp here. Should I use one?”
“Yes! This is a crisis for God’s sake!”
Embarrassed as he thought about it, Tarc picked up the box, pulled out a match and struck it. He’d never used a match himself, but had seen them used. The bright flare of heat he felt with his ghost startled him. He lifted the glass chimney off the lamp and held the match to the wick.
Turning, Tarc saw his father staring around at the wreckage of the deputy’s station that Tarc had been able to feel with his ghost. Chairs were knocked over. Materials such as their ledgers and pencils lay scattered about. The two night watch deputies lay face down in spreading pools of blood. Daum cursed, then stepped over and began pulling the alarm rope. The big bell atop the station began tolling with the deep clanging that called up the men of the town. “Aren’t we going to go on?” Tarc asked.
“I thought someone would show up to ring the bell while we went on!”
Tarc’s ghost felt people heading out into the street, but they weren’t coming toward the station. “They’re supposed to go to the wall to defend it aren’t they?” Tarc said, thinking that defending the wall was exactly the wrong response when the attackers were already inside.
“Yes,” Daum said between the clangs of the bell, “but if it stops ringing I’m afraid everyone will just go back to bed!”
Tarc was pondering the fact that the town should have had some other codes set up for the bells in order to differentiate various crises when suddenly his ghost, extended as widely as he could send it, gave him bad news. “Men on horses! Coming!”
Daum cursed as he let go of the rope and said, “Let’s get out of here!”
“Too late!” Tarc said, pulling back on Daum’s arm as four horses galloped up, men vaulting off of them, swords already drawn as they landed near the door.
Tarc and Daum ran toward the back of the station, coming only to the cell where the deputies locked up the drunk and disorderlies. Daum pulled up, “Goddammit! They don’t have a back way out?”
Tarc’s eyes widened as he saw that Daum was correct. There wasn’t another way out! He turned, knees watery and gut twisting as he wondered if the men coming in might show any mercy. The door had already slammed open and two men had entered, swords held high.
In the lamplight, Tarc noticed with a sense of unreality that they looked like good quality swords.
Then Daum’s arm flashed out and a knife flew across the room. Tarc’s ghost told him it was aimed at the first man, but it was much too high and Daum hadn’t led the man far enough! Using his ghost Tarc pulled it down and to the left. He could immediately tell that he wouldn’t be able to pull it far enough down to reach the man’s chest, or even his neck!
A fleeting thought came that hitting the man in the face with the knife should slow him down. Seeing the knife coming, the man started to duck but Tarc guided the blade unerringly to his face. It buried itself into the man’s eye.
It shot through the globe of the eye, up through the thin plate of bone over the orbit and into the skull.
The man convulsed and began to collapse.
Tarc’s ghost took over Daum’s second knife as soon as it left Daum’s hand. Having decided the eye apparently made a good target, this time as the knife flew, Tarc lifted it away from the man’s upper chest. Tarc’s ghost made him think the men might have armor on his chest anyway.
The knife shot into the second man’s eye.
Tarc had already reached back over his shoulder to grab the first of his own knives. A third man crashed through the door and started to stumble over his falling companions.
Wondering at his own lack of compassion, Tarc sent a third knife through a man’s eye and into his brain.
Recognizing that something was amiss, the fourth man slammed to a stop in the doorway, hands braced on the frame, eyes wildly looking about for whatever threat had struck down his companions.
He didn’t see the fourth knife coming before it stopped his sight forever.
Emotions slammed through Tarc.
Tremendous relief that the four soldiers were no longer going to kill him.
Amazement at his own control of those knives.
Horror at what he had just done to other human beings, especially the fourth man who had begun to heave himself back into retreat just as the last knife cut him down.
Tarc’s bladder spasmed out a squirt of urine and his bowels cramped. Then he bent to heave up the contents of his stomach.
Daum had started forward. Now he turned, grabbed Tarc by the arm. “Sorry Son, but we’ve got to get out of here,” he said, hauling Tarc along behind him even as Tarc turned his head to the side to vomit again.
When they reached the men, to Tarc’s horror they were twitching and quivering. Their brains might be damaged beyond repair, but their bodies were still trying to go on about the business of living. One of them had a pool of vomit about his head. From the smell at least one of them had beshat himself.
Daum bent and snatched the knives out of the men’s eyes, wiping them quickly on the men’s own clothes. He stood, “Let’s go!” he said, handing Tarc’s knives to him. “We’ve got to warn the deputies at the gate!”
Abandoning stealth, Daum started off down the street at a trot, Tarc following behind. A few other men ran nearby, also going toward the wall. Presumably they were headed for their posts there, ready to protect Walterston from an invasion. There didn’t seem to be as many as Tarc would have expected, but, after all, only one station had rung the alarm bell and it had stopped now. During drills, all the bells in town rang so perhaps many thought it had been a false alarm.
In fact Tarc saw that many of the men were slowing and talking to each other. Some had turned back for their homes. Daum shouted, “Someone’s killed the deputies at the Smith’s station!” Tarc realized that the station they had stopped at was indeed near the town’s five blacksmiths, though he hadn’t heard it called that himself.
Daum’s call didn’t keep the men from stopping and turning for home. Probably they assumed it was a murder investigation rather than an invasion.
Tarc extended his ghost into the houses he was passing. People were up and about, peeking out windows, but not mobilizing like his father had obviously hoped. He and Daum ran on toward the wall.
When they were about three blocks from the wall Daum grabbed Tarc and jerked him into a side street. “Wha…?” Tarc began. Then he heard the hoof beats he hadn’t noticed in his concentration on what was happening in the neighboring houses.
As Daum held Tarc in a deep doorway around the corner they watched a troop of horsemen ride by. “Shit!” Daum said, “The men who stayed at the tavern were there to open the gate for the rest of these men! Walterston has fallen without a fight!”
Tarc realized that someone must’ve killed the gate guards and opened the gates if men like these were riding in.
When the troop had passed, Daum said, “Let’s get to the armory, we need to get the town’s weapons out before these bastards figure out where they are!” He looked around the corner, then started off at a trot again. Tarc followed.
Daum rounded the corner to the armory and halted abruptly, Tarc running into his back. “They beat us to it!” he said with dismay, shoving Tarc back around the corner. Daum carefully peered back around the corner again, “Shit, shit, shit, shit!
Tarc looked with him. In the dim moonlight he could see a group of men stood outside the armory, swords drawn. Some men ran back and forth inside the drill center area. Tarc wondered where Captain Pike was. Pike lived full-time behind his office in the corner of the armory.
From behind them running boots approached. Tarc turned and saw Sgt. Garcia running up.
“What’s the hell’s going on?!” the sergeant demanded.
Daum turned. Seeing who it was, he said, “We’re being invaded.”
“Jesus, let’s get to the wall!” the sergeant said, starting to shoulder past them.
“It’s too late for that!” Daum said, grabbing Garcia by the elbow. “They brought in a small party yesterday and that group opened the gate in the middle of the night. The bastards are already inside, so getting on the wall won’t do anything!”
“Inside! How did they get a party inside?!” Garcia asked, peering around the corner.
“Through the gate a few at a time during the day. Some of them stayed at the tavern this evening.”
“Christ! They’ve got the Captain!”
Daum leaned back around the corner to see, so Tarc got on his knees and looked around himself. Several men were jerking Captain Pike out the gate of the drill center. His elbows were bound over a stick behind his back and his ankles looked like they were tied with about a foot of rope between them.
A wagon pulled up and they jerked the Captain toward it. Tarc saw with dismay that it was the tavern’s wagon pulled by Shogun. He realized now that when he’d scanned the stable for the men’s horses earlier that the stable had been completely empty. How did I miss the fact that Shogun was gone too?!
The men lifted Pike up and threw him into the back of the wagon. More men ran out of the armory carrying things that they threw into the wagon with him though Tarc couldn’t see what it was.
Daum turned to Garcia, “Should we go down there and try to free the Captain?”
Tarc’s stomach clenched on the thought of confronting those hard looking men with swords, but Garcia said, “It looks like they’re taking him somewhere. Maybe we can ambush them in transit. We’d have to be crazy to confront them there with just the two of us.”
Tarc didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended that Garcia hadn’t included him in their putative attack.
The man driving the wagon snapped the reins and Shogun pulled away. Two of the men who’d been throwing stuff into the wagon next to Pike followed. Garcia said, “We’ll parallel them on this street,” and turned to trot to the next corner.
Tarc trotted behind the sergeant and his father, thinking that if you counted the driver the odds were still two to three. At the next corner they waited a moment, then Shogun came around the corner toward them.
Garcia pushed Daum and Tarc back, then looked around. “The two guards have climbed up onto the wagon bed. That gives them a height advantage, but they’ll tend
to be looking ahead.” He stepped into a doorway and motioned Daum into the next one. “We’ll run out quietly and cut the backs of their thighs just above the knees to hamstring them. If they see us coming we’ll be screwed because they have swords and height, we can’t win then. We’ll have to run away for now and try again later.” He saw Tarc then and said, “You go back a couple more doorways where you’ll be safe. If we have to abort the attack we’ll run on across the street and you’ll have to meet your dad back at the tavern.”
Tarc hid in an indentation in the walls just beyond Daum, his heart pounding.
Shogun passed the corner.
Garcia held up his hand to wait.
The driver at the front of the wagon passed the corner.
The two guards rolled past.
Even after the back of the wagon had gone by Garcia’s hand still said to wait. When it had traveled about ten feet past them, he waved forward and started running after it himself, lightly on the balls of his feet.
Daum took off just behind him, slanting toward the guard on the right.
Too afraid to stay by himself, Tarc left his hollow and ran about ten feet behind the two men. He spread out his ghost and sent his attention everywhere he could send it but the street seemed otherwise empty.
Something seemed to have warned the two guards because they whirled to look back, seeing the two men approaching.
Daum and Garcia broke off their attack, Daum running right and Garcia left. Tarc started to run to the right after his father, but then realized that, instead of the expected sword, the guard on the right had a bow with an arrow nocked.
The guard lifted the bow and pushed it ahead, aiming the arrow at Daum’s unprotected back.
Tarc’s hand had already found the knife’s hilt behind his back.
His hand flashed forward.
The knife flew, guided by his ghost, and again rocketed into someone’s eye.
The guard convulsed, falling off the back of the wagon.
Tarc turned again and ran after his father.
Then he heard a heavy clanking thud and turned to see that the second guard had leapt off the wagon, revenge apparently on his mind as he snarled with rage.
Telekinetic Page 15
