by Liam Reese
“Thorn,” said Karyl, “stop.”
“They caught us by surprise. We were outnumbered by we don’t even know how many,
we were fighting in unfamiliar territory, in the dark, without weaponry— it was more than foolish, it was more than reckless, it was stupid.”
“I know!” The words burst from Irae as though against her will, so forceful and loud that they fairly rocked the little cage.
In the little light gleaming through the barred window, she glared at him. Thorn stopped speaking; his chest heaved, and pain clutched at his heart. He hadn’t felt this angry and frustrated since — since —
Well, since the last time he had been chased into the forest, away from normal human society.
There was no sound beyond the rumbling of the cart wheels and the outside clopping of hooves as they all regathered themselves. At last, Karyl spoke, when it was clear that their fearless leader had nothing else to say.
“Well, we clearly need a plan of some sort,” he said. He cleared his throat. “Ah — any suggestions?”
“I would suggest getting out of here,” said the bard from the floor.
“I meant actionable suggestions,” said Karyl. “Specific ones.”
“Escaping,” said the bard.
“Why did they capture you?” said the stranger in the corner. She shifted forward and favored them each with a long, hard stare. “The rogues only capture for ransom money. Forgive me, but none of you look like there is a valuable price attached to your health and well-being.”
“You’re forgiven,” said the bard.
Thorn exchanged a glance with Karyl, who was carefully, but just barely, restraining himself from looking at the rebel queen, who was keeping her thoughts to herself.
“They came across us in the dark,” Thorn offered, shrugging. “I suppose we looked like easy targets.”
She scrutinized him the closest, last of all, but apparently had no objection to anything she found, for she settled back into her corner. For such a young woman, she had an intense stare.
“Well, that makes no sense to me, but if it settles your mind, then feel free to believe it. There is no escaping,” she said offhandedly. “Believe me, I have tried. Their trick is to keep you in here until you are paid for. If you have ten minutes a few times a day to be taken out, you are fortunate, and it will be under heavy guard. They travel at night, sleep during the day.”
“Do they camp in the woods?” asked Ruben, finally shaking free of Graic and stumbling more or less to his feet.
“They have no fixed home that I can tell.”
“Do they feed us?”
“They haven’t yet.”
“I know that, I simply —” He stopped and looked at her. “How long have they had you in here?”
“Two days,” she said shortly.
Ruben handed her his water flask. It was fortunate that he had filled it up at the last stream, because she drank it dry, and handed it back to him, wiping her mouth and hiccupping a little. Irae found a piece of bread in her pocket and handed it over as well.
“Who are you?”
“Lisca Felcin.”
Irae suddenly came alive again, as though someone had lit a fire inside her. “Felcin,” she repeated. “Of the Balfour Felcins.”
“Yes. Sir Batrek is my father.”
“Which answers the question of how you would have come to be here.” Irae folded her arms and looked on the girl with something that looked a great deal like disgust to Thorn. “Your father is one of the richest, most influential men in the steward’s entourage.”
“Indeed he is,” said the girl, lifting her chin, “and in fact the steward is no longer a steward, but the king. You’ll do well to show a bit more respect when you speak of him.”
Irae opened her mouth, but Karyl put a heavy hand on her shoulder, and she closed it again.
“We have no quarrel with the king,” he said, “it is only that it would be a great deal easier on us, if he were able to get rid of the highwaymen.”
“Of course it would,” said Lisca Felcin. “But he is working on it. Rome was not built in a day, you know, and there is more than one faction of bandits operating in this kingdom. There is even talk of them being foreigners, coming in to Ainsea to swell the ranks of the local rogues.”
“You seem to know a great deal about it,” said Irae stiffly.
The girl shrugged. “My father often brings his work home with him, I suppose. My family has been privileged to meet with the king and dine at his table twice in the past month.”
Irae’s mouth was moving as though she were chewing rocks. “And how do you find the king?”
Lisca said, “He is the kindest man I have ever met.”
“Well, then!” said Thorn, as yet another unwinnable fight seemed to be in the offing. He stood up but had to bend his head to avoid striking it on the ceiling. The cart rattled and tipped a little with the change in weight distribution. “If they stop at daylight, that gives us a few hours to put together a plan. “
“A plan for what?” said Irae.
“For escaping,” Thorn said. “I thought that would be obvious.”
“But the king’s favorite over there said that escape was impossible,” said Irae, in a tone of voice that he guessed was calculated to annoy.
Thorn eyed her. “This display of pettiness is beneath you,” he said.
“How about this one, then.” She folded her arms and turned her head away. Thorn sighed and seated himself between Ruben and Lisca.
“You can help me, then,” he told them briskly. “We need a basis, something to start with. I realize that Karyl already asked for this, but do you have any suggestions?”
“Don’t get caught in the first place,” said Lisca.
“You are not being as helpful as I’d hoped.”
“I don’t know how you think we are going to manage this,” said Ruben. His brow was furrowed, and for once, he was not smiling. “Karyl is injured, and in no condition to fight, and he is our greatest asset. Lully’s arm is broken, and she’s in no position to run. Given that running and fighting are our two likeliest options and we can do neither, it seems unlikely that we could get anywhere, even if we did manage to escape, and since escaping is the biggest impossibility of all, this whole exercise is an example of the absolutely hopeless futility of life.”
Thorn stared at him. “Not what I was expecting, from you,” he said, “but a basis nonetheless. Many thanks.”
The bard threw his hands up in the air, and his smile reappeared, but it was more like a wince.
“So, you’ve pointed out that we need a third option,” Thorn went on, putting things into order in his mind. “And that the initial step is the greatest difficulty. So, if we get past the escaping bit, the rest should follow easily.”
“That is not at all what I said,” said Ruben, but Lisca stirred and sat up straight.
“If we could escape,” she said, “I think it is slightly less impossible to follow through after that.”
“Very good.” Thorn rubbed at his forehead with his thumb, thoughtfully. “Well. You know, of course, that I’ve had a few altercations with authorities.”
“Weren’t you almost hanged, once?” murmured Ruben.
“And you know that I’ve escaped.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Well, it wasn’t always before I had been caught, you see.”
“Are you telling me,” said the bard, suddenly clearly delighted almost beyond speaking, “that you not only —” He caught himself, “—know Riskel,, but that you can pick locks?”
Lisca shot Thorn a very sharp, direct look, but he ignored it in favor of attempting to shush Ruben.
“We don’t want to give anything away,” he said.
The rest of the occupants of the cart were now paying close attention, and so it took very little convincing for Thorn to extricate two hair pins from Lully. He concealed them in his cloak, and half-stood again, head ducked, to look out t
he small high window.
“Not long now before dawn,” he said. “Will they let us out first, Lady Felcin?”
“Lisca, please,” she said. “I believe they will.”
“And when will you know whether you can get us gone, once I’ve broken us free?”
She gave him a small, secretive smile.
“I only need to see who is on guard,” she said. “Or else we’ll have to wait.”
He gave her an approving nod and ignored the snort of distaste from the general direction of Irae’s corner.
They rode the rest of the way in relative silence, apart from Ruben’s introduction of them all and suggestion that Lisca call him Ben, as all his friends did. When the cart finally turned from the road and rumbled to a stop, Thorn could feel them all tense, could hear their scurrying heart beats.
A scrabbling noise, a jangling, and then the door opened, creaking loudly. They were bathed in the rose-gold light of a new dawn.
“Out,” said the strangely soft, commanding voice of the leader of the highwaymen.
He lifted a hand to assist the women as they stepped down from the cart, not seeming at all bothered by the fact that they uniformly ignored him. He was tall and rangy, dressed like his fellows all in black, with a mask covering the majority of his face, though he had removed his hat. The black cloth accentuated a flat, shallow moon of a face, and his black clothing only accentuated the paleness of what could be seen of his face, hands, and hair. Even his eyelashes were pale. His eyes were blue.
Karyl dropped down from the cart, wincing, and lifted Lully after him, but his strength was clearly failing him, and he set her down rather abruptly. Lisca leapt out but stumbled when she landed. Thorn caught her, as he happened to be standing near. She held onto his hand as she righted herself, and gave him a curious look, followed by a smile.
“I think I know why they captured you,” she said.
Self-consciously, he tugged his hair down over his ears.
In the light, he could finally put his finger on what had struck him as so familiar about the
young noblewoman. Her face was a face from the past, one he had not seen in nearly seven years. His breath caught in his throat. It couldn’t be —
It couldn’t be, of course. The girl he had left behind, all that time ago, would have been in her early twenties by now, near his own age, not the fourteen or so that this one appeared to be. And she was less gangly, her face broader and her nose shallower, and though her hair was the same dirty blonde and her skin was just as pale, there were no freckles on her face. And he remembered the freckles very well.
Also, the eyes were different. The same shape, perhaps the same color, he couldn’t remember — but he did remember that the girl he had known when young had never looked at him like this. She had never looked at him as though he were a stranger, not even before they had met.
He swallowed thickly and tried to find words. He had no time for them, however. He was shoved along in line with the rest of them, directed towards the underbrush. There was a guard for each of them, as they were allowed to stretch their legs and relieve themselves in the brush. The terrain around them had not changed as they traveled through the night, but Thorn was surprised to see how much closer the looming mountains to the north appeared. They were nearly in the foothills, and the leader of the rogues had chosen to camp in a small copse of trees, hiding them from the road.
Thorn made a quick assessment of how much further it would be to reach Rindor, and then turned to examine the camp itself.
The highwaymen all wore masks, tied closely about their faces, and were dressed uniformly in black, though their actual modes of dress and style of garments differed widely. There were a lot of rags and even more holes, things were tied shut or tied together, and a great deal of their clothing had obviously been liberated from its original owners. One man even wore the remains of a black mourning dress over his patched-knee trousers. Still, for a group of dirty bandits, they seemed in incredibly good cheer.
Neither Thorn nor any of his group looked much better by this point. Their own clothes were torn and dirty from travel and the fight in the dark. More than a few bruises and bloody spots were revealed by the burgeoning light. The only one who seemed to have escaped injury entirely was Graic, probably because she had just sat on someone.
The horses were tied here and there throughout the makeshift camp, and the prison cart was pulled well into the grouping. They would have to be exceptionally silent to escape. The men were milling about through the camp, preparing for rest. A small cookfire had been lit, an a few jackrabbits smoked on it already. Thorn’s stomach lurched and rumbled.
Thorn was directed, by means of a few well-placed shoves, back toward the cart. The rest of the prisoners joined him shortly. The leader of the rogues stood in front of them with his hands clasped behind his back and looked over them.
“A fine catch indeed,” he said. “Someone of great importance to one of the king’s close associates and of even greater importance to the king himself. As for the rest of you, fear not. If no one wants to pay for your bodies while alive, I know a doctor who might pay a great deal for them otherwise. No one is without value to me, you see.”
“And who precisely are you?” Irae spoke, though her voice was so low and sounded so matter-of-fact that Thorn scarcely recognized it.
The rogue laughed. “So you can spread my reputation for me? Thank you, milady, but no thank you. You have no need to know my name, and I have no need of your assistance when it comes to my own fame.” He stopped and cocked his head at her. “At any rate,” he said, “I know perfectly well who you are. I suppose that gives me yet another advantage in this business relationship of ours. Now, you’ve managed to patch each other up quite well, so I feel virtually no qualms about sending you back to your cage and putting you to bed for the night.” He waved them back to the cart. Karyl stumbled as he stepped up, and half-rolled into it; the rest of them arranged themselves around him, staring for a last few greedy moments at the sunlight before the doors slammed shut. Again, the clanking, the noise of the chain wrapping round, and the lock snicking shut. They could hear a genteel chuckle from the other side of the doors, and then nothing but the distant sounds of the men of the camp settling down.
Lisca got to her knees, but Thorn put a warning hand on her arm.
“We should wait till they are all asleep.”
“I was just shifting,” she whispered back.
“Oh.” He let her go. “Did you find out what you needed to?”
“I did. If you can get us out of here, I can get us back on the road.”
“How?” hissed Irae.
“The guard who will be on first watch. There will be only one. We will need to hit him over the head.”
“And I suppose he’s just going to sit still and let you do so?” Irae’s skills of sarcasm had really begun to come into their own over the last few days, Thorn thought.
“Yes,” said Lisca, unperturbed, “he is. We have arranged it.”
Irae made a huffing noise, but apparently had nothing to say. Thorn raised his eyebrows at Lisca, who smiled gently at him. A smile so familiar, it made his heart ache, though he had only seen it on this face once before.
“I know you have no reason to, at present,” she said, “but you must trust me.”
The words fell out of his mouth before he was quite ready for them to. “I do trust you.”
“I have questions,” said the legendarian. “Even should we escape, which seems unlikely, and even should we get back on the road, which also seems unlikely, there still remains the problem of Karyl and Lully.” He gestured towards Karyl, who was slumped against the wall with his head down. “We cannot walk at any great pace, and they will simply catch us again.”
“That is why,” said Thorn, “we are going to steal their horses.”
The arguments that ensued were quiet, at least. It was Irae who put forth the strongest protestation, and when the dust had cleared she
was sitting on her knees, leaning forward, glaring at Thorn.
“It would be better to take the cart.”
“They unharnessed the horses. And it will be too loud.”
“So much louder than the horses?”
“Much louder, and much slower.”
“This is a ridiculous plan that will never work,” she said.
“A ridiculous plan is better than no plan at all,” said Thorn. “I don’t see you coming up with anything.” If she had been able to glare any more fiercely, he would have caught on fire. “Look,” he said, “it’s either this, or we sit in this cart until someone pays to set us free. Who do you think that is likely to be?”
She had nothing to say to that, or, at least, nothing that she was willing to say in front of Ruben and Lisca. Thorn could see her biting her tongue and prodded her a little more gently.
“We will have to move swiftly,” he said. “Give us another hour, remaining silent, and then we put the plan into action. I will spring the lock. Lisca will deal with the guard. Ruben will assist Karyl and Lully towards the road, while Jelen — Jelen, will you help me with the horses?”
Her lips were tight. “You do not have the right to order me to do anything,” she whispered.
“I’m not ordering,” he whispered back. “I’m asking.”
He held a hand out to her, and she considered it for a moment. His confidence faltered. With Karyl out of commission, she was his strongest ally, and the most trusted. How was he supposed to pull this off if she wouldn’t help?
“I need you,” he said, his voice low.
To his great relief, her hand slid into his almost before he finished speaking.
They waited in silence, listening to the sounds of the camp gradually wind down and drift off. It was full daylight now, though with the thickness of the trees overhead it was not as bright outside as he might have expected. At long last, heart beating so strongly he could feel his pulse jumping in his fingertips, he stirred. Stood, stretched his legs, hunched his back, ducked his head, and made his way to the barred window.
