It was Sergeant Caulder. His face was a mess of yellow-tinged bruising, and his chin was crusted with red from where his lip had been split. The fingernails on his hands were gone, and Arcturus tried not to look at the pair of cruel metal pliers clutched in the torturers’ hands.
Crawley was one of them, while the other was a hunchbacked old man with a scraggly beard and a toothless mouth.
“Step away from him,” Prince Harold barked, jerking the crossbow.
“You…,” Crawley said, staring at the three of them.
“You’ll be quiet, or I’ll put this through your head,” Arcturus growled, with as much confidence as he could muster.
Ulfr hurried forward and sawed at the sergeant’s bonds, where his arms, legs and neck had been tied to the high-backed chair.
“I should have known,” Crawley hissed, staring down at the dwarf with venom in his eyes.
Ulfr glanced up at him, then struck Crawley between the legs with a clenched fist. The steward fell to his knees, clutching himself.
“Always wanted to do that,” Ulfr said cheerfully.
Sergeant Caulder stood shakily, and gave Crawley a kick in the ribs for good measure.
“Careful, we need him,” Arcturus said, wincing as the steward keeled over with a grunt.
“Do we need him?” Sergeant Caulder asked, nodding to the other torturer.
“No,” Prince Harold said.
“Good,” Sergeant Caulder said. “Kill him.”
“Wait…,” the torturer began. Prince Harold’s crossbow juddered and then the man was kicking and twitching his way to hell.
“He … he deserved it,” Prince Harold muttered, staring in horror at the dying man. Arcturus recognized the doubt and self-disgust in the boy’s voice. A moment later, the prince was emptying the contents of his stomach in the corner, and Arcturus felt numb when he thought about what they had done.
But what else could they have done? It would have been too risky to tie up the torturer. He tried to shake the guilt from his thoughts, but the feeling remained heavy on his heart.
Crawley stared at the dead man through wide, terrified eyes, and Ulfr lunged forward and lifted him to his feet.
“If you don’t behave, you’ll follow him. Understand?” the dwarf snarled, bringing Crawley’s face close. The terrified steward nodded hurriedly.
“You’d better be a damned fine actor,” Arcturus said. “Because you’ve had a sudden change of heart. The Twenty-Fourth are going to escort the nobles to a hidden location outside of Vocans, and you’re coming along for the ride.”
“Is that the plan, then?” Sergeant Caulder said, removing Crawley’s hooded cloak from his shoulders and throwing it around his own. “We’re going to walk out in full view of some friendly soldiers?”
“I’m afraid so,” Arcturus replied.
Sergeant Caulder grinned.
“I like it.”
CHAPTER
49
ULFR LED THE WAY once more, with Sergeant Caulder and Crawley behind him and Arcturus and Harold at the back, their crossbows loaded and ready to fire should Crawley get any fancy ideas.
All but Crawley and Ulfr wore hoods, which made Arcturus nervous. Though it seemed that the uniform had been designed for anonymity while inciting riots and setting fires in Corcillum, he had not seen many rebels with their hoods up while inside the castle. It was suspicious for three of them to wear them up, but it could not be helped.
Still, with Crawley walking with them, most of the rebels kept their eyes to the ground—it seemed that Arcturus wasn’t the only one who found him terrifying.
Arcturus’s back prickled with sweat when they finally made it to the ground level and walked on the marble of the atrium floor. Their footsteps echoed loudly, and he knew the eyes of a hundred crossbowmen were upon him as they headed to the double doors in the side of the atrium.
“Open it,” Crawley ordered, and the steward was indeed a good actor, for his voice was laced with disdain.
Ulfr pushed open the double doors and then they were through, into the leather-covered floor of the summoning room.
Then Arcturus stopped in his tracks. For there were not just the dozen soldiers of the Twenty-Fourth within the room. There were twice that number.
“Seize them,” Crawley cried out, throwing himself to the floor.
But the heavy doors of the room had been closed just in time, and his voice did not filter into the atrium. Even so, the soldiers, who had been sitting cross-legged in groups of three or four, struggled to their feet and stared at the new arrivals with surprise.
“I said seize them,” Crawley shouted. “Or there will be consequences!”
He was rewarded with a quick kick to the face from Sergeant Caulder. Arcturus lowered his hood and stepped forward.
“Where are Rotter and Sergeant Percival?” he asked.
Rotter shouldered his way to the front of the crowd and hurried to join them. He ruffled Arcturus’s hair, and Arcturus grinned, even if it made him look less impressive to the onlooking soldiers. Then Sergeant Caulder and Rotter shook hands, and it seemed to Arcturus that their military ranks were the only thing preventing them from a relieved embrace.
“I’m here,” Percival announced, crossing his arms. “Here with the Thirty-Eighth.”
He motioned at the men around him, the soldiers Arcturus did not recognize.
“They wandered in here, just like us. But Barcroft doesn’t trust the men who didn’t head for Corcillum as ordered.”
“Nor should he,” Crawley snarled, his voice muffled from where he was holding his injured nose with his hands.
“Why did you come here?” Arcturus asked, pointing to a second man with a sergeant’s chevrons on his shoulder. “To join the rebels?”
The man simply shook his head, as if he did not know the answer.
“We want no part of this,” Percival said, his voice almost despairing. “We didn’t start this war.”
“You’re in this,” Crawley hissed. “Whether you like it or not. And it’s time to pick a side. This pack of fools and their forlorn hope, or an organized army of rebels with the imprisoned heirs of the nobility as insurance.”
“The heirs have escaped and are waiting on the top floor,” Arcturus said. “We need you to escort them out of here, as if Crawley had ordered you to take them to a new secure location.”
Crawley began to speak, but a warning growl from Rotter silenced the man. Arcturus turned to Percival. It seemed the other sergeant was deferring to him, and the men were watching Percival’s face expectantly.
“That is a lot to ask of us,” Percival said.
“Help us, and the rebellion will be over. You could go back to your old lives,” Arcturus argued. “Give us to Barcroft and you’ll have joined them. Then you’ll be trusting men like Crawley to do right by you … if the rebellion even succeeds at all.”
He knew his argument was weak, but he spoke with all the conviction he could muster. The fact was, right now the rebels were winning, and he was asking the soldiers to risk it all for the losing side.
Still, Percival hesitated. Doubt was written across his face as clearly as if on a page from a book.
“You all know me,” Sergeant Caulder said, stomping in front of Arcturus and addressing the crowded soldiers. “We’ve fought together. Lost friends together. Stood shoulder to shoulder while the baying hordes of orcdom advanced to take our lives.”
Arcturus could hear murmured agreement and see nods of approval from the watching soldiers.
“But why do we fight?” Sergeant Caulder said. “It’s not for honor. Not for money. Not for the love of battle.”
He paused.
“It’s for our families. For our homeland. Our way of life.”
Scattered applause echoed through the summoning room. Though Arcturus sensed a change in mood, he did not dare to hope. Not yet.
“But the rebels do not stand for that,” he said, pointing at Crawley. “They threaten you for
your obedience. They do not ask; they demand.”
He sighed and stepped closer to them, bringing himself into the light of the torches in sconces on the walls.
“They may call themselves our saviors, and preach freedom from tyranny. But would a savior do this?”
He lowered his hood and held up his hands, displaying his bruises and mutilated fingertips.
“This is the work of tyrants in the making. These are not good men. They are men who want power for themselves.”
“But King Alfric is no better!” shouted a soldier from the back. Men nodded, and Arcturus’s heart fell. “Why should we risk our lives for that bastard?”
“Don’t do it for him,” said a voice from behind Arcturus. “Do it for me.”
Prince Harold stepped out of the shadows and threw off his cloak and hood. He stared out at the assembled soldiers, letting them see him, see the conviction on his face.
“My father is a bad king,” he stated matter-of-factly.
“Hear, hear,” a soldier growled.
“He taxes the poor to build his palace—a temple to his own vanity. He underpays Hominum’s brave troops who fight for his safety. He drinks and gambles while the country starves. But I will not be that king. So I make you a promise now.”
Harold took a deep breath, and Arcturus with him—he had no idea what the prince was going to say.
“I will replace him as ruler, as soon as I am free. I will feed the poor, bolster the army and cease construction on that damned monstrosity of a palace. This, I swear. Upon my honor.”
The men stared at him in silence. Then a single man began to clap. Another, then another joined in, until the entire room had burst into applause. Arcturus even heard cheering.
Prince Harold turned to Arcturus with a grin, then walked to the men and began shaking their hands.
“Looks like we’ve got an army of our own,” Rotter said, picking up Crawley by the collar and brushing down the steward’s crumpled clothes. “Got to look presentable when we head upstairs.”
Arcturus watched as the men gathered their spears, shields and crossbows, and the wave of relief he had felt was suddenly replaced with apprehension. This had been the easy part. Now they would walk into the belly of the beast and steal the key to the future of Hominum. In full view of the rebel army.
CHAPTER
50
THEY POURED OUT OF the summoning room and formed into ranks and files. Percival bellowed orders, sorting them accordingly in the atrium proper. The sergeant ignored the dark forms in the shadows of the floors above, even when a handful of crossbowmen approached the railings and looked curiously below. It was a brazen display—but if they were going to do this, there would be no half measures.
Still, as Arcturus joined the front of the ranks and began the slow march up the stairs, he could not help but look around and see the terrified faces of the soldiers around him. Sweat beaded on foreheads, and nervous hands twisted and tapped spear hafts. He imagined the procession through the eyes of the crossbowmen. Would they notice? Or was he making too much of it?
Perhaps he was, because in those nerve-curdling moments of panicked walking, not a single rebel shouted out or spoke. Even Crawley was silent, doing little more than walking beside Ulfr and Percival. It seemed that Sergeant Caulder’s loaded and half-lifted crossbow behind him was more than enough of a deterrent.
Time crawled. Every step was agony, every jingle of metal and whispered word seeming to echo deafeningly down the corridor.
Men watched from their rooms, but Arcturus did not risk looking at them. He simply focused on putting one step in front of another. They passed the dead rebel, then the provost’s office, and finally the sticky patches of blood that seemed to stink like a charnel house in Arcturus’s enhanced nostrils.
Then they were there. Thirty-odd men in double file, arrayed in full battle gear outside the room the nobles had been kept in. He heard Elaine’s cry of joy, and the hiss to be silent from Alice.
Arcturus saw Edmund being helped into line by Prince Harold, the royal’s cloak thrown aside. The flash of Gelert being infused, and then Sacharissa pacing beside him, her blue eyes turned up at Arcturus with adoration. He was forgiven. And he was terrified.
In that moment, it was hard to infuse her again—but it would have been too suspicious to have her in view. She reluctantly stood in the pentacle, and then she was within him once more.
Rotter hurried to wrap bindings around the nobles’ hands, followed swiftly by Arcturus. Crawley was harangued to the front once more, whispered orders and threats drifting down the corridor.
Arcturus was so tired. So terribly, terribly tired. The blood loss, lack of sleep and hunger were catching up to him. He wanted to fall to his knees and sleep for a week. But Sacharissa’s gentle support in his consciousness bolstered his resolve.
They marched. It was a show now. Percival snarled insults at Prince Harold, while another soldier cursed at Zacharias with a vehemence so passionate that Arcturus almost grinned. Sometimes acting and the truth were closely intertwined.
“Move it!” Crawley shouted just as they approached Barcroft’s headquarters. “Get the prison—”
Sergeant Caulder’s bloodied hand clapped to his mouth, silencing the steward before his voice would be recognized. Crawley had been too cowardly to shout a warning, but too treacherous to remain silent. A master stroke.
Arcturus waited with bated breath as they continued on. But there was no movement. Only the sound of Sergeant Caulder’s muttered threats, and a whimper of pain and fear from Crawley as the crossbow bolt was pressed into his spine.
Again they moved through the gauntlet of watching eyes. Now the rebels were riled up, and they cursed the nobles and Arcturus as the procession passed by. Arcturus didn’t want to think of the clamoring noise reaching Barcroft’s room. Ultimately, the general was the only man he knew of who could supersede Crawley’s orders—he or perhaps some of the officers in the army. Where Crawley fitted into the hierarchy, Arcturus did not know, and he suspected Crawley didn’t either. But they could use this disorganization to their advantage.
They reached the balcony, and the hundreds of crossbow bolts waiting to be hurled into their backs. Then, down the stairs. Arcturus held his breath, waiting for a challenge. But none came. None at all. In fact, the men did not even shout a curse, or shift from their positions. They were like living statues, disciplined to the last.
The double doors loomed on the bottom floor. Arcturus’s heart leaped as they creaked open, Ulfr heaving them apart with the brute strength of his stocky arms. The men were moving quickly now, eager to escape the waiting ambush.
For once, Arcturus welcomed the biting wind that snatched at his cloak, and the grim darkness that enveloped them. They had made it.
“Stop them!”
A scream from above. Barcroft, leaning out over the balcony, a trembling finger pointing at them. The tramp of a hundred rushing feet rumbled.
“Shut it, now!” Sergeant Caulder bellowed.
The doors began to close, ever so slowly.
“Shields!” Percival called.
A dozen men responded to the order, the rear guard turning and kneeling in one smooth motion. Bolts whistled, and Arcturus heard the thunder of the impacts, turning the upraised shields into pincushions of splintered wood. Then the doors crashed closed, and they were in pitch darkness.
“Hellfire,” Prince Harold cursed.
Ulfr shoved his way through the shield men, and Arcturus heard the jingle of keys in the lock.
“It won’t hold them for long,” the dwarf called. “We need to move. Now!”
Rotter picked up Edmund, for the boy was barely able to walk, and then it was a mad, bone-juddering rush from the paving stones of the courtyard to the drawbridge. Behind, Arcturus could already hear the pounding of fists on the doors. The rebels would catch up too soon.
The wood of the bridge creaked and shook as the soldiers sprinted across it. For a moment Arcturus t
hought the platform would snap in two, but then he was across on solid ground once more, and there was Ulfr, leading the way into the low, grassy hills that surrounded Vocans.
Then he stopped. The drawbridge.
That was it.
Arcturus turned and used the last dribble of mana in his body to power up a wyrdlight, barely larger than a firefly. In a rush, he summoned Sacharissa, the pentacle fizzing as her dark form flared into existence. Then he was running across the bridge once more, his axe drawn.
At the base of the bridge, the light revealed two iron hinges embedded in the wood, though the mechanisms were so rusted that it looked like they had not been used in years. These kept the bridge attached to the castle, along with the two thick ropes on the end that raised and lowered the enormous rectangle of wood.
Arcturus lifted his axe and hammered it down, sending a shower of sparks flying across the dark water. The light revealed a smear of bright metal where he had damaged the hinge. Barely a scratch.
“Think,” Arcturus cursed.
Sacharissa whined behind him, and Arcturus ordered her to begin work on the nearest rope. She snarled and went at it with a vengeance, leaving him to his dilemma.
Beyond, Arcturus could hear the hammer of weapons against the main doors of Vocans. Holes were appearing in the planking, casting beams of light across the courtyard. He had but a few minutes.
He slashed again in desperation, and missed completely, instead sinking the blade into the wood itself. It bit deep and was almost stuck, the water-rotted wood splintering easily beneath the cold edge of his steel.
“Wood,” Arcturus whispered.
He wrenched the axe free and chopped down once more, hacking in the dark at the wood that surrounded the hinges. Behind him, there was a snap as Sacharissa’s teeth parted one of the taut ropes holding the bridge in place. It lurched to the side, and he fell to one knee.
“Arcturus!”
His name drifted on the wind—someone in the escape party had noticed he was missing. No time for that now. The first hinge broke free from the surrounding wood with a crack, loosened by the shifting bridge. He began on the next one, swinging with wild abandon.