Caile fought back the wave of nausea and faintness that washed over him.
What's done is done,
he told himself. He grabbed one of Lindy's limp legs and tried to pull him up, but the man was too massive to lift. Seeing no other options, Caile instead stomped on Lindy's rump and forced him inch by inch down into the passageway. On the last kick, Lindy's body fell and landed below with the sickening noise of bones snapping. Caile lowered himself into the passageway to find Lindy's head twisted backward at a grotesque angle.
“I'm truly sorry,” Caile said, yanking Lindy's cloak free and pilfering the battle-axe and a belt knife from Lindy's dead body. Lastly, he yanked free his own boot knife from Lindy's neck and wiped the blood from the blade.
With the weapons and cloak in hand, Caile pulled himself back up into the room and covered the passageway entrance with the broken pieces of the floor-stone. He donned Lindy's faded black cloak and hacked the bottom foot and half off so that it wouldn't drag on the ground. With the cloak on, he was able to tuck the battle-axe up against his chest and keep it hidden. The boot knife he stowed in one boot, and the other knife he put into his belt.
Not wasting another moment, he strode out of the room, leaving the door wide open and walked calmly down the corridor. Boldness had served well in the past, and that was his only semblance of a plan now. Back in Sol Valaróz, Caile had snuck into all sorts of places he wasn't supposed to go simply because he had learned to walk as if he knew where he was going. People rarely questioned someone who walked with confidence and a sense of authority.
Caile knew a sentinel passed by his room every quarter hour, but with any luck the guard would think nothing of Lindy being gone since the door was wide open, and Caile was also gone. In all likelihood, the sentinel would assume Lindy had escorted Caile to the privy or to get a late meal in the kitchen. That left Caile free to barge right through the entire keep to his men, or so he hoped.
He strode down the corridor, trying not to think about what he had just done. He had killed several men before, but all of them had been in battleâeither pirates from the Old World or highwaymen. This was the first time he had ever killed someone in cold blood.
You did it to save your men, so it's not murder,
he told himself and tried to focus on the task at hand. The entire keep seemed to be asleep, and he met no one in the main corridor or in the side corridor leading to the training yard. Outside the air was crisp and pungent, reeking of smoke and soot. The moon had already set, and Caile surmised it was only a few hours before dawn. He heard distant voices from the armory to his left, and the faint orange glow of the forges cast long shadows across the training yard, but otherwise there was no sign of life.
Caile grabbed a wooden bucket beside one of the drinking troughs, filled it with water, and walked across the training yard to the stairwell leading down to his men's barracks. The single flight of stairs led to a dank, narrow corridor, lit only periodically by wall torches. Some fifty paces down the corridor, a half-asleep sentinel stood guarding the door to the barracks. He didn't notice Caile approaching until Caile was almost upon him.
“What's this?” the guard asked, groggily lowering his short pike toward Caile's chest.
“Water for the Prince's men.”
“Water?”
“That's right,” Caile said, and he flung the bucket into the guard's face.
The man flailed back from the sudden onslaught of water and fumbled for his pike. Before he could get a good grip on it again, Caile hefted his axe from his cloak and swung it in a tight arc right into the crook of the guard's neck. The man collapsed with a gurgling noise and did not move again. Caile knelt down over him and yanked the keys from his belt. There were only three keys to choose from, and the second one he tried opened the door the barracks.
“It's me,” Caile said, knowing his men would have been awoken by the commotion.
“Caile?” Lorentz hissed from inside. “What are you doing?”
“I'm saving you. Let's go.”
Lorentz stepped from the pitch-black barracks into the dim light of the corridor and eyed the slain guard. “Did you get the other one too?”
“What other one?”
“Damnit, Caile, we're not alone down here. There are more prisoners and another guard.”
“No,” Caile muttered, peering deeper down the corridor just as a dark figure came into view.
“What's going on down there?” the second guard asked.
“Uh, nothing,” Caile stammered. “I'm relieving you of duty.”
The man took another step forward and squinted his eyes to get a good look at Caile and the collapsed guard at his feet.
“Halt there a moment,” Caile started to say, but before he could finish, the man swore and ran off in the other direction.
Caile sprinted after him, oblivious to Lorentz's shouts behind him to stop. The guard was portly and didn't move fast. Within a dozen steps, Caile had closed the distance to ten yards, but then the guard inexplicably stopped and reached up to grab something: a rope pulley. Before Caile could reach him, the thrum of a bell rung out overhead sounding the alarm.
“No!” Caile screamed, and he took off the guard's head with one swipe of his axe. Caile stood there over the decapitated man, stunnedâas if in a dreamâand for a moment all was silent, but then other bells sounded overhead, relaying the alarm.
“Caile,” Lorentz yelled from the mouth of the corridor. “Get over here!”
Caile grabbed up the slain guard's pike and rushed back to join his men. Lorentz had taken up the other guard's pike, but the rest of Caile's men were unarmed. Caile handed off the pike he held and the knife from his belt, but held onto the axe for himself and pushed his way forward to Lorentz's side at the top of the stairs. A few scattered guards were running their way from the barracks, but otherwise, none of the Emperor's troops had yet taken up the warning call.
“Damnit, Caile, you should have just run away on your own,” Lorentz said. “Now you've endangered your life.”
“You can lecture me later. Right now we need to get out of here and to the gates. To the armory, go.”
Caile sprinted forward before Lorentz could protest, and his men had no choice but to follow him. The three of them with weapons rushed to the forefront, and the brief skirmish in the center of the training yard left the guards from the armory dead. Caile's two unarmed men took up weapons from the slain guards, and they pushed forward again. Before they reached the armory though, a full regiment of the Emperor's Imperial Guard marched into the training yard to bar their escape. The Imperial Guardsmen were fully armed with long swords and bucklers, and they outnumbered Caile's men, four to one.
“Go, get out of here,” Lorentz said, holding Caile back.
“I'm not leaving you,” Caile said, despair washing over him.
“You have to. Our only chance is for you to live and fight another day. We'll buy you time.”
“But where?”
“To your room, fool,” Lorentz hissed.
Across the yard, the captain of the Imperial Guardsmen shouted a command, and the regiment surged forward.
“Use the passageway,” Lorentz yelled, pushing Caile away. “Get back to Kal Pyrthin and free your father. Go!”
Caile handed over his axe. “Here, this will serve you better. There's a passage behind the forges that leads to the gates if you can break through.”
“Yes, go,” Lorentz said, shoving Caile away. “Go!”
Caile spun and sprinted back into the corridor from which he had come just as the Imperial Guardsmen reached his men. Shouts and the concussion of swords on shields receded away behind him, and after a moment, Caile realized he was weeping. He wiped away the tears so he could see where he was going and rounded the corner to the main corridor only to run smack into one of the sentinels. The man stumbled backward, and without thinking, Caile kicked him in the face, sending him reeling back to slam into the ground. Caile stomped on his face one more time, then snatched up his mace and raced down the corridor to his room.
He found his bedroom door still wide open and rushed inside to close it behind him. He didn't even bother gathering up the few belongings in his room. Time was of the essence, he knew. He grabbed the bulky table lamp from his nightstand, yanked up the broken floor-stone and lowered himself down into the passageway where he stood on Lindy's corpse while he slid the stone halves back into place overhead.
The table lamp was cumbersome, and Caile had to hold it steady so as not to spill oil on his hands and set himself aflame, but it lit up the passageway well enough. He could clearly make out the footprints in the dust from when Stephen had fetched him a few weeks prior, and he had no trouble navigating the intersecting passages. Before long, he was in the sewers looking for a way out. He didn't dare risk going up into the same cellar where he had met Roanna, but he was certain there were other ways out of the sewer. In fact, there proved to be dozens of exits, depending on what sort of drek he was willing to climb through to get out. None of the choices were appeasing: excrement, fouled water from the bathhouses, slop from butcher shops and millers, oil from the streets, and an assortment of other unidentifiable liquids flowed into the main sewer channel from a multitude of side-passages and shoots. Caile just had to pick one.
Seeing no better options, he picked a broad side-passageway that angled upward and started climbing. The stench was unbearable, and he had to toss aside the lamp so as to have at least one hand free to help climb the steep incline. In the other hand, he used the mace as a walking stick to keep from sliding back into the main passage.
It was a ten-foot climb and at the top Caile yanked himself up into a back alley gutter between a host of shops. He flopped onto the ground and rolled onto his back to breathe in the cool air, not caring that he was soaked in filth. The alley was filled with rancid trash and refuse, but after being in the sewer, the air seemed the sweetest he had ever breathed. When he finally caught his breath, he dragged himself to his feet and cast aside Lindy's sodden cloak.
It was still dark, perhaps an hour before sunrise.
Not much time to get out of the city.
He jogged to the edge of the alley and stopped unsure which way he should go. South was the most direct route to Pyrthinia, but the Emperor would know that, and if the guards hadn't already figured out Caile was gone, they would soon. Without a horse, Caile could probably make it out of the city before daybreak, but then he'd be out in the open on the road and easy to spot. He'd be safer heading east and skirting Forrest Weorcan, but that would take him a week out of the way and by then his father might already be dead. His only other option was to head for the harbor and try to sneak onto a ship making for Valaróz, but that would take even longer than heading west. His father would certainly be executed well before he could make it to Sevol as a stowaway, then travel by foot across the entirety of Valaróz and Pyrthinia to Kal Pyrthin.
East it is then,
he decided.
He moved swiftly, staying close alongside the buildings. There were lights in the windows of a few buildingsâbread makers mostly and a few early-rising craftsmenâbut the city was still largely asleep, and all was quiet except the occasional tolling of a bell from Lightbringer's Keep behind Caile. Those bells were not a good sign, Caile knew, and sure enough, before he had made it more than a few hundred paces eastward, the sound of horsemen approaching echoed through the streets. Caile tucked back into another alleyway, and a few moments later a half dozen of the Emperor's cavalrymen sped by. Caile swore. They would be heading for the east gate, no doubt, to keep an eye out for him trying to escape.
How am I going to get out?
He stood there for a long moment, again weighing the option of heading for the harbor.
Perhaps it would be safer to head back into the sewer for a few days and wait,
he pondered.
A new noise interrupted his contemplation. It was one of the noisy steam engines approaching. Caile tucked himself back into the shadows. The cacophonous cart lumbered his way, and he fully expected it to speed on by, but instead it stopped right as it reached the entrance to the alleyway. The engine slowed to a drumming drone of two intermittent steam pistons. Caile knelt down and peered into the street, the mace in his right hand loose and ready. The steam contraption was much larger than the rickshaw he had ridden in a few weeks before. It appeared to be a wagon drawn by a steam engine, although it was hard to tell in the dark. A lone figure sat at the helm of the controls. Caile shot a glance backward to make sure no one was sneaking up on him from behind. He couldn't be certain, but he felt like the person on the wagon was staring right at him.
“If you're heading east, I could perhaps give you a ride,” the person said over the noise of the engine.
Caile recognized the voice instantly. It was the turnip lady, the sorceress who had saved him from Roanna. “You,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said. “Come quickly. I'd like to be on the road before the sun rises.”
“How do you keep finding me?”
“There's no time for that now. Come. You must trust me.”
More bells sounded from Lightbringer's Keep, and Caile knew more troops would be coming soon to search for him. He didn't like this woman's damned secrecy, but he didn't see that he had any better options.
She's saved me onceâwhy not again?
He darted out of the alley and pulled himself up into the wagon.
“Bury yourself under the turnips and stay quiet,” the woman said, and before he could reply she was at the controls, throttling the engine up to speed.
Caile laid down and wormed his way beneath the turnips as the wagon lurched forward. The hard vegetables were far from comfortable, but they were big enough to keep him from feeling suffocated when he burrowed his head down beneath them. The noise of the engine was near deafening, and it took several seconds for Caile to notice when the wagon suddenly slowed and came to a stop.