A storm, Soap had predicted. And the seaman was right. The wind carried a plaintive desert cry.
Date palms by the market wells swayed crazily. Wind whipped around corners and down the deserted lanes. All the torches fronting the main roads were blown out, and the stalls and inns were quickly shuttered.
Now in a desert robe again, Falconer shielded his face with part of his turban against the biting dust like everyone else they saw. He had covered the waterskins on the back of the horse with Bernard’s shawl. But the storm made such precautions unnecessary. He and Nebo were merely two more robed figures struggling against the wind, leading a horse and a loudly protesting mule.
Both men held the turbans to their heads with one hand, while the other gripped the reins. The horse pulled fretfully at its traces, although not overmuch. It was, after all, a desert animal. The mule, however, twice nearly pulled Nebo off his feet in its frantic attempt to flee. Finally Falconer shouted, “Wait!”
He tied the horse to a wall stanchion, pulled Bernard’s fancy shawl off the waterskins, and retied it over the donkey’s face. The animal disliked it but at least it stopped trying to drag Nebo backward down the lane.
When a turn in the lane blocked the wind somewhat, Falconer called, “What if the tinderbox is snuffed out? How will we light the torches?”
Nebo’s booming laugh was out of place with the night. “First you worry storm does not come, now it is too great?”
Falconer muttered an admonition, “O ye of little faith.”
“What say you?”
“That you are right and I am wrong.”
The darkness opened into the main square. The wind felt gentler here, without the alleys’ funneling effect. The torches remained unlit, however. A few unshuttered windows beckoned windswept passersby into cozy inns. A few people rushed past, too concerned with fleeing the storm to pay Falconer and Nebo any mind. The fortress parapets, and any guards stationed there, were lost to the gloom.
Nebo hissed, “Do you see our friends?”
Falconer’s eyes continued their search around the square. Overhead, the reed mats rattled angrily against the wind. Then he spied two men gripping turbans and moving slowly. “There.”
Bernard was dressed as Falconer had instructed, the yellow robe whipping behind him like a flag. “Take that off,” Falconer said in greeting. “There’s no one here to question why you’re out.”
Bernard plucked the cape from his neck and lofted it skyward. The wind whipped it away. “Then we’re still going ahead?”
“Why should we not?” Nebo replied for them both.
“I was just…I suppose I am being afraid and cowardly.”
Falconer and Nebo exchanged a glance. “There not anything cowardly about warrior knowing fear,” Nebo told him.
To their surprise, Wadi agreed. “I glad you with us this night.”
“The storm is a gift,” Falconer said. “We must use it while we still can.”
Falconer watched the young banker’s shoulders straighten. Bernard took the horse’s reins from Falconer’s hands. “Then let us do this thing.”
The wharf was utterly deserted. Falconer walked the uneven rock barrier separating the outer harbor from the inner and reflected that the sound of water was clearest in a dry land. Far to his left, waves broke over the top of the port’s outer wall, sending foam and spray cascading over them. To his right, the boats crammed into the inner harbor creaked against one another in constant protest. Falconer saw no one.
He moved at a crouch, searching the boats intently.
Nebo hissed, “What do you seek?”
Explaining his vow of not taking another’s life would take too much time. Falconer held up his hand for patience. The boats were empty of sailors.
Then he spied something, and suddenly the search was not wasted. He leapt into the boat. “Give me your tinderbox.”
The boat stank strongly of fish. Falconer stepped over the pile of nets to a storm lantern lashed tightly to the stern. He slipped his dagger from his belt and sawed through the cable. Storm lanterns, a recent invention, had a series of adjustable vents lining the top of all four sides. A simple flame required air, but wind would extinguish the flame. A storm lantern was designed with a handle to fit around the wrist or be lashed to a cleat so only one face would be presented to the storm. Only the vents protected from the wind would be opened. Falconer crouched low in the vessel, struck a flame in the tinderbox, and transferred it to the lantern.
Nebo’s eyes widened when he realized what Falconer held. Falconer said, “Guards will see the light. We must hurry.”
As they approached, Wadi’s teeth gleamed in the lantern light. It was the first time Falconer had ever seen the man smile. Falconer told them, “Give us ten minutes to get into position. You know where to meet us, yes?”
In reply, Nebo took the lantern. “May Lord I am now learning about be with us this night.”
To either side of the fortress doors, bronze braziers as large as washtubs burned tar-soaked logs. The guards lurked just inside the gates, seeking protection from the storm’s assault. Falconer and Bernard passed unhindered and walked the empty lane flanking the castle’s eastern wall.
A hundred paces inside, Falconer stopped. “Here.”
Bernard released the coil of rope from the saddle and lashed one end to the horn. The desert saddle was high front and back, the horn carved from the same wood that framed the saddle.
Falconer looped the coil around one shoulder. “If you are challenged, flee.”
Bernard climbed into the saddle. “I will not let you down.”
“Listen to what I am saying, Bernard.”
“Go,” the banker said with a shake of his head. He patted the horse’s neck to calm its skittish movement. “Hurry.”
In their earlier tour around the castle, Falconer had selected this entry point for two reasons. If Amelia Henning’s recollections were correct, they now stood on the side closest to the dungeon entrance. The fortress wall had been poorly repaired here, and the crumbling façade offered Falconer a series of handholds. He tightened the turban about his head so only a tiny slit remained open for his eyes, and began to climb.
His face was tight against the stone, and every puff of wind flung grit into the small opening. He felt a shiver of sweaty dread trace down the length of his spine. The stones were so old many crumbled beneath his fingers. He tested each hold in turn, hurrying as much as he possibly could, fearing at any instant a cry of alarm from unseen foes.
Fear
. He had spent most of his adult life living in danger’s maw. In his former life he had been known as a cold man, hard and cruel and incapable of mercy. A stranger to fear. Yet now his heart thundered so swiftly he guarded each step, making time to carefully measure his terror. Time enough to see Matt’s shining face planted there upon the yellow stone. Time to think once more of Amelia Henning and the impact her words, her presence, had on him.
He reached the top and crouched, scouting the empty rampart. His breath seemed as loud as the storm, as though both he and the desert world panted together. He felt his legs quiver, both from the climb and from fright. He searched the yard below, but saw only blackness.
He willed himself to uncoil the rope and toss it over the side. But his muscles refused to unlock.
John Falconer. Born to a woman who worked in a roadside tavern. His father left when he was four. At seven years of age apprenticed to a chimney sweep and ratter who beat Falconer hard and fed him worse. At twelve he lied about his age and ran away to sea. He fought his way through the years and up the ranks. Until finally he won his captaincy when a storm swept the skipper of a slaver overboard. Brought to the Cross by the horror of a wasted life. Brought to here. Clinging to the rampart of a fortress from beyond time. Staring into an inner keep as dark as the pit. Stung by another storm.
Then a new voice rose within his own internal tumult, the storm that no one saw but him. A declaration that did not need volume to speak above the gale.
John Falconer,
the voice whispered over the tempest’s howl. A man loved by an orphan child such that the lad is able to look beyond his own pain and trust him to lead them both upon a vital quest. Befriended by men who trusted him for more than physical strength. Men who were lifted up even in this dark city of slaves and woe by the knowledge that Falconer no longer lived for himself. No longer fought for selfish gain. No longer walked alone. These same men sought the direction he could reveal to them, spoken in words that communicated to their hearts, spoken by a man who was once as they were. And had found the strength to turn away, to change.
Falconer felt himself lifted from the fear and despair. He was filled with the most astonishing sensation. Someone was praying for him. An ally on this earth approached the throne of heaven on his behalf.
What, then, should he fear?
Falconer hoisted the rope off his shoulder, but before he could drop it down the wall, a subtle alteration took hold of the night. The storm still howled over the parapet. But the night was dark no longer.
A volcanic glow rose from the direction of the sea and the harbors. At the same time, a shriek louder than the storm rose from the castle’s front gates.
Again Falconer dropped flat against the parapet stones. Below him, the inner keep suddenly boiled with noise and movement. His cheek pressed to the stones, he looked over the edge as a hundred voices echoed the alarm. A hundred blades. A thousand. Unseen until that moment. He realized that soldiers had been driven inside the castle walls to escape the storm.
There to greet him had he dropped down a moment earlier.
The fact that fear had saved him left him trembling once more. He crouched on the cold stones and watched the light grow to where it colored the horizon like a giant lantern. The soldiers pushed and jostled and shouted as they rushed for the gates, driven to a fierce panic by the news that the inner harbor was on fire. All the city’s fishing vessels, all the attack galleons, all ablaze.
Falconer waited while the noise faded. He looked through the gloom around the keep, then dropped the rope over the side. If there were still soldiers about, they paid no mind to a shadow slipping silently down the wall.
Save for the glow beyond the main gates, the inner keep was utterly dark. Falconer knotted the rope to the back of his belt, turned his back to the burning in the distance, and waited for his vision to adjust. The storm still howled overhead. The wall might have blocked much of the wind, but a constant rain of dust and grit fell into the keep, so thick no doubt both their torches and the soldiers’ campfires had been stifled.
Falconer peered into the dark, fearing Amelia Henning had remembered wrong, wondering what he would do if he could not find what he sought. Then it appeared before him, a hulking shadow that resembled a grave mound more than a hut. Falconer crept forward, his heart pounding so loud he could hear it over the storm.
The dusty murk was so thick he would have walked straight into the two guards had they not chosen that moment to speak.
Falconer was too close to hesitate. As soon as the forms separated themselves from the hut’s shadow, he rushed forward, gripped two handfuls of greasy hair, and brought the heads together hard.
The dungeon guards collapsed at his feet.
Falconer quickly searched one guard’s supine form, then the other. Neither had keys. He felt his way around to the front of the hut. As he feared, the door was locked from within.
He dragged the unconscious guards to the rear of the small structure, thus keeping them from the view of any in the main keep. He tossed their weapons toward the unseen wall, then used their cloth belts to bind their wrists and ankles.
Falconer returned to the front of the hut and the locked door. He untied the rope from his belt and lashed it around the bars that formed a viewing port in the dungeon’s door. Hand over hand, Falconer drew in the rope’s slack. There was so much extra rope his fears had time to rise into certainty that Bernard had untied his end and vanished.
Then the rope grew taut. Falconer tightened it further still and felt a jerk in response. He sighed with shaky relief, took a firmer grip, and hauled back hard.
There was a moment’s hesitation, but only a moment. Then the rope sang through his hands.
Bernard had not merely ignored the flood of warriors racing toward the fire started by Wadi and Nebo. He had remained at the ready.
At Falconer’s tug, Bernard had spurred his horse. The desert steed had obviously been storing up its own share of nervous force, for in the space of a single heartbeat the rope went from coiled at Falconer’s feet to tighter than a noose.
The door exploded from its ancient stone frame.
Falconer did not hesitate one instant. He flew down the stairs so fast he scarcely touched them at all. Speed was his strongest ally now. Speed and surprise.
The storm entered even here, drumming within the windowless stone chamber and causing the torches to flicker nervously. His boots crashed upon the landing. Two tunnels branched out before him. He searched one, then the other, and spotted movement.
He roared as he ran. The jailer was a rotund man with a belt about his bare midriff. His mouth gaped about a scraggly beard at the sight of this bellowing apparition. Falconer struck one blow to the jailer’s right temple, and the man went down hard.
“Byron!”
Falconer made a mess of unlashing the keys from the jailer’s belt.
“Catherine! Kitty!”
The keys would not come free.
“Byron!”
A faint call resounded from somewhere further along the tunnel. Falconer heaved so hard upon the keys he lifted the jailer from the stones. The leather strings fastening the ring to the belt finally gave. The jailer thumped back to the floor with a groan.
“Byron! Kitty!”
Falconer raced down the endless stone tunnel, its ceiling so dismally low he had to move at a crouch.
This time the sound was much clearer. “Say again! I can’t—”
“Here!”
He was guided by a frantic pounding upon one door. Falconer fumbled through the keys, selecting one after the other until one finally fit. The lock creaked back.