Rebels and Fools (The Renegade Chronicles Book 1) (42 page)

Scout
had promised to return to camp under the cover of night—last night. As Klye had
tried to get comfortable with only the thin material of a bedroll between him
and the hard ground, listening to the breathing of his slumbering companions,
he imagined the many terrible things that could have happened in twenty-four
hours.

But
apparently he had finally fallen asleep for now he was pushing back the fog of
slumber, trying to figure out whose hand was on his arm.

“Klye,
wake up,” whispered a woman’s voice. “We need you outside the cave.”

Lilac
didn’t say more. She pulled him to his feet and guided him out of the cave. The
cold mountain air quickly cleared the cobwebs from his mind, and the first
thing he noted was that Lilac carried her sword unsheathed. Then he saw
Horcalus standing a few yards away from the mouth of the cave, his longsword
held out at what looked like a bundle of blue cloth.

Only,
this bundle of blue cloth wore a pointy hat made of straw and carried a staff.

“Hey,
Klye! It’s me…Noel!”

Klye
was speechless. Even though he had come face to face with the midge a few days
ago and even though he had finally come to terms with the fact that his coma
dream had been more than a dream, the sight of Noel was enough to made Klye’s
brain go numb all over again.

As
if sensing Klye’s unsteadiness, Lilac took hold of his arm once more. “The
midge says he knows you…and that he has a message from Scout.”

It
took more than a little coaxing to convince Horcalus to sheathe his sword. Klye
didn’t fault the man for his suspicion, but there simply wasn’t time to explain
the uncanny circumstances under which he had met Noel. So he simplified matters
by telling Horcalus and Lilac he had worked with the midge back when he was a
thief.

“What
are you doing here, Noel?” was all Klye could think to say.

“I
was going to ask you the same thing. It’s great seeing you and all, but I must
say I’m disappointed in you.”

“What?”

“After
being a hero for so long, you went back to being a bad guy.” Noel regarded him
with a disapproving frown.

“What?”
Klye repeated. “What in the hells are you…look, Noel, I’m
not
a bad
guy.”

“Yes,
you are. You’re a Renegade Leader.”

Klye
shook his head. The memories—and the familiar frustration—of dealing with a
midge were coming back all at once. “I don’t have time to explain it, but
suffice it say, the Renegades are not the bad guys. It’s your friends, the
Knights, who are in the wrong.”

The
look Noel gave him spoke volumes about the midge’s doubt. Not that Klye could blame
him.

“If
you’re siding with the Knights, then why did you come here, Noel?” Klye asked.
“And what do you know about Scout?”

“I
came here to save your life for old time’s sake. Scout told me where to find
you on the condition that I told you two things…first, he’s alive…and second,
he’s being held prisoner in Fort Faith’s dungeon. Now you and your gang have to
get away from here before the Knights come and get you. Go on. Go! The sooner
you leave, the better.”

“We’re
not going anywhere,” Klye told him flatly. A bittersweet mixture of relief and
anxiety churned in the Renegade Leader’s stomach. Scout was alive—but how long
would that last? “If the Knights have Scout, we have to get him back.”

Noel’s
eyes opened wide. “What? No. You’re not
listening
to me. You have to go
far away from here. If you go to the fort, they’ll kill you. Colt is really mad
at you because you made him look bad, and now the Prince of Superius is coming
to yell at him. You have to go far, far away.”

“What
was that about the Prince of Superius?” Horcalus demanded.

Ignoring
Horcalus, Noel added, “I didn’t risk meeting with your friend and then come all
the way out here in these scary mountains just so you can do the
opposite
of what I say!”

“We’re
not leaving Scout behind,” Klye repeated. “I’m…honored that you’re concerned
about me, but if you truly want peace between us and the Knights, you have to
realize we need to be on equal footing before a truce can be made. Only after
we get Scout back will we consider leaving Fort Faith.”

Klye
had no intentions of abandoning his quest, but he had to give Noel some hope of
reaching his goal. Otherwise, the midge might decide to do something drastic,
like using a spell to transport him and the rest of his band halfway around the
world.

“If
you help us break Scout out of the dungeon, you’d be a big help to both the
Renegades and the Knights because then we’d have nothing to fight about.” He
felt far worse about the lie than he had expected.

Noel’s
eyes narrowed. Hands planted on his hips and scowling darkly, the midge said,
“I can’t do that, Klye. Colt is my friend too. And besides,
I
am not a
bad guy.”

I’m
not a bad guy either, you twit! Klye seethed. But he had learned early on in
his dealings with Noel that shouting always made things worse. Only by thinking
like a midge, by using Noel’s own illogical reasoning against him would he get
Noel to do what he wanted.

Anyway,
Scout’s life was at stake. If lying was the worst thing he had to do to save
his friend, so be it.

“We’re
not leaving until Scout is back with us,” Klye said slowly. “So if you want to
make sure that neither Colt nor I get hurt during the rescue, maybe you should
help.”

Klye
unconsciously held his breath as Noel pondered the arrangement. “Can I use my
magic?” he asked at last.

“Yes,”
Klye said softly, knowing that that was the only right answer and ignoring the
alarmed looks on Horcalus’s and Lilac’s faces.

Then
Noel was all smiles. “All right. I’ll help you, Klye, but just this once…unless
you become a good guy again. The Knights are always telling me I can’t use my
magic, except when they really need me to, and then they ask for miracle at the
drop of a hat.”

Klye
tuned the midge out as he rambled on. He needed a plan to break Scout out of
the dungeon. He considered attempting the rescue without the midge, giving Noel
a pointless task that would keep him out of the way, but he remembered all too
clearly how the prison-break in Port Town had almost ended—how it
would
have ended if not for Father Elezar.

No,
Noel was a necessity, as much for his knowledge of the fort as for his arcane
powers.

Even
as Klye reviewed options, he knew he still had one problem left to consider
before worrying about the rescue plan: the monumental task of convincing his
men to put their trust in a midge.

Passage XIII

The
Renegades watched the mysterious activity at Fort Faith in collective surprise.
Due to the dense trees they were hiding behind, not to mention the distance between
the copse and the fort, there was little chance the Knights would spot them.
Regardless, Klye stayed low to the ground, half-crouching as he squinted into
the brightness of morning and tried to make sense of what was happening.

It
looked as though every Knight stationed there was lined up outside the
fortress, standing side by side in clean rows. The warriors stood completely
still and might have been empty suits of armor for all Klye could discern.
After remaining motionless for several minutes, the Knights uniformly adjusted
their stance.

“What
in the hells are they doing?” Plake asked. “Running drills?”

Klye
didn’t answer. He had no answer.

Beside
him, Othello said, “Someone is coming from the east.”

Klye
squinted into the sunlight, where, sure enough, three riders traveled the road
at a hurried pace. Two Knights broke away from the ranks of would-be statues
and stepped forward to greet the riders.

“It
would seem that the Knights are receiving some important guests,” Klye mumbled.

With
so many Knights outside the fort—there were at least forty men standing at
attention—it was the perfect time to make their move. But curiosity kept him
from giving Noel the order to cast the spell that would take him, the midge,
and Lilac to where Scout was being held.

And
it was these words that changed the plan altogether:

“That
must be Prince Eliot.”

Noel,
who was perched on a low branch of an elm, almost fell out of the tree when he
glanced down and saw eight pairs of eyes staring straight at him.

“What?”
the midge demanded, his big, blue eyes popped open even wider than usual.

“What
was that you say about Prince Eliot?” Horcalus prompted.

“Oh,
that,” Noel replied, looking much relieved. “The reason the Knights are all
outside is because the Prince of Superius is here. He must be one of those guys
on the horses. I forgot he was coming today. Maybe we should come back
tomorrow.”

Klye
felt the others’ gazes fall on him. It had taken a lot to convince them to
trust Noel. None of them had said more than two words to the midge during their
early-morning hike through the foothills and across the plain. Now they were
all waiting for their Renegade Leader to decide what to do with this
information.

“Prince
Eliot? At Fort Faith?” Klye didn’t bother to mask his incredulity.

“Uh-huh,”
Noel said. “Colt’s been busy preparing for his visit, though nobody really
knows why the prince is here. Colt thinks Prince Eliot is upset with him, and
it might be my fault, though I don’t see how because I only came here to help,
and I
did
help when—”

“Noel,
are you absolutely certain that that’s the Prince of Superius out there?” Klye
asked.

“Well,
I don’t know who else it could be,” Noel snapped. “I guess we’ll just have to
break Scout out of jail tomorrow. Or better yet, we’ll wait until Prince Eliot
is gone. I don’t want Colt to get into any more trouble.”

Klye
said nothing, allowing his mind to follow the paths of reason. He had never
known Noel to lie. Sure, the midge exaggerated every now and then, but Klye
couldn’t recall Noel ever being intentionally dishonest. As crazy as Noel’s
tale sounded, he had no cause to believe the midge was lying.

“And
who’re those two with him?” Plake asked Noel. “The Emperor of Huiyah and the
Duke of Korek?”

“Shut
up, Plake,” Klye said.

The
rancher looked taken aback. “You don’t actually believe—”

“There’s
a change in plans,” Klye announced, taking another look out at the throng of
Knights. The three riders had dismounted and were being led into the fort.

“No
rescue today,” Noel said decidedly.

Klye
did not meet the midge’s eyes. “Not exactly.”

*
         
*
         
*

His
hands folded beneath his chin, Colt sat behind the desk inside his office, the
fort’s war room. Staring at nothing, he replayed his exchange with Prince Eliot
over and over in his mind.

The
prince had been unimpressed by the showy welcome that had been arranged for
him, and if Eliot Borrom had noticed how much work the Knights had put into
restoring Fort Faith to its former glory, he had shown no sign of it. At this
point, Colt wondered if the prince was even capable of uttering a minor
compliment.

Prince
Eliot had seemed annoyed from the start, accepting the Knights’ welcome with
all the warmth of a snowstorm. When Colt had offered to give the prince a tour
of the fort, he had declined, asking—nay,
demanding
—to be taken to his
room post haste. And when Colt made a comment about the feast he had planned in
the prince’s honor, Eliot Borrom replied with a noncommittal grunt before
shutting the door in his face.

Even
the prince’s bodyguards made Colt feel uneasy. The two men seemed always to be
watching him, which wasn’t so unusual, he supposed, except their hard
expressions made him feel like their enemy. Or prey.

Colt
sighed—he had been doing that a lot lately—and reached for a quill. He had to
get his mind off of the prince. Dinner was still a few hours away, and if he
allowed himself to obsess about Prince Eliot, he’d surely drive himself mad. He
dipped the quill in a well of ink and brought the point to parchment. Yes, he
would write a letter to Commander Calhoun, thanking the man for his forewarning
about the Renegades and to inform him of all that was happening at Fort Faith.

Before
he could complete the first line of his letter, however, the door to the war
room burst open, and Colt found himself once more in the company of Prince
Eliot. The bodyguards, their hands lingering near sheathed weapons and their
eyes boring into Colt’s, came to stand on either side of the door. Prince Eliot
stormed up to the desk.

“Commander,
are you aware that there is a midge scurrying about your fortress?”

The
words hit Colt like a punch to the gut. He hadn’t seen Noel in nearly two days.
Optimistically—and perhaps a bit irrationally—he had hoped the midge had moved
on.

When
Colt finally found his voice, he managed to say, “Ah, yes, that’s Noel. He
arrived a week or so ago, and despite my own reservations and against
Lieutenant Petton’s advice, I allowed him to stay.”

“You
should have listened to your lieutenant,” Prince Eliot said.

Colt
cleared his throat. “Be that as it may, I did not want to…offend…Noel, and
since the midge are members of the Alliance of Nations, I did not want the
Knighthood to appear ungracious to their new allies. Besides, there was no real
harm in letting him stay…”

The
way the prince’s eyebrows came together told Colt he didn’t agree.

“Noel
has proven quite helpful,” Colt continued, unable to stop his mouth from
moving. “None of us here are fond of magic, mind you, but Noel did apprehend a
Renegade who was spying on the fort.”

Colt
fell silent as the prince’s pinched expression eased into one of curiosity. But
while some of the tension seemed to leave the room, Colt felt anything but
satisfied with himself. He had not wanted to tell Prince Eliot about Scout,
even though he knew he should—and even though Scout’s capture was sure to make
Colt look like less of a failure.

“I
want the midge apprehended, bound, and gagged,” Prince Eliot said after staring
into Colt’s eyes for what seemed like hours.

“What
has he—”

“The
little bastard barged into my room. Not that I need any justification when it
comes to issuing orders. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes,
my prince.” The words tasted like bitter wine.

“Tell
your men to keep an eye out for him,” Prince Eliot added as he turned his back
to Colt and took a few steps toward the door.

“Of
course, my prince.” Colt could barely keep from grimacing.

Eliot
paused before the doorway. “And I will have a few words with the Renegade in
your custody tonight after your little feast.”

Colt
felt a tingle run the length of his spine. Before he could reply, Prince Eliot
slammed the door behind him. Left alone with his worries, Colt prayed that the
gods would give Noel the wisdom to find a good hiding place or, better yet, to
leave Fort Faith once and for all.

And
as for Scout, well, he wouldn’t trade places with the rebel for anything.

*
         
*
         
*

Arthur’s
stomach had been in knots ever since he had awoken to find a midge in the camp.
Throughout the day, with each bit of news getting harder and harder to swallow,
his bowels kinked and twisted anew. He didn’t know what should worry him
more—that Klye planned on using magic to rescue Scout or that Klye was friends
with a midge to begin with.

Although
they had spent much of the day taking step after uneventful step, Arthur felt
as though everything were happening at a dizzying speed. Before he knew it,
they had stopped at the edge of the woods with Fort Faith in plain view.

Klye
had asked only Lilac and Noel to accompany him into the fort itself, but the
sight of the stony bastion was still intimidating. For a moment, Arthur
couldn’t catch his breath, and he feared he would vomit then and there.

But
all at once, things seemed to slow down, and all discomfort—physical and
emotional—fled his being. He couldn’t even remember when Noel had left the
group…or why.

“I
know it sounds crazy,” Klye was saying, “but I need you all to trust me on
this.”

Klye
had said the same thing about the midge just that morning. Klye was not afraid
of the midge, but Arthur was. He recalled with unnerving vividness the violent
stories Plake and the pirates had told him the night Scout first brought word
of the wandering midge.

“We
won’t get another opportunity like this,” Klye continued, looking at all of
them in turn.

Arthur
only half listened to the Renegade Leader’s words. He knew the band would
follow Klye Tristan into the Crypt and back should he but ask it. For one
thing, they were all past the point of no return. To back out now would be to
admit that they had been wrong all along.

Perhaps
none of them, not even Klye himself, could trace back along the path of their
descent into desperation to find that single point in time where the path
curved away from sanity and sped, ever onward, toward this deranged destiny.
But Arthur could.

The
consequence of his jealousy and spite had doomed him for what felt like years.
He had killed a fellow human being, and for that, he too must be killed.

Arthur
knew the Renegades would do exactly what Klye asked. It was not all due to
downhill inertia or even the fact that it was always easier to make poor
decisions in large numbers. Maybe the others would accept their own deaths—for
that surely would be the result of this folly—without suffering from guilt. As
long as there was some hope, it wasn’t technically suicide.

And
hope was what Klye always provided. He never made promises. Because hope was
enough—enough reason to step forward into death’s embrace.

“None
of you are obligated to follow me in there,” Klye said.

This
notion of backing out was more moot. They were all committed to following Klye
into Fort Faith for their own reasons. Maybe the others weren’t afraid of
whichever hell they were bound for. Arthur could see why someone like Dominic
Horcalus wouldn’t worry for none of this was the knight’s fault.

But
Arthur knew he himself would end up beneath the waves of fire and brimstone.
What did it matter if he got there sooner rather than later? Could eternal
damnation be worse than the waiting?

“What
about the midge?” someone asked.

Arthur
wasn’t worried about it. Klye would think of something, or maybe Noel would put
an end to it all before they even got started. The myriad possibilities no
longer concerned him. There was no point to being nervous or scared.

No,
he didn’t care about the midge any more. He was getting antsy, tired of waiting
for this nightmare to end. But he did wonder how Klye would handle the midge,
who wouldn’t want to cross Fort Faith’s commander.

Not
that Arthur would put his curiosity into words, not when Lilac or Horcalus or
even Plake could do so for him. With an apathy borne of acceptance, he would
let others speak for him, would contentedly follow their lead. Why should his
actions leading to death be any different from those throughout his life?

“Let
me deal with Noel. I’ll get us in there. I don’t like having to lie to him, but
this is more important than us…than any of us.”