‘Plenty in those mountains to feed a man, if he’s got wits,’ said Rapha. ‘Otherwise, you can starve a few days, I’m sure. But I’ll not see Gren disgraced. He’ll get the key back before mornin’, and he’ll owe me a favour.’
Aren opened his mouth to argue. Rapha’s look told him not to.
‘But a king can show mercy,’ Rapha said, once he was content that Aren wouldn’t challenge him further. He snapped his fingers at his men and pointed to three of them. ‘You, you, you – hand over your blades.’
They looked at each other in confusion. ‘To them?’ one asked at last.
‘Do it,’ said Rapha. ‘It’ll give them a chance, at least.’
Rapha’s men parted with their knives unhappily.
‘You read me right,’ said Rapha to Aren, with a nasty grin. ‘I’d like to see a little chaos. And if you kill a guard or two on the way out, I won’t salt the earth with my tears any.’
He walked away and his men followed. Aren heard the rattle of the chain on the door as they left and then the three of them were alone in the gloom, gazing at the knives they’d just gained.
‘Grub don’t know how you did that,’ said the Skarl with reverent awe.
‘Me, either,’ said Cade. ‘You should have that tattooed somewhere.’
‘We lost the food,’ Aren said grimly. ‘We won’t get far without it.’ It was a bitter blow to their chances, and even if they survived the mountains, he dreaded to think what might one day come of the promise he’d made.
‘Aren,’ said Cade. He wiggled his fingers in front of Aren’s face. ‘Let’s take the positives, eh?’
A bell rang in the dark outside and Aren raised his head. ‘Last bell before curfew. Anyone wants to reconsider, now’s the time.’
Nobody said a word.
‘Thought not,’ said Aren. ‘Get some rest. It’s going to be a big night.’
27
They sat against the cold tile walls of the bathhouse, faces dour in the faint red light. It was an hour past curfew and as dark as it would ever get. Out there, above the roof of cloud, Tantera loomed over the world, a charred orb riven with fiery cracks, the herald of misfortune.
It was an inauspicious night to attempt an escape, but the Hollow Man was on Aren’s heels, and he had no more time to wait.
Nobody had spoken for a long time, each occupied with their own thoughts. Grub worried at a fingernail with his teeth. Cade hung his head, elbows on his knees and hands in his hair. Aren examined his knife, lost in memories of his father.
Randill had once told him that grief was as individual as love, and each felt their losses in their own way. Aren’s grief for his father was muddled and incomplete. The man was still a mystery to him, and it was hard to lay him to rest with so many questions left unanswered. Had Cade been right when he said this whole tragedy had nothing to do with his dalliance with Sora? Maybe his father had been a traitor after all, then.
His grip tightened on the hilt of the knife. Stop, he told himself. Stop shifting the blame. Whatever his father had or hadn’t done, all Aren’s misfortune could be laid at the same door. Krodans killed his father. Krodans threw them into this gods-forsaken prison to die. And they did it because they were Ossians, second-class citizens in their own land, without rights or recourse to the law. Slaves, tricked by the trappings of freedom.
No country that called itself civilised should incarcerate a boy for courting the wrong girl, nor should sons be punished for the crimes of their fathers. Whether Randill was traitor or not, the Krodans were wrong. He turned the blade in his hand, fury smouldering in his breast. He wanted to use it on someone.
Cade lifted his head. ‘You want to hear a story?’ he said. ‘I’ve got a good one. It’s about how Hallec Stormfist escaped the dungeons of the Revenant King.’ He smiled weakly. ‘Might be we’ll pick up a few tips.’
But Aren had been inspired by fictions too long. ‘I’d rather hear the tale of Cade, Aren and Grub,’ he said. ‘How they broke out of a Krodan work camp like shades in the night. It’ll be the first tale you tell of us, but it won’t be the last; and I’ll hear it in an inn, far from here, over meat and mead. How’s that?’
‘Aye,’ said Cade, his voice quiet. ‘That sounds fine.’
Raindrops tapped against the roof, soft and tentative at first, then louder and faster until the bathhouse rang with impacts and a fierce hiss swelled beyond the walls. They lifted their eyes to the windows, where the glass ran with water. A smile grew on Cade’s face.
Heavy rain. If they couldn’t have fog, this was the next best thing.
‘Looks like Joha was listening after all,’ Aren said to Cade, and he got to his feet. ‘It’s time.’
He went to the bathhouse door and cracked it open. Muddy puddles jumped and seethed in the downpour, their water stained red with moonglow. A guard splashed away between the buildings, a lantern in one hand and a cloak over his head, seeking shelter.
Aren checked for archers on the walkway that ringed the inner side of the stockade. The rain made it hard to see anything at a distance, but at last he spotted one beside a struggling pitch-soaked torch, shoulders hunched, too wet to pay attention to anything but his own misery.
There’d be no better opportunity. He pushed the bathhouse door open to the limit of the chain and slipped out, the others close behind.
They were soaked in moments, but that was a small price to pay for the cover as they darted through the alleys, watchful for guards. Cade carried the bag of crows, the blanket rope tied around his waist and shoulders in ungainly loops, ready for their climb down the outside of the stockade. The rest of the blankets they wore knotted round their necks like capes, to protect them from the elements once they were free.
Aren had chosen a spot in the north-west corner for their escape, as close to the cliffs as they could get while staying concealed among the longhouses. The torches there were widely spaced, leaving darkness between, and there was nothing beyond but bare grass and riverbank, and the edge of the forest some way distant.
They huddled up under the eaves of a longhouse, within sight of the skulldog pens. Cade held out the bag of crows. Grub sketched a sign in the air; a gesture of protection, perhaps, or an apology to the Bone God.
‘Stay here,’ Aren said. He took the bag, glanced once more at the walkway, then darted to a gap in the fence that he could peer through.
The pen was a stretch of sodden ground with cross-fences dividing it from its neighbours. Three skulldogs sheltered beneath the wooden scaffolding under the walkway. They shifted and prowled between the poles and struts, moving with predators’ grace, hulking killers in the dark. Aren saw Deggan’s execution in his mind again and remembered how these creatures had reduced a man to a jumble of parts while he screamed and ran red into the earth.
Courage, Aren, he told himself. He looked back at where Cade and Grub were waiting, watching him expectantly. They’re relying on you.
He pulled out a crow and lobbed it over the fence. A quick glance through the gap showed him that it had landed in a puddle near the foot of the scaffold. He threw two more. One fell short; the other bounced off a beam and almost hit one of the skulldogs.
Now they were roused, and they came sniffing. The crows were unfamiliar meat and they were cautious, but skulldogs were not known for their patience. The biggest of them shouldered the others aside and crunched a crow down, bones and all.
Aren threw another, aiming for the far side. Eifann had brought him six crows in all, and each dog had to eat at least one. Two went for the same crow and began to tussle over it, snarling and growling. When one of them won the battle and tore the crow away, the other barked angrily in protest.
Aren panicked; he hadn’t planned on the dogs making such a racket. He flung the last two crows over the fence, careless of where they went, and hurried back to the others. The skulldogs, driven to excitement, snapped and barked as they fought over the unexpected morsels.
‘Dogs bring everyone!’ Gr
ub hissed furiously as Aren slid in under the eaves. As if to prove his point, a thickset guard came into sight along the walkway, one side of a grizzled face outlined in the torchlight. He leaned down and peered into the pen, sheltering his eyes from the rain with one hand.
‘Shut up!’ he yelled in Krodan. ‘Mangy bloody mongrels.’
Aren and Cade exchanged a glance. In the shadows of the eaves they couldn’t be seen, but the noise might bring other guards.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ said Aren. ‘We’ll come back when it’s all died down.’
Cade nodded. Aren turned to say the same to Grub, but the Skarl had vanished.
‘Where’d he go?’ Cade asked, alarmed.
Aren cursed under his breath. He should have known Grub would be trouble. ‘Come on,’ he said darkly.
They slipped along the wall of the longhouse, away from the fence. The rain hissed and splattered around them, sluicing off the sloped roofs. Aren was jumpy, feeling hunted. First Rapha, now this. He thought he’d considered every angle, but the plan was coming apart. Where had that gods-damned Skarl got to? Had he taken fright and run out on them? Or had he something more sinister in mind?
‘Who goes?’
Aren froze and Cade bumped into the back of him.
‘Who goes?’ came the voice again. A guard was approaching from a side-alley, sword in hand, a slender shadow in the night. He carried a lantern, but it was dark, perhaps leaky and doused by the rain.
Cade made a sudden motion, as if to run, but Aren grabbed his arm. ‘We have permits from Captain Hassan!’ Aren said.
As the guard approached, they saw that he wasn’t much older than they were, barely old enough to shave. He had bulbous eyes and a nervous look about him. Aren stood in front of Cade to block him from view. It was strange enough that they were wearing blankets as capes; if the guard saw the blanket rope tied round Cade’s body, they’d be finished.
‘Why are you out at this hour?’ the guard snapped.
‘Blocked latrine,’ said Aren, over the din of the rain. ‘Captain told us to stay until we’d cleared it. We were just heading back.’
The guard was suspicious, but too green to risk calling for help and looking like a fool. He wanted to deal with this himself, if he could.
‘Show me your permits,’ he said.
‘Here,’ said Aren, closing the distance between them as he reached towards his pocket, past it, his fingers closing round the hilt of the knife in the waistband of his trousers.
His heart began to pound, his mouth went dry and everything felt suddenly remote. He was going to kill a man. It seemed impossible, and yet it was happening now. It was the only thing that could happen.
Him or us. Him or us. Him or us.
There was a flurry of movement in the dark. The guard half-turned, but too slow. Grub crashed into him, bearing him roughly across the alleyway and into the wall of a longhouse. Before he could cry out, the Skarl stabbed him, quick and hard, over and over. There was something appallingly intimate about it, the way Grub hugged him close, crushed against the wall, as his blade plunged in and out. The guard whimpered and jerked, but made no more noise than that. When Grub finally let him go, he slid to the ground, folding up like a dropped puppet.
Grub turned towards Aren, breathing hard, savagery in his eyes and blood on his coat. Aren stared at him in shock. He’d been a fool to ever take this man lightly. Grub was far more dangerous than Aren had given him credit for.
‘Fargan? Is that you down there?’
At the guard’s voice, all three hid under the eaves. It was the archer on the walkway, the one who’d yelled at the dogs. They saw him by the light of a torch, squinting into the alley below.
‘Fargan? Did you call, boy?’
Fargan lay on the floor like an accusation, his eyes half-open and blank. Aren felt panic rising again. Everything was slipping out of his control. The alarm would surely be raised now. There’d be no escape; instead they’d be caught and fed to the—
‘All’s well!’ Cade called out in Krodan. His voice was higher than usual, his vowels harsher, coming from the back of his throat. It was a near-perfect imitation of Fargan. ‘A mistake! All’s well!’
The archer kept on squinting into the dark, seeking the source of the voice. He sensed something amiss but couldn’t find the cause. Aren willed him to move on, as if he could command him by the desperate force of his thoughts.
‘Fargan?’ the archer said again.
‘All’s well, I said!’ Cade called, adding a note of irritation.
The archer grunted and wandered away. Aren let out a long, slow breath of relief and nodded gratefully at Cade.
‘I knew those Krodan lessons I gave you would come in handy one day,’ Aren said.
‘Aye,’ said Cade. ‘Lucky he backed off, though. I’d about reached the limit of my vocabulary.’
‘Grub say we better move this body,’ Grub put in.
They dragged Fargan into the side-alley he’d emerged from, where any other guards were unlikely to see him. Once, touching a corpse might have disturbed Aren, but life in the work camp had hardened him, and they divided up Fargan’s gear and disposed of the body matter-of-factly. He had good boots, thick socks and a proper cloak. Cade suggested that Aren take his armour as a disguise, but Aren wasn’t used to wearing armour, and anyway, they’d have to travel light if they hoped to outrun the pursuit once they escaped. In the end, Aren took his sword, belt and scabbard. Grub didn’t protest; he didn’t seem to want them.
‘I’ll check on the dogs,’ Aren said.
‘More careful this time, yes?’ Grub said unhelpfully.
Once again, it was hard to find the dogs in the dark. They were all beneath the scaffolding, having retreated from the rain. One had lolled on its side and was obviously unconscious. Another was curled up nose to tail, asleep. The third was still on its feet, but barely. It wobbled here and there until its legs gave way, after which it twitched on the ground a few times and lay still.
Aren licked his lips, which were dry with nerves. The draccen tears had done their job. The dogs were drugged. But were they drugged enough?
He dared not hesitate, or his courage would falter. He jumped up, grabbed the top of the fence poles and pulled himself over.
The skulldogs didn’t react. He crept closer, ready to run if they stirred. His senses blared an alarm; instinct told him this was suicide. Each step took him further into danger. He ignored it and pushed on, willing himself forward.
Beneath the walkway and out of the rain, he could hear the heavy sighing of the skulldogs and smell their warm animal dampness. They looked even larger up close, piles of muscle and fang that might spring into life at any moment and savage him. He kept his stolen sword ready, but even with a blade, he wouldn’t stand much of a chance. The thought made him sick with fear. He was keenly aware that he’d bet his life on a drug he knew almost nothing about.
Did you all get your fill?
One of the skulldogs jerked. Aren’s heart lurched and he jumped back, blade raised high. Then it gave a long sigh and settled back into unconsciousness.
Hearing no screams or barks, Grub and Cade came over the fence and hurried across the pen. Grub, his knife between his teeth, started to climb the scaffold, moving smoothly between the criss-crossing poles.
Cade followed him. ‘Reckon it’s a sight safer up there than it is down here,’ he said, eyeing the skulldogs.
Aren agreed.
The scaffold was an easy climb even when wet, and they soon caught up with Grub, who was balanced on a crossbeam just below the walkway, knife back in his hand. The Skarl jabbed upwards, where the wood was creaking beneath the tread of an approaching guard.
‘We wait for him to pass,’ Aren whispered. ‘Then we go.’
Grub gave him a steady look. ‘You think like child. Sneak past impossible.’
Aren opened his mouth to argue, then didn’t. In his heart, he knew the Skarl was right. Slipping over the stockade behi
nd the guard was the stuff of stories. He tasted bile in his throat, swallowed it. ‘I’ll follow you up.’
Grub put his knife back between his teeth. Footsteps passed overhead again, the dejected tread of a drenched man grudgingly doing his duty. Aren felt a moment of pity. Krodan or no, he had a life, and perhaps a family. Maybe he was a good man, a decent man. But right now he stood between Aren and freedom, and that meant he had to be dealt with.
Grub went up and over the edge of the walkway with a grace belied by his bulk. Aren heard quick, running footsteps, and when he pulled himself up he found the two men struggling in silence. Grub’s knife went in and out; the guard stiffened and sagged. Once he’d stopped moving, Grub pushed his limp body over the stockade wall.
Aren felt a moment of crawling horror at the sight. A man’s life, extinguished with such frightening ease. It didn’t sit right. But then he remembered all the other lives, all the Ossian lives, that had ended here. It didn’t seem so much like murder after that. More like retribution.
Aren crouched next to Cade and unravelled the sodden rope of blankets while his friend tied one end around a stockade spike. Even in the dark between the torches, concealed by the driving rain, they felt exposed; Grub looked up and down the walkway for signs of other guards, taut with nervous energy. Haste made Cade clumsy and the rope slipped off the wet, pointed tip of the spike. He tried again, and failed again. Aren resisted the urge to scream at him to get on with it. The third time, Cade made the blankets fast.
An arrow smacked into the inside of the stockade wall, inches from his face.
‘Prisoners escaping!’ came a shout from the dark.
Grub reacted first. He shoved past Cade, grabbed the rope and flung it over the wall, sending it uncoiling into the night. Then he went over himself, clambering down hand over hand.
‘Go!’ Aren said to Cade, searching for the archer who’d fired on them. A guard, alerted by the cry, was running towards them, drawing his sword as he came.
Cade hesitated, reluctant to leave Aren behind, but Aren shouted, ‘Go!’ again, more forcefully. This time he did as he was told, seizing the blanket with both hands and scrambling over the top of the stockade.
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