Brann looked at Gerens. ‘I thought you might have been gallant enough to help such a magnificent lady on her last stretch to the floor.’
The boy frowned. ‘It would hardly be gallant to insult her magnificent capabilities by interfering with them.’
‘And yet you follow me, ready to murder anyone who would even think of doing me harm.’
The dark eyes regarded Brann. ‘Indeed.’
‘Oh!’ The shrill female voice bouncing off the hard surfaces of the hall and ringing with its echo froze their thoughts. Brann looked at Sophaya, as did Gerens and Grakk, but the girl merely looked back at them, the sound as much a mystery to her as it was to them.
‘I got such a fright.’ The voice was quieter now and with less of an echo they were able to determine the source. A young girl in nightclothes stood on the great staircase. ‘I was ever so thirsty and thought I would just go for a drink. I’m sorry if I startled you but I never expected to see someone. Are you cleaning the statue?’
Grakk stepped forward with a disarming smile. ‘We are indeed, young lady. These tasks are best completed while those who would admire such wonders are abed. I do hope we have not disturbed your own rest?’
She smiled back. ‘Oh no, my chamber is too far away, and I could see when I came down that you were trying very hard to be quiet.’
Grakk bowed slightly. ‘We can but do our best, young lady. But please, do not let us keep you from your drink.’
‘You are most kind, sir.’
She turned with a swirl of flimsy fabric to angle down the wide steps but, in doing so, her eyes dropped on the weapons hanging from Brann’s and Gerens’s belts. She looked back at Grakk and, for the first time, noticed the hilts of Grakk’s crossed swords protruding above his shoulders. Her hands flew to her mouth and she screamed, turning and bolting back to the stairs, her shouts echoing as she went.
‘Attack! Attack! We are under attack! Attack!’
Doors started to bang and drowsy shouts resounded in the hallways above. Brann ran immediately to the main doors and heaved one open, leaving it ajar. The guards on the walls had not heard the noise from within the keep yet, but they soon would. They might not be able to leave their posts, but they would alert those in the barrack house.
Sophaya ran to stop him. ‘We can’t go that way now.’
‘We never could. Hopefully they will think we did when they see this lying open.’
‘Not if they see us standing here, they won’t,’ said Gerens, heading for a door to the side of the hall. They piled through and Grakk shut the door behind them. They stood in a small servants’ hallway, stairs heading up and down and a corridor leading towards the back of the keep.
They looked at Brann. ‘Down,’ he said. ‘We need to go down.’
Four flights took them down two floors before Grakk halted them with a hoarse shout and pulled them into a store cupboard. ‘Wait. We forgot.’ He reached into his own pack and drew out four loose robes in the style worn by the royal servants. More important than the style was the fact that they were large enough to cover not only their dark functional clothing but also their weapons. In a fight, they would be hard now to access, but if they got into a full-blown fight they were as good as caught anyway. Better to pass unnoticed.
Grakk threw his pack in amongst the stores – all that remained within was his sling and a few handfuls of stones, and none of that was needed now. The pack Gerens wore was too bulky so he had to be content with slipping it on over the top of his robe. It would have to do.
They moved down the stairs at a run. They had planned to pass through the levels carefully and quietly, the disguises mostly intended to make their appearance credible should someone stir as they passed a dormitory or should they chance upon a servant with nocturnal duties. As the alarm grew, however, there would be much running and confusion in general, so there was little need for cautious movement now. It would be more out of place to be walking sedately through the mayhem that would surely ensue. They rushed, when the stairs ended taking any corridor until they found more downward steps.
And so it transpired. Bells had started to ring, and men and women in various states of dress spilled from doorways, yawning and questioning. Most moved past them in confusion, seeking guidance on how they were expected to help with whatever the reason was for the commotion, but one man, a shift pulled half on to reveal an overly hirsute torso, stopped in front of Grakk, staring in doubt at the tattooed tribesman. Immediately Grakk grabbed him by the arm. ‘What’s happening?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do you know?’ The man made to pull away, but Grakk grabbed his arm tighter. ‘Wait, we need to know what to do.’
‘Ask the master of your section,’ the man growled, his bushy brows lowering as he wrenched his arm free. ‘I will not risk any lashes for your panic.’ He made off along the corridor, shouldering others out of his path.
They moved in the same direction before branching into another passage. Gerens looked at his companion. ‘That was more successful than the last time. You are improving.’
Grakk grinned. ‘It’s easier when you merely have to join in with chaos and panic.’
‘To be fair,’ Sophaya pointed out, ‘you were doing well at charming the young girl until she opened her eyes.’
Grakk looked innocent. ‘Are you trying to say that I am not always the most charming of men?’
She lightly tapped his cheek in affection. ‘I would never dare suggest such a thing, dear Grakky.’
Brann and Gerens looked at each other. ‘Grakky?’ Brann said.
The man merely shook his bald head. ‘There are times when the magnificent is not quite so magnificent.’
A door lay open before them, the courtyard visible beyond. Sophaya gleefully made for it, but Brann shouted to Gerens and the boy caught her by the arm.
‘We might not get a chance if we don’t go now,’ she protested, wriggling futilely in Gerens’s grip. ‘That area will soon be teeming with soldiers.’
‘Possibly with us only halfway across,’ said Grakk.
She looked angrily at Gerens. He shrugged. ‘I have found it wise to listen to Brann at times like these.’
‘Times like these,’ she spat. ‘This is why I work alone. In and out with not a trace, those are the times I am familiar with.’
Grakk raised his eyebrows. ‘All the more reason to listen to others when it is a little noisier, no?’
She shrugged. Brann stepped forward. ‘Your plan got us in and gained us the rock, and it worked perfectly, none of us can deny it. But my part was to get us out. It is not transpiring exactly the way I had hoped, but it is still possible. Confusion suits us more than them at this point. Come.’
He took them away from the door until they found stairs once more heading down. They encountered varying concentrations of servants although, as they descended they did become fewer, unsurprisingly. The first two levels were still relatively dry, though the air was cool, suiting their use as a vast store with anything from food to bed linens carefully arranged in orderly precision in a series of rooms cut from the rock. As they dropped to the next level, the atmosphere became palpably damper and grew even more dismal as they realised they had reached the dungeons. Brann shivered, not from the chill but the sight of the cells hewn from the rock and barred at the front, eerily reminiscent of what had been his home in the City Below. He had the memories of what had transpired there, but only a detached recollection of the person he had been forced to become to endure such a time.
He was snapped back to the present by a large guard who stepped to block their path. He was bareheaded and armoured only in a breastplate, but carried a wicked-looking sword, curved like those that Grakk favoured but with a heavier blade. Once they managed to pull their own weapons from under their robes they would overcome him without difficulty, but in the time it took them to disentangle themselves he would have already cut down at least one of them, and that was one more than they were prepared to accept.
They froze. Th
e guard started to speak but stopped at the sound of a sharp thud. His eyes rolled up and his knees buckled as he dropped to the ground, revealing the stocky slave who had led Brann to the old nobleman. The man held up a short thick club. ‘There are some old habits you don’t lose,’ he said simply. ‘Follow.’
He led the way down the passage between the cells, sullen and defeated faces watching them from the compartments.
‘Did you know he would be here?’ Sophaya whispered.
Brann nodded. ‘I asked for it. We need a guide for what comes next. I could get us to the general area of the dungeons from the directions I was given. The next part needs local expertise.’
That local expertise took them to the far end of the passage where their guide lit a small lamp. Gerens put a hand on his arm. ‘The two Northern nobles. Are they in these cells?’
The slave shook his head. ‘Not that easy, I’m afraid. They are hostages, not prisoners, remember. Their rooms are on the upper floors, in altogether more pleasant circumstances. To place them here would, should they be returned to their people, be almost as much an invitation to war as killing them.’
He stepped into a hole in the floor that gave access to steps cut to wind upon themselves in an oppressively tight coil through the solid rock. They followed, finding the footing treacherous from the moisture that now coated the walls and, occasionally, trickled. An opening the height of an average man was cut immediately at the stairway’s base to allow them into a chamber that was a crossroads for four passages. The slave headed into the one to their right and they followed quickly, fearful of being left beyond the lantern’s reach. Illuminated by it as they passed each one, the cells in this level lay empty, the bars rusted and the drips of water loud alongside the sound of their footsteps smacking on the wet floor. All but one empty. The final alcove to the left boasted solid bars and, as their light approached, a figure scuttled back from it. A sound of shock burst from Brann and all four flinched in surprise. It was impossible not to look. What had once been a man and was now just skin, bones, hair and rags, cowered as far back as he could manage, turned away from the light and with both arms shielding his face.
A shudder wracked Brann and he looked at Grakk. ‘Had you not come…’ He couldn’t bring himself to complete it, but the tribesman nodded his understanding.
The slave had not faltered for even a step and blackness claimed the prisoner and his cell once more. It was only a dozen paces more before the man slowed carefully, then stopped. He held the lantern over a circular hole in the floor to reveal a vertical shaft through the rock, iron loops set into one side for hands and feet and a rope hanging beside them.
The lantern’s handle had a hook on it, and he used this to hang it on his belt. ‘I will light the shaft and you will climb down. At the bottom, place your back against the wall and move to your left to allow room for the others. I will follow the last of you. The rope is to lower anything you cannot carry.’
Grakk’s eyes narrowed. ‘And how do we know you will not depart with the light as soon as we are down, leaving us blind and with only that wretch we just saw to ask for directions?’
The man shrugged, handed the lantern to Gerens and climbed down into the hole.
Brann followed, the shaft narrow enough for his shoulders to brush each side. He found himself thankful they had not brought Hakon. The depth to the next level was further, and the press of the rock around him made it seem even more so. As much as Gerens tried to bathe him in light, his body blocked most of it from travelling past him and when space opened around him it came as enough of a surprise for him to grasp tightly at the metal rings he had reached, pausing slightly, fearful that disorientation might cause him to fall. Had he lost his grip, he would not have dropped far: the floor was barely a person’s height below the ceiling.
His feet found a slick surface and he pressed back and hands against the wall, taking tiny nervous steps. The others followed quickly, the darkness behind the lantern’s reach pressing them on. Gerens pulled up the rope and used it to lower his pack to those below before the swinging of the pool of light on the floor of the chamber signalled that he was lowering the lantern and, as it emerged from the hole in the ceiling, their surroundings were revealed. His own approach followed closely.
Brann saw the wisdom of the advice to hug the wall. He had assumed it was to keep them together in the dark and to offer balance without eyes to help them, but the truth was now evident: they stood on a narrow ledge that ran around the circumference of a circular room. Four passages led again from the chamber, as on the level above, possibly to more cells, but this time with a central channel collecting the moisture from the surroundings and letting it stream to this room. The main difference was, however, that the floor of the central room where the corridors met sloped beyond the lip of the ledge to a wide dark hole in the centre. The incline was shallow but perilous, for not only did water stream down its surface but it did so over rock filmed with streaks of a pale-green slime, similar to a secretion Brann had seen on the sea walls of the docks back in Hakon’s homeland.
He looked at the slave. ‘Which passage?’
The impassive face never twitched. ‘None.’ Brann’s mix of confusion and suspicion was mirrored in the faces of his companions, and Gerens’s hand noticeably stole to his knife. Unperturbed, the man nodded at the centre of the room. ‘That is your passage from the citadel.’
They looked at him. ‘To where?’
‘Few know it, but an underground river flows beneath the keep. It is possibly its greatest defence against siege. There are several wells giving access to it, but not one is of sufficient size for a person to pass through. This is the only access to it.’
Gerens grunted. ‘So we just slide down and drop through the hole into only the gods know what?’
‘Only if you want to hit the side of the hole and break something. Look at the floor.’ He indicated small indentations, vertical at their lower side. ‘Turn sideways, use them to brace your feet. Ease your way to the hole. Then drop through into only the gods know what.’
Grakk’s voice was less controlled than they had ever heard. ‘We will be walking beside this river, or travelling within its waters?’
The slave shrugged. ‘There may be a ledge here or there, but most likely you will be in the river, letting its current take you to the sea.’
‘Then I have a problem. I cannot swim.’
The others looked at him. Brann was astounded. ‘I always assume you can do everything.’
‘There is not much call, nor opportunity, for swimming lessons in the desert.’
Gerens was equally surprised. ‘You spent how many years at sea without being able to swim?’
Grakk shrugged. ‘There is as much chance to learn when you are chained to a bench as there is in the desert.’
‘So,’ Sophaya said, ‘that is the why. Now we need the what. That is, the what we do now. Go back up?’
The slave shook his head. ‘It was thronged with soldiers when you came down. There will be many times more of them now. The water does not swing swords or shoot arrows.’ He produced a length of rope. ‘This will keep you together. The task of keeping your friend afloat is yours to achieve.’
He was right, and Grakk nodded. The slave gave them a bag of waxed canvas to protect their weapons as much as they could, and each of them strapped their bag tight to them. They tied themselves close together with the rope, partly to reduce the chance of it snagging on anything as they travelled in the river, but mainly because each of them wanted to be close to Grakk at all times.
‘How many have survived this route?’ Brann asked the slave.
‘As many as have attempted it.’
That was the first encouraging thing he had heard for a while. ‘And how many have attempted it?’
‘None.’
‘Sometimes,’ said Gerens, ‘I prefer you to not ask questions.’
It was as treacherous to edge their way as a group to the edge of the hole as
it had looked, and it took them an eternity and several heart-stopping slips from each of them before they managed to range themselves around the lip of the hole, Brann roped to Grakk, he to Gerens and he to Sophaya. The hole was wide enough to take all of them and, as they paused to gather their resolve, Brann looked back at the slave, impassively standing with the lantern.
‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I do not know your name.’
‘No,’ said the slave, crouching to tie the lamp to the end of the rope hanging through the hole to the upper level. ‘You do not.’ He grasped the iron rings and started to climb.
They looked at each other, all thinking the same thought. If the slave were about to leave or, more to the point, if he were soon to pull the only source of light with him, this was their time to go.
Words were unnecessary. They nodded in unison, took a deep breath, slipped their feet from the footholds and dropped into darkness.
They knew it was coming, but still the shock of hitting the water was like a punch in the gut, and Brann fought the urge to gasp as they plunged under the surface. He kicked upwards and the others must have done the same, for they dragged Grakk upwards in a heartbeat. As soon as Brann felt air on his face, he pulled at the rope, hauling himself to Grakk and grabbing him around the chest from behind.
‘Are you all right?’ he gasped.
‘I am.’ But the rigidity of Grakk’s entire frame betrayed the lie.
They were already moving with the current and Sophaya and Gerens quickly joined them. They formed a ring, grasping each other’s arms and helping Gerens keep his head above the water despite the weight of his pack. While all but Grakk kicked, they also let their legs drift back a little to feel for the sides of the channel and push gently against them to keep from dragging against the rock.
Hero Grown Page 36