Around him the silence was almost complete. Only the occasional complaints of his empty belly and the faint sounds of someone crying softly in one of the other cells could be heard.
Shivering in his misery, Aaron wondered why he and the others had been singled out for this special treatment. The guards had said nothing to them to explain their situation, and other than the brief struggle the night of their capture, when he and his father had tried to come to the defense of Sarah, he had been as cooperative (helpless, really) as the rest of the captives. His only hope was that all would be explained to them in the morning. Thought of this darkened his spirits even further. There was no morning in a dark stone cell this far beneath the ground.
Jack shivered in the frigid morning air as the sky slowly lightened in the east. He had wedged himself with his cloak and his blanket into the same gap in the rocks that Marian had used to stand her watch, and the protection from the night breezes had helped some, but his immobility and the approaching winter cold had still had its effect.
The stars had become his only source of light not long after Marian woke him for his turn at the watch, and it had been difficult to make out any details in the little valley that separated them from the trees that the gorn had searched the evening before. Several times he had thought that he detected movement in that valley out of the corner of his eye, but each time, when he concentrated, he could see nothing but the vague outline of a small bush or a dip or boulder that appeared just a little bit darker in the landscape under the stars. More than once he felt that the enemy was sneaking around behind them and he had nearly decided to wake Marian and suggest that they flee further north, further from the gorn encampment, but he dared not lose contact with the enemy completely. It was vital to be in position to see which direction they moved come morning so that he could raise the proper warning. So each time he had controlled his anxiety and remained motionless on watch.
As the light slowly improved, he could see that a light frost had settled over the land during the night. Gradually he was able to verify that the frost lay undisturbed in the valley between his position and the trees. If gorn had crossed that space, they had not done so since the frost settled. That was some relief, at least.
With the improving light, Jack could make out the wood clearly now. The trees stood silent and undisturbed. He could see no motion for the little distance that his sight could penetrate under the trees, but he had already decided that they would not attempt to move back to their vantage position in the bushes across from the tower. There was just too much risk that the gorn would be patrolling those woods.
From his position on the little hill, he could look down to the east and see the valley that the gorn would use if they continued on toward South Corner. To the south and a little west, he could also see in the distance the path that led back to the castle. The enemy would not have sent such a large contingent of gorn just to man the watchtower, so unless they turned straight south this morning, staying behind the wood from his current lookout, he would know their intentions when they moved.
The morning wore on slowly. A small herd of deer, browsed quietly through the valley, but did not approach what Jack had begun to think of as the tower wood. Soon they were back into the trees to the northeast. Other than that, only a faint wisp of smoke rising from where the tower stood indicated that there was any life in the area.
Marian woke with the morning sun in her eyes. From her campsite she could just see Jack still in position on watch. They had left their mounts on long tethers well back behind the hill the previous night. They had left them saddled so that if they had to flee they could do it quickly. Marian gave them some water, then removed one saddle at a time, brushed the horse out well, then replaced the saddles, leaving the cinches a little loose. She checked their hooves for stones they may have picked up during their night ride, but all was well. They browsed contentedly on the sparse autumn grass and appeared ready for another day of travel.
Marian tied her bedroll in place behind her saddle, then climbed the hill toward Jack, keeping herself well to the back so that she could not be seen from the tower wood. When she was close enough, she spoke in a low voice, “Any sign of movement yet?”
“Nothing yet. They have a campfire going over by the tower, but I’ve seen no other sign of activity. Nothing on the edge of the woods, either. They don’t seem to be in any hurry to get to wherever they’re going.”
“They got a pretty late start last night. They might just be sleeping in. You hungry? I’ve got water and some biscuits if you’re interested.”
Marian handed Jack the provisions, and Jack nibbled on a biscuit while he kept his watch on the wood and the two possible avenues of travel that he expected the gorn to use.
“What do you think Owen was dreaming about last night?” Marian asked after a while. “He seemed pretty scared when we finally woke him.”
“I don’t know,” Jack responded with a sigh. “It wasn’t like the night before when I woke him from that owl thing. He seemed to be fighting something last night, and I don’t think that he was winning. His shouts as he was waking up didn’t make much sense either.
“You’re going to have to keep an eye on him when you go back up there. I wish he hadn’t taken that blasted lump of brass from the Old Wizard’s cottage. The wizard’s magic is having some kind of effect on him, and I don’t think that it’s good. The way he thrust the falcon’s head in his pocket when we suggested that he leave it behind was a little spooky too. It was like he wanted to get it out of our sight before we could convince him that it was having some kind of negative effect on him. Almost like it wasn’t really Owen who wanted him to have it.”
“Well he probably saved our lives from that gorn in the woods the other night,” Marian admitted, “but I know what you mean. He’s starting to act a little strange. He’s just my brother, and we’re just farmer’s kids. I don’t think that magic is meant for the likes of us. I’ll see if I can’t get that staff head away from him. If I just threw it in the river gorge that runs by the castle we’d never have to worry about it again.”
“That might be best,” Jack agreed. “But I think you’d better do it soon. Owen’s changing, and he might not be able to change back if it goes too far.”
They remained silent for a while as the sun slowly rose higher in the sky, each thinking about Owen, the enemy, and the serious trouble they were all in.
“I’ve got to stretch,” Jack said, breaking the silence. “Take over for me for a while… Wait a minute,” he hissed. “There they go.”
Marian crept on her stomach around the side of the hill until she could see down the valley to the east. There, in the distance, along the trail leading toward South Corner were the gorn. For being on foot, they were moving pretty fast.
“I can’t count them from here,” Jack whispered, “but it looks like most if not all of them to me.”
“I agree,” Marian responded. “Do you think I should creep back up on the watchtower to see if they left anyone behind?”
“No,” Jack responded strongly. “They had plenty of opportunity to discover our vantage point in the bushes, and if they left anyone behind, they may be on the lookout for one of us to come back to it.”
Slowly and carefully Jack backed out of his place of concealment in the rocks and edged over to where Marian lay. “Stay here and watch the trail back to the castle for another hour, then go back and find Owen. Stay out of sight from those woods when you leave here, there may still be somebody watching. I’m going to have to leave you now and get ahead of those gorn. Be careful, and take care of Owen. Remember what we agreed about that staff head. I’ll bring back help as soon as I can.”
The two shook hands, and Jack edged back around the hill, ran to his horse, replaced the halter with his bridle, checked and tightened the cinch, then trotted into the woods to the north. He intended to swing wide so that he could not be seen from the tower wood, then converge on the track to South Corner well
in front of the gorn.
Marian moved carefully up the hill and around to the rocks so that she could see the trail between the watchtower and the castle. There was no sign of movement. The gray smoke from the gorns’ campfire still rose in a plume into the morning sky, but as Marian watched, it slowly dwindled. Perhaps the gorn had left the tower unmanned. She dared not go check.
When she had asked Jack’s opinion earlier, she was hoping for the answer she had received. It was one thing to sneak up on the tower when it was the three of them and the gorn didn’t know that anyone from South Corner was near by, and even last night when she was with Jack and they were pretty sure that the tower was empty, but it would be something else entirely to do it now in broad daylight, all by herself, with the gorn alerted by the discovery of their earlier attack. Marian reckoned that she was brave enough, if barely, but that was tempting fate just a little too far.
Marian lay motionless on the grass for what she was sure was at least an hour. There was no sign of movement either in what she could see of the tower wood, or along the trail back to the castle. The gorn they had seen earlier had long since traveled out of sight behind the hills to the northeast.
She spent the time thinking about how she was going to get the brass staff head away from Owen. It was clear from their earlier experiment that it did not want to leave Owen’s possession. What would it do if she tried to take it from Owen while he slept? Perhaps she could use a stick to roll it into a sack, then throw the sack into the river. Would the sack burst into flame if she tried that? Hopefully, Owen could still be made to see the danger he was in, and he would dispose of it himself, but Marian was doubtful. The staff head was influencing him, and Marian was not sure that her brother would listen to reason.
Finally, Marian carefully edged back around the hill and moved down to collect her horse. For the past little while, she felt an itch between her shoulder blades as though someone were trying to sneak up behind her. After brushing up the grass where they had camped and the horses had stood the night, and making sure that they had left nothing behind, she followed Jack’s course into the trees to the north then swung west toward the castle. If watchful eyes had spotted them on the hill overlooking the tower woods, and observed their individual departures, Marian had failed to see them.
Chapter 7
Broken Threads
“Enter.”
Commander Furstiv al Bardon sat at a plain wooden table, the morning light shining through the window and across the report he was writing. He had taken a room on the first floor of an old inn that stood at the edge of the square across from the castle gate as his office. The room had once been a small library with a high vaulted ceiling. There was a fireplace at one end, and the walls were lined with shelves. Many of the shelves were still stocked with books, most decayed beyond use, but surprisingly, some were still readable if handled very carefully. The library’s former furnishings were gone, but his aide had located a table and a few serviceable chairs.
“Ah, Captain Saglam. I am just completing a report for Lord Sorcerer Kadeen to inform him of your successes. We’ll need a runner to take it back to him, someone agile and surefooted to make it safely across the bridge.”
“I’ve just the man, sir.”
“Kadeen will not be pleased that you were unable to recover the wizard’s staff. I’ll pick out a couple of the prettiest village girls to accompany the messenger. I know the sorcerer’s tastes, and perhaps their presence will soften the loss of the staff sufficiently that the messenger will not be executed when he delivers the message.
“I’m also acquainting him with our status here and the condition of the bridge over the deep. If he tries to go ahead with our original plan and send us engineers and slaves to remove the dam that holds back the Deep, we’ll lose most of them in the crossing. We’ll have to make do with what we have until Sardang can bring us more of the locals.
“Put a detail to work on the front gate. I want it serviceable so that a small squad can hold this fortress in case any of the local farmers try to interfere before we have them all rounded up. Also, send a squad out to inspect the condition of the walls and any sally ports or minor gates, and put a detail to removing any vines or creepers that might be used to scale the walls. I want this position secure before we move the prisoners across the river to start excavating the dam.
“We don’t have enough men to send out proper patrols, and I don’t expect any activity in the neighborhood for some time, but set a strong watch on the castle walls and make sure that the men are alert. That’s all for now. Any questions?”
“No, sir.”
“Good. Get to it, Captain. Send me the runner first.”
As he watched Captain Saglam depart, Furstiv thought to himself that he should have asked him to send his most shiftless, most expendable soldier to carry the message back. Kadeen was not known for his ability to handle disappointment with equanimity. Even if the messenger survived the delivery of his message, which was doubtful, there was no sense risking a top soldier on a round trip excursion over that disintegrating bridge. ‘I hope he’s smart enough to have caught that message,’ he thought.
With a sigh, Furstiv signed the message to Kadeen, folded it, and sealed it with his signet ring. As the wax was cooling, a disheveled soldier entered and reported to the Commander. He was a little smaller than most, and bore the marks of countless unsuccessful brawls.
“Regular Soldier Stangar reporting as ordered, Commander,” the soldier declared, coming belatedly to attention under al Bardon’s fierce gaze.
“I’ve a report here for you to deliver to Lord Sorcerer Kadeen, Soldier Stangar” al Bardon said. “It is for his eyes only; is that clear?”
“Yes, Commander.”
“Make sure that it is. If this goes astray, it’ll be your hide, Soldier.”
“Yes, sir. I understand, sir,” Stangar responded, a tremor in his voice.
“Alright, come with me. There’s something else I want you to deliver to the Lord Sorcerer.”
Commander al Bardon led the way out of the inn and over to the stable where the villagers were being held, collecting half a dozen additional men along the way. Entering, he stopped to talk to the sergeant of the guards.
“Are they giving you any problems, Sergeant?”
“No Commander, sir. They’s quiet as can be. Most of them still have their hands bound, of course, all except the water girls, sir.”
“Good. We’ll keep them that way until we can get them in leg irons. After that, we can put them to work. Worked hard enough, they won’t have the energy to cause us any trouble.
“I need to pick out a couple of girls to send back to Baraduhne. Are all the prisoners here now?”
“Yes, sir. All except them that we moved to the cells last night, and none of them was girls, sir.”
“All right, Sergeant. I brought along a little help. I’ll identify what I want, and you and your men separate them out to the square. Be easy when you do it,” Furstiv added gruffly. “I don’t want them all marked up.”
“Yes, sir,” the sergeant answered with a gap-toothed grin. “Course some of ‘em tripped a time or two on the trek out here; you understand, sir. None of ‘ems what you might call ‘damaged’, exactly, just bruised a little here and there, sir.”
“I’ll point them out, and you haul them out, Sergeant, and see that they don’t ‘trip’ in the process.”
Commander al Bardon worked his way through the prisoners, evaluating each one for their ability to work. The women and girls he also considered for their suitability as appeasement for Kadeen. Most dropped their eyes when confronted with al Bardon’s calculating, one-eyed stare, but a few, both men and women, returned it with a glare. Sarah and Brian Murray were both among the latter.
“Take that one and that one, sergeant,” al Bardon ordered, pointing to two of the prettier young women.
There were shouts of protest and some brief scuffling as the men of South Corner tried to prote
ct the two girls chosen, but their struggle was quickly quelled by the cudgels of the guards and the girls were taken out of the stable. One was sobbing and crying as she was dragged away; the other merely continued to glare at al Bardon. Another face was added to her growing list.
In the courtyard, al Bardon looked the two young women over again in the daylight. “They’ll do. Put that one in the back,” he said, point to the tight-lipped auburn haired girl who still held her glare.
A light, strong line was tied around the necks of the two girls, much as it had been around Aaron Murray’s neck the night before. It allowed the girls about eight feet of separation, with a ten-foot lead at one end. Handing the lead rope and the sealed message to Stangar, the Commander growled, “Here’s your package and here’s the message. Don’t make any stops or detours along the way, and make sure that they both make it to the Lord Sorcerer Kadeen intact. Do it as if your life depended on it, Soldier,” he said with an evil sneer, “because it does.”
Owen watched the castle through the night, until the moon finally set behind the peaks of the West Wall. Huddled in his cloak and his blanket, he was still shivering in the cold night breeze off of the mountains. In the crisp air, he could also occasionally smell a hint of odor from the Wizard’s Moat. The water there was not stagnant, there was a steady flow into it from the mountain streams, and it fed two rivers as output. Still, the water seemed to have a musty decayed smell to it, as though it were a pool on the edge of a swamp that lay over a forgotten graveyard. Owen shuddered at this mental image, and put his concentration back on the castle.
Since Marian and Jack had gone west to track the gorn, there had been no activity. Twice Owen thought that he detected a glint of metal reflecting moonlight along the wall above the ramp leading to the main gate, but it was so slight and gone so soon, that he could not be sure.
Mostly, Owen spent the time worrying about the sorcerer that had summoned his spirit and questioned him. Could it only happen while he slept? When Jack woke him, the contact was broken, and it had not resumed after his friends left.
The Staff of the Winds (The Wizard of South Corner Book 1) Page 14