by Kris A Hiatt
The men got a look, knocked an arrow, and then nodded.
Disdane threw open the gate and the archers fired their arrows.
All three of Liernin’s men went down.
“Has the route changed?” Disdane asked her.
“Drastically so,” Jass replied. Drokier had provided both her and Disdane with a rough hand-drawn map that Jass actually found to be quite accurate. The plan was simple enough. While Shamir’s main force kept Liernin busy directing his army near the main gate, Disdane and his force would mount a surprise attack from the rear. The thought was that virtually all of Liernin’s forces would be busy with Drokier and Shamir. There would be little resistance for Disdane to cut through in order to get to the baron. With his attention on the army in front of him, he’d be too late to mount a defense from an attack on his backside. “Liernin isn’t with his main force at the gate.”
“Where is he then?” Disdane asked.
“He’s at his palace,” Jass explained, tying on the yellow cloak she’d been handed. She had discarded the other one so that she wouldn’t be mistaken for one of Liernin’s men.
“The coward,” Disdane spat. He looked around for a moment, clearly agitated by the news. “Can we get there from here?”
“Very easily,” Jass replied.
“How much resistance will we face?” the large man asked her, his agitation already gone.
“Not enough to matter,” Jass replied. While it wasn’t entirely true, she decided it was a simple enough of an answer.
“I’ll decide that. Give me a number.”
Jass wasn’t overly familiar with the man and her only opinion of him up until this point was that he was just a brute. But there was a level of intelligence in those eyes that she hadn’t seen before. Either she had missed it or Disdane was good at hiding his true intellect. She was very good at reading people, men especially, and she didn’t pick up on that until now. She knew she’d have to be on guard with this one. “No more than a few dozen roaming the streets and less than a hundred guarding their baron.”
Disdane quickly mulled over the information. A smile formed on the large man’s face and he nodded his head. “Show me on the map,” he instructed, pulling a parchment from an inner fold of his armor.
Jass traced a line on the map with her finger, starting at their current location and ending with the baron’s palace. “The most direct route.”
“Kill anyone that comes outside,” Disdane ordered his men, but be quiet about it. We don’t want to draw Liernin’s entire army to us.
“Many are holding up in the church,” Jass pointed out. “They think God can save them.”
“Better there than dead at my feet,” Disdane assured her, motioning for his men to follow him.
The large group moved through the gate and fanned out, taking up the entire width of the street. People peeked out windows and some dared a quick look through a door, but no one left their homes or otherwise posed a threat.
Bored and curious to see just how intelligent Disdane was, Jass decided to ask a few questions to see if she could find out. Even if she couldn’t, the questioning might just get under his skin, and she always enjoyed doing that to people. “You’ve got more than double the forces of those protecting the baron,” Jass said matter-of-factly. “But what if those outside the wall do come back in? Surely you can’t fight them all off.”
“Once I kill Liernin, they have no one left to fight for,” Disdane reasoned.
“So you don’t think they’ll continue to fight? What if that makes them angrier?”
“When I hold Liernin’s lifeless body up before them, their anger will quickly turn to fear.”
“Do you think that will be enough to scare him?” Jass asked, implying Treace. She hoped Disdane would catch on. Everything she’d learned about Treace said that he wasn’t easily scared. Apparently he was close to the baron’s family and had even given combat lessons to Liernin’s son. She had learned much in her short time in Haven. People were very free with information. Those in Kadenton weren’t as eager to tell her what they knew, at least without some form of payment first.
“If it doesn’t, it will at least give him pause,” Disdane replied with a slightly annoyed tone. “Which is more than I need to deal with him.”
Two of Liernin’s guards rounded the corner then. The shock and surprise on their face was priceless! Jass loved seeing that look. Their faces didn’t stay that way long, however, as they were quickly overtaken by Disdane’s men.
They left the bodies where they fell and continued on, walking over the dead men as they passed.
“You seem pretty confident for someone who’s already lost him once,” Jass offered.
Disdane gave her a sour look. “The old man and his magic saved the runt last time. The old man isn’t around to save him anymore.”
“You don’t like people pointing out your failures, do you?” Jass asked. She knew the answer already, but she wanted to hear him say it. It would set her up for the next part. The part where she told the large man how he had failed yet again.
“Who does?”
He had a point. No one actually enjoyed being reminded of their failures, but that’s exactly why Jass liked doing it. It pissed people off. “No one that I’m aware of. But I’m afraid I have more bad news for you.”
Disdane gave her another unpleasant look and picked up his pace, as if to get away from her.
“That old man. The one that saved Treace, that you thought was dead? He’s not. Actually, he’s rumored to be with Liernin,” Jass cheerfully informed him, matching his stride. “Sorry to break the bad news that you failed again. Wait. No, I’m not.” She raised her eyebrows at him a few times and grinned.
Disdane cut down a man that was stupid enough to exit his home. “If what you say is true, I wouldn’t be so happy about that. Our job just got much harder.”
“Your job just got much harder,” Jass argued, emphasizing the first word. “I’ve done my job. I got paid to open the gate. That job is done. Your job is to kill Liernin.”
“If you don’t intend on helping, then why are you following me?”
“I could help,” Jass replied, dragging out the second word. “If I were to get paid for it.”
“I’ll give you a kaden if you kill the old man,” Disdane offered.
“You’ll give me twenty when I kill him,” Jass countered, stabbing a guard who rushed out from between two nearby buildings.
“I’m not paying for anyone else,” Disdane told her, motioning to the man she had just killed.
“That one’s free,” she happily replied and began humming her tune.
Rather than talking, Jass continued to hum her tune the rest of the way to the baron’s palace. She’d had her fun with Disdane. She also found some truth to the man. He was far from an idiot. He was smarter than he let on.
There were a few calls for reinforcements during the trip, but those that did the calling were quickly cut down and there weren’t any reinforcements in sight. Either their calls were not heard, or any support that may be arriving was trying to be quiet or get a measure of what they faced. Jass hoped it was the former. Not that she was opposed to cutting down more of Liernin’s men, it was just that she wouldn’t be paid to do so.
“I can’t believe we made it unnoticed,” one of Disdane’s men remarked as they paused before the baron’s palace.
“Who says we did?” Disdane replied.
“Wouldn’t they have attacked us by now if they did?” the man asked.
“Only if they were stupid,” Disdane assured him.
That solidified the thoughts that Jass had about Disdane’s intellect. She looked around, irritated. It wasn’t what she saw that irritated her, it was what she didn’t see. There were no guards anywhere in sight. “They know we’re here.”
Disdane nodded his head in agreement. “From what she says, we outnumber them,” he explained to his men, motioning to Jass. “But that doesn’t mean we’re going t
o be able to just walk right in. They’ll fight us the whole way. Be ready.”
The men relayed Disdane’s orders back down the lines. Jass thought it was pointless to do so. If they didn’t think Liernin’s men would fight to their last breath, then the fools deserved to be cut down for their stupidity.
“If you find Liernin, bring him to me. We aren’t stopping until he’s dead,” Disdane assured his men.
“I’ll see you around,” Jass told him, moving off to the right. She had no intention of being told what to do by the man. Disdane may be smarter than what he let on, but running headlong into a fight wasn’t something she preferred doing. She liked to surprise her enemies.
“Where are you going?” Disdane asked.
“I’ll find my own way in.” Jass recalled another gate, near to a tavern, that led to barracks and a training yard that butted up against the back side of the palace. She thought she’d try getting in that way.
“You’ll stay with me.”
“I don’t take orders from you,” Jass replied, not slowing in the least.
“Everyone takes orders from me,” Disdane argued.
“And yet I don’t,” she said as she rounded a corner. Truth be told, she half expected either Disdane or one of his men to stop her. That didn’t seem to be the case, so far at least.
She looked over her shoulder one more time, ensuring that she wasn’t going to be collected by any of Disdane’s men and moved on. She thought it best to steer clear of the front of the palace, so she put a few streets between her and the building.
Sounds of battle erupted from the direction of the palace. Disdane must have finally found Liernin’s men. She wondered how long before the man had the baron in his grasp. Not long, she guessed. Meaning she had to move quickly if she was going to play some part in this. Truth be told, she didn’t need the twenty kadens. Drokier had already agreed to pay her a hundred times that just for opening the gate. But, even though she didn’t need the money, she liked the idea of killing the old man simply because it was something that Disdane had previously failed to do.
She continued on and it wasn’t long before the gate came into view. There were two guards stationed there, both looking around uneasily. She wondered if they were trying to decide whether or not to see what the commotion was on the other side of the palace.
“Not the wisest of choices of color for your cloak,” a voice called out to her.
Jass snapped her head in the direction of the speaker to find a grizzle-haired man looking her over from inside a forge. She didn’t think the man recognized her true identity. It seemed more like he was making a simple observation to her. Jass pulled her cloak out and pretended to give it a good looking over. “I suppose you’re right.”
“It sounds like they’ve broken through,” the man said, inspecting some tool or other before placing it on a large cloth. He didn’t sound overly concerned, even though it was quite obvious that he was speaking of Shamir’s forces.
“That’s what I’m going to find out,” Jass informed him, making sure he could see that the armor she wore was that of Liernin’s men.
“Good luck to you, girl,” he told her and continued on with whatever it was he was doing.
Jass thought about killing him for a second, but the thought didn’t last much longer than that. He was old, didn’t have a weapon that she could see, and she wasn’t getting paid to kill him. Granted, she generally enjoyed killing, but for some reason she didn’t like the idea of killing this man. It would make getting through the gate a bit more difficult, but certainly not impossible. Since the old man could see her, she couldn’t just kill the two fools. She’d have to improvise. She removed her heavy cloak and headed for the gate.
“What’s going on over there?” one of the men asked her as she approached. They both wore concerned expressions, bordering on fear.
“Looks like he’s packing up to leave,” Jass replied, thinking they were speaking of the man at the forge. Why they’d be concerned or afraid of the man leaving though, she had no idea.
“I’m not talking about Smith. I’m talking about over there,” the man clarified, pointing in the direction of the battle.
The man at the forge was named Smith? Who gets named for a profession? “It sounds like they’ve broken through,” Jass said, using Smith’s exact words.
“Then surely we’ve lost,” the other guard remarked.
There was a great amount of sadness in that voice. Jass couldn’t blame them for being sad at losing. No one liked to lose, but they should be happy. Normally she would have already killed the pair and moved on. They had no idea that they were lucky to be alive. She pushed past them then and into the training yard.
“Where are you going?” the first one asked.
“To find Liernin and help win this war,” Jass replied without looking back.
“Wait up,” the first spoke again. “We’re coming with you.”
Jass didn’t mean for her words to inspire the men, nor did she intend for them to entice the pair into joining her. She was about to refuse their help, and even opened her mouth to do so, when she realized they had to know more about the layout of the palace than she did. She’d reach her goal faster with them than without. She thought about asking their names, but passed knowing it wouldn’t matter in a few minutes anyway. “Take the lead, and be quick about it. I’ll watch our rear.”
The men did as they were told. Jass wondered for a moment if there was some marking on her uniform that indicated rank and if so, was she a higher rank than them? She didn’t recall seeing anything that stood out, but she admitted she could have missed something since she wasn’t looking.
The pair led her through the yard and into the palace. They made a few turns, passing what looked to her like barracks and then a weapons storage room. Most of the weapons seemed to be cleared out, but she could see that a few remained. The sounds of battle became much louder. It wouldn’t be long before they were a part of it.
“My mum sings when she’s nervous,” one of the two remarked. “I talk when I’m nervous, which is probably why I’m talking now.”
“So?” Jass asked harshly. She knew the man was scared, but why bring it up?
“I just thought you were too, since you was humming and all,” the man replied.
Jass didn’t realize that she was humming. She didn’t have to ask what tune it was. She knew full well that it was her own. She was glad she didn’t sing instead of hum. She would have had to kill both of them if they didn’t manage to catch on and kill her first. The man was wrong, however. Even though she was humming, it wasn’t because she was scared. “I’m not nervous, I’m excited.”
They made another turn at the end of the hall and in front of them was what Jass knew to be the main courtyard of the palace. There was a large fountain in the center, covered in ice with water slowly trickling out of the top. Large trees, barren from the winter, reached higher than they highest part of the building. Large marble walkways, cleared of snow allowing her to see the material, led to the main building, which stood only paces from where she now stood. She couldn’t see the actual stairs, nor where they actually led due to her being so close to the building.
As much as her gaze caught all of those things in the few seconds she looked them over, it was the battle beyond the fountain that held her eye.
Disdane’s force was engaged with Liernin’s men near to the entrance of the courtyard. The opening was much narrower than the actual courtyard itself, allowing the smaller force to defend their position much easier. She had to hand it to them, they were smart. Disdane may have more than twice the number of men as Liernin, but you could only fit five men side by side in that narrow opening.
Arrows flew out from high above her, arcing between the trees before disappearing into the throng of men. From the angle in which the arrows were fired, she thought they were missing Liernin’s men altogether and scoring hits on Disdane’s men. Even though that opening was narrow, it was not hindere
d by height. While there were walls, there wasn’t a ceiling. It was open to the sky, so arrows could be fired into the oncoming force, if they were fired from a high enough position, which they appeared to be. She thought the archers might be firing from the roof.
Jass hadn’t spotted Disdane yet, but there were so many men fighting in such a small area that she couldn’t make out individuals anyway. But still, he was so large that she didn’t think she could miss him if he was in her field of view.
More arrows flew out. They flew over both her and Liernin’s men to strike once more into Disdane’s forces. Jass thought that if the onslaught of arrows continued, the benefit of numbers would soon go to Liernin. If she was going to get paid, she needed to do something about it. “You two help there,” she said, pointing to the opening.
The men looked at her briefly before running off to join the fight.
With those two out of her hair, she ran around to the front of the stairs to get a better look at where the arrows were coming from. There was a large, beautifully crafted balcony that jutted out from the main building on the top floor. It had to offer a perfect view of the courtyard. That had to be the baron’s balcony. She couldn’t get a look at the men that were on it, but she could clearly see their bows sticking out beyond the balcony. She counted ten. Being four stories up, Jass knew they had no problem having a clear line of sight directly into Disdane’s force.
“Make them pay!” she heard someone yell from above her. “Make every arrow count!”
She climbed the stairs slowly at first, mostly out of habit, then sped up when she realized that even if someone was at the top, which there wasn’t, they would be more suspicious of her for sneaking around than simply walking as if she knew where she was going.
Jass kept on, moving with a purpose, trying to find another stairwell leading up. She paused at every corner, ensuring she wasn’t running into other groups of men. She may be wearing a uniform, but she’d need to explain what it was that she was doing. She found another set of stairs leading up, which she took. She encountered no one, but Jass still decided caution was the best course of action.