Wren and the Ravens

by Eric Buffington

  “If I know Wren at all, when he hears that we botched this job, he won’t care to hear anything else you have to say. Remember, he’s in it to complete the mission and get his pay, that’s all. Everything or everyone else, well, we’re either pawns he can use, or obstacles in his way. Less useful than a bird.” Hunlok nodded and stepped away into the crowd, headed back to Wren’s home.

  Liden walked slowly through the streets of the market, but his mind was somewhere else completely. He thought through his own escape from the dungeon. He knew what had happened after Wren came in, but how did he get in past the guards? He didn’t know if he could knock someone unconscious quickly enough to not raise an alarm.

  Would being a nobleman gain them entrance? He did have papers to prove his nobility. Could they help? He shook his head from side to side. No, that wouldn’t work. If he came in trying to help a Kresthinian spy, they’d know something was wrong.

  Something would come together, he felt sure of it. He just needed to eliminate as many bad ideas as he could so he would only be left with the right ones, then he would pick the best plan after seeing where the girls were taken. The next hour passed like a snail crossing a mineshaft. He walked a large circle, weaving in and out of the market, but couldn’t help but spend most of his time looking down the street to see if Hunlok or Debir had returned. When he finally saw Debir he had to exercise extreme self-discipline to not run over to meet him.

  “Where are they?” he asked, trying to keep the Merrynian accent and making an extra effort to seem like he wasn’t urgently asking something of great importance.

  Debir spun around and flourished a new scarf he had picked up somewhere along the way. “What do you think?” He was doing a much better job staying in character, though if he kept it up much longer, it might get him strangled.

  “If you continue spinning like that it is likely to get caught on something,” Liden replied. “Perhaps you can stop admiring that scarf and answer my question.”

  Debir’s eyes darted back and forth, checking for any eaves droppers. “Large stone prison. Looks impenetrable. I think we’ll need Wren for this one.”

  “Hmmm.” Liden rubbed his chin. “That eliminates some options. How tall were the walls?” He turned around and saw Hunlok making his way through the crowd. He didn’t look overly happy by his gait.

  Debir’s eyebrows furrowed, “Did you not hear me? We need Wren. This is impossible. We don’t have time for me to design anything new.”

  “We’ll see,” Liden responded, tilting his head to indicate that Hunlok was back. “We might not need anything new.”

  Before being asked anything Hunlok simply blurted out, “He wasn’t there. The place was empty, like he’d cleaned it out and left for good.”

  Liden nodded. Now they had nearly confirmed their suspicion. It was true that Wren’s homes weren’t exactly homey, but if it looked even more empty than normal, he might have left them on their own. Maybe he’d also seen the girls get captured, or perhaps he had found his target. Either way it was best to assume that they needed to get the girls out themselves. “Debir, we’ve got some coins, and we have time. I have a couple of plans that I think might work…”

  “You don’t understand,” Debir cut him off. “We need Wren because we don’t have any time.” Liden and Hunlok leaned in close, not sure what more he had to tell them that could possibly make the situation worse. “The girls have been labeled as Kresthinian spies. They will be housed in the lowest level of the dungeon and their sentence is already set. At dawn in two days they’re being executed.”

  “It’s tragic,” a gravelly voice said from behind Liden. He spun around and his eyes widened, feeling like they would burst from his head. Wren’s mark was standing right behind him. How did he know about them? Why was he not dressed in the bright clothing Wren had described? Had Wren been outsmarted? “Take all three of them back to where the large boy went.”

  Liden swung at the tall man, but he easily dodged to the side, grabbed Liden’s hand and twisted so he was dropped to his knees. Through painful tears he watched as two soldiers restrained Hunlok and Debir.

  Chapter 18

  Wren, disguised this time with a false beard as well as a fake scalp to give the appearance of a balding, elderly man, meandered through the streets and turned toward the church. When he saw that neither Sarta nor Knell were in their designated positions, he grimaced and clenched the handle of his wooden cane until his knuckles turned white. Their disappearance could mean one of several things, but the first and most prominent he could think of was that they had botched yet another assignment. If they made him lose his chance to catch his target, he would never forgive them.

  He hobbled toward the church and pressed his way inside. Greeted by empty pews and the stained glass wall on the east end, he grumbled and went in. He took a seat in an empty pew and collected his thoughts. If they had made a mistake, and the target had found them, they would likely be dead, or in prison, but it was possible they had just gotten bored and abandoned their posts. Wren sighed and shook his head. Maybe he would get lucky and they had found the target. Perhaps they were waiting for him right now back at the house – though they shouldn’t have left until he gave them the signal of course, but at least that would be an acceptable act of disobedience.

  The assassin slowly stood up, keeping up his act for any who might be tailing him or passively observing. With people like Ashlyn and this particular target in the same city, there was no telling which walls had eyes anymore.

  He circled around the long way toward his home, stopping in a small shed to discard his disguise before heading toward his stable.

  The raven sat high above on the perch and fluffed its wings before giving a long caw.

  Wren stopped in his tracks and looked up. Could someone have followed the teens back to his home? Maybe they were captured and forced to lead someone back. Wren answered the raven’s challenge with a series of sharp, short whistles to identify himself.

  The raven then answered that with ca-caaw, ca-caaw.

  Wren felt a fire burn within his chest. Someone was there.

  Wren gave a short, two-toned whistle to get the number of enemies.

  Rook, rook.

  “Two is not so bad,” he muttered to himself.

  He quietly opened the stable door and moved into the stall with the horse. The large animal grunted and shifted away from him, but otherwise remained quiet. Wren bent down and brushed the straw bedding aside to uncover a hatch leading to a cellar. He glanced over his shoulder while his fingers nimbly worked the cypher lock and then he went down into the darkness, pulling the hatch closed above him and locking it in place with a sliding bolt on the inside. At the bottom of the seven-foot long ladder he fumbled around for a small vessel of oil. He lit it and illuminated the cellar. There were bags of potatoes stacked as high as he was tall, as well as carrots, onions, and jars of pickles too. He turned sideways and shifted through the narrow walkway until he came to a set of stairs. Setting the burning lamp on a nearby bag, he quietly ascended the stairs until he came to a solid panel of wood. He pulled the panel back and set it to the side, then he reached up and took a smaller rectangle away from the wall, revealing a peep hole.

  Inside the front library of the house he saw the three young men. In front of them stood two men he had not seen before, local guards by the look of their uniform. The three young men were bound with ropes around their ankles and wrists, but their mouths were not gagged. They kept their eyes on the floor, and were obviously nervous. Hunlok had a red mark on the right side of his face that would likely bruise within the day.

  By contrast, the two guards appeared quite at ease. One stood nearer to the library entrance, and the other stood on the far end of the couch, with his crossbow only a few inches from Liden’s head.

  So this was it then. The teenagers had been found out somehow, and now they were being held hostage in an attempt to catch him. Wren replaced the small panel over the peep hole and
went back down the stairs.

  He pulled out his mini-crossbow and checked it. He removed the bolt currently loaded and opted for one with a thinner shaft. He would have to make sure he aimed directly for flesh with this particular bolt, for it would likely not have the strength to penetrate the guard’s leather armor, but the narrower body would allow him to maneuver it into position slightly better given the small peep hole he was going to be firing from. After he was finished, he took in a breath. “You kids aren’t worth this much trouble,” he whispered aloud. “The raven hasn’t ever fouled up a single assignment. He can steal keys, make distractions, scout for enemies, and all he needs are crackers! Stale crackers at that!” He turned around to face the stairs. This is the last time I rescue them.

  Wren went back up the stairs and pulled the small panel back. He aimed the mini-crossbow and waited. He had to time it so that he struck the guard near Liden while the guard’s crossbow was aimed somewhere other than the young man’s head. For a moment, the thought crossed Wren’s mind that all of them might be just a touch better off if Liden was shot, but he dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it came.

  The clock on the wall behind the guards began to chime as the minute hand struck the hour. The guard near Liden turned to look at it. Wren fired his shot, catching the guard in the back of the head at the base of the skull, just under the rim of the steel cap helmet he wore. The guard stumbled forward and fell into the stone mantle, knocking a pair of books to the floor as he crashed downward. Wren kicked his secret door open and closed the seven foot gap between him and the guard at the library’s entrance in less than a second. His left hand seized the guard’s sword-hand at the wrist, then he brought in a savage right hook that caught the guard across the left cheek, splitting the skin and splattering a bit of blood on the floor. The guard tried to pull his sword-hand free, but Wren held tight and then came down with a fierce stomp to the guard’s left knee, collapsing the joint inward with a ker-POP!

  The guard went down hard, and might have cried out except that Wren slipped behind him, wrenching the sword arm out to the side before he brought down a massive strike to the guard’s left forearm, snapping the bone and forcing the guard to drop the weapon. Wren then put his right hand over the guard’s trachea and squeezed just enough to silence the guard from shouting.

  “Who sent you?” Wren asked.

  “It was the man with the scar,” Hunlok called out.

  Wren turned and shot the young man a glare. “What?”

  Debir nodded. “It’s true. He sent these two guards.”

  “Knell and Sarta were arrested,” Liden cut in. “We have to save them! They’re going to be executed as spies.”

  Wren tensed. Spies? If that was true, then everything was lost. He spun the guard around, picked him up and slammed him into the wall behind them. “Where is Gorban?”

  “You’ll never catch him, he is heading west, and you will never see him again,” the guard said.

  Wren tightened his grip and pressed into the guard’s broken knee. “Where?!”

  “Safe house, just outside of town. The Millerton’s farm has a shed he uses, but you’ll never catch him.”

  Wren delivered a terrible blow that crushed the guard’s neck and then let the body fall to the floor. He turned and went to the young men. He pulled his dagger and cut Hunlok’s hands loose. “Here,” he said as he gave the large teenager the dagger. “Use that to free yourselves.”

  “You’re going to help us save Knell and Sarta, right?” Liden asked.

  Wren puffed air and shook his head. “No, I dare say things would have been better if I’d never laid eyes on you.”

  “We can’t save them alone,” Debir said. “We need you.”

  “You’re going to have to figure this one out by yourselves,” Wren said. “I’d suggest you go in and try bribery. Maybe they’ll believe you if you say you were forced into working with me.”

  “We were forced into it,” Liden said coldly.

  “Exactly. No reason not to believe the truth, especially if you sweeten the deal with coins. Now get out of here, I never want to see any of you again.”

  “Where do we go when we have Sarta and Knell?” Hunlok asked.

  “You can all take a long walk off a short pier for all I care,” Wren snarled. The assassin then turned and ran up the stairs to grab his backpack with all the items he had collected over the last several weeks. He then slipped the vial of blue liquid into a larger container that would keep the vial from being damaged, and stuffed it into the backpack with the other things. He tossed a rope out the window, tying off one end on the thick beam that acted as the raven’s perch. The bird squawked and flew away in a flutter of black feathers.

  Wren tightened the straps on his backpack and started climbing out the window.

  “Where are you going? You can’t leave us here,” Liden shouted as he stormed into the room. “You wouldn’t leave your precious raven to die locked up in a cage.”

  Wren glanced up at the boy with a hard stare. “You fail to recognize the fact that my raven has never been caught.”

  Liden stared back with wide eyes, too stunned to offer a retort. Wren turned away and didn’t slow down or even so much as glance back to the young man. He was done with them and their incompetence. If the girls died in this last mission, then so be it. Their sacrifice would not be in vain, for the target Wren was after was far more malicious than a group of teenagers could imagine, and stopping him would be worth five lives. It was even worth Wren’s life, if that’s the price the fates demanded. The assassin slipped on a thick pair of gloves and then slid down the rope, landing hard atop the stable’s roof in a mere second. He moved to a hatch and pulled it open, then jumped down inside the stable next to his horse. A moment later the stable doors flew open and he galloped through the streets.

  There was no time for disguises or pretenses now. The Millerton’s farm was only a half mile outside of town to the west. With any luck, Wren could still catch Gorban, but he needed an edge. He couldn’t very well chase from behind. Gorban would be too smart for that, leaving traps and other allies behind in the way to obstruct Wren’s path.

  The assassin rode hard for the library, forcing people and guards alike to scatter from the streets or face his horse’s furious hooves. A few guards called for him to stop, some even took shots at him with their crossbows, but he continued on without slowing at all. When he reached the library the horse started to slow down, obviously expecting to stop outside the building, but Wren kicked the animal’s sides and rode toward the open door. A large woman gasped and dove away from the entrance as the animal grunted and its hooves clik-clacked up the stairs and into the library.

  “Sir! You can’t come in here like that!” the librarian shouted. Wren urged the horse onward to the secret door that led to the underground tunnel. He put the horse into position and then pulled back on the reins to make it rear up and kick the door down. Wood splintered inward, tumbling down a set of stairs that luckily unfolded straight ahead of him instead of spiraling tightly.

  “Just enough room,” Wren said. He tapped the horse’s sides, but the animal refused, taking a couple steps backward instead. Wren tightened his grip and gave the animal a harder kick.

  “Sir! I’m calling for the guards!” the librarian shouted from behind.

  Wren kicked a third time and finally the horse complied. The assassin bent down to lie as flat as he could along the animal’s back until they reached the bottom of the stairs. The horse took deliberate, slow steps as the light from above failed to illuminate the rest of the tunnel. Wren pulled a torch from his backpack and lit it. The bright orange flames gave them enough light to see by, but more than that, it illuminated a trough near the ceiling on the right hand wall. Wren put his torch to the trough and laughed as oil within whooshed into life and the darkness was banished.

  “There we are, now we can see,” Wren said.

  “He’s down here!” Wren could hear the librarian s
hrieking from above. The sound of boots stomping across the floor approached the opening.

  “Time to go,” Wren said. As the tunnel stretched out ahead of them, the ceiling was just a few inches above the horse’s head, allowing the animal to gallop so long as Wren hunkered low to avoid slamming his head into the stone above. The horse tore off at a great speed, crossing the four mile tunnel in just under ten minutes. The only trouble was, there was a spiral staircase at the other end of the tunnel.

  Wren dismounted and set his backpack on the stairs before moving to the horse and turning it around. He knew the other guards had likely followed him into the tunnel, so he tied his torch to the horse’s tail and gave the animal a good whack with it. The horse whinnied and took off like a shot of brown lightning toward the opposite end. The assassin grabbed his backpack and went up the spiral stairs to find a solid door with a nasty lock holding it fast. He pulled two vials from his backpack and opened them. He poured about a third of the first vial into the lock, waited thirty seconds, and then poured half of the other vial in. Wren backed away as smoke began to rise from the keyhole. Popping sounds preceded a shower of sparks and then the lock broke into several pieces, falling to the stairs in a jumble of broken metal.

  The assassin kicked the door open and found two men sitting inside what appeared to be a kitchen. One held a mug to his lips, and the other was in the middle of lighting a pipe. They both looked at Wren, seemingly frozen to their spots for a second or two, and then they jumped up from their seats. The first tossed his mug at Wren, but the assassin was not about to flinch away from a cup. He let the vessel strike him in the chest as he advanced forward, drawing his own sword. He cut down the first guard and then parried an overhead chop from the second before raising his mini-crossbow and firing it at the guard’s face. The second guard stood rigid, and then toppled over backward like a tall pine tree, crashing to the floor.