Impossible Odds

by Dave Duncan

  “You swear that?” the man growled.

  “I swear it.”

  “And if we refuse?”

  That was what Radu dreaded. These rootless hill folk cherished their freedom fiercely. Would they be insane enough to defy the Brotherhood?

  “We will take the boy. Whatever else happens is up to you.” And he exceeded orders by adding, “Please don’t resist. If we must use force, we will leave no witnesses.”

  “We will trust you, Radu,” Voica said.

  So the mission was accomplished without violence. That afternoon Radu saw the boy and his two guardians enter Vamky, but where they were taken or what happened to them he had no idea.

  He had barely dropped onto his cot that night before he was again summoned to Banneret Dusburg.

  “Excellent work, Radu. You are promoted to senior knight-brother, effective at once. Congratulations. You are making fine progress.”

  Radu could only gasp, “Sir!” Of course, he had been lucky, but chance played a part in every man’s career. Now he was two ranks ahead of his spectacular young brother again. He doubted he would hold that lead very long.

  “Deliver this letter,” Dusburg said, “with all reasonable haste—‘reasonable’ in this context meaning you are not to injure the horses and preferably not yourself, either. Banneret Catavolinos has been advised. Check with Operations regarding your route.” Before Radu could say a word, he added, “Dismissed.”

  The letter was addressed to Preceptor Oswald, on assignment at the court of the Tzarina Regent of Skyrria, but Radu knew that the real message was intended for him, and was simply that he must not talk with anyone around Vamky before midsummer at the earliest. Kiensk, the Skyrrian capital, was far to the east, at least a month away.

  For a lively young knight, such a mission was both reward and good training. He could see the world, perfect his horsemanship, and experience something very close to freedom for the first time in five years. He wore half armor with the Brotherhood blazon on his surcoat, so honest wayfarers saw him as a welcome companion, a deterrent to footpads and highwaymen, and the dishonest were not inclined to interfere with him. Furnished with expense money and protected by conjuration from travelers’ flux and hostelry vermin, he met with few troubles. The worst were the tavern girls who enjoyed mocking a man forbidden even to notice them. He had only his willpower to defend him against them, and many times it was severely tested.

  He had to detour around Bohakia and Dolorth, since both were negotiating with Vamky for knights and battle conjurers and he might have found himself stranded on the wrong side in a war. He arrived in the Skyrrian capital of Kiensk early in Sixthmoon and reported to Preceptor Oswald. Two hours later, the Preceptor handed him a letter addressed to Banneret Valentin, presently commanding brethren on campaign in Gevily. Radu saddled up and rode west, across the entire width of Eurania.

  Valentin refused Radu’s plea to be allowed to share in the fighting, but did have the grace to ask if there was some land he particularly wanted to visit. Radu chose Distlain and wondered why the onlookers grinned. He discovered the answer a few weeks later when the southern sun almost cooked him in his cuirass.

  He duly delivered the letter Valentin had given him and was given another, but his Distlain visit was not entirely wasted. Riding alone through an orange grove one fine morning, he was shot at. One quarrel missed him and another went through his shield, but was slowed enough to do no worse than dent his breastplate. He drew his sword and charged the highwaymen without even thinking to count them. Fortunately there were only three of them, and he gave them no time to rewind their crossbows. He left their bodies for the crows and took their horses to sell in the next town. The honor of the Brotherhood was upheld.

  After a six-month tour around Eurania, Radu homed in at last on Vamky. Seen by moonlight high on its ridge, the monastery was ethereally beautiful, towers and walls of dream and cobweb, so insubstantial that he looked for stars showing through them. And yet, riding his horse up the long incline, he could not deny that this felt like returning to a prison. He should have overnighted in Krupa, but honor had impelled him to press on and complete his journey instead of loitering and making two easy days out of one hard one. However weary, he might be sent right back out again if the Marquis’s whereabouts were still so great a secret.

  He had often wondered on his long trek whether Volpe and Dusburg really believed he was an untrustworthy blabbermouth, or were merely withholding information from someone within Vamky itself, someone so high in the Brotherhood that he could compel Radu to talk. Minhea, maybe? Gossip was a list three offense, but it was common knowledge that Abbot and Provost did not always agree.

  Vamky never slept. He gave his password, Heron Flight, and the clerks found his card as fast as if he had been gone only a day, not half a year.

  He rode over to the armory to shed the steel he had worn for so long. The squire who helped him emitted a quiet whistle when he saw the dent on the cuirass, but knew better than to ask who had paid for that and how much. Radu stripped from the neck down, donned the white robe he was given, then turned his back to remove his helmet and pull up the hood. Faceless he left and faceless he returned.

  Men from the stables and quartermaster’s arrived to relieve him of everything else. He walked into the monastery proper with only his robe, sandals, and sword, and even those were not his to own. The guard would inform Banneret Dusburg that his minion had returned, and Dusburg would either send him out again or advise Banneret Catavolinos that he could have his subordinate back. Radu’s only immediate duty was to deliver the letter he had brought from Meistersinger Groningen in Ritizzia to Cantor Samuil and get a receipt for it. Cantor was the lowest conjuring rank, outranking banneret within the monastery. Radu did not know the man, but would be very happy to drag him out of bed. Six months’ saddle sores cried out for satisfaction.

  He went next to Housekeeping, a dusty, musty room where novices stood at writing desks all day, copying lists into enormous tomes. Like all brethren, Radu had many unpleasant memories of this boredom. He asked for Cantor Samuil’s cell number. The solitary novice on duty, who looked both sleepy and stupid, fumbled back and forth through the directory for a while, then disappeared out a back door. Just before Radu exploded and started breaking rules by going in search of him, he returned with a man wearing the brown sword belt of a junior knight-brother, who lifted down another volume and consulted that.

  “Sir. That information is not available.”

  “Brother, I have urgent business with the cantor.”

  “Sir. I do not have authority to release his whereabouts.”

  “Brother, I killed the last three men who tried to stop me completing this mission. I order you to tell me.”

  “Sir. I have my orders,” the man said sullenly. He sounded old to be only a junior and not nearly arrogant enough to be sure of his ground.

  No doubt the dispatch Radu bore was of no importance whatsoever, but his duty was clear and an inquiry would uphold him. Following procedure, he threw back his hood and drew his sword halfway from its scabbard. “Brother, I will see your face!”

  The novice went chalky white, perhaps imagining himself being sent to drag very senior officers out of bed to adjudicate the conflict.

  His superior capitulated. “Blue 1, A 5.”

  “Say that again?”

  “Sir! Blue 1, A 5.”

  “Brother, I didn’t think there was a Level 1 in Blue Hub.”

  “Sir. It says here to go to a door marked ‘Brooms’ in Blue 3, J 6. You will need a lantern,” the junior knight added in a belated frenzy of cooperation.

  There were seven hubs in Vamky, and Blue was as far from the main gate as it was possible to go, where the monastery abutted the mountain. Radu knew Blue 3 quite well, because that was where squires received basic conjuration training. Octograms must be sited at ground level, where air and earth elementals met, and the ridge rose steeply there, so Level 3 rested right on bedrock. Hence
his surprise.

  When he arrived at Blue 3, he found the J corridor dark, with no guiding star at the far end. All Vamky lanterns were the same, a glass bottle constricted in the middle to a waist narrow enough to hold. He removed the chimney and raised the lantern itself to the hub lamp to light the wick. As soon as the flame was steady, he replaced the chimney and set off in search of J 6. He found the big eight-sided room empty and silent, creepy with remnant spirituality like odors of ancient cooking. What seemed to be a cupboard door opposite opened to a staircase descending into the rock. The only staircases he had ever seen in Vamky were up in the towers, so curiosity tempered his fatigue as he began his descent. No doubt he was trespassing in territory reserved to the conjuring ranks, but he had an excellent reason to snoop and that was always a pleasure. Straight and dangerously steep, the stair eventually brought him to a hub where three corridors met, and there the walls were of ashlar again, not living rock. Numbers on the walls confirmed that he was on Level 2 and this was still Hub Blue. Another stair, even steeper, went on down.

  Vamky was enormous. Even in winter, when most of the expeditionary forces returned to base, the monastery never ran out of space, so why was Cantor Samuil quartered so far away from everyone else? By the time he came back from the mess hall it would be time to eat again.

  The second stair cut through a spur of bedrock and back into masonry, turned sharply to the left once, then twice, and continued down to end at a barred gate, beyond which there was light, much light. It would seem that Blue Hub Level 1, Corridor A, was a jail, and it was certainly not the hoosegow used for errant novices and squires. Radu knew that one only too well, and a busy, nasty place it was.

  Standing on the bottom step, he peered through the grille in growing astonishment. The extravagant lighting was the first surprise. Oil was never wasted, yet a dozen or so hanging lamps made this place almost dazzling. It was apparently the end of the road, with no obvious way out. Six doors arrayed along the right-hand wall looked like entrances to standard monastic cells, similar to Dusberg’s Red 7, A 17, or his own Green 5, F 97. He was too far away to read the numbers burned into the wood, but if one of those was A 5, then Cantor Samuil was a jailer required to live close to his charges.

  The opposite wall held four doors of metal bars, dungeons for prisoners. If one of those was A 5, the idea of handing the letter to Samuil personally was devilishly tempting and utterly stupid.

  Most surprising of all, a plank table in the center of the long room held a few books, two arms, and a head, the body parts belonging to a white-gowned swordsman whose buttocks rested on a bench alongside. He was snoring vigorously. There was enough light for Radu to make out that the man’s sword belt was violet, meaning he was a preceptor, no less, but what sort of prisoner required a senior master to guard him? Knight-brothers caught sleeping on watch were summarily executed. If Radu reported this offence, he would put the sinner in grave danger, but he might compromise himself also. He knew he had stumbled into matters that did not concern him.

  He backed up the stair until he was out of sight, then coughed. The snoring continued. He stamped his feet, but sandals made only wimpy noises. Giving up, he went down again and clinked his sword hilt against the bars. The snoring never wavered, but the gate moved.

  He had assumed it was locked, and no doubt it was supposed to be locked. Did loyalty to the Brotherhood require him to report this sloppiness? Giving the miscreant one last chance, he pushed the rusty door wide. He had expected the hinges to squeak, but in the subterranean silence they shrieked like banshees, making him jump.

  The guard stopped snoring…snuffled a few times…and started again.

  This was ridiculous! Radu was nearly asleep on his feet and would be lucky to catch two hours’ hay time before he had to start writing a report or take up weapons training again or undertake whatever torments his superiors could imagine. He marched into the jail, swinging his lantern. The first solid door was A 1. So Samuil was a jailer, not a prisoner, and his door would be right along here:…3…4…Three thunderous impacts on those timbers ought to give the sleeping guard a heart attack.

  “Brother!”

  Radu spun around, almost dropping his lantern. He knew that voice from somewhere. Only one dungeon was occupied, and the prisoner was standing just inside the gate, clutching the bars and peering out. Radu strode over to him, and for a moment the two of them stared at each other in silence. Faces were a rare sight in Vamky, and that face in this place was beyond imagining.

  “Radu!” the prisoner whispered. “Help me!” He was tethered to the back wall by a long chain attached to a heavy brass collar.

  “Your Highness!” This was madness! Why would the Grand Duke be—

  “Death and fire!” roared another voice. “Who the pus are you?”

  The shout came from a newcomer, a large, flabby man, very likely Cantor Samuil, because he was standing in the doorway of A 5 holding a sword. The sleeping guard grunted, sat up, and grabbed for his own sword. Samuil moved toward the entrance to cut off the intruder’s escape.

  Radu shot past the table like a crossbow bolt and up the precipitous stairs as fast as he could go. Angry shouts behind him warned that pursuit was on its way. Elementals of pure terror drove him on, around the first corner. Rubin a prisoner in the monastery? High treason! Abbots and Grand Dukes had been known to quarrel in the past, but never in all history had it come to open revolution like this. Heads must roll.

  Around the second corner…He was a dead man if the conspirators caught him. And who could be behind this but Provost Volpe? Possibly Abbot Minhea, but it had been Volpe who had sent Radu to find the Grand Duke’s hidden son. The memory hit him like a kick in the stomach—Volpe had claimed to be speaking for the Duke, authorizing the kidnapping of his own son! So the Provost was the chief traitor, and Radu was now witness to two acts of treason, accessory to the abduction and no doubt murder of the infant Marquis.

  He stumbled onto the Level 2 landing and stopped. He glanced at the stairs going up and the three corridors leading spirits knew where. Then he turned and hurled his lantern back down the way he had come. Glass shattered, and a chorus of oaths turned into screams as burning oil splashed over Samuil. Radu hurried through the darkness, waving his arms before him. To run up the stairs would be too obvious. Where the corridors led he had no idea. The novice barns were on Blue Level 2, as far from anywhere civilized as possible, but the fact that he had been directed to come via Blue to 3, J 6, strongly suggested that this section did not connect with them. Besides, nobody would put a secret like that jail within reach of nosy novices.

  He walked down the central passage of the three, running fingers along the wall. When he reached door 2, K 1, he decided he had come far enough.

  A few bladder-testing moments later, three men carrying lanterns and swords scurried up from Level 1 and on toward Level 3. If one of them was Samuil, he had taken time to dress. Radu fumbled his way back through the darkness to the hallway—ignoring a faint stink of burned wool—and started up the long stair to the broom cupboard. He had no way to rescue the Grand Duke; rescuing himself would need all the wits he owned.

  From octogram Blue 3, B 6, he knew where he was going, even in the dark. Where had the others gone? One to find help, almost certainly. Another to report to the Provost, likely. One to fetch a stretcher for the burned man, maybe. Radu cut through octogram B 5 and took the ramp to White. He walked at a standard knight-brother pace, head down, one hand on his sword. If he were seriously challenged, he would fight, he decided, but the few other men he encountered paid him no heed. Lamps were glimmering, faint light showed around the shutters, but all thoughts of bed and sleep must be discarded. He had to get out of the monastery and out of Krupina before he was cut to pieces.

  How, though? Nobody left Vamky without a pass, and those came down from the highest levels. Every window in the place looked out over a fatal drop. You couldn’t let a horse down on a rope, anyway, and without a horse he would be
caught inside an hour.

  Would denial work? Suppose he destroyed the letter so there was no visible connection between him and the spy? If Dusburg asked about the trip, he could say that Meistersinger Groningen had just told him his vacation was ended and he could go home, period. No letter. Would Dusburg believe that? Had Samuil heard the Duke say his name? Could they beat it out of the Duke? The clerk brother in Housekeeping would not voluntarily tell anyone that he had given out a confidential address, and why should the traitors think to ask him? They had no way of knowing that the spy they had so nearly caught had just returned to Vamky that night.

  Radu had reached about that point in his thoughts—his feet were climbing the ramp from Red 4 to Green 5—when he realized he no longer had the Groningen letter. He remembered holding it when he pushed the barred gate open. He had tucked it in his belt to free up a hand when he was about to knock on Samuil’s door. That was the last he remembered of it. They would find the letter—might have already done so—and run down to the gate to ask who had come in that night. They might very well be waiting for him already in Green 5, F 37. He was dead.

  Lacking other instructions, his feet kept walking on the same path, and his mind revolved in the same terrible circles, like a moth around a balefire. His fingers located his cell number. No guards were waiting in the corridor. They might be inside. He had no real reason to go in there, no possessions beyond a comb, and there might be a death squad lurking inside, and yet this was his home until the day he died, which might well be already dawning out there in the world. Somehow it felt like a refuge, which it most certainly was not.

  He raised the latch and went in. Nobody put a sword to his throat. There was nobody there, no change in six months except a list-three layer of dust. His blanket lay neatly folded on his mattress exactly as he had left it when the novice bringing Dusburg’s summons thundered on his door. He opened the shutters and let in the light and fresh mountain cold. He was dead, dead, dead.