Hero Risen (Seeds of Destiny, Book 3)

by Andy Livingstone

  ‘The quick way, then.’

  He marched the Duke to the window and pushed him backwards until he was lying on the sill. Grabbing an ankle in each hand, he tipped him until the man was hanging upside down above the drop.

  ‘He’s gone quite rigid, chief,’ Gerens said. ‘I think he’s a bit frightened.’

  Brann was sure he was. ‘Are you sure you can hold on to him? Remember we need information.’

  ‘He really is very light,’ Gerens reassured him. ‘There’s actually nothing to him.’ To demonstrate, he let go with one hand, then leant out of the window slightly. ‘Now, don’t wriggle. You might break free, don’t you think?’ He reached out and grabbed the free ankle again. ‘There, we go. Don’t want him to get too scared to speak, I suppose.’

  ‘Good,’ Brann said. ‘Ask him about Loku.’

  Gerens leant forward. ‘My friend would like to know if you have encountered a man called Loku recently. Or maybe you know him as Taraloku-Bana?’ There was a muffled sound from outside, and Gerens spoke over his shoulder. ‘He knows him as Loku, and he was indeed here when we thought he was. It appears he is a colleague.’

  ‘Ask him who he reports to.’

  ‘My friend would like to know who your boss is in your affairs with Loku.’ He turned his head again to Brann. ‘He says Loku was arranging a meeting across the water with others like them, to report to he who controls them and receive instructions. This dangling man is to meet this boss for the first time at that meeting.’

  ‘Ask him where Loku is now.’

  ‘My friend would like to know where that bastard Loku has gone.’ He relayed the message once again to the room. ‘He says there is a camp near here, a day’s ride to the east. He might still be there. Some have already been sent to the next stage of fulfilling their purpose, and he was to assess who would be ready to go next.’

  Konall strolled across and looked with interest over the top of Gerens. ‘I must say, this Duke is being fairly eager to help.’

  ‘Would you not, in that position?’ Brann asked.

  Konall frowned. ‘It would be impossible. I am too heavy for Gerens to hold for such a length of time.’ He noticed something and eased partially past Gerens to peer out of the window at an angle. ‘Excuse me,’ he said politely to Gerens.

  ‘Of course,’ Gerens said, leaning flat on the sill to allow Konall to lean further. A moan came from outside the window.

  Konall turned back to the room. ‘Two guards have come round the corner. The fools are chatting enough that they are unlikely to look up here, but the man hanging from Gerens’s hands will be able to see them very soon, and I’m pretty sure he will start shouting.’

  Brann looked at the others, and saw that they were looking at him. He considered the options and the situation. ‘We need to shut the Duke up, and we need to divert the attention away from the front door.’

  Gerens turned from the window, empty-handed. ‘That’s easy. Anything else?’

  The Duke’s wail was cut short by an audible thump, precipitating shouts of alarm.

  Brann shrugged. ‘That should do it.’

  ‘A quicker end than he deserved,’ Konall reflected.

  Brann kicked a stool, sending it careering across the room. ‘You don’t know the half of it. Let’s go.’ He looked at Sophaya. ‘Ready?’

  She nodded and stood, the waiflike figure still huddled in her arms. Grakk ripped a curtain from its hanging at the opening to the stairs leading upwards, and they wiped the worst of the blood from their faces and hands. They retrieved what weapons were still protruding from the various bodies lying around the room and cleaned them also, sliding them back into their sheaths. Grakk pulled the object from the captain’s eye and wiped it on the curtain, turning it over curiously in his hand. It was a flat piece of metal, shaped into a star with barbed points, and the tribesman looked at Sophaya. ‘An interesting weapon,’ he observed. ‘I have heard of such among some guilds of assassins in the Empire.’

  She stroked the child’s hair. ‘You mix with all sorts when you work in certain sections of society in a big city. It pays to develop contacts, especially when you can learn from each other.’

  Grakk was still examining the star, weighing it on his hand and turning it on his fingertips.

  ‘Keep it.’

  Grakk smiled. ‘Thank you. You are kind.’

  She shrugged. ‘I have several.’

  Brann sheathed his axe, eager to organise their exit. ‘For the first few floors, at least, we will try to pass unobtrusively. Or, at least, as unobtrusively as can be managed by a group that looks like us.’ He turned to Philippe. ‘We need someone to lead us down.’

  Konall looked at him askance. ‘We just keep going down stairs, surely, until we reach ground level. How much leading does that need?’

  ‘No,’ Brann said, his eyes still on Philippe, ‘we need someone to look like they are leading us down, at least for as long as we can manage before someone realises that something is wrong. Every step we don’t have to fight for, hastens our departure.’ He put his hand on Philippe’s arm. ‘Can you act a part?’

  The young man smiled weakly. ‘I may be useless at drugging someone, but I have spent so many years acting in one way or another that I’m not sure if I can do anything else. What do you want?’

  Brann chewed his lip, gathering his thoughts. ‘People in here recognise you. If you are directing us, explaining loudly about things as if we were guests of the Duke and you have been asked to show us out, it would be good. The more you look to draw attention to yourself, the less people think you don’t want them to look closely. They just get irritated and hope you go away quickly. Or at least, I hope they do.’

  Sophaya grunted. ‘Only one way to find out. Now can we go? There may not be much to this little one, but she’s not made of feathers.’

  Gerens made to reach for the snuggling girl, but she just pressed harder against Sophaya, who shook her head briefly. He nodded in acceptance, but stepped close, loosening a large knife in its sheath. No one would harm either girl while he could still move.

  Brann took a deep breath. ‘Yes, we should move, but one more thing, Philippe. Eloise is downstairs. In the guard room.’

  His eyes widened. ‘You only thought to tell me this now? Why have we dallied here?’

  He made for the door in a rush, but Brann restrained him.

  ‘I’m sorry, but we came for a purpose and could not leave without it. And to rush without thought would be to rush to death, and we cannot help her if we are lying bleeding on a stairwell.’ He gripped him tighter. ‘Can you do this?’

  Philippe stared at him for a moment, before the actor returned to his eyes. He straightened. ‘I can. But we do it now.’

  No more words were needed. They followed his abrupt exit. No more words on that matter, but Philippe had already slipped into the overbearing conversation of one who looks to show off their petty importance. ‘If you follow me, I’ll show you the guard room, as the Duke requested of his most trusted servant.’ He turned and said in a low voice. ‘If people think you are going somewhere else inside, they won’t think about you heading outside. Do you think that’s right?’

  Brann wasn’t sure it was necessarily so, but nodded with a smile. It did no harm to encourage Philippe, and the main thing was that he kept talking. As Philippe continued his guided tour, each proclamation more strident and pompous than the last, Brann ran over in his mind the layout the young man had described to them. A single winding stairway ran from top to bottom, wide enough for three men abreast and with a landing at each level. Below the Duke’s chambers on the top two floors were the late captain’s rooms, and then the kitchens situated where they could serve those above and below equally as quickly. The next floor down housed storerooms: half for the cooking staff and half for the guards’ equipment, while the level below that held sleeping quarters for guards and servants. At ground level were more sleeping rooms and the main guard room, and below was a cellar with ha
lf-a-dozen cells around a central area where prisoners could be questioned in view of those awaiting the same fate.

  They passed the captain’s level quickly, Philippe averting his eyes from the interior as they did so, and approached the kitchens. ‘I will show you the guard room as agreed,’ Philippe pronounced even more loudly than before, his words audible over the work of those servants preparing for the next day. ‘But if you care to look into the kitchens on the way past, the Duke said that you would be welcome to do so.’

  At the sound of the reference to the Duke, Brann noticed the heads of the servants stare down, every one wishing to avoid being noticed. That was fine, it suited them.

  The store level was passed quickly, but, as they approached the upper sleeping quarters, three drowsy guards stumbled into the stairwell, roused by the shouting outside.

  ‘Quick!’ Philippe yelled, his voice filled with panic and his hands grabbing the first soldier and propelling him down a few steps. ‘There has been a most terrible accident! The Duke! A fall! The garden! Oh my, we must all help, we really must! Please hurry!’

  Clearly dreading the consequences of not being on hand to help the Duke in his time of need, the men almost fell in their haste to run down. Brann and the others followed fast – who would question anyone rushing in the company of guardsmen?

  They reached the ground level and Philippe cut past the front entrance and flung open a door with clearly no consideration of his own safety. They piled into the guard room behind him with weapons drawn – and stopped.

  Alone in the room, Eloise crouched in a corner. She had managed to retrieve a shift from the pile of her clothes on the floor, but had dressed no more, as if she only had the energy for the minimum to cover herself. Her hands were pressed to her lap, where the pale material was stained red, and she turned a face to them that was swollen and cut beyond recognition of the girl who had left them on the street outside. It was her eyes that struck Brann hardest, though. As a child, he had been at a friend’s house when old Rewan, who tended the ailments of villagers and animals alike, arrived to end the misery of a working dog that was too injured to recover. The animal had seemed to know Rewan’s purpose, and Brann now saw the same look in Eloise’s eyes: a cornered fear, a shrinking from the inescapable, a desperation for mercy.

  Philippe cried out as he rushed to her. His arms wrapped her into him, and he rocked, singing a soft tune into her ear, a melody Brann could only guess had seen the pair through times both hard and lonely. He looked up at them, his own eyes stricken, his voice a whisper of horror. ‘How could you let her face this? How could you leave a girl to face them?’

  Brann couldn’t answer. He was asking himself the same questions.

  Grakk knelt beside the pair. ‘It was beyond our power,’ he said softly. ‘All we thought, all she thought, was that she would dally by them at the gate, turn their eyes to her. When they took her inside, when she went with them, what she did – it was bravery on a par with anything I have seen on a battlefield.’ He put a hand on Philippe’s shoulder. ‘She did this that we might help you.’

  Philippe looked again around them. ‘Those last words do not exactly make me feel better.’ But the anger left him in a long sigh, leaving abject acceptance in its place. ‘We both knew something like this can happen; does happen. Everyone in our… our line of work knows that. You just have to think it will not happen to you or those you love, or you could not carry on.’ He smiled weakly, humourlessly, grimly. ‘I know, that sounds stupid.’

  Brann walked over. ‘Not to a fighting man, it doesn’t.’

  Philippe nodded, and drew strength into him with a slow breath. ‘Eloise, my darling, we need to go.’ He leant in close and spoke into her ear, and his words gradually had effect. She unwound her body to stand, leaning on her brother.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, her tone as flat as her eyes. ‘Go. We must get go. Away from here. Far, far away.’ She looked at him. ‘Take me away.’

  Konall lifted a cloak from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around her as she passed, while Gerens took her free arm, supporting her at that side as well.

  Brann glanced around the room. His attention had been so caught by Eloise that he hadn’t noticed a large opening in the floor: a stout wooden hatch lying open and allowing him to peer cautiously over the edge. Steps led down and, as Brann moved to a better angle, he could see a wide square room, the central features a slab of a table with metal restraints set into the wooden top stained with blood old and new and, around the sides, barred cells.

  Memories stirred at the sight of the cells, and he pushed them away. Approaching footsteps indicated that another room lay beyond his vision, and he held his breath, reaching for the hatch. When the three guards came into his vision, though, they walked across the way, never thinking to look up the stairway. It was the prisoner held between two of them that caught his attention and stayed his hand on the hatch. A young woman, her build athletic and strong, her hair the colour of the summer sun and framing a face golden of hue and heart-shaped, who moved as can only a dancer or a warrior. When pale blue eyes turned to meet his, he knew she was no dancer.

  On impulse, he slid the knife from the sheath strapped to his right forearm, and reached down to set it on the step at the extent of his reach. A slight frown creased the space between her eyebrows, then a nod was the last he saw of her as the guards continued their way to a cell. He suspected that his knife would be put to use before long, but whenever it would be, they would be gone by that time. Still, it pleased him that it would be put to use by her.

  His intention had been to close the hatch and bolt it to trap any guards below, but instead he rested it back open as he had found it. If events in the cells reached the conclusion he was sensing they would, there would be no guards able to exit in any case.

  The others were already out of the guard room and he ran quietly to catch up. They moved as quickly as Eloise could manage, down the steps at the front of the tower and straight for the gate.

  Brann looked around. The courtyard was empty – all must be around the rear of the tower, at the Duke’s body. There was certainly enough noise and consternation echoing from that direction. He fixed his eyes on the gate.

  Thirty paces. Twenty. Ten.

  It was at five paces that two guards ran around the corner of the building. They saw the bedraggled group and veered away from the tower entrance to face them. They stared at each other.

  ‘Philippe,’ Grakk said from the corner of his mouth. ‘How many guards are there here in total?’

  ‘At least two dozen, maybe more,’ he said, his voice starting to tremble.

  ‘We can’t engage these two without them raising the alarm,’ Brann said. ‘And we can’t take on all of them without at least some of us dying.’ He looked at Eloise. ‘And we can’t outrun them.’ The men were coming towards them, shouting across questions. ‘So maybe we need to wrong-foot them.’

  He waved his arm frantically, urging the guards to hurry over. ‘Please, hurry! There is someone else hurt. We need to get them to a healer.’

  The guards stopped, one with his spear lowered, the other with a sword held warily. They both eyed the four armed men before them. ‘What are you talking about?’ one said.

  Brann automatically ran his eyes over them. A spear thrust would come across the attack line of the swordsman, hampering his movement forward. Neither had a shield. The distance could be closed in moments. They were not even wearing helmets, dishevelled hair as if they had just woken all that lay between a blade and a blow to the skull. Their eyes moved nervously…

  He paused. The faces seemed familiar. The hair… as if just out of…

  They were two of the three men they had run into in the stairwell. They had just been roused from sleep. They knew nothing about Eloise’s arrival at the tower. It opened up a possibility.

  ‘It’s this young woman,’ he said, pleadingly, indicating the figure hanging between Philippe and Gerens. ‘She seems to have been brough
t in for the Duke. We don’t know what happened, but she is in a bad way. She needs help.’

  The guards looked at each other, and one nodded at the other. ‘Well, it’s not as if the Duke has any need of her now.’ The spear lowered and the sword was sheathed.

  The older of the two, a bearded man, smiled slightly. ‘Look, friend, I have no idea who you are, or what the Duke wanted of this girl, though I could come up with a few suggestions. But he’s not in a position to want anything any more and some would say that’s not a bad thing. Probably best for all if we open the gate to check the street outside and you just go about your business. Better for us, better for you and,’ he looked at Eloise, ‘best of all for her. Take her as far from this tower as you can.’

  Brann relaxed. ‘Thank you.’

  The man shrugged, unbolting the gate and swinging one half inwards. ‘Sometimes straightforward is as complicated as life needs to get.’

  They all breathed a little easier.

  Then Eloise lifted her head. She did not see the faces. She had not heard the words. But she saw the tabards, and the Duke’s insignia. She shrieked and hurled herself at the nearest guard, Gerens’s knife in hand. Before he could react, she had sliced across his throat, blood spraying beneath a face frozen forever in disbelief. She launched herself at the other, who had stumbled back in shock, his spear coming up in defensive reflex. The point took her in the chest but her momentum took them both down, the spear ripped from his hands in the fall. Amid screams and snarls that turned to coughs, she stabbed three, four five times into his chest and throat and horrified face. She stabbed for the few short moments that she had left to live, then lay still in the shared mess of their blood.

  Grakk and Brann reached her just as she stilled, Gerens and Konall casting around for danger with weapons drawn. Sophaya kept the child’s head turned from the bloodbath. Grakk bent over Eloise and checked the obvious, then shook his head to confirm it. Philippe was on his knees, hands held in supplication, eyes struggling with comprehension, every part of his face straining, a silent scream tearing itself from his soul.