If Ahern was as impossible as Baxter made him out to be, her threats would prove useless against him.
Even as she plotted a strategy for getting around Lieutenant Ahern, Else couldn’t help but be impressed by her surroundings. Bold tapestries bearing coats-of-arms and exquisite paintings of historical personages lined the corridors. Far above her, the vaulted ceilings were covered with murals and friezes depicting scenes in exquisite detail.
After traversing richly embellished flights of stairs up to the third story of the palace, the captain led her to a small foyer. The man stepped up to an unremarkable door and knocked. When there was no reply, he rapped louder, but again there was no answer. The captain tried the doorknob, only to find it locked.
Cursing to himself, but loud enough for Else to catch each and every word, the man stopped as though he were considering his options. Finally, he gestured toward one of several chairs pressed up against the wall of the antechamber.
“Looks like Sir Ahern has stepped out,” he told her. “You can wait for him here. It’s bound to be more comfortable than sitting outside on the steps.”
Else muttered an oath of her own once she was certain that she was alone. She supposed the guards had a right to be distrustful of her. Nevertheless, she found herself wishing something bad would befall the captain and his underlings—until she remembered how bad things were about to get for Rydah’s defenders.
She was aware of every minute passing in that small, silent room. What if Lieutenant Ahern had already left the palace for the day and had no intention of returning? Every second brought the Renegades closer to their attack, and here she was, hunkered down outside an absent Knight’s office.
Impatient—and more than a little flustered—Else stood up, stormed out of the lobby, and collided with someone. For a moment, she feared she had run into the Immovable Tower. But although the fellow wore armor, he was no taller than Baxter. Relieved and disappointed at the same time, Else apologized for her carelessness.
“No harm done,” the Knight replied cordially, but then a puzzled expression creased his features. “Might I inquire who you are and why you are skulking about outside Sir Ahern’s office?”
She gave her name and added, “I came to the Celestial Palace to deliver an urgent message to High Commander Walden but was brought here instead.”
The Knight snorted. “You would have been waiting for quite some time. Lieutenant Ahern is away on a mission, and no one knows when he will return.”
Else scowled. “Now listen to me carefully. I need to see Bryant Walden. Now. He knows me, and the news I have cannot wait another second. Do you understand?”
The Knight blinked twice, probably surprised by the woman’s brazenness. “I will be happy to take you to the high commander’s office. I do not know for certain that he is in, but it is a good place to start.”
Else nodded wearily. There was a window behind the Knight, and she noted with alarm that the sun had already passed its zenith. Time was running out.
The Knight walked quickly, and she was grateful for his haste, even if her legs ached from hiking across the city and through the labyrinthine halls of the Celestial Palace. As she followed her newest guide, she lost track of how many staircases she had ascended since entering the palace. Judging from the view out one of the windows, she had climbed more than halfway to the top of the towering palace.
From her vantage, she caught glimpses of the city that stretched for miles in every direction. Seeing so much of Rydah all at once made Else worry all the more for the capital. Who could guess how much damage the Renegades might inflict before they were subjugated?
When she was certain her legs couldn’t survive another flight of stairs, the Knight stopped before another antechamber that was almost identical to the one she had just left. In lieu of a doorway, however, the room lacked a front wall altogether. But as with Ahern’s lobby, this room also led up to a second room, presumably the high commander’s office.
The door was shut.
Please be inside! Please, please, please! she silently begged. She couldn’t remember wishing for anything so desperately. She nearly pushed past the Knight and pounded on the door herself, but at the last moment she held herself back and impatiently waited for her guide to knock.
There was no response, and only silence answered the Knight’s second and third attempt. Else was almost giddy with disbelief. Why do these people even have offices if they never use them? she wondered.
She might have kicked the door down in frustration, but she felt too defeated to do much of anything. The thought of exploring more of the palace to locate Bryant Walden—or Lord Magnes Minus, for that matter—nearly sent her collapsing into the closest chair.
“Miss Fontane,” a familiar voice said, “I did not expect to have the pleasure of seeing you again so soon.”
Else spun around, and there was Bryant Walden, standing in the expansive entryway of the lobby. She wanted to run up to the man and give him a hug but immediately dismissed the ridiculous urge. Still, the sense of relief that washed over her was overwhelming.
She opened her mouth in order to say hello, but suddenly her mind was assailed by Gomez’s warning, and she ended up choking on her words.
Perhaps it was a combination of physical exhaustion and the stressful nature of her visit to the palace for her lightheadedness became full-fledged dizziness. She felt herself falling but didn’t understand at first that she was fainting. No! her mind screamed. I can’t fail now, not when I’ve finally found Walden!
Nevertheless, her legs gave out beneath her, and the last thing she saw was Bryant Walden running forward to catch her.
Passage XII
Only minutes after the overgrown path rejoined the main highway again, Mitto saw Fort Faith in the distance. By his estimation, they would reach the fort in half of an hour.
He had never seen Fort Faith before—until recently he imagined it was nothing but a pile of rubble—and even though he knew the castle to be inferior to Fort Valor in size and splendor, he breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of the place nonetheless.
Then he heard the Knight’s cry of alarm, and his speculations about Fort Faith’s accommodations burst like a balloon. Mitto let out a roar of frustration and pushed the horse harder. Not again, he pleaded. Not when we’re so close.
He wanted to grab one of the goblins by their necks, give them a good shake, and ask them why in the hells it couldn’t leave them alone.
He prodded the horse into a grueling pace. As the wagon sped up, Mitto tried to catch a glimpse of their pursuers, but he could see nothing of the goblins from his vantage. Beside him, Stannel maneuvered himself into a more-or-less standing position and attempted to peer over the covered section of the wagon.
“What do you see?” Mitto asked.
Stannel carefully lowered himself back down to the driver’s seat before answering. “There are quite a few of them. No mounts of any sort, but they are moving very quickly.”
Mitto swore. “Can we outrun them? We’re almost to Fort Faith for gods’ sakes!”
“Maybe,” Stannel allowed, and he said no more. Mitto glanced over at the commander, but Stannel Bismarc, his eyes closed, seemed lost in his own thoughts.
He swore again. “Hold on, everyone!” he shouted over his shoulder and gave the reigns another jolt. “Come on, you lousy excuse for shoe leather! Move! Move! Move!”
Running was their only hope. Luck had seen him through two encounters with the goblins, and he didn’t trust that fickle mistress to intervene a third time. Even a small party of the monsters would easily tear them apart—and Stannel had said there were “quite a few.” Fighting was out of the question, even if they did have a wizard among them.
“Hey, wizard, now might be a good time to throw some fireballs or something!” he yelled into the back of the wagon.
When they had covered half the distance to Fort Faith, Mitto let out a little laugh. “We’re going to make it! Feol’s fools,
we’re actually going to—”
Mitto hadn’t seen the stone in their path—or whatever it had been—but suddenly the wagon was running on only two wheels. The front two were airborne for a fraction of a second before they came crashing back down to the road. The whole wagon shuddered on impact, and then it shook even more violently as the front, left wheel fractured and broke apart completely.
A second later, the other front wheel shattered.
The wagon pitched, and Mitto nearly fell off. He held fast to the driver’s seat with one hand and to the reins with the other. As the vehicle slowed to a bumpy halt—for the horse had given up on the pulling the ruined wagon—a thick cloud of dust rose up from where the bottom of the wagon had scraped against the road, making seeing and breathing difficult.
It had all happened in the span of seconds, but now that the wagon had stopped completely, Mitto took a moment to get his bearings. Stannel, on the other hand, wasted no time in leaping from his perch and drawing his sword.
“Wake up, man!” he said to Mitto. “The goblins will be on us in no time.”
Mitto didn’t want to wake up. On the contrary, he wanted very much to close his eyes and hope when he opened them again, the nightmare would be over. He certainly didn’t want to ready himself for another clash with the gruesome creatures that had murdered Baxter Lawler. I’m a merchant, not a warrior, he almost shouted at Stannel, at the goblins, and at the gods themselves.
Instead, he muttered, “Let’s get this over with” and jumped down from the driver’s seat, quarterstaff in hand.
He followed Stannel to the rear of the wagon. There was no sign of the Knight who had been keeping watch from the back. Mitto figured the poor bastard must have gotten tossed over the guardrail. The dust made it impossible to make out anything from farther down the highway.
Someone inside the wagon handed the little girl, Zusha, to Stannel, who helped her down to the road. In spite of the gravity of the situation, Mitto found himself enthralled by the little bundle of brown cloth. The child neither cried nor complained. She was as silent as the grave, and her calmness seemed to Mitto an unnatural thing. As Ruben crawled out of the wrecked wagon, Mitto continued to watch the girl.
Zusha was looking down the road, where the dust was slowly settling and the unmistakable shape of the goblins could be seen. But she didn’t scream or run over to one of the adults. She just watched them. When she finally pulled off her hood—possibly to get a better look at the monsters—Mitto snapped out of his trance and ran over to her.
Kneeling down in front of the girl, Mitto said, “I want you to run that way as fast as you can. Run to the castle!”
He pointed up to the road to where Fort Faith’s blocky frame broke up the monotony of the flatlands around it. They were close enough for the guards to have spotted them, but Mitto knew that the Knights would never reach them before the goblins did.
As he spoke to the girl, Mitto noticed two things. First, she was older than he had estimated—a lot older. Before, he would have guessed her age at seven or maybe eight. But looking at her so closely, he saw that in spite of her size, she was at most a year or two away from adolescence.
The other thing he saw was that he had not been mistaken about the girl’s eyes. Mitto found himself staring into two eyes of different hues. One was as blue as the Aden Ocean, while the other resembled the dark brown of blackbean tea.
“I can’t leave Toemis,” she told him calmly. “He’s all I have.”
Mitto broke away from her mismatched stare. “If you stay here, you’ll die.” He forcefully turned the girl around and gave her a shove in the direction of Fort Faith. “Get going!”
He watched her take a few tentative steps toward the horse, glancing back at the wagon, where Stannel and Aric were arguing about what to do with the old man. He saw Zusha approach the stallion and pet the beast’s flank. He was about to yell at her again—a threat this time—but he became aware of a great clamor behind him.
Slowly, tragically, he turned around.
The goblins—there had to be thirty of the bastards—spread out, forming a circle of blades. Some of them goblins spoke to one another in a harsh tongue. Others were clearly laughing at their prey. They shook their weapons, which ran the gamut in size and shape, at the ensnared company. Slowly, ever so slowly, they stepped forward, closing in on the humans.
Only Stannel and Mitto were armed. The Commander of Fort Valor held his sword in two hands and stood protectively in front of Aric. As for the healer, she had no weapon and when Stannel offered her a dagger, she declined.
Then Mitto remembered Zeetan. He found the highwayman pressed up against the back of the wagon, gawking wide-eyed at the ever-encroaching ring of goblins.
“What are you waiting for? Cast a spell, or we’re all dead!”
The wizard shook his head frantically, “I…I c-can’t.”
Mitto cursed the pathetic excuse of a spell-caster. Hadn’t Zeetan nearly brought the lodge down on top of them during the last fight? Where was that spectacular power now?
As if in answer to his unspoken query, the roar of crackling flame whooshed past him and engulfed three of the fiends in a blanket of orange fire. The goblins shrieked in agony, flapping their arms impotently against the hungry inferno. Those nearest the ones burning alive backed away from their doomed companions.
A goblin to his right screamed and clutched its abdomen, where the small shaft of an arrow protruded.
Mitto spun around, trying to figure out what in the hells was going on. A large chunk of the goblin’s circle had broken away, as many of the monsters were now rolling on the ground in an attempt to extinguish the flames that greedily ate at their gray and mottled flesh. He was even more surprised to find three new faces.
One of the newcomers, a short man in blue robes who looked more like a wizard than Zeetan ever had, carried a wooden staff that appeared to be the source of the fireballs. There was also a red-haired woman who was in the process of reloading a crossbow.
The third stranger was only slightly taller than the spell-caster. He wore a dark suit of armor that was unlike anything Mitto had ever seen. Along with a horned helm that hid his face entirely, the armor covered the man’s entire body. No, the fellow’s hands were bare, and his skin was as black as coal.
Despite his diminutive stature, he spoke with a deep voice that might have belonged to a giant. “What’re you waiting for? Fight for your life!”
The short, thick-bodied man—if it was a man!—then raised a battle-axe that was nearly as tall as he was and threw himself at the goblins nearest the terrified stallion. Stannel was already hacking away at the monsters surging toward him and Aric.
Although nothing seemed to be making sense anymore, Mitto had enough sense to raise his weapon as a goblin charged at him. Thrusting and bashing with his quarterstaff, he managed to drop two of the creatures in a series of desperate moves.
Breathing heavily, he waited for the next fiend to come at him, only to realize the battle was over. All but a few of the goblins were dead or dying. Some resembled little more than charred piles of meat, though many others were riddled with deep wounds wrought by sword, axe, and crossbow. The bodies near the stranger in the horned helm were missing arms, legs, and in some cases, heads.
Of the motely band, only Zeetan appeared injured. He had slumped to the road and was clutching an arrow that had pierced his belly.
The remaining three goblins were making a swift retreat, but the blue-robed wizard—who was surely a midge—had given chase. A final blast from his staff sent a particularly big conflagration at them. The fireball sent the monsters thrashing to the ground, but no matter how much they rolled around, the flames would not abate.
Mitto watched the midge saunter back over to the wagon. With a sweep of his conical hat, he bowed and said, “On behalf of Commander Colt, welcome to Fort Faith!”
* * *
Else opened her eyes and looked up at a ceiling she didn’t recognize. Figh
ting through the cobwebs in her mind, she sat up.
She was alone in a sparsely decorated room with stone walls. Swinging her feet over the side of the small couch, she examined the small room, desperately seeking something familiar. Why aren’t I at Someplace Else? she wondered. What has happened?
When she saw Bryant Walden’s face, everything returned to her in a sudden jolt of clarity—the warning from Loony Gomez, her struggle to reach the Celestial Palace’s upper echelon, and the impending attack on the city.
The high commander took a couple of steps into his office and came to halt when he saw she was awake. “Well, Madam Fontane, I am glad to see you are awake. You gave us quite a scare. I had just called for one of the palace’s healers.”
“My apologies, High Commander,” Else replied. Her cheeks burn, and she wondered what it was about the Knight that made her feel like a bashful maiden. “I have come here to give you some dire news.”
“About Toemis Blisnes?” Walden took a seat behind his desk, which was littered with papers, quills, and what looked to be part of a gauntlet.
Else shook her head and got to her feet. “This is far more serious than one old man.”
Walden leaned forward in his seat. “I have already summoned Lord Minus. I sent for him when I was under the impression you had learned something about Toemis. But if this is not about your merchant friend and his curious passengers, then what?”
Else took a deep breath. She knew she should tell the Knight everything and not leave a single detail out, though she was hesitant about mentioning Loony Gomez. It wasn’t that she was worried about betraying the old thief—Gomez had said he was leaving Rydah anyway—but she was concerned Bryant Walden wouldn’t believe her after learning the source of her knowledge.
Williams, D M - Renegade Chronicles [Collection 1-3] Page 59