by Gary Gygax
Gord seized the opportunity. “My lady, what is it that troubles you so?” he asked.
“Captivity is a hard burden to bear, sir,” she replied with a tinge of hardness in her musical voice.
“Durance, lady, is vile indeed, but it is you who hold my heart captive!” he said, speaking softly but with sincerity. “Being a ward of the master of all around us is not captivity, but rather privilege!”
Evaleigh glared at him. “Take back those words, sir,” she said, “or I swear I shall have revenge for your taunting me so!”
This response nearly left Gord speechless. The vehemence of this wonderful woman was undeniable. He hastened to make amends. “Again, I am at a severe disadvantage, fair lady,” he said as graciously as he could. “Do not become angry at me for some ignorance on my part. Be generous and kind, I beg of you! Tell me the cause of your anger, the source of what discommodes you, and I shall pledge myself to serve to remedy all and make right what you view as wrong, even at the cost of my very life!”
Now it was Evaleigh who appeared taken aback. For a long moment she looked into the young man’s eyes, searching his countenance, contemplating. Then, at last, she spoke. “Gord, I may have misjudged you. Know you who I am?”
“Only, fair Evaleigh, that you are the most gorgeous woman ever to have walked our Oerth’s thus blessed soil, and the one for whom I would most gladly die!”
“Spare me these plights, Gord, no matter how sincerely meant and well-spoken. Answer me directly: Do you know who I am?”
“The woman of my dreams, the one I love, the charge of Lord Dhaelhy…. That is the full recital!”
Evaleigh slipped her small hand into Gord’s as he spoke thus. Standing close and staring into his face, she asked, “And that is all?”
“On everything I honor and cherish, lady, that is all.”
“Then hear what I am about to relate….”
Within a few moments, Gord had the essence of her story. Evaleigh was a captive, being held for ransom by Stoink. Her land was far to the east, and her father was Dunstan, Count of Blemu and Lord of Knurl. Boss Dhaelhy was keeping her intact, as it were, pending a reply from her father to a demand of ten thousand orbs for Evaleigh’s safe return to her home. Time was beginning to grow short, for several months had passed without response from the Noble Grace of Blemu. Unless she was ransomed soon, Evaleigh would be sold off to the leader of Rookroost, Plar Teoud Fent, who had offered Dhaelhy treasure and alliance for her. To be sure, ten thousand gold pieces outweighed the sums proffered by Rookroost, vague alliances aside, but meat in the pot was worth far more than magic in the promise, as they said. Thus, the upshot was that Evaleigh was bound for the tender mercies of concubinage of the Plar unless her father’s emissaries soon reached Stoink… or fate intervened!
“Sold? They would sell you?” said Gord when her downcast eyes told him that her tale was told.
“As surely as my father fails to pay my ransom.”
“No one can sell you, Evaleigh. You’re a baroness-and the most beautiful girl in the world!”
“Don’t raise your voice so,” she cautioned softly. “And thank you, Gord.”
“Don’t thank me yet, dear lady. Wait until Stoink is behind us, and then you may say thus.”
Evaleigh looked up at him for a moment, the moonlight making her eyes gleam marvelously. Gord was unused to looking down upon a woman, for his height was such that most girls were nearer to par with him. But this gorgeous creature stood only an inch over five feet, and Gord felt like a hero already as she silently beseeched him to make good his intimation of rescue.
“We must return to the palace now, or they will become suspicious,” Evaleigh said, moving away from him toward the pathway leading to the hall. She still held his hand, lightly, and Gord moved to retain the contact.
“When shall I see you again?” he asked.
“Never, unless you make the opportunity,” she whispered. “Do you think that pig in there allows anyone as young and handsome as you to be near me?”
Handsome… she had called him that! Gord felt as though he were floating above the ground, as tall as a titan. “I shall soon devise a way then!” he responded with great vigor.
“I’ll pray it is so,” Evaleigh said, and gave him a soft little kiss on the cheek, so swiftly and briefly that the guards did not see, and even Gord was uncertain for an instant that it had, in fact, happened. “We approach the sty, so I can no longer be civil, but you are my champion!”
Stiff and straight, Evaleigh entered the palace ahead of Gord. Without another word, she was gone, leaving Gord to return to the celebration. The great hall was only slightly less crowded. Trestles removed, the revelers were now engaged in serious drinking, while a motley assortment of entertainers performed in various parts of the long chamber. As he approached the place of honor, Gellor sidled up to him.
“Your face is as long as a troll’s snout, Gord,” his companion said. “Better put another expression on it, or the boss might be offended.”
“Screw him!” Gord spat.
“Oh, ho! So Lady Evaleigh has scored a conquest, has she?”
“Leave her out of this, Gellor!”
Without showing any umbrage, the one-eyed thief took Gord firmly by the arm and halted his progress toward Lord Dhaelhy’s dais. “For your continued health, listen!” he said. “That woman is a treasure of great value, and guarded thus. If a man sees one who is desirous of stealing his wealth, he acts-get my meaning? Now smile, relax, and we’ll hoist a few tankards! We’re honored guests, you know, and likely to get some companionship from the ambitious ladies here.”
Gord still looked sour, but he slowly nodded acceptance of the advice. “Thanks, Gellor. You’re right,” he said, regaining his composure as he did so.
“Good. I hear that Evaleigh is bound for Rookroost in a few days anyway.”
Chapter 18
A patch of shadow detached itself from the dark space between two of the buildings. For a brief moment only it seemed manlike in shape as it moved swiftly and noiselessly across the starlit courtyard. Then it was gone, enveloped in the umbra of the other structure toward which it had drifted. Only a bat had seen the shadow-figure, and it cared nothing about it. Sharp-eyed sentries hired for their ability to see well in darkness had noticed nothing, and the squad of soldiers that passed the area a few seconds later noticed the bat flutter overhead, but saw no more.
Gord was clad in black, head covered by a soft felt cap of inky hue, face smeared with lamp soot, hands gloved in ebon leather. Long training and practice enabled him to move without noise, and this silent progress was but a part of his skill. Clad as he was, Gord could become virtually invisible, using small projections, indentations, and shadow to conceal his presence.
It had been an easy matter for him to scale the wall around the complex, ease down the other side, and then disappear among the buildings of the fortresslike compound within which the lord of Stoink dwelled and the city’s government was administered. However, crossing the broad expanse of Hall Street a few moments earlier had not been quite so simple, for there were late-night passersby out strolling, and sentries on the outer wall before him to be contended with. Gord had utilized a passing night-soil cart, smelly as it was, to mask his approach, and then he had been forced to remain frozen, prone against the base of the wall, until a group of off-duty guards quit conversing with their fellows atop the wall and went on their way up Safe Avenue.
The outer wall of the building he was adjacent to had many projecting stones and cracks. Gord’s ascent was much the same as that of a normal person climbing a ladder-although a normal person attempting such a climb as the young thief made would find it next to impossible. Once atop the structure, he continued his oblique progress toward the palace, moving up and down as easily as normal folk went back and forth along the ground. He utilized the concealment of another nearby building, then the south inner wall, to move west to where he could easily see the palace’s tall turre
ts and towers showing faint black silhouettes against the pale stars. Once, Gord had to hang by his fingertips over a ledge as a sentry slowly paced by. Then he was scrambling up at a juncture where the lower wall of the administrative compound met the higher barrier around the palace proper.
Now he must be doubly careful, for this area was teeming with guards. The inner bailey of the castlelike palace was only twenty or so feet below him, although the drop to the park on the outer side was over thirty. The palace was built on a small hill, and the ground had been terraced long ago to make the place into a stronghold capable of withstanding siege. As a sentry approached, Gord hung at arms’ length over the inside of the wall and allowed himself to drop. His fall, roll, and recovery made little more than a whisper and soft thump. Shadow hid his position, and the patrolling soldier continued on along the top of the wall, unaware that an intruder was within the place.
Understanding that he may well encounter magical as well as flesh-and-blood protections, Gord had opted for a bold plan. He ran along the base of the palace wall, for the bailey was deserted, and the darkness hid his motion. Where the angle of the wall met the great tower at the southwestern end of the palace proper, he sprang upward and stood upon the tiny ledge provided by the arch of the locked portal beneath.
Unmoving, hardly breathing as he plastered his body against the stone, Gord watched the bronzewood gate open and light spill out into the compound. A half-dozen guards came out, the door was banged shut, and the group walked away toward their barracks tower, chatting. Their torches might have revealed Gord’s presence, if any of the soldiers had bothered to look behind and up. In another minute, Gord was halfway up the tower, moving with speed verging on recklessness. However, he made the ascent without a slip, and about sixty feet up he moved off onto the steeply pitched roof of the great hall. Another guardsman on the tower’s top, thirty feet above, was dozing and witnessed nothing.
Pausing near a small turret at the northeastern end of the roof, Gord silently unstrapped his ebon-hued backpack. He pulled a dark cloth out of it and carefully removed all traces of black from his visage. Next he divested himself of his black outer garments, then got out and put on a surcoat identifying him as a junior officer of the Constabulary Guard, the body of men-at-arms whose duty it was to protect this very place. He pulled out and strapped on his shortsword, then stuffed the black garb into the pack, which he left tucked into a niche where none but the birds and bats would see it.
Now for the hard part, he thought, taking a deep breath and thrusting open a small door that gave into a circular room.
“Rotten Ralishaz!” a dice-playing guardsman exclaimed at Gord’s sudden appearance before him. The three other men seated at the rough table looked equally taken aback.
“Who is in charge here?” demanded Gord, looking angry and official.
One fellow sprang up instantly, the others a bit more slowly, until they realized that an officer was before them. Normally the guards-and most of their commanders-were pretty lax, but this unfamiliar officer before them could mean big trouble. They were supposed to be patrolling the rooftop, watching for possible threats to Boss Dhaelhy’s security. And now they had been nailed by an officer, albeit a most junior one, playing at knucklebones in obvious dereliction of their duty. Not one of them wanted to speculate on the consequences of this, if indeed the man before them had been sent by the boss to check on how really secure the palace was.
The first man who had stood assumed a sloppy sort of posture of attention and responded meekly. “I am in charge, sir,” he said. “Corporal Mender. Sir, I can explain about the game….”
“Shut up, asshole!” Gord commanded. “You listen, I’ll talk! Lucky for you dumbshits that Commander Oakert it was sent me, not the Boss himself.”
Gord gave them a minute to let that sink in. Commander Oakert was in charge of all the guards on night duty this month. He was not a lovable man at best, and he hated night duty. He’d just been posted to it as a way of letting him know that his master was displeased with him for not finding out about the plot of the Hierarchs. Oakert had been chief of spying before. All this was common knowledge among the guards and other employees of the palace, and they also knew that the commander would do anything he could to get back into the good graces of Lord Dhaelhy-including exposing the men under his command who were slacking in their duties.
“But we-”
“Shut up!” interrupted Gord. “I’m supposed to be here catching you jerks and placing you on report so that the commander can look good. Well, I don’t mind telling you that I’m a new boy here, and I don’t like that sort of crappy deal at all. Oakert will end up looking great, I’ll get a nasty reputation, and one day I’ll happen to slip and fall off a wall, or have some other accident, and that will be that.”
The four guards looked at each other and couldn’t keep from grinning knowingly at what the subaltern just said. Piss off the troops, and things did have a way of happening-perhaps not to captains and commanders, but certainly to subalterns.
“Wipe those damn smirks off your ugly pusses!” Gord raved at them. “Any more of that behavior, and I’ll be tempted to take my chances with an accident. Get your asses out of here and on your rounds! Nobody was goofing off in here when I checked, understand?”
“Yessir,” the guards muttered in unison, and then they were gone in a scuffle and a slam of the roofway door.
Gord looked around the room, smiling at the ease of his success, then spied a trapdoor in the floor and pulled it open. In another few minutes, he was walking briskly along the torchlit corridors of the palace’s upper floors, looking very busy and official. None of the various persons he encountered took any suspicious notice of him. In fact, the only ones who seemed to notice him at all were a pair of guards at the entrance to Lord Dhaelhy’s wing. They came to attention smartly as Gord passed. Tossing off a distracted salute in reply, he strode past, and that was that.
There was but a single man-at-arms on duty at the entrance to the great tower. Waving his papers vaguely at the guard, Gord went through and up the stairs there without being questioned. The uppermost storey was where Evaleigh was kept as “guest” of Boss Dhaelhy. Another guard was before the door to her chamber-a serjeant who looked professional and mean.
Gord took a chance. “Is that door locked?” he demanded.
“Yes… sir,” the sentry replied, adding the honorific as he measured the junior officer before him, and saw danger in not responding with deference.
“Then open it, Serjeant. I am here on the order of His Authoritative Lordship.”
“At midnight?” The man was uncertain, but not easily moved.
“Are you on guard duty? Or posted to tell your superiors the time of night?” Gord allowed the anger he truly felt to rise within him. “Open that door, or I’ll have you on report for insubordination!”
“Yessir. May I see the order from His Lordship?”
Gord was prepared. “I assume you can read, Serjeant,” he said sarcastically, pulling a square of parchment from within his coat and handing it to the guard.
The fellow took the document without comment, noted that it was an order for the immediate removal of Lady Evaleigh to Boss Dhaelhy’s apartments, and signed by Commander Oakert.
“Well?” said Gord impatiently, after scarcely giving the guard enough time to absorb the contents of the parchment.
“This is in order, sir. I’ll have the door unlocked in just a moment.”
“Hurry, damn you! If I am questioned as to why I am tardy by Commander Oakert, or His Lordship, the Boss, you’ll be the one to hear! Serjeant…”
“Serjeant Melson, sir-Black Melson,” he added hastily as he turned the great lock and pushed on the iron-bound panel to open it.
“Stay at your post. I’ll get the lady and be out as quickly as possible,” Gord said with a steely voice that brooked no further word from the sentry.
The room beyond was a salon, with a thick rug on the floor and seve
ral divans and other furniture. A serving maid slept on one of these couches. Gord walked over to her and woke her none too gently, causing the woman to give a small, startled squeak.
“Go to your mistress, Lady Evaleigh. Inform her that His Authoritative Lordship Dhaelhy commands her presence in five minutes. Tell her she must be dressed for travel, but without any baggage or impediment.”
The maid got up without a word and turned toward the door of her mistress’ chamber.
“You may inform her that Subaltern Gord is to be her escort,” the young thief added.
“Subaltern who, sir?” inquired the still-drowsy servant.
“Gord…. Tell her Subaltern Gord.”
“Very well, sir. Subaltern Gord. I shall tell Lady Evaleigh just that. Five minutes, you say?” She bustled into the next room, leaving the question hanging in thin air.
Not more than ten minutes elapsed before Evaleigh and her maid appeared through the door. Gord had been pacing nervously but silently, pausing often to listen at the outer portal for any sign of possible trouble. He breathed a sigh of released tension when he heard the two women approaching the salon. Then, at the instant he saw her, Evaleigh’s eyes met his, and Gord felt a strange flow of energy within him-a force that made his heart sing and his muscles weak at the same time. He shook it off, forcing his mind to remain on the matters at hand.
“Woman,” he said, addressing the maid, “I have no instructions as to you. Wait here until someone comes to fetch you or tell you otherwise. Go back to sleep, do your duties, whatever.”
“If it’s all the same to you, Subaltern Gord, I’ll just go back to sleep.”
Gord gave the servant a black look, keeping in character, and then turned to Evaleigh. “Your Ladyship, are you ready to be escorted to His Authoritative Lordship?”