A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter

by Ron Miller

  “He may not even be in one of those cells,” says Gyven. “Perhaps he’s in one facing the other way.”

  “Just a moment,” says Bronwyn. “I’m looking for something...Ah! There! See?” She points to a window near the left center of the wall. It is distinguished from the others by a small white patch. Gyven strains his eyes, trying to pierce the mist. “There’s something tied to one of the bars.”

  “That’s just what I thought.”

  “What is it?”

  “That’s Milnikov’s cell.”

  “How can you know that?”

  “I figured out how to get a message to him. You’ve seen all the religious tracts that have flooded the city? Most of them telling about how wonderful my idiot brother’s reign is going to be? I don’t know why, but I was browsing through one, for laughs, I suppose, when a passage caught my eye. It said, ‘By a sign I shall know thee; by the symbol of thy purity shall I know thy place.’ I don’t know what it's supposed to mean; it's probably referring to my brother, Musrum forbid, but it gave me an idea. I marked that passage and sent it, along with a few others as camouflage, to the baron. I’m sure that his mail is severely censored, but I don’t think that they’d hold up anything of a religious nature. I was right.”

  “Well,” said Gyven, “if that is his cell, now what?”

  “Well, since I found out that much, at least, I was hoping you’d be able to think of something. You’re the expert at jailbreaks.”

  “Let me give it some thought.”

  “Don’t be too long about it.”

  That night, Gyven asks, “Do you think you can get one more message to the baron?”

  “I don’t see why not. What?”

  “I’d like for him to put a candle in the window.”

  “A candle? Whatever for?”

  “I’d rather you that see when the time comes.”

  This annoys the princess, who loathes mysteries, but Gyven flatly refuses to discuss it any further. Scowling, Bronwyn begins to shuffle through the brochures and leaflets. It takes her an hour to locate a passage in one of the tracts that she hopes would give the baron the right idea. It says, “Against My coming, make of your soul a lantern to guide My way.” Not exactly obvious, but it would have to do. In the morning, she sent it off by the first post. It would be at the fortress within a few hours.

  Gyven has vanished at first light, leaving the princess and Thud to entertain one another, an interesting task for both. It is Saint Wladimir’s Day, the day of the coronation. Before the sun set, her brother would be king. There would be no stuffed momrath for her this year.

  The inn is deserted, as is most likely the case with every hostelry in the city. Most of the population would be crowded into the vast plaza in the center of Palace Island. The ceremonies and festivities would continue all day and well into the night. If there is to be a perfect time to effect an escape from Kaposvar, it would be now. Gyven does not return until late afternoon. The sky has been growing ever more threatening all that day; thunder rumbles in the distance and the air is charged with electricity. Bronwyn’s clothing and hair crackle with every movement; sparks pop from her fingertips whenever they approach metal and the inn’s cat avoids her in horror. A storm of extraordinary violence is clearly promised.

  Gyven is carrying a pair of enormous bundles, which he deposits on the floor of the room with a heavy clatter.

  “What’s all this?” Bronwyn asks.

  “You will see. There’s not much time for explanations. Get your things together. We must be prepared to leave immediately.”

  Bronwyn wordlessly packs her few belongings into her rucksack. Neither Thud nor Gyven possess anything to take, other than what the latter has just delivered. They leave the deserted inn unseen. In a few moments they have crossed the road, entered the woods, and are soon again within sight of the fortress. The trees surrounding them are swaying erratically in gusts of wind that blow from every direction. Between the roar of the river, the thunder that reverberates from the walls of the canyon and the rustling trees, Gyven has to shout to be heard.

  “Look!”

  In the dark mass of the fortress glimmers a single pale light.

  Gyven begins unwrapping the bundle he’d been carrying. He reveals a crossbow of huge proportions.

  “Where did you get that thing?” Bronwyn asks.

  “Never mind!”

  He takes one of the heavy ten-inch steel quarrels. To its nether end he ties one end of a ball of string, then unwinds several hundred feet it.

  “What’re you going to do?”

  “Watch!”

  Placing a foot in the stirrup that terminates the wooden stock, he cranks a two-handed winch that pulls back the wire until the steel bow, as massive as a carriage spring, locks. He inserts the quarrel with its trailing string, then, bracing the weapon atop the stump of a broken tree, takes careful aim at the fortress.

  “Wait a second!” cries Bronwyn, realizing what Gyven intends doing. “What if you hit the baron?”

  “I don’t think I will! He must surely be expecting something like this!”

  “How can you know that?”

  Gyven ignors her. He adjusts his aim microscopically, takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger. The quarrel shoots into the darkness with a wicked hum.

  “Did you hit the window?”

  “I think so! There! Look!”

  The candle makes a circular motion, then disappears.

  “Quick, Thud! Tie the rope to the end of the string! Hurry!”

  Thud has already dumped a coil of heavy rope from the bag he is carrying. Without any wasted motion, he ties its end to the remaining end of the string. Gyven, meanwhile, has taken from a pocket a stub of candle and a large box of matches. Hunching over to shelter it from the wind, he attempts to light the candle. Unfortunately, he has not counted on the storm and the erratic wind blows out his matches as fast as he strikes them. Bronwyn, seeing what the point is, cries, “Give me those!” and takes the box from his hand. “All you want is a signal, right?”

  “Yes!”

  She takes the box and opens it so that its contents are exposed. She sees that it contains at least a hundred large matches. She picks up a small rock and strikes it across the heads. The entire mass ignites at once with a flash and a foot-long flame. Bronwyn drops it from her scorched hand with a cry. But it seems to have done the trick: the string begins to move again, drawing off into the darkness of the abyss. When its end is reached, the rope to which it is tied begins to move, sliding across the wet grass and over the edge of the precipice like a suicidal anaconda.

  “All right, Thud!” Gyven shouts. “Get the rope secured!”

  Thud ties their end of the cable in an elaborate if uncouth knot to the bole of a massive oak. A moment later the rope is taut, a nearly invisible, tenuous bridge linking the two sides of the gulf. The baron has evidently tied his end of the rope to the bars of his window.

  “I hope the baron is as intelligent as you say, Princess! Thud, are you ready?”

  “Yes!”

  “All right, then, pull!”

  The two men grasp the rope and do just that.

  “You’ve got to be mad!” cries the princess, realizing what their scheme is. “That won’t work!”

  But they pull just the same. Under the strain, Thud seems to grow more compact and massive. His broad, flat feet dig six inches into the earth. Gyven, at the same time, is transformed into a kind of industrial machine, all steel and cables, pistons and drive rods. The whole operation would have looked far more ludicrous had it not been performed by such superhuman creatures. The rope thrums like an organ pipe and the princess cannot imagine what keeps it from snapping, even though it is nearly an inch thick. She peers into the gloom. When the clouds of mist part she can see the window clearly in a flash of lightning. By Musrum! There are cracks showing all around it. She watches a large flake of masonry fell into the chasm. But that is all.

  “It’s not working!”r />
  “I know what to do!” says Thud, suddenly.

  “What?” says Bronwyn, desperately.

  “What?” says Gyven, skeptically.

  Thud unties the rope from the tree and takes it to a huge boulder that stands at the brink of the cliff. The rock is as large as a small house, or so it seems to the girl. It is, at least, several times larger than Thud. The Kobold takes the rope in both hands, so that it makes a vast loop, and tosses it over the boulder. He then ties it securely. The rope now comes in from the darkness, makes a turn around the tree, then ends tied to the boulder.

  Thud signals Gyven, who joins him behind the rock. Together they begin to push against it. Under their combined masses, the rock, unbelievably, begins to move.

  “What are you doing?” cries Bronwyn, almost afraid to believe what she is seeing.

  The rock begin to oscillate like a ponderous metronome as the two men work with its natural period. With each outward swing, it hangs just a little further over the abyss. In the flashing lightning and swirling, misty rain, Thud and Gyven look like creatures from some primal, pagan mythology ‘and quite probably are). Suddenly, with a grinding crash, the top of the boulder tips past its center of gravity and plummets into the chasm like a meteor.

  “Watch out!” screams the princess.

  The rope snaps as taut as an iron rod with a sound that rivals the thunder, as though Musrum Himself has just cracked a titanic whip over their heads. From across the gorge comes a detonation that can be heard even above the thunder. The rope screams as it winds around the big tree, nearly sawing it in half in a cloud of acrid smoke. An instant later something as large as an adult ox smashes into the tree like a meteorite, throwing splinters, rubble and dust in all directions. Bronwyn is thrown to the ground by a whipping branch and is only prevented from going over the edge of the cliff by the strong arm of Thud Mollockle.

  “Are you all right?” he asks.

  “I think so! Where’s Gyven?”

  “Here!” comes his voice from the other side of the vast, grey mass that had nearly crushed them.

  “What is this?” she asks before realizing that she is looking at most of the outside wall of the baron’s cell. Holy Musrum!

  “Where’s the baron? What’s happened to him?”

  “There he is!”

  She looks across the gorge. In the lurid electrical illumination she can see the gaping black hole where the baron’s window once was. A pale figure stands within it.

  “It’s the baron!” she cries. She waves to the figure, who gives a jaunty salute in return.

  “We must hurry!” says Gyven.

  “What Thud accomplished won’t go unnoticed!”

  “How can we get him out?”

  “I’m not sure! I think he needs to get to the roof! If he can get up there, then perhaps he can lower himself to the top of that wall, where it meets the Tower.”

  He points to the low wing that is pierced by the outlet for the moat. As he speaks, Gyven reloads the crossbow. Once again he ties a string to the quarrel. This time, however, he aims higher and the heavy projectile carries the line over the peak of the roof.

  “If he can get up there, he can pull over another rope!”

  “But how can he climb up there?”

  “Look!”

  The figure in the wall-less cell has swung out of the opening. Not more than a yard from the hole is the iron cable of the lightning conductor. By grasping the edge of the broken masonry with one hand, he is just able to reach the cable. Bronwyn gasps and shuts her eyes when the baron swings from the cell, supported for the moment only by his grasp on the wet wire rope. Using the staples that attach the conductor to the wall, the baron begins to climb the cable. It is the most harrowing thing Bronwyn has ever seen. The wind has increased during the last quarter-hour, all the time that has passed, amazingly, since they first arrived at the cliff, and it now howls down the confining chute of the gorge. Bronwyn has to hold onto the branch of a tree for security, and can only wonder at how the baron is able to withstand the buffeting gale that must be trying to pluck him from his precarious hold. Lightning laces the low, smoky clouds and the thunder is now an almost continuous roar.

  The baron is only a yard or two from the eave when Bronwyn cries out, “Look!”

  The twin spears of the lightning rods are glowing with an eerie, flickering aura of blue-violet light. The atmosphere is so heavily charged with electricity that Bronwyn can feel her skin prickling and the hairs on the back of her neck starting to rise. She has no idea what would happen to a man holding onto a lightning conductor when it is struck...her meager physics are not up to that, though her macabre imagination is working hard to compensate for that lack. The baron’s figure becomes radiant; pink and yellow rays shoot from it and sparks fly from his fingertips, even from the ends of his every erect hair, so that his head is surrounded by a coruscating globe of fire.

  Bronwyn, certain that the baron has been fried like a moth in a candle flame, squeezes her eyes shut against the uncanny vision. However, when she opens them again, the baron is not only still there, but has managed to clamber over the projecting eave and is on the edge of the roof. The electrical effects are abating, though the lightning rods still flickers fitfully, gobbets of violet flame running up and down them like ghostly squirrels.

  The baron quickly finds the string and begins reeling it in, eventually bringing a hundred feet of rope across the gorge; it now lay coiled at his feet. Carrying this to one of the lightning rods, he ties one end to the base and throws the other over the edge of the roof, where it dangles across the wall below.

  “He’s going to make it!” shouts Gyven.

  “Come on!”

  Bronwyn, with Thud close behind, follows Gyven out of the woods. Running down the road, heedless of being seen, as unlikely as that is on this night of all nights, they cross the river by way of the scenic footbridge over the falls. Bronwyn, who never can run very far without cramping, has to stop. She is panting fitfully and the painful stitch in her side is bending her double. The road to the fortress is now uphill and daunting. Gyven, with scarcely a pause, sweeps her into his arms and carries her. He seems totally unaware of her weight. His arms feel to Bronwyn as though she is resting in a cradle of hard oak.

  The vicinity of Kaposvar is reached in only a few minutes, and they slow in order to not attract attention. Anyone not at the coronation would be instantly suspect. Gyven drops the princess to her feet and the three conspirators leave the road and cut diagonally through a small woods toward the corner of the fortress wall that met the cliff. They are just in time to see a dark figure drop from the wall. Bronwyn gives a short, low whistle and the figure immediately turns toward them.

  “Baron Milnikov, presume?”

  “If you are my unknown friends, I am.”

  “This is Gyven, he’s Thud Mollockle, and I am the Princess Bronwyn.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned! What an interesting evening this is becoming.”

  “We’d best hurry,” urges Gyven.

  “Yes, indeed,” agrees the baron. “I don’t know how you people did it, but you’ve stirred up the whole fortress. They’ve no idea yet what happened, but they’re searching the place and it won’t be long before they discover that my cell no longer has a wall. Fortunately you chose a perfect night: the place has only a skeleton staff.”

  “We’d better go,” urges Bronwyn.

  Hurrying back down the road, the quartet find a shelter erected for the sightseers who never came to the falls. The rain has finally begun in earnest, now that the preliminary electrical display is over. It is a deluge that quickly turns the narrow road into a river of mud. In the obscurity, Bronwyn is able to get her first real look at the baron. He resembles to a degree that surprises her the romanticized illustrations in the weeklies: the same tall, lean figure, gaunt face with eyes in a perpetually amused squint, long, erratic nose, upturned moustache and pointed goatee. His curly black hair is plastered to his head, rev
ealing a normally hidden bald spot on his crown. However, instead of the flamboyantly fashionable clothing he normally affected, he is dressed in the flimsy pajama, like uniform issued by the prison. Gyven removes his own coat and drapes it over the baron’s shoulders.

  “What a pleasure it is to see you, Princess,” the baron says, with a bow. “I’m entirely at your service!”

  “That’s what I’d hoped you’d say,” she replies.

  The coronation, as it turns out, is a social disaster. To protest Payne’s presence, many of the old nobility have refused to attend, disdaining the anger of the king. Those who do attend are scandalized beyond expression when Payne is blasphemously allowed to carry the crown in the procession to the altar. More than one head turns nervously ceilingward, hoping that the wrath of Musrum would be a carefully aimed manifestation.

  The arrangements for the coronation had been left entirely in Payne’s hands and he botched them, well, royally. Schedules are either impossible to meet or are not met at all; nothing is on time and many sacred and traditional events are cancelled out of hand or performed out of their properly ordained order. Ferenc is rude to everyone and Payne supercilious far above his birthright; the representatives of a score of ancient families, who had arrived willing to forgive and forget, went away insulted and offended. Afterwards, the new king held a private party in the great lodge that dominates Catstongue Island, a celebration of victory that is still going on well into the early hours of the following day.

  He and Payne have surround themselves with their closest sycophants and toadies. The party is that sort of orgiastic revel that only Ferenc can organize or desire, especially now that he literally knew no restraints. There are several orchestras, trestles bending under the weight of more food than most Tamlaghtans are likely to see over the entire winter, fountains of champagne and wine, glossily handsome men in full evening dress and fashionably beautiful women in spectacular evening undress, every one of whom looks as though they had been ordered from a catalog, and a gloating, bloated king looking down upon it all.