by Philip Smith
“I’d say I was sorry,” she yawned. “But I’m not.”
The princess rose out of bed feeling drugged and groggy. The men were all in a similar state of undead unrest as they stood around the small campfire, rubbing their arms and legs into semi-warmth. Dinendale stood across the fire tying on his leather vambraces.
“Well, friends,” Dinendale spoke loud enough to gather their attention. “This is it. We all know what's expected, and I have absolute faith in each of you. A princess's life hangs in the balance tonight. In the event something goes wrong, know that I count it an honor to have served by your side in every battle we’ve faced.”
“Well, don’t be so chipper with the trumpet call, Dinendale,” Duelmaster chuckled. They all grunted somberly in amusement.
Dinendale smiled and shook his head, resting his hands on his sword belt.
“So, do we even have a plan?” Broadside asked.
The others laughed.
“I’ve been thinking about all the information collected yesterday, and I think I have an idea that just might work,” Dinendale said.
“Care to share?” Jesnake asked.
The dark elf grinned at the Western elf. “Depends,” he teased. “How do you feel about crawling through another water trough?”
“As long as there are no millstones on the other end, I think I can handle it,” Jesnake said, twanging his bow like a lute.
“Alright, then,” Dinendale said, “I’ll explain on the way. Now that we’ve got the darkness to cover us, the hourglass has been tipped.”
Chapter 18
Beyond the Gates
Paige leaned on the stone archway holding up the gigantic aqueduct, the thunder and vibrating pillars humming as the water rushed through it high above on its course into the city. The cold granite did little to soothe her hot neck and flighty stomach that churned like a barge’s wake. Robert was next to her, and Twostaves beside him. She reached up and touched her hairpin reassuringly. Yes, the sword was there. In addition to that, the bow Broadside had lent her snuggly rested against her back. The quiver of arrows lay lashed to her belt for easy access. The coil of rope draped across her shoulder and midsection like a nobleman’s sash.
Paige stared at the fortress, a series of stone blocks mounted over three stories high on the opposite side of the chasm. It was darker than midnight. She gulped as she ran her fingers across the crevasses between the stones comprising the aqueduct’s pillars. They’d come this far together, but now it was up to her to climb a wet, slippery, stone structure a hundred paces high.
Right.
She took a deep breath to calm her nerves. She looked at Robert. “Ready?” she asked.
“Whenever you are,” he offered, extending her a hand. She took a moment to pick up a decent-sized stone and slip it into her pocket.
“Well, wish me luck,” she said. She nodded to the giant, pulling her scarf up above her mouth as a makeshift mask. Twostaves squatted next to the pillar, offering her his back. Paige took one more breath then slammed her foot into Robert’s laced fingers, jumping to the giant’s back and standing atop his shoulders. He leaned against the column, trying to stand on his tiptoes to give Paige as much height as possible as she prepared to climb the damp stone.
Each of the stone blocks were about three feet high and four to five feet long. She grabbed hold of the crevices and stretched for the next hand hold. She climbed slowly at first, taking her time as she inched her way further from the ground. Luckily there was not much lichen or moss growing on the aqueduct, but the dribbling of water from above did make several of the blocks harder to grasp with her toes or finger tips. Paige held no fear of heights growing up among the treetops, but the near death experience on Craymoghr Cliff was now branded into her memory. The thought of that moment felt like a boat sinking in the pit of her stomach. Paige could feel gravity’s pull on her strengthen with every stone she climbed.
The shrill blast of a horn startled her. Changing of the guard wasn’t expected this soon. Paige struggled to keep her balance amidst the eerie sound. Her heart skipped a beat as she clung to the stone. She couldn’t fall now. Just because they almost fell before didn’t mean that she couldn’t climb. She wanted to be confident but she felt as small as a cricket staring up at this enormous wall. Paige whimpered as the blast of sound died away. She gripped the cracks in the wall with the pads of her fingers till she mustered her poise. She forced air in and out of her lungs.
“Careful!” Twostaves hissed in the darkness. It took her a few more moments to literally and figuratively get a grip on the situation. Slowly, she began to ascend again.
Inch by inch she crawled up the top of the pillar, passing the archway, to the lip of the trough that plunged water into the city. She crawled within reach of the battlements, her fingers so sore they felt as if they might fall off. She reached the lip of the water trough, gripped the edge of the stone, and hauled herself over the top.
Having not been able to see the top of the aqueduct from below, Paige had no idea what to expect once she made it up there. Turns out there wasn’t much room to maneuver on the lip, as it was barely as wide as a man. Paige was thankful for the low hanging clouds that kept the bright moonlight from making her visible to the guard towers along the city’s first wall. Her biggest concern right now was the trembling current. Paige was sure the stone under the surface would be slick as glass.
But she could not go back now. In order to give the others access past the second tier of fortifications, Paige, Robert and Twostaves would have to get beyond it to open their makeshift back door. Glancing at the guardhouses of Aschin’s outer wall and assuring herself all was quiet, she slipped the rope from off her shoulder and tied it around a makeshift iron hook she’d made back at the cave.
Carefully, she found a crack in the mortar and fished her hook into it. Deftly, she pulled the rock out of her pocket and used it as a hammer to hit the hook into the stone crevice. The sharp plunking sound echoed in her ears, and she had to convince herself not to stop and get it all done quickly, like ripping off a bandage, otherwise the prolonged noise might attract attention. Inch by inch, she seated the hook into the crevice until there was nothing left for her to hit. She prayed that it would be strong enough to hold Twostaves, and then tossed the remainder of the rope to the ground.
She saw the slack in the line tighten. Finally a tuft of black hair popped up and the giant crawled over the side and splashed into the running water, keeping his head down.
“Nicely done, princess,” Twostaves congratulated. “Gods above, this is some fast moving water!”
“It is, so keep your head down and hold on tight!” she hissed. The rope went taut again and she gasped. Finally Robert’s sandy hair popped above the rim.
“Not bad. I’ve never seen someone catch themselves from falling so gracefully,” Robert nodded to her. “I’ve also never seen anyone cry at the blow of a horn.”
Paige smacked him on his left cheek. He was in the act of aiming a strike back when Twostaves caught his hand.
“Shut up!” he pointed to the tower closest to them. They followed his gloved finger and saw a lone soldier on the tower’s balcony. He held a bow with a nocked arrow while gazing about the wall in his white turban and spiked helmet. Paige was afraid he’d look down and see them. She waited with baited breath. She watched. In a moment, the man instead returned to the shelter of the tower’s guard house. A rumble of thunder sounded off in the distance as three collective sets of lungs let out a shaky breath.
“That was close,” Robert hissed.
“Way too close,” Twostaves whispered. Paige tugged on the rope to release it from the plaster but it didn’t move. She tried again, thrashing the rope in all directions, but to no avail.
“Um, guys? This rope isn’t coming with us. Not with the hook, anyway.”
“Well at least we know we wouldn’t have fallen,” Twostaves offered.
“Yes, but how are we going to get down now?” She felt th
e panic in her voice.
“We could dive into the cistern?” Twostaves offered.
Robert shook his head. “We’ve no idea how deep it is. We could break our necks, legs, or both.”
“Well, there was a regulator, right? Some sort of contraption to help regulate the water’s flow? They have to be able to get up to it somehow. Maybe there are some stairs? Or a ladder?” Paige said.
“Cut the rope, just in case,” Robert whispered.
Paige knotted and yanked her hairpin out, gripping Klaíomh tightly, its tiny silver rose buds giving her wet hands the grip they needed.
“Twostaves, I need your shadow,” Paige hissed. The giant slid around behind her, blocking her from potential prying eyes that might take note of a flock of blue sparks.
“Klaíomh.”
The blade leapt from the pin in a shower of blue sparks dancing atop of the water, disappearing as they rushed downstream. She sawed through the wet rope, glancing over her shoulder to ensure no guards were peeking out of the tower again. After cutting the rope, she coiled it, returned Klaíomh to its hairpin form, and nodded to Robert.
“Right then. We wait for the next changing of the guard and then we move,” he said, throwing the hood of his robe up. “After that, the real work begins.”
Minutes dragged by as they sat in waist-high water waiting for the next horn to blow. Paige clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering, glancing up at the moons to gauge time. Twostaves held in a couple alarming sneezes as he lay on his back in the water to hide his height as best he could. Occasionally a swell washed over his face and caused him to sputter, but to the giant’s credit, he kept his boisterous tone low.
Finally, the horn blast echoed through the city. Paige jumped into action knowing their time was short. The later the change, the longer the gap got, but they still needed to hasten. As soon as the horn died away, Paige, Robert, and Twostaves crawled forward through the water in a single file line. As they neared the wall, they heard soldiers calling out orders, their voices muffled by the stone walls. Paige felt herself slip once or twice, but Robert grabbed her jerkin and kept her from sliding further towards the end of the aqueduct.
“Keep going. We’re almost past the first wall!” Twostaves urged, risking a peek over the edge of the trough. Paige scurried along, her hands numb with the cold. The stones beneath the water were smooth and slick, and she feared pushing herself too fast would cause her to slip. Luckily the rushing water covered their own splashing noises which helped them considerably.
As soon as they could, the three passed over the wall of the city. Paige felt her heart give a great leap. Only one more wall stood between where they were and where they needed to be. Her heart raced, longing to see Olivian. They pushed onward, the city below sprawling out to the west and south.
The next wall was thinner with fewer guard towers, the nearest of which lay far from the aqueduct. Hopefully they would not be seen. They kept inching their way along till they saw the end of the aqueduct. They stopped abruptly to observe the water cascading downwards to the cistern far below.
“There’s the floodgate,” Robert pointed ahead. The iron doors were opened wide, allowing the water to flow unimpaired to the ground. Paige could see a wooden windlass attached to the doors on the left side of the aqueduct. It stood on a small stone platform that had stairs leading down to the ground below. Robert sighed a huge breath of relief.
“Oh good, stairs. I was afraid we’d have to…”
He stopped abruptly as his hand slipped, pushing him forward and bumping into Paige. On the slick stone, Paige immediately lost her fragile grip and felt herself sliding towards the end of the aqueduct. Water rushed forward with them in a tempestuous current. She gasped and spun around, clawing for a grip on anything she could reach. Her pruny hands wouldn’t latch onto anything as the water dragged her towards the edge.
“Paige!” Robert leapt after her, but slipped on the same slick surface and rolled towards the edge of the aqueduct at an alarming rate. Paige could hear the rush of the water over the edge of the stone, feel the icy tendrils grabbing hold of her and dragging her to that same doom. She gritted her teeth, wondering if the cistern would be deep enough to catch her fall a hundred feet down.
Suddenly a great creaking sound echoed in Paige's head. Just as she was about to slide over the edge of the aqueduct, the two iron doors swung inwards and stopped halfway shut. Paige kicked her feet out, catching the doors and straddling the opening while laying on her back. Water blasted past and poured over her to its natural pathway. She yanked her head out to take a deep breath as Robert bumped into her from behind. She pushed with her legs, trying to keep them both from popping through the narrow opening of the gates. The doors kept closing. Paige felt a strong hand grab her by the collar and pull her back and raise her up over the side of the aqueduct.
She gulped the air back into her lungs and whirled around. Twostaves, drenched as a cat on bath-day, had each of them grabbed by the collar and had hauled them onto the little platform where the windlass sat. One of the giant’s quarterstaves sat lodged in the mechanism.
“Thanks, Twostaves,” Paige coughed. She felt a momentary panic set in again as she whipped her hand up to her braid to make sure the hairpin was still there. It was. She felt the fear melt away slightly as she swallowed hard.
“Don’t mention it,” the giant said. “Now, come on. We’re too exposed. We need to get down to the ground!”
The marble steps leading down the aqueduct were steep, and Paige had a hard time keeping her footing as they began the rapid descent. Twostaves yanked the staff out of the mechanism, and the gates creaked back open, allowing the waterfall to commence at full trust. The tiny, zigzagged, stone steps felt like they continued forever.
“Aw, snapdragons,” Robert muttered as they rounded a course of steps halfway down the aqueduct. The stairs ended abruptly at the next run of steps, leaving a fifty foot drop to the grass below. A ladder lay propped up on the wall beside the cistern, clearly the easiest way to deter unauthorized people from accessing the water controls. Aside from the ladder, there was only a storage awning touching the pillar of the stairs below them.
“Too far to jump,” Twostaves whispered. “We’ll have to use the rope.”
“But we haven’t a hook. How will we secure it?”
Twostaves glanced back up the stairway, a thoughtful expression on his large brow.
“We could wedge something in the small nook where the stairs change directions.”
“I don’t think a knot would hold any one of us, let alone all three of us,” Paige looked at the ground pulling the rope off her belt.
“Is there a loose stone we could lash it to? Maybe an old nail in the stonework?” Robert asked, looking around.
Twostaves paused for a moment then grabbed the rope out of her hands and lashed a knot in the middle of his father’s staff. Paige grabbed his hand.
“Twostaves, no!”
“Sticks are replaceable, I’ll get another,” he assured, climbing up to the last bend in the stairs. He dropped the staff in such way that it straddled the last step of the previous run of stairs and the first step of the series they were on, the rope dropping straight down to the ground.
“You’re sure it’s secure enough?” Robert asked skeptically.
Twostaves shrugged. “Only one way to know for sure!” He let out a light laugh and grasped the rope. Then without giving them any more time to protest, he leapt off the side. The rope snapped tight as his weight pulled against the mighty staff, but it stayed true as he repelled down the rest of the the stone stairway. As soon as he touched the ground, Paige looked at Robert, shrugged, and followed suit.
When her feet touched the soft green grass grown in the barracks for the horses and soldiers to march on, she glanced up to see Robert making his descent. The heavy fellow was about half way down when the three heard a creeeeaaaaak. At that precise moment, the rope went slack in Robert’s hand.
“Oh,” he said as his body froze in mid-air for an instant before he plummeted to the ground. Robert crashed into the corner of the awning before barrelling into an array of large pots. Paige winced as she heard the shattering of now broken pottery he’d landed on. Fear stabbed the bottom of her stomach at the sound of the commotion suddenly piercing through the night’s silence.
Paige held her breath as she heard shouting from the guard towers. Twostaves pulled her into the shadow cast by the aqueduct’s arch. Torches and soldiers’ heads appeared atop the barracks wall from the guardhouse on their left; they searched the training ground and cistern below them. Twostaves cupped a hand around his mouth and let out a yowl, mimicking a cat. Paige let her breath out as she saw the guards shrugging in confusion and dismissal.
As soon as the soldiers were back in the towers, Paige scampered over to the mess of torn canvas, broken wood, and pottery. Robert moaned as she reached him, and she crouched low beside the tangled mess.