by Jon Kiln
Most eyes were on the man hanging aloft above the roof of the abandoned nobleman’s wagon. His clothes were discolored and marred by sweat and urine. The rope that held him was looped over the arm of a twenty-foot statue in the midst of the fountain. The tribute to one of the earliest kings of the kingdom, now deified among the temples and the lore of the kingdom’s origins.
The rope that suspended the man wrapped up around the god-king’s stone arm and then around his chest and face. The people marked themselves with motions meant to cast away curses and hexes at the desecration of the statue even though most of them paid little attention to it, ate their lunches under it, and neglected to even clean bird droppings from the edifice.
The suspended man was tied by his feet and hung upside down with his hands still bound behind his back. He had a rag tied in his teeth for a gag. His eyes rolled up into his head and he issued weak grunts of pain and exhaustion as he waited for someone to free him, swinging to and fro in his inverted state.
A small compliment of constables pushed into the square. They fought their way through the thick crowd and began pushing harder as they drew closer to the scene.
Berengar picked off another piece of dried fish where he and Nisero sat. They were shrouded in their cloaks, casually sitting along a wall in the shade of a brothel.
“That took all morning,” Nisero grumbled. “Hours. We could have walked through the city and out the other side in that time.”
“It was worth knowing,” Berengar said as he licked the salt from his fingers.
Nisero watched the scene where the constables searched around the wagon and entered to untie the driver. One man climbed on top and tried to jump up to free the Duke, but failed. Nisero did not think they had yet recognized the man as Arch Duke Aedwrath.
“They will tell the authorities it was us, and then the city will be locked down,” Nisero guessed.
“I’m not so sure,” Berengar disagreed. “They had a checkpoint on the roads entering the capital as we expected, but they did not bother to search inside when we met them at the door of the carriage.”
Nisero grinned. “You did tell them that the Duke was in congress with a lady friend.”
Berengar shrugged. “I said two lady friends. I’m surprised that they did not search out of curiosity.”
“No one wants to be on the bad side of a Duke.” Nisero glanced at the brothel behind him. “I could use the company of two lady friends right about now.”
Berengar gave a short chuckle. “I don’t think you could handle two at once.”
Nisero watched the constables wade into the fountain and scale the base of the pseudo-sacred statue to reach where he and Berengar had tied the rope.
“The army units on the checkpoints did not venture in to investigate,” Berengar said as he watched the spectacle. “The state of the Duke and where we put him could have been viewed as a threat to the crown.”
“I thought as much, sir.”
“But it still took half a day to get a response, and then it is only a small group of constables,” Berengar continued. “The city is undermanned.”
“Meaning?”
“The checkpoints are little more than a show meant as a basic deterrent. I would say at least half of the constables and private fighting men have been called up to the regular army and are out on the staging grounds, more than a day’s journey away. Possibly more than half of the city’s usual compliment.”
“If that were widely known,” Nisero considered, “the capital could be in grave danger—quite vulnerable… especially in times like these.”
Berengar took another bite of fish. “An odd act by a king that was seeking to stir up trouble by subterfuge and assassination.”
“What are you thinking, captain?”
Berengar savored the saltiness and licked his lips. “I don’t think we know enough yet to see who holds the end of the rope on this very complex snare. I’m not certain the nobles that were involved know all the twists and turns of the trap either. But I’m not sure. Men like Caffrey and Aedwrath stink of guilt even after a warm bath, I think.”
Nisero sighed. “We should be wary to keep our feet clear.”
The knot came loose under the constables’ hands and the rope snaked around the body of the statue as it unraveled. No one thought to stand under the Duke on the wagon, so he fell on his head and crumpled to his side. A gasp spread through the crowd as the constables splashed back through the fountain toward the wagon.
Berengar snorted. “They are lucky they didn’t break his neck.”
Aedwrath moved his legs and rolled to his side. He groaned loud enough for them to hear across the square, but he did not move again.
“They don’t appear to be the most capable,” observed Nisero. “Once they know we are afoot, they may call in better men.”
“I don’t know. They are not combing the area looking for suspicious figures. They are not questioning anyone. There is a certain level of competence that is required to know that help is needed. If they don’t think to ask, no one will volunteer to take on the task.”
“Arch Duke Aedwrath might make enough noise to bring soldiers in for our heads.”
“That may be true.” Berengar offered some dried fish from the basket to the younger man.
Nisero sniffed and looked at the scant remains. “Are you enjoying your meal, captain?”
“It is a little more aged than I like. The selections were few, and the price was a touch steep. I’m thinking there is not a steady supply coming into the city for some reason. I get the impression from your tone that I should not be enjoying my food. Is that it, lieutenant?”
“Throwing around the Duke’s coins might not endear us to him further.”
Berengar shrugged and set the basket aside. “As Aedwrath said the first day, he has plenty of money. Being bandits is not cheap.”
One of the constables walked the driver out and sat him on the ground. The men on top untied the Duke. Aedwrath shoved their hands away and tried to stand, but then collapsed to his back on the roof again.
“We should move along before they tell their stories,” Nisero suggested.
Berengar wiped off his fingers on the front of his cloak. “Come along then.”
They slipped around through the crowd and down the western avenue called Golden Hawk.
“I’m not sure what you see as our next move.”
Berengar remained silent for several steps. The avenue cleared out and the crowd thinned as they walked farther from the square. It was not normally one of the busier destinations in the city but the display they had put on for the people had drawn more than the usual attention. Nisero noted that word had spread through the city far faster among the common people than the reaction of the constables indicated.
Berengar finally said, “We’re going to have to approach the King.”
“And do what exactly? Hang him up by his feet?”
“That probably would not be received well,” Berengar murmured.
“No, it would not, sir. But not much of anything we would say or do entering the palace would be received much better.”
“If we were able to approach him and deliver a message without doing him harm, I think that would go a long way to proving our innocence to the one man above all that we need to believe it.”
Nisero rolled his head inside his cloak’s hood, stretching his tired neck muscles. “I do not know that we will find much impression in breaking into the throne room, and then stopping short of killing the King as our plea of innocence. If he is even indirectly involved as has been implied, he might already know of our innocence with no desire to allow it to be proven. If our deaths or imprisonment serve to pacify the eastern kingdom or advance his war agenda, I’m not sure that our guilt or innocence in reality will matter much.”
“That may be true,” Berengar agreed.
Nisero hesitated. “You still intend to try to enter the palace, don’t you?”
“I do,” he sa
id. “I believe it is our best play. We just need to be sure we can get back out again.”
“Well, sir, if we accomplish the impossible by getting in, then doing the impossible a second time would be that much easier.”
Berengar slapped Nisero on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”
They turned into a dark archway and followed through into an open courtyard. Three floors of tenement room doors looked out over balconies on the central yard. Children played and eyed the two men as they passed. Women sewed and beat stones against wet cloth. They glanced to the side as the men passed, but did not look on them fully.
An older man with his shirt off and scars across his tanned back sat on an overturned bucket carving, shaping, and bending a staff of wood that Nisero thought might be for a bow. He did not look up from his work at them at all.
As Nisero took the stairs leading up to the second level, he thought that any one of these people might give them up if constables came through asking for people fitting their description. If enough reward were involved, it would be a near certainty.
Nisero bore little hope that the peasants’ hatred for authority would go very far. Maybe the lack of manpower that Berengar’s stunt had exposed would be enough to keep them hidden. He still saw the stunt itself as being the prime to bring in more manpower where it was lacking before.
As they crossed the balcony and rounded the corner, Nisero said, “I think you misunderstand the state of my spirit, sir.”
“No, I read your meaning exactly.”
“What is it that you hope will occur then?” Nisero asked. “Do you expect the King will grant us pardon on the spot where we enter as burglars and then will grant us a feast as he agrees to engage the east in war on our behalf?”
“I think a feast may be a bit much to ask with the shortage of fresh fish in the city,” Berengar remarked.
They climbed the stairs to the third level and rounded the corner to walk along the front edge of the tenement block.
“I don’t sense that you have a desire to explain yourself, sir, nor to dissuade my concerns,” Nisero said.
They stopped at an unmarked door two from the corner. Berengar gave a particular pattern of a knock. “I think the King may well realize that there are movements being made by powers below him. I’m not convinced that men like Caffrey and Aedwrath are acting on behalf of the King as they imply. The effort to capture you for the crime of escaping with your life may well be an effort to keep you from bearing witness of the events from that night. I do not think the men that operate in the dark believe that we would make this play to speak to the King directly. After what I’ve seen today, I believe we might be able to sail this strait and reach the King in the very vacuum created by the war threat that evil men have created. This may be our chance.”
“They do not think we will do it, because it is a truly insane ploy.”
The door opened and Arianne peeked around from behind it. “Will you two get inside? I can hear you talking from in here. You have all the stealth of two drunken aunts.”
They walked inside and she closed and barred the door behind them.
“I think there may have been some form of rum soaked into the fish we ate as a preservative,” Berengar realized.
“You do seem nearly jovial, father. I don’t like it.”
Berengar unlatched the window and opened the shutter boards out part way to allow light into the room. They were one level above the street. Berengar chuckled. “I actually have a glimmer of hope. Maybe that is what you see that disturbs you both so. I’m sure something will come along to tamp it back down. Do not worry.”
Arianne sat down on the edge of one of the beds. “Are you sure it is wise to have that window open?”
Berengar waved her off as he sat down at the table in the center of the single room. “Unless the constables are riding birds, they will not see in here and I am not convinced they have the capacity to know they are searching for us even if they saw us.”
“We are running low on supplies,” she said. “You should have bought more on your way back to avoid a second trip.”
“We will need to buy a great many things for what we have coming ahead.”
Arianne looked back and forth between the two men. “What have you got planned?”
Nisero gazed out the window at the avenue below them. A group of men started shouting and pushing. The merchant yelled, “I have no grain. I can’t help you. Leave me be.”
Nisero felt the urge to run down and break up the fight, which would normally be his duty. He took a couple deep breaths and tried to remind himself that there was nothing for him to do. He had no grain to fill the bellies of the attacking men nor their children. He had no authority to protect the merchants from the rioting crowd.
The lieutenant thought about Arianne’s question and finally said, “We are going to see if the King wants to throw us a feast.”
Chapter 13: In Chains
“Just slide through,” Nisero hissed.
Berengar dragged the shovel, pulling out more dirt from the space under the wall. “Just a little more. I don’t want to be caught trying to get back under if we have to leave in a hurry.”
Nisero turned his eyes back toward the city beyond the parade grounds. Even in the darkness, he could see bits of trash marking the grass across the open space. It was tenuous enough crossing the broad, open ground the first time. If they came back through on the run with soldiers on their trail, he was not sure a little extra space under the garden wall was going to make all that much difference.
Nisero thought back to not that many days ago when he stood shoulder to shoulder with the men now hunting him. The late prince was honored that day on these very grounds.
“We almost assuredly will be on the run whether we get back this far or not,” Nisero predicted.
Berengar set the shovel aside and pushed the rest of their gear through the opening under the wall. “Okay, come on.”
As the captain clamored under, Nisero looked up at the spikes atop the wall and wondered why the builders had not dug the garden wall deeper. The lieutenant followed. The interior surface of the wall was lined with ivy and the grasses were thicker.
Berengar waved forward and they both ran into the ornate hedges along the wall of the palace. Nisero looked out in both directions, but saw no men patrolling or standing at the outlook positions.
“Let’s climb,” Berengar said.
He fed the grappling hook and rope out before swinging it around in a circle to gather momentum. Then, the captain threw it above a decorative protrusion on the wall. The rope looped over and the hook scraped the stone as it pulled up the other side.
Nisero hissed through his teeth and looked around furtively for anyone that might be investigating the horrid noise. The hook caught the edge and Berengar leaned back on the rope to test its hold. He nodded and put his boots against the wall, using the rope to walk and climb up to the top of the overhang. Berengar shook the rope and nodded down at Nisero. Nisero grabbed hold and climbed up. Berengar took the younger man by the shoulders and helped to pull him up to his knees the last couple feet.
Berengar took the hook free of the ledge and wound the rope up with them. As he swung the hook around in a circle and prepared to catch the next ledge, Nisero looked down the short distance to the ground compared to the vast expanse leading up the wall.
The captain threw the hook, letting the rope feed through his gloves. The hook pinged off the head of a decorative lion without hooking on. It fell away loose and he locked his hands around the rope to avoid losing the entire bundle. The hook swung like a pendulum down below them as Berengar wound it back up around his arm.
He swung the hook around in a circle again and let fly. It looped over the lion’s head and the prongs of the hook caught on the detailed engravings of the stone lion’s mane. Nisero did not like the look of the hold, but Berengar leaned back on it and the hook did not slip.
He handed the end of the rope off
to Nisero, who wrapped it around his waist and leaned back. If Berengar fell loose with the hook, Nisero would do his best to keep the captain from tumbling all the way down the wall. Berengar scaled the wall diagonally between the hook on the lion and the anchor of Nisero’s weight. The captain straddled the lion’s head and shoulders, holding the rope with his weight. Nisero nodded and swung out on the rope along the wall. He climbed straight up and scrambled up onto the lion.
Berengar stood and made a throw. The hook missed and he staggered, but Nisero grabbed his legs and steadied him. Berengar wound the rope back up and swung the hook over the next protrusion. They worked their way up the outside of the palace wall one level at a time in this manner.
“Are you sure about that window?” Nisero asked from the broad back of an eagle. There appeared to be the remains of nests from lesser birds around the wide base of the grand, stone monument.
Berengar grunted. “That’s where we want to enter.”
“I would hate to get this far only to crawl into the bedroom of one of our enemies to get caught.”
“I’m sure it is empty. But all the same, be ready to fight.”
“Always.”
Berengar took three throws to get the hook locked over the open, stone sill. Nisero anchored below as the captain climbed up and over. The wait seemed to be forever as the lieutenant watched upward from his high perch. Berengar finally leaned out and waved him up before bracing the rope for Nisero with both hands. The lieutenant climbed up and shuffled over inside.
As Berengar rolled up the rope, Nisero looked around at the grand bed, mirror, and draperies in the darkness. “Whose room is this?”
“Visiting dignitaries.” Berengar shrugged his broad shoulders. “It is not usually occupied.”
“How do you know this?”
“I was kept here when I was honored by the King the last time.”
“How did you know there would be no visiting dignitaries in it now?”
Berengar shrugged again. “Would you stay with the King after what happened to the prince?”