by Gordon Ryan
“Dude, I don’t know.”
“If you don’t go, I’m going.”
Tim looked down the hall to the staircase. “There’s no way she could know, right? I mean, she’s down there fighting.”
“And when she comes back she’ll be beat up and sore. Last thing she’s going to do is march up here and check on the prisoner. You’ll be back long before then.”
“Okay. Yeah. Just make up something if anyone asks. I went to take a shit or something.”
“No problem,” Dmitri said.
“Thanks, dude.”
Dmitri watched him go with a touch of a relief. He’d just met Tim Forester half an hour earlier but it was enough. As Tim blabbed about girls he’d had and famous bands he’d met, a real person took shape. Hard to kill a man once you knew him. What would it be like to put a crossbow bolt through Peter’s head? What about Tess or Lars? Could he do it?
Maybe it was the broken thumb that made him think that way. Sapped his confidence, made him second-guess his motives.
He unbarred the door. It was a small stone room with a single chair against one wall. There was no fire in the fireplace. Yekatarina stood in front of the window. She glanced over her shoulder. “Anton is about to kill your friend. Do you want to watch? She wasn’t your lover, was she?”
“Tess? No.”
Dmitri wanted to go to the window. He wanted to shout for Tess to get out of there. It was a trap. If she was going to die, it should have be in a fair fight.
“I didn’t think so. She’s still in love with Peter.” She turned with a smile. “And Peter is in love with me. Damn inconvenient for Tess. Just so long as you’re not in love with Tess, that would be even more inconvenient for you.”
“I’m not.”
“So you say.”
“Can we get out of here? I got rid of that idiot, but he might have second thoughts.”
“Oh, I thought you were going to kill him.” She grabbed her cloak off a hook and left the window.
“Tim Forester?” Dmitri asked. “He’s nobody.”
“Exactly. If he were somebody, we’d make him do something before he died.”
They shut the door behind them and then she handed him a green pill. “Swallow this.”
He eyed the pill as they headed for the stairs. “How long will I be out?”
“A few hours. You might have a hard time remembering everything that happened. That’s good. Just lie down in the hallway. You’ll be out in maybe ten, fifteen minutes. They won’t be able to figure out how I took you down, but it will be obvious I did something.”
He popped the pill into his mouth. It was bitter. It took two swallows to go down. Yekatarina smiled. For a moment he thought maybe she’d poisoned him. Get rid of an inconvenient detail.
They hurried down the steps to the bailey. Twenty feet of open air and they were in the keep. Dmitri brought her to the trap door over the dungeon and they threw it open and hurried down the ladder. Yekatarina produced a small flashlight.
“I shoved this up my pussy before I got on the boat. I thought Peter might search me before I came to the island.”
“Too bad you couldn’t fit a sawed-off shotgun up there,” Dmitri said.
They grabbed the ladder and moved it to the second trap door, the one that led down to Peter’s warehouse. “What’s the point in killing someone like Forester, anyway?” Dmitri asked.
“Are you getting squeamish?”
Dmitri held up his splinted left thumb. “I’m not squeamish, I just don’t kill for the sake of killing.”
“Sometimes I do,” Yekatarina said. “It’s practice. For when you’ve got to do it. Like shooting arrows at a target. Train your muscles. You don’t want to be fumbling at the bow string when an enemy is charging with a drawn sword.”
They made their way down the hallway and into Peter’s warehouse. Yekatarina flipped the switch and put away her flashlight. Dmitri wondered if she’d washed it or if it still smelled like her crotch.
He was struck again by the huge size of the room and the beauty of those few things he could see. He knew they were replicas, but what a display they would make.
“What a fool,” Yekatarina said. “What a total, complete waste of a human being Peter is.”
“He’s almost there, he’s almost one of us,” Dmitri said. “Why do you hate him so much, is it because the two of you broke up?”
She turned, her face livid. “I hate him because he sees, he knows what’s going to happen and he’s doing nothing. This whole collection is shit. Who cares? You think after the collapse anyone is going to care about anything but feeding their bellies?” She snorted. “Not for a hundred years, maybe longer.”
“What are you saying?”
“You think we’re playing with castles? You think we’re storing crappy museum stuff in our redoubts? No, our vaults have Mi-24 attack helicopters, artillery, AK-47s, ammunition, and twenty million barrels of oil, plus gold, silver, food, everything we’ll need to fight off the starving hordes, then control the aftermath.”
“But what’s the point, if we can’t stop people from acting like animals?” Dmitri asked. “Who wants to rule over a world of starving slaves?”
“That’s going to happen no matter what,” Yekatarina said. “And if we don’t take over, it will happen again and again and again. You care about art, history, that sort of thing? Fine, then you need to control the aftermath of the collapse.”
“And the only way to control it is to become a ruthless warlord.”
“Bluntly, yes.”
Dmitri and Yekatarina crossed the vault to the service entrance. It had taken him nearly an hour to find it last night. It was a heavy metal door with all the locks on the inside. They opened it. There was a pile of fractured cinderblock and pressed cement. A pair of crowbars sat on the floor. Henri and Dmitri had chipped and bashed through the new construction, almost to the open air.
“Let’s hope you’re right about this wall,” Yekatarina said.
They picked up the crowbars and bashed and pried at the wall. In a moment they’d opened a hole to the outside. It emerged from the solid granite on the far side and into the open air. Yekatarina poked her head out and looked around, then pulled back inside.
“Damn it,” she said. “There must have been a ramp or something.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’re still ten feet off the ground. There’s still bedrock underneath us.”
“You’ll have to jump,” Dmitri said. “Then run for it. If everything goes right, they’re still fighting out front, but you don’t want anyone to see you coming out of this hole. I’ll shove some of this rubble back in place, see if I can block it up.”
“How are we going to get back in?”
“Ladder,” Dmitri said. “Should be easy enough. If your guys do their job out front this morning, the watch tonight will be very weak indeed. But if Tess gets away, she’ll be watching this side, too.”
Yekatarina put a hand on his wrist. “If I’d known you wanted her, I’d have told Anton. You could have had her.”
“I don’t want Tess.”
“Good, because she’s already dead.”
After Yekatarina was gone and Dmitri filled in the rubble, he passed through the warehouse a second time. It seemed colder this time. And maybe it was these last few days of candles, torches, and firelight, but the fluorescent lights looked sterile, almost poisonous.
Dmitri carefully shut the door behind him as he stepped into the little room with its ladder that led back down into the dungeon. He turned around and drew up with a start. Lars stood above the stairs.
“Jesus,” Dmitri said. “You scared me.”
“What are you doing?”
Dmitri blinked. “What was I doing? I started to worry about the far side of that warehouse. I was wondering if there was a second entrance on the far side, and I thought—”
“Right. You had all these thoughts at the exact moment when Tess was outside the cast
le fighting.”
“How is she doing? Is she winning?”
“And it’s funny, but I thought you were supposed to be watching Lady Borisenko. Tim Forester showed up and said you’d sent him away. I went back and you were gone. Now look at you.” Lars took a step closer and Dmitri had to look up to meet his gaze.
Dmitri reached for his knife. Lars grabbed for his wrist, but Dmitri pushed him off with his other hand. He took a step back and had the knife out before Lars could recover his balance.
Lars held up his hands. “Don’t do this, Dmitri.”
“I’m sorry. I have no choice.” Everything felt like it was going in slow motion. There was a roaring in his ears. He was about to kill his friend.
Lars looked at the trap door, no doubt wondering if he’d get to the ladder before Dmitri could stab him. He wouldn’t. And Dmitri was good enough with a knife that if the bigger man tried to grapple with him, he’d get the knife shoved right under his rib cage.
“Please, whatever it is, just tell me about it.”
Dmitri stepped forward with the knife. And lost his balance. He felt like only half his body had moved. The other half dragged behind like water sloshing across a bathtub.
The pill. The green pill. The drug had caught up with him even before he could remember he’d taken the thing.
He staggered, tried to regain his footing. Lars stepped to one side and then he was moving impossibly fast. He grabbed Dmitri by the jerkin and swung him forward. Dmitri crashed into the wall, then collapsed to the ground. He rolled over and lifted the knife as Lars pounced on him.
Only the knife wasn’t in his hand. It had skittered to the side where it winked in the light, mocking him.
Lars shoved his knee onto Dmitri’s chest and reared back his fist. “You bastard. We trusted you.”
Dmitri stared up at him, his vision swimming. It felt like he was watching himself struggle with Lars from a distance. Like theater. It wasn’t real.
Lars’s fist came down like a hammer. Dmitri barely felt the blow.
Chapter Twenty-nine:
Tess took cuts to her left thigh, her other shoulder, and her ribs. The last blow knocked her down. She gasped for air and tried to regain her feet but she couldn’t catch her breath.
And if Kirkov had pressed his attack, he would have finished her. But he hesitated just a moment—no doubt thinking she was feigning—and took his own ragged breaths. And Tess regained her feet. She brought her sword up just in time.
Peter and his guards fought in front of the tent.
No signal had been necessary to the men on the walls. As soon as the fighting spread beyond Tess and Kirkov, the gates and the portcullis opened and Lars’s men charged out. She couldn’t see Lars, but they kept a tight formation as they advanced on the tournament pitch. Niels’s men raced from their encampment, double the number of her own side, but less organized. The two armies would meet before they reached the roped area. She didn’t think Lars had enough men to fight his way through.
Kirkov and Tess traded blows again. He stepped back, then blocked her path to keep her from fighting her way to join Peter and his swords outside the ropes.
Men on the castle walls rained down crossbow bolts. Several found their mark. They shattered on impact and splattered their targets with red paint. But Tess could see men marked with paint still fighting. Any doubts about the deadly nature of the battle disappeared.
“You’re almost finished,” Kirkov told her. “One more blow and you’re dead. Surrender and I’ll let you live.”
“Liar.”
The bargaining gave her hope. He’d been jeering, boasting just moments earlier. She hadn’t landed a single stroke, yet Kirkov offered terms. Tess studied his labored breathing, then threw herself forward with a flurry of blows.
It was her first offensive since the opening moments and she forced him back a step before his equal technique and superior strength overwhelmed her again. She turned her head just in time to avoid the brunt of a blow to the head. It clanged off her helmet. Instead of staying out of his reach, she pushed forward again and again fell back just in time.
But this time she was sure. He was tiring. Tess was breathing hard, and bleeding from superficial wounds, but she had more stamina to draw on. She hung her head and took great gulps of air and Kirkov mistook her actions for equal fatigue. He came at her, hard, but he was slower this time. She fell back, fell back, always acting as if one more stroke would drop her guard.
He pulled his sword behind his ears and delivered a crushing blow that would have severed her head from her shoulders, if she’d been there when it landed. Kirkov flailed at the air, only just managed to keep his balance.
“And now it’s my turn,” she said. She came at him, thrusting, slicing, stabbing.
Her sword crushed into his shoulder. It would have bit through armor, flesh, and bone, but her blade was dull. He fell to one knee. She drove down with another blow. Kirkov lifted his sword and she was not strong enough to bash through his defenses. She swung again and this time drove him into the mud.
There was a movement at the corner of her eye. She turned to see two men cut the ropes and rush her. Her enemy was down, laid low by her attack, just waiting for her to bludgeon his skull in, dull sword or no. But instincts took over and she turned to face her new enemies.
The first came too hard and she sidestepped as he swung. Her sword caught him under the jaw. Bones cracked. He collapsed.
The second man forced her to retreat with a series of well-aimed swings. She let him drive her all the way back to the ropes on the far side, then knocked his sword aside and swung for his knees to get under his shield. When he dropped his defenses, she came around the top and bashed him across the clavicle. He pulled back with a cry. His shield arm hung limp.
Tess ignored him. She went for Kirkov, who’d regained his feet. He was done; she knew it. His only thought was to escape. She meant to finish the bastard before he could do it. Two more men joined his side and she’d have to cut through them, first.
Enemy soldiers had broken Lars’s tight formation. The battle degenerated into a dozen knots. She still couldn’t see Lars. He should be calling people to rally around his position.
Tess gave one final glance at Kirkov. So close. She could take those two men who shielded him.
But she turned and ran from the tournament pitch. She fell into one of the small battles, helped her men drive off their attackers, then shouted for them to follow her. They picked up two more a moment later. More than one man bled from wounds.
Tess led them into the knot of fighting that spilled out from the gate. There, she found Peter. She pulled him behind a protective wall of shields and swords.
“They’re trying to kill us,” Peter said.
“You think?” She looked around her. “Where’s Lars?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t come out with the others. What are we going to do? We’re not armed.”
“Like hell we aren’t,” she said. The men parted in front of her and she beat back a ferocious attack by three men who tried to get at her. Not all of them had sharpened swords, she thought.
The shield wall closed around her again. Tess shouted to the men on her left flank, which was stronger, and they sent a sortie to recover some men who had yet to fight their way back to the main group.
The action weakened her left side. For the next five minutes they fought a terrific battle to keep them from splitting her force in two. The handful of men who remained on the walls fired a stream of crossbow bolts. Weakened as they were, they couldn’t kill, but a blow could still knock a man from his feet.
“Into the castle,” she shouted. “Orderly retreat. Nobody turns his back.” They were only twenty, thirty yards from the protection of the hoardings that extended over the gatehouse.
“No,” Peter said from behind her. “We have to get to that tent, first.”
Tess stood two paces in front of him. She reached past the shield of the man at her front
to bash at an attacker. “What? Why?”
“You saw Niels. He didn’t order this attack. They’ve got him hostage. And Sasha, too.”
She eyed the tent where she’d spoken to Niels. No question, now. That was no food poisoning. They’d worked Niels over during the night. But why? Just to take over his army? But the tent was on the other side of a small army trying to kill them.
“It’s too far away. They’ll have to take their chances.”
“No,” Peter said. He was at her ear, now. “They’ll make Niels tell them how to break into the castle.”
“And if we stay out here, they won’t need to, because we’ll all be dead.” She turned. “We’ve got to get back inside. Your son is in there.”
“I know. Don’t you think I know that?” He sounded anguished. “Do it, Tess. Rescue those guys. You have to do it.”
“Impossible.”
“You either get my friends out, or I’ll start shouting my own commands.”
“Try it and I’ll knock you senseless.”
“Look,” he cried. “Up on the hill.”
A second, smaller battle raged in the enemy’s camp. There were three or four men against as many as a dozen. A tent was on fire and a second had started to burn as well.
There were others, then, who resisted Kirkov’s coup. She watched their desperate struggle against a much larger force and knew she couldn’t leave them to die.
“I need the best men you can find,” she said to Peter. “Nine, ten of them.”
“I’ll go, too.”
“No. Fall back to the castle. Get anyone you can. Lars, Dmitri, everyone on the walls. Just leave the gates open. Get those spears. Come out to meet us.”
He nodded. His face was grim, but there was no panic in his eyes.
She’d meant the spears to form a bristling porcupine should the enemy breach the gates. Slow him down and force him to take punishment from the walls above. They were not sharp enough, but could be lethal if thrust hard.
She pushed men aside and studied every battle. Peter grabbed the first man, Tess the second and the third. In a moment she had seven. She looked for an eighth, but did not see one who was good enough. Not at hand.