by DAVID B. COE
If he hadn’t been wounded, he wouldn’t have thought twice. One of the lads was being brutalized. Duty required no less of him. And with his training and experience, he could take on four men and prevail.
Injured as Landry was, though, he knew he could not take on Redman, Gaspar, and the pirates they probably had with them. They would kill him without breaking a sweat, and all would be lost.
The knight bellowed again. Landry closed his eyes and gritted his teeth.
God, by your grace, grant us the strength to endure.
God, by your grace, grant us the will to resist.
God, by your grace, grant us the courage to keep faith.
They had known this might happen. Godfrey had told him he must have faith in his fellow Templars. That meant not only trusting the lad not to reveal what Landry had done, but also understanding that the young knight was prepared to suffer through this torture to give Landry the chance to find them a path out of the prison.
He repeated the litany in a whisper. Calmer now, he walked back into the chamber and to the pile he had left moments before. He halted before it, staring at the mound, hearing another scream from the torture chamber.
Realization crashed through him. These clothes, this armor – it must have come from previous victims of Redman’s cruelty. Likely the men to whom the items belonged were long since lost, tortured to death.
He muttered another prayer, this one for the lost souls who had preceded him in this place. Steeling himself, he resumed his search.
Two mounds on, he found what he had been looking for. Beneath still more moth-eaten cloth and rusted armor, he discovered a collection of weapons. Nine swords, three shorter blades, a pair of shields marked with the Templar cross. The swords and daggers had suffered from neglect, just as the mail had. But like the armor, they would serve their function.
Landry hefted one of the swords, gripping it with the hand that was less swollen. Even fighting with his off hand, he could kill. He swung the blade once, and then again. And he glared into the ebon darkness of the corridor, contemplating anew an attack on Redman and his allies. Killing the Monk might not be enough to drag the pirates into chaos. If he could defeat Gaspar as well, then perhaps the other Templars would have a chance, even if he himself was killed. The problem would be fighting through the other pirates to get to their leaders. For a second time, he was forced to concede that he couldn’t fight their captors alone. As much as he wanted to, as much as one of his brothers might need him to, it would be a waste of his life.
Deflated, he set the sword back on the pile and resumed his search.
One of the other piles contained additional weapons, and leather sheaths and scabbards for the various blades. Pausing over this mound of weapons, armor, and clothes, Landry had a thought. He dropped to his knees and dug through the sheaths until he found what he sought.
The sheath was designed to be strapped to a belt, but Landry sorted through one of the previous piles, remembering a leather bracer he had seen earlier. This was made for a forearm, of course, but by loosening the belts all the way, he managed to fit it around his calf. He then attached the sheath to the bracer and slipped a blade into the sheath. He rolled down the leg of his breeches and smoothed the material with his hand. Standing, he walked in a circle, trying to get used to the way the device felt on his leg. He halted, looked down at his calf from different angles. He didn’t think the sheath showed.
If they searched him, they were certain to find it. He was willing to take that chance. Now, at least one Templar would be armed.
He found nothing more of value in the chamber. Starting back the way he had come, he heard more cries from the torture chamber. As long as Redman and Gaspar were there, he didn’t dare risk the journey back to his cell. Instead, he turned at the nearer of the corridors he had found. Eighty-eight.
The passageway had a dirt floor and no light. As before, he kept his left arm outstretched, his hand trailing along the stone wall. The passageway curved gradually to the right and upward. His wounded leg ached, and he was out of breath, but his need to know what lay at the end of this corridor drove him on. The air within the passage grew warmer with every step Landry took, giving him hope that it led to some means of escape.
A bit farther on, as the air continued to warm, sounds reached him as well. He heard voices and music, much as he had from the cell he shared with Draper. Following a last bend in the corridor, he found himself at an iron gate, barred and locked. It wasn’t a solid door with a gap, like the entrances to the cells in which the Templars were held. This was constructed only of bars of iron. Starlight and torch-fire illuminated the end of the passageway.
Landry flattened himself against the wall, sticking to shadows.
He spied no pirates at this gate, no guards of any sort. He eased forward, peering out at the buildings beyond the bars. He didn’t recognize any of what he saw. He wasn’t sure where in the compound he was. Reaching the gate, he knelt to examine the lock. It was similar in size and design to the one on his cell door. He could open it with the iron spike he still carried. When the time came, this might be their most promising route to freedom.
He listened, marking the direction from which the voices emanated. They were to the right. From the cells in which he and his fellow Templars were being kept, the voices came from the top of the stairway and what he thought of as the front of the building. That gave him at least some vague sense of where he was, and how they could reach the gate of the compound.
He stood, backed away from the opening. After a few steps, he turned and started back the way he had come. Fingertips touching the wall, he strode blindly back down into cooler air, trusting the path. Sooner than he expected, he reached the intersection. He went left, and walked, counting his steps. As he reached forty, he slowed. A few strides later, he came to the other spur. Forty-three.
Landry thought it risky to be away from his cell for too much longer, but curiosity drove him into this dark passage.
The path didn’t climb as the other had. The farther he went, the worse the smell. He wished he had thought to bring a sword. The dagger strapped to his calf seemed woefully small.
He walked on, following the contour of the corridor walls, making as little noise as possible. One hundred and sixty-one strides from the intersection, he spotted light ahead of him. Flickering and yellow-orange, it had to come from a flame. A fire, or torches. Eyes fixed on the light, he caught his toe on something a few steps later and fell. His hands scraped on stone. The impact to his knees and hands brought a gasp.
The dirt path had given way once more to stone. Was he back where he had started? Was this merely a different path back to the cells that held the Templars? Or had he lost track of where he was and turned into the original corridor?
Uncertain, he climbed to his feet again and crept forward, watchful now, confused.
He listened for voices as he neared the end of this passageway, thinking he might hear Godfrey or Tancrede. But all was silent within the prison. He had long since lost track of the time; he knew only that it had to be quite late. Had the lad being tortured been brought back to his cell?
On that thought, he halted and half pivoted to look back. He hadn’t seen the torches of the torture chamber. This couldn’t be the corridor back to his cell.
The end of the passageway opened onto a round chamber, much like the one where the Templars were held. Torches burned in sconces. A stairway across from the corridor climbed to… somewhere. Iron doors, complete with barred windows, were fixed in the stone walls around the chamber. This place was, in almost every respect, a twin to the chamber in which Landry and the other knights had been imprisoned.
He stepped to the nearest of the doors and peeked inside.
Two men slept on straw pallets against opposite walls.
“Who the hell are you?”
Landry spun.
Chapter 16
A face loomed at the doorway of another cell: dark-eyed, bearded, with long
, lank hair. The man glared, brows bunched.
Landry heard footsteps in the other cells. Within moments, men gazed out at him from every doorway. He counted at least twelve of them.
“I asked you a question. Who are you?”
“My name is Landry. I’m a prisoner here. Like you.”
The man appeared skeptical. He might have been older than Landry by a few years, but in other ways he reminded Landry of himself. “How did you get here?”
“That corridor,” Landry said. “I followed it from… from where I’ve been held.”
“That seems unlikely, doesn’t it? If you’re a prisoner, how did you get free of your cell?”
Landry didn’t answer. He knew nothing about these men, other than that they were being held by Redman and his crew. None of them bore bruises and wounds of the sort inflicted on the Templars. He didn’t know what that might mean, but he thought it best not to tell them too much about himself or how he had escaped his cell.
“Caught him lying, didn’t you, Kad?” said one of the others. “Look at him. He can’t think of a thing to say. Probably sent by the Monk to trick us.”
“Yes,” Landry said, facing the man. “How clever of you. See how I’ve beaten myself bloody just to deceive you.”
The prisoner’s face reddened.
“All right, if you are a prisoner,” said Kad, “tell us how you got free.”
“I don’t think I will. I don’t know you, just as you don’t know me. Some things are best left unexplained for now. I assure you, Redman and Gaspar have no love for my friends and me. We’re eager to escape this place.”
Kad laughed. “Good luck with that. We’re in a dungeon, in a fortress, in the middle of a deserted island. We’re surrounded by two hundred men, we have no weapons, and we’re miles from any ship. And you speak of escape? You’re mad.”
“I’ve been called worse.”
“How many of you are there? You and these friends you talk about.”
Landry cringed inwardly. “We are seven.”
“Ho! Seven! Well, forgive me, Landry. I thought you were mad, but clearly I’ve misjudged you.”
Landry held up a hand, silencing him. “You’ve made your point.”
Kad eyed him critically. “Yet, here you stand, free of your cell. I would dearly like to know how you did that. And you’re clearly strong enough to survive a beating. That counts for something.”
“My friends and I are not to be discounted,” Landry said. “Redman has beaten nearly all of us in this way, trying to extract information. We’ve told him nothing.”
“What sort of information?”
“You know the man. What do you think?”
“You’ve got gold somewhere. And he wants it.”
“An excellent guess,” Landry said. “What does he want with you?”
“Same thing, in a way. We’ve a rival ship. He doesn’t like to be challenged, and when we refused to leave these waters, he hunted us down, destroyed our vessel, and took us prisoner.”
“This is all of you?”
Kad nodded, lips thinned. “He killed some, including our captain. Others escaped. I expect he’ll sell us to slavers.”
“He offered to make some of us members of his crew.”
This from a third man in a cell across from Kad’s. He had wheaten hair and pale eyes. His skin was browned by the sun, and freckles dotted his cheeks and the bridge of his nose.
“In exchange for the whereabouts of those who got away,” Kad said.
“Sure, but he could offer them—”
“We’re not talking about this, Henry!”
“You may not be. I am. And just so we’re clear, nobody made you captain.”
“Captain’s dead,” said another man in another cell. “Of those of us left, Kad’s been part of the crew longest. That makes him captain in my eyes.”
The one named Henry scowled and averted his gaze. “Fine. But that don’t mean he makes decisions for me. If it comes to a choice between joining Redman’s crew and dying… well, I’ll be damned if I’ll give my life for Kad’s pride.”
Kad faced Landry again. “As far as Redman is concerned, we’re all that’s left. He won’t learn of the others.”
“Slavers,” Landry said. “That’s a hard fate.”
“There’s worse.”
Landry raised his brows.
“All right, not many. But what choice do we have?”
“Join with us.”
Henry huffed a laugh. “Sure death, that is. Join with you. All seven of you?” He laughed again.
Kad watched Landry, his expression remaining sober.
Landry ignored Henry, keeping his eyes on the leader. “He could be right,” he said. “Chances are, when the time comes, we’ll get ourselves killed trying to escape this place. We’ll take plenty of Redman’s men with us, though. Maybe Redman and Gaspar themselves. I’d rather die than be kept here for the rest of my days, or be given over to slavers.”
Kad weighed the response of his men, his gaze skipping from door to door.
“You’re not really considering this,” Henry said.
The man who shared Henry’s cell shoved him away from the door. “Shut up, Henry.”
“Whatever you did to get free,” Kad said, “you can use it on our cells, too?”
“I can.”
“Then what?”
“There’s a corridor,” Landry said, gesturing over his shoulder at the passageway behind him. “A series of them, actually. One of them leads to my friends. Another leads to an abandoned chamber. There are weapons there, and armor. Rusted to be sure, but serviceable.” He paused, eyes scanning the chamber, gauging the reactions of Kad’s men. “A third passage leads to an iron gate. It’s locked, but it poses no more of an obstacle than our doors, or yours.”
Stares met this.
“We’ll speak of it,” Kad said at last. “If you can find your way back here, we’ll have an answer for you. If you can’t…” He shrugged. “Then best of luck to you.”
“And to you.”
“No!” Henry said, forcing himself back to the barred opening in his door. “We won’t talk about it! We won’t do it! I’m not dying for some madman running loose in Redman’s prison!”
“Damnit, Henry!”
Before Kad could say more, the lad bellowed, “Redman!” The echo in that space was deafening. “Redman!” he called again. “A man’s got loose! There’s a prisoner—”
A blow from his cellmate knocked Henry down and out of sight. A second silenced him.
“Run!” Kad said to Landry. “If they find you, they’ll kill us all!”
Cursing the lad with a vehemence that would have shocked Godfrey, Landry wheeled and hobbled back along the dark corridor, moving as fast as his injuries would allow. The pirates would be drawn to Kad and his men first. It might take them some time to learn anything from them, particularly if they managed to keep Henry quiet. He could get back, but only if he spent no more time on exploration. Even so, he would need some good fortune.
He stumbled at the spot where stone gave way to dirt, but he caught himself and continued. The walk back to the other corridor seemed to take a long time. Longer than he had anticipated. In his haste, he had neglected to keep count. There had been no turns off this passageway. He knew he couldn’t lose his way, but as he ran on, finding no sign of the next corridor, fear began to intrude on his thoughts.
Reaching the corner at last, and knowing a moment of blessed relief, he turned, counted forty-three paces, and turned again. In the distance, he saw the glow of torches from his familiar chamber.
He heard shouts as well, distant but unmistakable. He hoped Redman and his men were headed for Kad’s chamber. If not, they would reach the other Templars before Landry did.
He slowed as he neared the end of the corridor, and used the darkness of the passageway to mask his last few steps. All was quiet in the chamber and the cells of his fellow Templars. He heard voices still, but all from outsi
de. He entered the chamber and stepped to the door of his cell.
The lock remained unlatched, as he had left it. He removed it and opened the door. The instant he did, Draper rolled off his pallet.
“Praise the Lord! We feared you had been discovered.”
“Where have you been all this time?” Tancrede asked from his door.
“I have much to tell you, but not now. Redman and his men may be on their way here as we speak. I need to be inside the cell with the door locked.”
Landry entered the cell, and started to close the door. Before it closed all the way, he remembered the knife he had strapped to his calf. He rolled up the leg of his breeches and detached the bracer.
“Where did you get that?” Draper asked.
“I’ll tell you everything, brother. I swear it. But not now.”
He scanned the chamber, desperate for somewhere to hide the weapon. Each spot he considered struck him as too obvious, or too easily searched. Perhaps if the pirates had left the unoccupied cells open, he could have…
Landry laughed at his own foolishness. Crossing the chamber to one of the unused cells, he slipped the weapon, sheath, and bracer through the gap in the door and allowed it to fall to the floor.
“Why would you do that?” Tancrede asked.
Landry pulled out the sliver of iron and held it up for his friend to see. “Because I can retrieve it whenever I wish.”
He entered his cell and closed himself inside. Handing the iron spike to Draper, he said, “Hide this somewhere. I’ll lock the door.”
The Turcopole took the sliver from him. Landry pushed his arm through the window of the door, lock in hand, and reached down to fasten the door shut once more. Hearing the shackle click in place, he sagged against the door and let out a breath.
“All right, then, Landry,” Tancrede called. “What’s this all about? Where have you been?”
Landry straightened. The rest of the Templars, except for Brice, had gathered at their doors. He had been free of his cell for only an hour, maybe two. Already, though, it felt odd to be a prisoner again.