Blood on Bronze (Blood on Bronze Book 1) (15 page)

Begu won the first toss, and Arjun lost a piece of
dried meat to him. Arjun nibbled the piece he hadn’t wagered, and Begu,
watching it hungrily, did the same with his own. He smiled appreciably at the
flavor. Slaves were rarely allowed meat, let alone spiced. In moments however,
he was rolling on the ground holding his belly. He started speaking between
spasms of pain.

“Ah! Sinin, you son of dogs, that meat you gave me is
spoiled! I’m going to be late… I could be whipped!”

“Begu, I’m sorry I’m sorry. Let me make it up to you!
I just finished my shift, and I’ve got a little time before I have to get back
to my barracks. I’ll tell them I was assigned to cover your shift.”

“You’re a fool. If you get caught, and they’ll be
whipping both of us!”

“But if I don’t, it’ll be neither of us!”

“By the hells, my stomach! Ah… all right. Take my
pack.”

As Arjun left, he thought his money at the apothecary
had been well spent, Begu would be ill for an hour or so. Arjun felt sorry for
what he’d done to him, though the man’s callousness much reduced the feeling. 
The complete plausibility of Begu’s story would, hopefully, mean he’d avoid
punishment beyond a whipping like he’d brought on his fellow slaves with his
thefts.

With his basket of bread tied to his slave’s pack,
Arjun approached the tower, and the guards standing alertly out front. They eyed
him, and one of them tilted his spear across the doorway.

“Who are you, and where is Begu?”

“Ah… sir, I am Sinin. Sorry, Begu was sick this
afternoon, and I was sent as his replacement.”

“Sick, eh? Tell that lazy worthless dog that if he
gets sick again, or is so much as late once more, I’ll have his hide peeled
from his back. You understand me, boy?”

“Yes sir,” said Arjun, cowering with feigned fright.

The guard’s eyes narrowed.

“You look a little strong to be on ration duty, where
were you transferred from?”

“Brick hauling, for the sewers, sir.”

“Hah!” snorted the guard, “Then you might actually
consider this place a promotion! On the other hand, you’ll see we don’t allow
any of that sewer-crew lazing around. Bah! You’ve wasted enough of my time, get
on your way, or I’ll give you a kick you won’t soon forget.”

Arjun scurried forward with as much of an air of
groveling fear as he could muster. Inside was a large entrance chamber with
scribes on the right, a few more guards playing at sticks on the left, and a
few casks, boxes, and amphorae of supplies next to them. The tower was a big
place, but very practical. In the ideas driving its operation, aesthetic beauty
or tidiness ranked far behind maximum storage of prisoners of and guards to
keep an eye on them. As the new slave, it would be a good idea to act like it
and ask a scribe where he was supposed to go next. In contrast to the guards,
they were unlikely to follow through with any threats to kick him.

“Honored scribe, sir,” he said to a lower-ranking scribe
in plain tan robes with the narrowest band of purple, “I’m here to replace Begu
for his shift, carrying food to the prisoners, which way should I go?”

The scribe, sitting cross-legged on a low bench,
looked up at him as one might an annoying fly buzzing near one’s ear. Still he
answered, in a long-practiced flat monologue.

“The door on the right, the one with the carved
vulture above it. Go up and around to the left, then back down the stairs on
the opposite side at the top. Give food only at those cells with city seals in
the spaces above the doors. Others are either empty or have prisoners not to be
fed.”

Arjun bowed his head with an air of subservient
gratitude to the scribe, and went on his way.

15.
The Tale of the Hand of Death

As Arjun went up the stairs and made Begu’s rounds, he
found that the next two levels up were dark and windowless, perhaps to
discourage attempts at escape by jumping, but after that, windows were placed
at the ends of each floor, near the staircases. By the next level above, the
fifth floor of the tower, he was level with the citadel walls. There were
guards stationed at this level, but they were less alert than the ones at the
main entrance, and after a cursory glance, waived him by so they could continue
a game they were playing with little numbered clay tiles.

At the seventh floor, Arjun saw that he was level with
the top of a nearby tower lining the wall. At the ninth and highest level, he
found the cells for his father and Keda. He began to doubt his ideas for how this
might work, but knew he had to press on. He knocked on the door of Keda’s cell,
mindful of the glimmers of magic he could see upon it.

“Keda, can you hear me?” he said.

“Eh… who… knows my name?” said her voice from within.
It sounded weak.

“It is Arjun,” he replied.

“Arju… do you really have to lie to me, jailor… why…
eh? It does sound like Arjun.”

“It is me, just as it was that day when I was five,
and you took me to the bazaar to buy honeyed almonds.”

“Arjun! My sweet…” she yelled, her voice hoarse, and
with coughing fits it sounded like she was crawling closer to the door, then
came to a halt with the clank of lead chains.

He leaned against her door, straining to hear her, the
replied, “Yes, I’m here to get you out of this place.”

She laughed, and the laugh was interrupted by horrible
sounding coughs, but at last her voice sounded again, “Arjun, you… are mad…
it’ll never work. No way to get a dying old woman out of this place.”

“I’m going to try.”

Then he heard the scrape of chain, and his father’s
voice from the other cell.

“My son, how do you propose to do that?”

“I have learned Words of Opening, and other magics, I
will use them to open your cells, and then, we’ll find some way to sneak out of
here.”

Keda laughed again, and again collapsed into wheezes
and coughs before she could speak, “Sneak! Arjun, I can’t even walk.”

His father spoke as well, but in surprise, “It is
amazing that you’ve come this far. How did you get here? Did you find some
hidden back way? This place did not look like it would have them.”

“No my father, I disguised myself as a city slave and
feigned taking the shift of the regular slave to deliver bread to you.”

“I am proud of your skill, my son, and your devotion
to what is right, but I do not see how we will escape down the guarded stairs.”

“I’ll… find something…” said Arjun, bitterly thinking
the truth of his father’s words, and Keda’s. What had he been thinking? He’d
imagined the place as somehow more of a maze than it actually was. Even if his
training in his five spells had been complete, how would they get out of here?
How would he get two people who’d spent several months chained in cramped cells
past armed guards?

Arjun hadn’t come this far to give up, though his mind
raced.

“Father, Keda… I love you both… I’ll find a way.”

He scanned the walls with his magically enhanced
sight, looking for the glimmer of magic that might, if he was lucky, mark the
wards defending a secret stairwell. There were none. It was possible that there
was a hidden door with no magical defenses, but as he studied the arrangement
of the walls, it began to look more likely that there simply wasn’t such a
stairway.

Then he heard voices, coming up the stairs on the
right.

“Curse all slaves! Where is that lazy swine?” said
one.

“Up here napping, I’ll wager,” said the other.

Arjun drew his dagger, and darted to the wall next to
the door, out of sight of those coming up the stairs. In moments, two of the
guards from the fifth floor arrived side by side. They walked casually, and
didn’t even have their swords drawn. Arjun drove his dagger into the kidney of
one, who howled in pain and doubled over, then into the throat of the other.
Turning back to the first man, he slit his throat, and the howling was replaced
by a gurgling sound.

He hoped the sounds of death hadn’t reached four
floors down, but knew he had at best some minutes before the rest of the guards
down there noticed their comrades were late in returning, and raised a general
alarm. He tucked his dagger in the calf straps of his sandal, pulled the sword
from the scabbard and the round shield from the back of one of the dying
guards, and returned to the door of his father’s cell. He laid the gear down by
his feet and spoke.

“Father, I had to kill two guards, I’m going to try a
spell now, stand back!”

“I heard the noise, my son. That was unwise…”

Arjun spoke the Words of Opening, modified for what he
guessed might be the magic of the wards on these doors. Nothing happened. He
cursed under his breath, thought of another combination of magic he imagined
could be useful for a prison door, and again spoke The Words of Opening.

Magical energy seared back along his fingers and
hands, with a burning pain that left no mark. From the door, however, wards
flashed with a blare as of trumpets, and a gust of wind that knocked Arjun and
the plundered sword and shield against the far wall. The wind died, and he
heard roars of many voices on the stairs to the left.

He screamed a curse, hopeless rage coursing through
his mind, and threw kicks against the door. It moved not at all, though the
alarm trumpets sounded again, this time without wind. Arjun took a step back
and spoke, a third time, the Words of Opening. This time the building shook.
There were cracking and crashing sounds sound below and to the right. Angry
frightened voices roared below and to the left.

“Arjun, you mad stupid boy… I love you, but stop
this!” said Keda hoarsely. 

“Go now, my son, while you still can!” said his
father.

Arjun was in agony, mind and heart, he would not
abandon them a second time!

The other four guards from the fifth floor came
running up the stairs to the left with swords and shields drawn. Arjun could
hear more voices approaching below. They stopped in momentary surprise when
they saw him, a slave in a tunic, and the bodies beyond him. Then with deadly
expressions, they closed ranks, formed their shields in a line, and advanced on
him.

Arjun took the shield, advanced, and hurled it like a
discus at the head of the third guard from the right. Caught by surprise, the
man failed to react in time and the shield hit him square in the face.  He
toppled backwards, mouth foaming blood. Arjun ducked low and brought his sword
up under the arm and into the chest of the guard on the furthest right, who’d
instinctively raised his shield to protect his own face.

Then Arjun spun, parried a stab by the guard second
from left, and brought his free hand against the guard’s upper shield arm.
Arjun let loose a gout of flame against the unprotected skin, and the man
screamed and dropped his shield. Arjun seized the opening and thrust his sword
into the man’s shoulder and ducked behind him to dodge the blow from the
leftmost guard. The latter overbalanced against his comrade, and fell to the
ground. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough to avoid the slash from
Arjun that severed his head almost clean from his body. Arjun then turned again
and quickly finished off the wounded.

“My son!” Roared Ashur, “I command you, go now!”

But Arjun had obeyed before, and regretted it. Now he
stayed.  He prepared to try, against his own wisdom, the Words of Opening once
more, when up the stairs on the left came twenty or more guards. They formed up
and advanced at him at a trot. He fought madly, skillfully, but was driven
back. A guard captain appeared with yet more men, looked at him for a moment,
then yelled.

“That’s him men, the prisoner’s son! Get him alive if
you can, if not, the reward’s good either way!”

The guards charged, breaking ranks in disorder. Arjun
downed one with a quick stab to the groin, barely avoided death as he deflected
the blow of another. In their haste to catch him alive, the guards made
mistakes, but he wasn’t going to last much longer. He continued to back up,
despite his intentions.

Then, his footing gave way under him.

Arjun hadn’t been paying attention to the stairwell on
the right, hadn’t seen how much damage his failed casting of The Words of
Opening had done, or thought to ask why all the guards came up the left stairs.
Now he was slipping down a slide of fallen brick and powdered mud plaster that
ran a full level down to the eighth floor. There, a whole section of wall had
given way. Some of the loose bricks and debris began to join him, and he lost
his grip on the sword. He tried to climb back up the crumbling slope, but only
succeeded in starting an avalanche that sent him on his way towards the hole in
the wall, and death.

Then Arjun made a fateful decision, and one that,
however right, he would regret for the rest of his life. He desperately righted
himself, moving with the downward slide of gravel, rather than against it. He
leapt from rubble to rubble, and, as fragments of brick poured from the broken
wall like a lethal waterfall to the ground far below, he jumped across and
down, to the rooftop of the tower on the citadel wall.  There he clutched
desperately as the clay tiles cracked with the impact. He slid down by his
fingers to the edge, felt the sill of a window under his feet, and ducked
himself under and in. A startled guard was racing up the stairs, sword in hand.

Arjun tumbled to the ground and dodged the guard’s
attack, then swept his feet out from under him. The guard fell headlong into a
wall, and rose slowly and disoriented. Arjun paid him no heed and raced down
the stairs from which he’d come. Another guard was on his way up the stairs,
and Arjun leapt with a foot into the man’s face. It went less well after that,
and the two tumbled down the stairs in a heap. Arjun found to his amazement
that his dagger was still tucked in the straps of his sandal, pulled it, and
knifed the other man under the chin before he could act. Arjun then raced out
the door below to the broad top of the wall. The screams of the guard on the
stairs and the yells of the one above rang across the pavement. Trumpets were
sounding elsewhere. Arjun looked and saw that dozens of guards were running his
way from all directions, swarming up stairs and along the wall.

He ran to the outer edge, which he knew on this side
looked over to the high ground of wealthy town houses. There were trees on that
side, trees that had long been allowed to grow almost to the edge of the wall,
though even their tops were ten feet or more below the parapets. There would be
time enough to cut them down in advance of any attacking army. Now though,
Arjun was glad for them. He sucked in his breath, steeled himself, and leapt
from the wall to the highest branch he thought he might reach.

For a moment, his body flew through open space,
doubtful where it might land.

Arjun caught the branch, feeling agony as the impact
knocked the wind out of him and nearly cracked his ribs. He desperately hung
there for a moment, gasping for air, then recovered and climbed down from
branch to branch in dizzying drops.  Some of the guards above had bows, and
arrows began to skitter among the branches. He dared the final drop of more
than ten feet, landed rolling down the slope away from the wall, and then
forced his tired and pained body to move into a sprint.

He leaped down the hillside and into the gully at the
base of the higher ground. From there, he darted into the busy streets of the
inn and tavern district between the temples, the plaza, the bazaar, and the
citadel. Startled passersby watched him run. Far behind, he could hear the
shouts of guards on the walls. He guessed someone had ordered the gates of the
citadel closed to seal him in, and now they were slowed as they sorted out
whoever could give the order to open them again for pursuit.

Arjun kept running for a while, then slowed to a
panting walk as his reserves of energy gave out. Then he wandered purposefully,
looking for one of his growing collection of usable entrances to the sewers. At
last he found it, a loose grating in a debris-strewn alley, pulled it aside,
and then closed it behind him. For good measure, he summoned his flame to melt
the lead of the grating to its mounting, and then dropped into what was for
others dark, and for him merely another means to see.

As he hit the bottom, he also felt the exhaustion of
everything he’d done. That last use of magic had cost him much of what little
energy he had left. But, he thought, even down here he might not be safe for
long, not with the vast and angry ant hill he’d kicked up at the citadel. There
would be guards, soldiers, and probably magi looking for him all night. He
threaded his way slowly toward the remotest back passages he could find,
seeking an entrance to, of all places, the tunnels he’d feared like death
itself not so long ago.

He didn’t find one, but he did find a side tunnel in
such ruined condition that he thought he could brick it up enough to make it
look like it was completely caved in. He did so, and then fell back on the
sloping rubble beyond in utter exhaustion. Wretched thoughts raced through his
mind. Inina would be afraid for him, and he ached at that, but there was nothing
he could do. He hoped she would sit tight, as it was the safest possible choice
right now.