Chosen Ones (15 page)

But once we are beyond the trees, the guards wil be able to see us. We would not be in danger, as there are too many of us. But the guards inside the building would be forewarned. The whole building would be tightly locked down by the time we got there.”

“And there is no way of approaching it without being seen?” asked Julia.

“No, my lady. We would have to walk there by night if we were to avoid being detected.” He paused, sensing their disappointment. “There are twelve of us. There could be as many as twenty guards, and they al have swords. We have nothing but wooden staffs. They wil have the advantage over us, and it is only a fool who goes into battle without the advantage. Even if we did manage to take them by surprise, they would soon recover. I’m not sure that we can win this one. And remember, they may have orders to kil the children if the building is attacked.”

Peter peered hard into the distance.

“There seems to be a stream leading from the wood to the compound. Do you think someone could crawl along its banks without being seen?” Lukas took a few steps forward, examining the stream and its steep banks with the trained eye of a master woodsman. He nodded.

“The banks seem high enough—enough to hide someone if they stayed flat as they worked their way round. They could make it to the outside wal and report back on what they found.”

Peter considered his options. It might work.

They would have to find the source of that stream inside the wood, and see whether its banks were high enough to act as a cover. He sighed. His first major military operation was not going to be easy.

Julia heaved a massive sigh—a sigh that indicated she was done playing and ready to go to work. “Come on,” she said. “We can’t waste any more time considering this; we’ve got to act. We need to get those children back to their parents.” She looked at Peter and he looked back at her, and both children broke into enormous grins as they thought the same thing at exactly the same time.

“Come on,” she said again, and held out her hand to him. He took it in his and they began walking out from between the trees, leaving Lukas and his men behind.

They heard them spluttering—heard their protestations and the hissed orders to stop, to come back into the safety of the trees, not to throw their lives away just to play at being heroes. And then, as

they walked out of the woods and into the ful sunlight, the orders stopped as Lukas and his band of men melted back into the safety of the forest.

Peter and Julia walked on together, hand in hand, until they were close upon the gate. So close they could have run to it…but now the guards had seen them, and had drawn their swords. They looked at each other, their fair hair tousled by the breeze, clenched each other’s hands, and screamed.

The guards sank to their knees, hands clamped tight over their ears as the screams reverberated through the air. And then, above the noise of the screams, one could hear a cracking—faint at first, and then louder. If the guards had been looking they would have seen a fissure in the wal , and they would have seen that fissure grow until the wal s fel down in a great cloud of dust.

And when the dust cleared, the wal s were gone and the children were free.

They were hopelessly bedraggled—al of them dirty and too thin, but they were safe. They walked slowly, as if in a daze, the younger ones clenching the hands of their older brothers and sisters. They didn’t recognize the fair-haired strangers standing before them, but then Lukas and his men came out of the forest and the children broke into a run, laughing as they ran into their waiting arms.

T
he Lords of Aedyn had gathered for a crisis meeting in the Great Hal . Only Solon, the new captain of the guards, stood before them.

Anaximander was rotting in a cel , awaiting execution for his treasonous acts.

“We face a catastrophe unless we act decisively,” the Leopard was saying, pacing the smooth tiled floors. His hands were clasped tightly behind his back as he spoke. “Both the fair strangers have escaped. Our Lord Chamberlain has proved…untrustworthy. And the hostage children have been set free by those wretched outlaws!”

“Yes,” said the Wolf slowly. “Please, Captain, tel us how that sad event came to pass.” Solon, who had told himself he had nothing to fear from the lords in his new position, began to tremble.

“It…it was something not of this world, my lords,” he said. “My men saw the fair strangers approach and cal ed to them to halt, but they would not. They drew their swords, ready to kil , and then the strangers…” He paused, coughed, and looked around. “They screamed.”

“Screamed,” the Wolf repeated. Solon nodded, swal owing hard.

“Screamed, my lord. Screamed so that it might have shaken the sun in the sky. The sound of it knocked in the door and burst al the windows, and…

and it shook the chains from the captives. My men were paralyzed, my lord—their ears stil ring with the pain of it.”

“And the children?” asked the Jackal. “What happened to the children?”

“They ran out the door,” said Solon miserably.

“They ran out of the door and into the forest with the fair strangers.”

“Ah,” said the Wolf, and Solon began to tremble al the more.

“We are most displeased,” the Wolf continued.

“And had we not heard a similar tale about such a terrible scream from a patrol a few days ago, your life would not be worth the breath it takes to speak your name. Do you understand?”

Solon nodded. He understood.

“You wil ensure that the guards are ful y mobilized and ready to repel any attack from these bandits. It may come at any time. And you wil make sure that the slaves never hear this news of the children.”

The Wolf waved his hand. The audience was clearly over. Solon bowed and left the Great Hal as quickly as decency al owed, thankful to stil be alive.

The Wolf paced the room after his new captain had departed, admitting to himself that, for the first time in centuries, he was worried. He fingered the ebony amulet at his neck as he pondered the situation. His grip on power was slipping, and there was now a real threat of revolt from the slaves.

The Leopard, seeming to read his thoughts, spoke up in the silence. “Everything is fal ing to pieces around us,” he said. “There is no one left to trust—and no one who can stand against this new power. We are doomed!”

The Wolf turned angrily on his heel and spat his reply. “We have triumphed in the past and we wil triumph again! Let me hear no more of that talk!” The Leopard, who had lived five hundred years without fear, began to be afraid.

The Wolf turned away from the Leopard as he continued. “We must now turn our attention to preventing a revolt within the castle. We shal institute a policy of terror. By the time we have finished with them, any thought of rebel ion wil die in their hearts. Guards!”

Two armoured men entered the Great Hal , silently awaiting their orders. “Fetch Anaximander from his cel . Tel him that he wil be restored to our favor if he wil show the slaves the meaning of fear.” By suppertime the children had been delivered to the safety of the garden, to shouts and tears of joy. After an evening of feasting and a good night of rest, Gaius, Peter, Julia, and Lukas gathered over breakfast to make plans for the liberation of Aedyn.

They sat at a large wooden table, a series of maps laid out before them, while not far away in the garden Alyce and Helen sat mobbed in a crowd of children, al shrieking with laughter.

Gaius was deep in conversation with Lukas about military strategy, discussing how best to assault the castle. They now had twenty swords, captured from the guards the previous day. For the first time, they would be able to meet the forces of the Lords of Aedyn in combat.

“Twenty swords,” Lukas was saying. “A help, of course, but we’l be fighting scores—perhaps hundreds of men. We simply don’t have the numbers to meet them in ful battle.”

“No, we don’t,” Gaius agreed bluntly. “But perhaps there is a way.” He turned to Julia, who had been largely silent. “Not an hour’s walk from here there is a cave—a cave guarded by a messenger of the Lord of Hosts himself. In that cave are a hundred bows and quivers of arrows.” Lukas’ eyes went wide.

“You never told me of this,” he said, his voice accusing. Gaius shook his head.

“Perhaps, my son, when you have seen five hundred years you too wil find that it is sometimes best to keep secrets.” His eyes twinkled beneath his heavy brow. “These are the arrows Marcus brought with him from Khemia—the arrows that the lords did not destroy. They kept them hidden, but I have put my own protections on the hiding place. A messenger of the Lord of Hosts stands guard at the doorway. None but the Deliverer may enter and take what is hidden,” he said. “And that day is upon us.”

Lukas leaned forward, his eyes bright.

“With arrows we can attack from a distance,” he said. “Distract the lords with an assault and send a group of men around to free the slaves stil trapped inside. With a hundred bows, I’l have enough to arm al my men and more besides for those who join us from the castle.” He could see only one problem.

“Gaius, can you teach us how to use these bows?” The monk shook his head. “In my time I was a scholar, not a warrior.”

“Then they aren’t real y going to be al that much use to us, are they?”

And Peter’s face broke into a grin, because even if he was rubbish at Orienteering and Wildnerness Survival there was one thing he could real y do wel . “I think I might be able to help you there,” he said.

It was later that afternoon when he and Julia set out to find the hidden cave. The walk was neither long nor particularly arduous, and they passed the time in a companionable silence.

Fol owing the eagle, who flew just ahead of them, they soon found themselves at the foot of a hil .

As they looked more closely they noted that the bushes and scrub, although long overgrown, seemed too neatly ordered to have grown there natural y. At one point, a curtain of vines and creepers reached from the ground up to the top of the hil . Peter began to draw it aside, pushing his way through the thorns and barbs to reveal a cave. So wel had it been concealed that nobody could have found it had he not known precisely where to look.

He was on the point of stepping into the cave, Julia close behind him, when a voice boomed into his hears. He looked wildly about but there was no one near…and yet the voice stil rang in his ears.

“Who dares to enter here?” it roared. Peter looked frantical y back at Julia, who came forward and laid a reassuring hand on his arm.

“We are Julia and Peter, the Chosen Ones,” she said. “We seek the treasure you guard to restore this land to the Lord of Hosts.”

A breathless pause, and then—

“Enter,” said the voice, and then fel silent.

They went inside the cave. It was dark, but that could only be expected, and saturated with an earthy smel —the sort of smel you get in a damp room that has not been aired for a long time. After only a few paces Peter found himself bumping up against some wooden boxes. They were too heavy for him to lift, but he was able to pry the top off the uppermost container. He gingerly reached inside with one hand, privately hoping that there wouldn’t be spiders, and was soon rewarded by the feel of a leather case.

More confident now, he used both hands to pul out the case, his heart pounding. Even in the darkness he could see that the case had a distinctive shape—