Gunpowder (7 page)

The agent
stopped at the guard-post, right in front the bend of the corridor.
About a dozen feet behind this curve was a staircase leading up to
the ground floor of the building. At the top of the stairs the
corridor was closed with a solid oak door. The fugitives went up
the stairs cautiously. The girl put her hand on the doorknob, and
after a moment of concentration made a gesture to let Kristoff know
that the door was locked. She crouched beside it and put her eye to
the keyhole. Behind the door was a chamber in which the jail clerk
officiated. In the centre of the room, at the clerk’s table, a
fierce game of dice took place, between the guards from the
abandoned guard-post, the interrogation officer and the clerk.

Iskandriel
stood up, closed her mouth to the sailor’s ear and almost
soundlessly whispered.

- Now I will
open the lock. Give me a moment to pull myself together, and then
kick the door open. Inside, there are four men. I will paralyse
one, and you have to charge the remaining three. I will try to help
you, but I do not know how much strength I will have left.

Kristoff
nodded. He was not convinced about his ability to defeat three
opponents, but was ashamed to show any weakness. Sparks, although
trained and dangerous, was quite an attractive girl that he just
wanted to impress as a man. The agent was already kneeling at the
door talking to the steel mechanism through the aura. She turned to
him, giving a sign that she had finished. She was clearly paler and
trembled barely noticeably with effort. After a few moments, she
raised her hand and her fingers started the countdown. Captain
tensed, and when her hand signalled to attack with a lonely
extended index finger, he kicked in the door with a vengeance.

Without
hesitation, he moved swiftly towards the men sitting around the
table. He pulled the shoulders of the guard sitting with his back
facing the door, while the interrogation officer’s eyes widened and
he grabbed his own throat making a wheezing sound. The smuggler
jumped to the second guard sitting in front of the desk before he
managed to realize what was happening around him. Kristoff put his
left hand behind his neck and pulled back choking him,
simultaneously hitting him in the liver with strong, measured blows
of the right hand. At the same time he wondered why the clerk,
springing up from behind the desk, gaped trying in vain to scream
again and again and to his own surprise had not made even the
slightest noise, until his face blushed and he coughed with effort
just as soundlessly. Wasting no time, the captain let go of the
guard who had already lost consciousness and stopped responding to
repeated blows as a result of near-suffocation. The smuggler took
two steps to gain some momentum and violently kicked the groin of
the guard, who had fallen at the beginning of the battle and was
just trying to get back on his feet. Standing over his body rolled
up in a foetal position he snatched the poor man’s dagger from his
belt and stabbed almost blindly. When he was trying on to land
another stab, an overwhelming weight suddenly fell on his neck,
knocking him off balance and pushing him to the ground. The dagger
fell from his hand.

The clerk sat
astride the slightly bewildered sailor and somewhat awkwardly began
to pummel him with his fists. The blows were not staggeringly
strong nor very accurate, but still painful and troublesome. The
hail of strikes stopped just as suddenly as it had begun. The
prison clerk went limp and fell to the floor boards face to face
with a smuggler. The captain turned his head and looked up with
gratitude at the aurician standing over him, breathing heavily. In
her hands she was still holding a solid guard’s truncheon, with
which she had stunned their last opponent just moments earlier.

The smuggler
looked around the chamber. One of the guards was lying on his back
unconscious, the second was twitching in agony, lying in an
expanding pool of blood flowing from a wound in the thigh around
the dagger. The jerk of the dagger at the time of the clerk’s
attack changed a stab wound into a deed cut causing an unstoppable
arterial haemorrhage. He was moaning and snarling softly, which
could be heard from the moment the aurician ceased to mute the
chamber in order to put out the clerk. The clerk himself was lying
motionless with an irregular dent on the side of his skull, where
he had been hit with a full swing, two-handed blow. The
interrogation officer, or maybe just a simple investigator, as it
was difficult to spot the officers' insignia on a twisted
silhouette lying in a pool of its own urine, gave no signs of life
just like the prison clerk.

Sparks was
standing slightly astride with both hands bracing against the head
of a heavy guard’s truncheon, which supported her. Her breath was
calming slowly. After a moment of rest she bent with a slight
grunt, over a guard strangled by the smuggler and took his dagger
and keys. Straightening up, she turned to Kristoff, who was
whisking away off his cuff in disgust the blood of the second
soldier.

- Take both
daggers. The truncheon will suffice for me. You need to break away
to the streets and get on the ship. I will try to find Breiig and
either release him or kill him. I do not know how much he knows,
but I can not allow for this interrogation to take place.

- I
understand. That's why we escape armed only with two daggers, a
truncheon and a few meters of steel chains, in broad daylight, from
a jail in the middle of the city centre, every other citizen of
which is in the civil defence guard, Another extremely efficient
strategy of the intelligence...

- Stop this
bullshit...

- ...very
discreet...

- ...and do
not mock me.

- ...not to
mention the likely effectiveness. No offence, but your plan is a
plain suicide. No, wait. Not even a plain one, but an extremely
stupid one.

Iskandriel
approached him and looking him straight in the eye, she hissed.

- If you lack
faith in surviving, then you are already dead.

- Faith has
nothing to do with it. Even if by some miracle I would manage to
cover more than a hundred yards, this port is impossible to sail
out of. If we only go as far as the head of the breakwater, we will
be obliterated by their artillery batteries.

The girl bit
her lip and slightly cocked her head in a moment of reverie.

- You're
right. We will have to do something about it. Yes... We'll create a
diversion... Actually, I will create a diversion. Your part of the
plan does not change. Getting to the ship and preparing to set
sail.

The captain
nodded without conviction. They stood in front of a door leading
into the depths of the guard’s building. Sparks kissed the sailor
on his cheek for luck, then she pulled the door handle. The
corridor was surprisingly empty and ran straight to the main hall,
in which only a single guard sat behind the counter. Kristoff
stunned him before he could raise any alarm. The refugees said
goodbye to each other with a casual wave, then Iskandriel moved on
to find Breiig, and the smuggler came out the front door into the
street as if it was business as usual.

The agent
walked carefully along the wall of the corridor leading to the
other side of the jail, trying to step on her toes, not to alert
anyone with the clatter of her steel-shod heels. She listened
intently to the sounds of the environment, but the jail seemed
empty. She went down to the lower level leaving behind the office
and the interrogation room to reach her goal. Another
disappointment awaited. The arrest was indeed empty. It looked very
suspicious. She could delude herself that only one guard in the
main hall, was the result of heightened patrols and rotation in the
port’s forts, but the lack of anyone in the whole jail wing was
impossible to explain. Where was the clerk, the investigator, where
were the guards? What happened to the prisoners? Was she to believe
that in a crowded port city there was not a single drunk who needed
to sober up in a cell?

Her alertness
heightened. Reflecting on the situation, she returned to the main
room and tried to rouse the stunned soldier. Unfortunately Kristoff
hit him a bit too hard and she failed to get much out of him. After
a few spirited cheek slaps he gave a few signs of life, but was
babbling incoherently, so it was difficult to call this state
consciousness. Sparks gave up and went to the stairs located in the
back of the room. She headed to the second floor, where she
expected to find a cloakroom, a guards’ lounge guards and the
warden's office. The guards’ quarters emitted no noises, but from
behind the closed doors of the warden’s office, there came a murmur
of a cordial conversation interrupted with bursts of laughter. From
this distance she was not able to make out the words, but she was
ready to give up her arm if the voice of one of the participants of
this conversation did not turn out to be Breiig’s. His hoarse,
resounding bass was all too recognizable, resulting in a slight
vibration in the windows she passed along the corridor. Many things
could be said about Breiig, but his voice was completely
un-spy-like.

She sneaked
one step at a time, and after a few moments she could understand
the individual words. Inside there were three men sitting and
talking about her imprisonment. One of them was Breiig. With horror
Iskandriel realized that Breiig was not sitting there as a
prisoner. He was not even sitting there as a suspect. He was in
there to receive the award for her head. Her training prompted
Sparks that she should lurk under the door and eavesdrop on the
ongoing conversation inside. The training was, however, left far
behind in Daelwynn, and on the spot her rage pushed her to act.
Raging and unstoppable.

The girl took
a short run-up and kicked in the door with vigour. It fell straight
in with a bang of hinges being dislocated from the door frame and
cracking of lock latches being broken. Three heads turned in her
direction. In the men’s eyes surprise mingled with fear. Iskandriel
ran over to them. With only a length of chain and a truncheon, she
started by jerking the high back of the chair in which a man was
sitting with his back to the entrance. She leapt up still running,
bounced off the crotch of the man flying backwards in his chair and
landed on top of the desk where she imposed a fervent kick aimed at
the head of the host of the meeting adorned by a familiar
short-cropped beard. A disgusting crunch left not much doubt about
the chances of a long and happy life of the culprit, whoever he may
have been. Breiig jumped up from his chair and with a wild shriek
tugged at the desk trying to roll it over together with a girl
still standing on its top. He was strong, the scoundrel. He almost
succeeded. Sparks slid down the rapidly steeping slope and jumped
to the side. She stopped in a squat position just off the
previously overturned officer currently struggling awkwardly on all
fours. Still looking at Breiig she landed a straight left to the
side of the head of the getting up soldier. Again he fell down on a
wooden floor as if cut down. At the same time, the desk came
crashing upside down right next to them, and Breiig walked toward
the girl setting up for a kick not worse than that presented by
herself. He did not make it.

Sparks threw
herself at him with a wild shriek. Her voice took on the highest
possible pitch and broke into the spy’s ears with a metallic
reverberation. Icy needles ran up his spine crystallizing muscles
and pouring lead in his joints. Breiig was completely paralysed
before the weight of the girl's body fell on him. She charged him
shoulder first and toppled, falling along beside him. His face was
contorted by a resident terrifying grimace of pain fixed in sudden
paralysis. His skin was marked with numerous, smaller and larger
haematomas. The aurician sat astride him and frantically pummelled
his face, until she realized the futility of her efforts. Breiig
was dead. His heart could not withstand the auric shock wave.

The stillness
after the fight calmed her emotions. The agent stood up and putting
her hands on her hips she spat at her feet. Her spit landed near
the Breiig’s head, whose dead eyes seemed to be staring at her with
stubborn attention. On one hand, everything was fine, as Sparks was
still standing and her opponents were not. On the other one, the
mission did not go well at all. The resident, whom she was to
extract, was dead, and she did not know really why she had killed
him. Apparently it was obvious at first sight, but cold analysis of
the situation awoke unexpected doubts in her. Was Breiig a traitor?
Circumstantial evidence indicated that, yes, but there was no hard
evidence whatsoever. Did he want to kill her? Apparently so, but
evidently she had attacked first.  

There was no
time for senseless considerations. She walked over to the
unconscious man lying near the door. Judging by the uniform he was
the chief guard. She wondered briefly if there was time to
interrogate the witness. The screams on the courtyard proved that
this was not the case. Apparently her little auric show could be
heard outside the guard building and understandably aroused
curiosity. Especially among the guards patrolling the
neighbourhood. The agent, without losing a beat, grabbed the
unconscious officer under the armpits and dragged him to the
window, from which she then threw him out. She hoped that the
defenestration would stop even the most curious for at least a few
moments.

Herself, she
ran along the little corridor and without thinking much she yanked
the wall lantern out of its holder. With a flick she lit the wick
and threw the flaming projectile under the askew desk. Another
encountered lamp was thrown into the guards’ locker room. When she
jumped off the last flight of stairs, the top floor of the building
was already burning with a merrily roaring fire. At the door she
almost collided with the soldiers running inside the building. She
turned on her heel and maintaining momentum she jumped through the
back window into the inner drill-and-exercise square. She landed
softly with a forward roll and without losing velocity got up to
run, as soon as her feet touched the ground. With grace she climbed
to the roof of the jail wing, and from there to the roof of the
adjacent building. Being already a good twenty-five feet above the
square, she turned to see the progress of the chase. Some guards
came out to the square and taking their weapons off their arms were
setting up to shoot her down, but a sergeant started running
between them and banging their heads with his hat was raising the
barrels of their guns. Iskandriel was a bit surprised, but a moment
later she realized that she was standing on a munitions' magazine
full of gunpowder barrels, and the sergeant did not believe much in
the marksmanship skills of his men. She knelt down and jerked out
one of the tar covered wooden shingles covering the roof. Standing
up she perked her head and looking with a smile at the terrified
soldiers, set the shingle alight with a flick of her fingers. She
took one last look at the dense clouds of smoke coming from the
windows of the second floor, waved cheerfully to the soldiers,
dropped the flaming shingle to the rooftop and jumped off to a side
street outside the guards’ building perimeter. Pleased with herself
she started running towards the harbour. She came to the waterfront
of the harbour followed by a surrounding sound of bells tolling for
fright, but was disturbed by no one.