The Shadow Within (53 page)
He pulled his hand away. Byron crouched there a moment, head bowed and motionless as if overcome with emotion. Abramm stepped back, and finally the other man took in a deep breath and raised his head and stood.
No one knew quite what to say at first. Then Trap murmured, “We have no time to waste, sir.”
“Right.” Abramm pivoted and stepped to Warbanner’s stall door, slamming back the bolt and swinging the half door inward.
Blackwell protested at once. “You’re not going to ride him, are you, sir?”
“I won’t leave him here for Gillard to abuse.”
“But everyone will know it’s you.”
“Only if they can tell it’s him.” He turned again to Trap, who already knew what he wanted and was already heading for the tack room at the end of the aisle. “I want him fully caparisoned. In as dark a color as you can find.”
“Well, here, you’ll need a light,” Blackwell said, snatching the dimmed lantern from its hook. But as he moved to follow Trap, he stepped too close to Banner, who seized his chance and lunged, teeth snapping nastily just short of Blackwell’s arm as the man jerked himself away. He crashed into the stall door, losing his grip on the lantern. It sailed into the stall, smashed into one of the few spaces where the straw was thinnest, and burst apart. Flames erupted as if from a firework, and Banner veered back with a snort and a squeal. The lead went taut; he tossed his head and it came free, slapping into the side of Abramm’s face as the horse took off.
Releasing his frustration in a burst of unkingly epithets, Abramm grabbed a pail of grain and went after him, leaving the others to put out the fire. But as he reached the doorway, he found his way blocked by a curving wall of men, cloaked and cowled in gray, standing just at the edge of the arc of lantern light. Gadrielites.
Ten of them, all armed, though they had not yet drawn their swords. Momentum carried Abramm two strides into the yard before he stopped, already weighing options. Ten to one was not good odds, even for him. Trap could even it up, but he had an idea the doorway at the stable’s far end was similarly guarded and Trap would have his hands full there.
He had no idea where Warbanner had gone, which was too bad, since he could really use the horse right now. The young stallion was far from trained to come on call. Worse, he’d already eaten his fill of grain while Abramm had been brushing him, so he was unlikely to come to it now, especially with all these strangers standing about. And once the fighting began, he’d get more spooked than he already was and run for the farthest corner of the yard. They’d be lucky if he didn’t jump the fence and hie out into the wilds.
One of the Gadrielites at the center of the line cast back his cowl, flipped the right edge of his cloak over his shoulder, and stepped forward into brighter light, gloved hand resting on his sword hilt. Abramm recognized the hatchet face and tightly queued hair at once. “Prittleman. Your hubris knows no bounds, it seems. I have not given you leave to return to palace grounds.”
“I do not need your leave, Abramm Kalladorne,” Prittleman said, closing the gap between them. His eyes were fixed upon Abramm’s chest, where the golden shield glittered faintly between the open neck-slits of jerkin and blouse. Even with the light at Abramm’s back and his chest in shadow, the mark would be visible. Especially to a man so intent upon finding it as Prittleman. The dark, too-close eyes climbed to meet Abramm’s, a smile curving the hard lips. “I knew there was something wrong about you the moment I met you.”
“The feeling was mutual, I assure you,” Abramm said, shaking the grain pail in both hands, more out of habit than any real hope Banner would come.
“Rhiad was right, wasn’t he? You came to us marked by the Shadow from the very start, and killed that sea beast with your evil power.”
“I came to you marked, but not by Shadow. And it was Eidon’s Light that killed the kraggin.”
“Liar! Blasphemer!”
Abramm shrugged and shook the pail again.
“Your horse will not come. We seized him when he first came out of the barn.”
Abramm laughed. “Now who’s the liar, Prittleman?” That they’d done no such thing was obvious from the fact that none had been bitten, kicked, or trampled.
Prittleman stiffened, his thin face darkening, gloved hand curling round his sword hilt. “I’ve had enough of your insolence, heretic. You will come with us now.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have to catch me first.” Abramm whirled and ran back into the barn. With ten opponents he would need the smaller space, since trying to maneuver them into each other’s way out in the yard would be a feat greater than he could pull off. Behind him Prittleman shouted and, in a rasp of steel, thumped after him.
Only a few steps into the shadowed aisle Abramm turned back and flung the grain bucket hard into his pursuer’s face. His blades sprang to hand, and in a heartbeat he’d slashed the thumb tendons on Prittleman’s sword arm, the man’s long rapier clanging to the stone floor from a suddenly useless hand. Prittleman’s men had followed a few steps behind, not because they were afraid to engage, Abramm thought, so much as to grant their leader the honor of taking down their quarry alone. Prittleman, after all, had a reputation for having a fair hand with a blade. Not fair enough, though.
Now, as their leader swore and clutched his injured arm, the men behind him faltered, wide eyes darting up to Abramm in surprise. A moment they hesitated, then, urged on by Prittleman, surged around their leader’s now hunched form. Abramm angled backward up the aisle, hoping to string the men out, so he could take them one or two at a time. As feared, he’d glimpsed Trap when he’d come in, faced off against another group of Gadrielites at the aisle’s far end. There’d be no help from that quarter, nor from the other men clustered at the aisle’s midpoint, before Warbanner’s blackened, still-smoking stall. Neither Haldon nor Blackwell were swordsmen, and Jared was just a boy.
The first blade came slashing down, and Abramm caught it on his dagger, returning the strike with a lunge of his own that plunged his rapier into the shoulder of the man’s sword arm. He gave the blade a quick twist and yanked it out, to block the slashing downswing of the next attacker. His first opponent now lurching backward into the path of an approaching third, Abramm slashed at the second Gadrielite’s face, opening a cut on his brow. A second slash loosed the longsword from his hand, and for a moment Abramm had a barrier of staggering, howling men between himself and the other Gadrielites seeking to take him down.
Then all devolved into a flurry of flashing swords and rippling cloaks, of clinks and cracks and arm-jolting jars as he caught strike after strike and delivered thrust after thrust. There was no time or thought for such niceties as striking only nonlethal blows. He must incapacitate as many of his opponents as possible, and if some died in the process, so be it. They had started this fight, after all.
In the end, only two men remained standing and, having watched the fates of their fellows, they dropped their blades and fled, their gray cloaks sailing out behind them, breaking suddenly free, and floating to the ground in their wakes.
Abramm straightened and stood for a moment, catching his breath, eyes flicking across the fallen men, noting at once that Prittleman was not among them. He must have run away shortly after the contest had begun. At the far end of the aisle, Trap’s battle appeared to have come to an end, as well, and— Abramm squinted in surprise—was that Channon and Philip and others of the royal guard with him? It was! How had they known to come and help?
Before he could answer that question, however, he turned back to the vanquished and, sheathing his dagger, walked among them to collect their weapons and see how many still lived. It was a distasteful, guilt-producing chore, for now that the threat was over, the men were only men again, rebels to be sure, but his own subjects nonetheless. And they were hurt—or dead— at his hand. Worse was knowing that some needed medical attention, yet he could not risk bringing down all Gillard’s men upon him.
Thankfully, Channon and Trap joined him just as he tossed the last of the swords onto the pile of them he had made, and Channon took matters from there. Men were assigned to strip the cloaks off all of them, then separate the dead from the living and herd the latter into one of the empty stalls. Both upper and lower doors were then locked and barred as Channon pointed at the pile of confiscated cloaks.
“It appears we have our way out of the city, sir.”
Abramm frowned at him. “As Gadrielites?”
“No one will dare to stop us. Not tonight.”
“Then again, they might—Prittleman and a couple of others got away.
They’ll be back.”
“But by then we’ll be gone, sir. And they’d have to have wings to get word out ahead of us.”
Abramm turned his frown to Trap, who shrugged. “The faster we move,” he said, “the better our chances.”
And then, as if to put the cap on the argument, here came Warbanner, walking back into the barn with a swish of his tail as if nothing had happened, stopping several strides in to lip the last of the grain from the fallen bucket.
Using soot from the burned-out stall, Abramm darkened Warbanner’s face and neck, then swirled the deep blue caparison over him and set the saddle into place on his back. Less than twenty minutes after the attack had ended, he and Trap were ready to go.
Cloaked in Gadrielite gray, they no longer needed the Bunman Bridge gambit, deciding instead to make for a Terstan safe house Trap knew about on the Keharnen Rise. Using Haldon as a decoy—he was about Abramm’s height—Channon and his men would head east across the preserve, hoping their own gray cloaks would get them through any guards already stationed at the one exit point in the eastern hedge. Once assured they were not being followed, they’d circle back to meet up with Abramm at the safe house.
As expected, their gray cloaks got Abramm and Trap through the palace gates without incident. From there they turned north onto the Keharnen road, congested now with carts, horses, and pedestrians as the citizens of Springerlan returned home for the night. The traffic forced them to keep the horses to a trot, hoping no one looked at them too closely. In fact, their cloaks turned out to serve another purpose. Not only did no one look at them closely, but people had a tendency to turn aside and move out of the way as if hoping
they
wouldn’t be noticed. At the guard station that had been hastily established at the city’s edge, they trotted past the line of carts and coaches waiting to be searched, and were waved on by harried guards who had more suspects than they could handle. After that, the lantern light and busy clatter swiftly gave way to shadows and starlight as the road wound up the side of the escarpment, and they found themselves eerily alone—few wanted to be out at night with the evils that roamed the land these days. Least of all now, with that new beast just come out of Graymeer’s.
They cantered up the gentle incline, for once Warbanner’s pace not outstripping that of his companion, thanks to the fact he’d been out all day. Nor was it in the horses’ best interest to be riding fast up a road they could not see well. Even a canter was too fast, so once they were far enough from the city, they returned to a vigor-saving, ground-eating trot, which they maintained for over an hour, until the road grew too steep. As they climbed the switchbacks toward the top of the escarpment, Trap peered repeatedly into the darkness at the end of each north-side bending until he finally turned off onto what appeared to be a game trail.
It traversed the steep, rocky slope for a bit, then turned downward, entering a forest that echoed with the rush of running water. Abramm guessed it for the River Hennepen, which crossed the Keharnen Plateau from the east and cut through the rise here at the Springerlan’s northernmost end, running down through the valley to join with the River Kalladorne. The trail they now rode wound through dense foliage to the cleft itself, and there ascended upstream along the chuckling froth of the Hennepen. The cleft narrowed as they climbed, until the trail was little more than a ledge running up the vinecloaked wall.
Just below the top of the rise, Trap reined Erad sharply right and parted a curtain of vine to enter the good-sized tunnel beyond. The sound of the river faded swiftly behind them, and the darkness thickened to the point Abramm couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He was tempted to make a kelistar, but decided he’d better follow Trap’s lead.
The horses’ hooves thumped on soft ground, then clopped loudly over bare stone as they left the tunnel for a wider space reeking of horses and straw. Now Trap did make a light, revealing a dozen horses tied to a line on the left, and on the right, a jumble of boxes, rope, lumpish sacks, kegs, saddles, pack frames, and other assorted paraphernalia. Ahead, a smaller tunnel led off into darkness.
A whisper of movement behind drew Abramm’s glance as three men emerged from the shadows framing the outside opening. Plainly dressed, with swords at their hips and Terstan shields exposed in the neck openings of their jerkins, they approached and offered to take the newcomers’ horses. Abramm recognized none of them, and if they recognized him, they didn’t show it.
They did seem to know Trap, however.
“I’m surprised they let us in so easily,” Abramm said as he and his liegeman walked down the second tunnel to the main room.
“The opening’s cloaked,” Trap said. “You can’t get in unless you’re Terstan and know exactly where it is. This canyon is riddled with caves just like this one. We passed numerous openings on the way up, though you couldn’t see them in the dark. And it’s so treacherous, if you don’t go exactly the right way, you end up in places you don’t want to be.”
“Reminds me of the SaHal.”
The main room was a cavern four times larger than the first, lit by kelistars tucked in niches carved high into the walls. More gear and supplies had been stacked and dumped in the larger right side of the chamber, while the left served as a gathering/living space for the refugees. A long wooden table flanked by crudely made benches stood beside a raised stone fire pit, in which burned a small blaze. Rolled sleeping mats stood in a niche, and across from them, a large water cask lay on a stand, the ground wet beneath its spigot. Five men sat at the table, bent over a ragged map lit by kelistars clustered on a tarnished starstick. Others sat with their backs against the walls, looking worn and weary, women and children among them. They all looked up with interest at the arrival of the newcomers, and Abramm gave a start as he recognized first Seth Tarker, then Everitt Kesrin, among the men at the table.
