The Way Into Chaos (59 page)

“That’s not necessary,” one of the young men said. He was a handsome fellow--barely old enough to march with a spear--with wide, expressive eyes. He nodded towards Tejohn’s shirt. “We’ll be getting more around midday.”
 

Tejohn felt embarrassed for some reason he couldn’t really understand and ate the rest of the bun.
 

They spent the morning along the riverbank, collecting wood. Tejohn pulled the cart to the work site, even though he was at least twenty years older than the oldest of his co-workers. They felled trees with bronze axes, all six of them, with no one guarding them but a pair of archers who joked and laughed with each other, and kept only a casual eye on the servants. On the way back, everyone but the archers worked together to pull the cart.
 

After a mid day meal that consisted of some rice and boiled fat, Weshka came to him with a special job. “Do you see this trail?” She gestured toward a cart trail that ran along the main road. There was a muddy ditch between them--the road was for troops and traveling merchants. The cart trail was for servants and had a tall fringe of weeds so decent folks wouldn’t have to look at them. “Take this cart of wood to the stone building at the end of this trail. Don’t touch the building without permission or joke with the guards. They have important prisoners, and they’re touchy. Hunch down more. You still walk like a soldier.”
 

He nodded to her and started up the path, pulling the two-wheeled wagon behind him.
Important prisoners.
The trail was not as friendly to his injured feet as the grass had been, but it was kinder than the stones of the parade grounds.
 

Since he could not see very clearly anyway, he did not even try to look for the tower. He just kept his eyes on the path, avoided stones, and thought.
 

Tyr Finstel--he would not be calling him King Shunzik any time soon--had a flying cart, Tejohn was sure of it. He was also sure that revealing himself to his former tyr and asking to borrow it for a few days would get him thrown into a pit. Or worse.
 

Still, he needed to get to Tempest Pass as quickly as possible. While he was starving at his labors, the grunts were out there, making more of their kind.
 

The first step was to get into the holdfast somehow, which meant striking out upriver. He would have to find the cart first, then need to hire or bully someone trained to fly it. Then they would both have to escape without being opened up like a pig on a butcher’s block.

The most logical place he could turn for help were the other servants, but it was too soon to ask for so much. What’s more, if he failed, it would certainly cost all of them their lives.
 

No, better to work this out on his own: escape somehow, avoid the guard’s usual methods of recapturing fleeing servants--

Fire and Fury, he didn’t even know how to avoid the guards. Yet. Song knew his plan was so absurdly unlikely that it was farcical, and still it would be a month before he was ready to try it. He needed something else. He needed a way through, or he was never going to accomplish the task Lar had set for him, and there would be no one to save them all. But what?

The cart path was fairly straight, but Tejohn was startled to see it widen suddenly into a meadow. He’d come upon the tower very suddenly, and as he did, he saw Shunzik Finstel standing before him.
 

He did not look much different than he had at Lar’s birthday, except he was wearing a black fighting tunic emblazoned with the Finstel waterfall. He had his father’s pugnacious nose and rounded chin, but none of the scars.
 

There were four bodyguards beside him--all carrying absurdly long spears--and another eight farther back...
 

Beside the carts. There were two flying carts set on stone daises beside the tower. There were drivers standing inside, but of course, they were too far away for Tejohn to make out their faces, let alone study them for--
 

“You!” One of the guards marched toward him. Tejohn let his face go slack as he looked at the man--a young man, barely older than Shunzik, with a bull’s neck and a scar down his cheek--then at the ground. “If you have work to do, see that it’s done quickly and move on. Their tyrships do not need to be eyeballed by the likes of you.”
 

“Keep to your position, soldier,” a very familiar voice said. “Your tyr requires your attention.”
 

Tejohn couldn’t help himself. He glanced at the man who had spoken. It was Tyr Belder Gerrit. His braided beard had gone gray and his hair was nearly gone, but his eyes were still shrewd. He and Tejohn had feasted, gamed, and sparred together. Belder had laid a laurel crown on Tejohn’s head himself and poured out a cup of his finest wine. Tyr Gerrit had called him friend and brother.
 

His gaze met Tejohn’s for a long breath.
I have been discovered.

But no. There was no spark of recognition in Tyr Gerrit’s face.
 

Tejohn was invisible. Dressed as a servant, he was so far beneath the notice of the people he had known that they couldn’t even see him.
 

The tyrs and their soldiers strode back to their carts. Tyr Finstel was insisting on something with a young man’s impatience. Tyr Gerrit assured him there was time enough for their plans to be finished.
 

As Tejohn pulled the cart toward the tower gate, the guard at the front shouted at him, “You’d better have brought us enough this time. Last night was chilly!”
 

“I bring what I’m given to bring, sir,” Tejohn said, flushing with shame as he spoke.

The guard slapped him on the side of the head, but Tejohn saw the blow coming and rolled with it. Still, he knew better than to show he hadn’t been hurt; he sprawled to the side, rolling across the dried, packed dirt. The guard stood over him, the corner of his mouth turned up with satisfaction. “Who are you? Where is the usual man?”

A familiar tension ran through Tejohn’s limbs. Not even days of servitude could stifle his urge to start killing. “Ondel Ulstrik, sir. I don’t know about the usual man. They don’t tell me anything.”

“Pah. Get up!” The guard banged twice on the door, turning his back to Tejohn as he opened it.
 

It wasn’t much of a tower. It wasn’t as high or as broad as the Scholars’ Tower in the palace, or even the commanders’ towers in the forts. It had been built with stones of every shape and shade of gray, all held together with mortar. Tejohn didn’t much trust mortar; it crumbled too easily, then what did you have? A pile of stones to mark your grave.
 

The lower level of the tower was lit only by a fire in the open hearth and daylight streaming in from the second floor mezzanine. Tejohn pulled his cart into the main hall. The floor was same stone slab, but it had been swept of the dried mud and loose stone that covered the servants’ path. There were two guards in here, both standing bored at opposite ends of the room. In the exact center, a wooden grate was set into the floor.
 

Tejohn began to stack the wood into the empty wooden platform beside the hearth. What excuse could he make to get close enough to the grate to look at the person down inside? His only idea was to drop a piece of firewood so it rolled toward the center of the room, but that was too obvious.
 

“Bring a third of that upstairs,” one of the guards said.

The stairs up to the second floor didn’t bring him near the grate. Two more guards walked around the stone mezzanine, slowing as they passed their little fire. The peaked roof above was supported by four stone columns. Tejohn wondered idly what it would take to break them, the way the ruhgrit had crushed their flying cart.
 

From the inner edge of the mezzanine, he looked down to the first floor, but beyond the wooden grate on the floor he could see only darkness.
 

Helpless frustration burned in him. Ellifer Italga could be
right down there
but Tejohn could do nothing about it. Still, it was time for a tactical retreat.
 

As he turned the wagon around in the narrow hall, one of the guards called, “Hey! Come over here.”
 

The other guard said, “Kyun, not again.”
 

Kyun ignored him. “Pull up that man’s waste bucket and dump it in the hole outside.”
 

“Kyun, that’s your job.”
 

“Watch Commander delegated it to me, and I’m delegating it to this rock-wit here. It’s a rock-wit task, isn’t it?”
 

“Kyun—”

“Yes, sir,” Tejohn said, using the same slow voice he’d used among the refugees on the road. He padded out into the center of the room and crouched over the grate. It wasn’t locked into place. He lifted it and set it aside.
 

Fire and Fury, it was deep and dark. Tejohn could see someone moving down there, but only barely. He certainly couldn’t tell who it was. Here he was, right where he’d said he would need to be, and he’d still failed.

A rope was tied off to a hook set just below the rim of the pit. Tejohn pulled it up, raising a stinking bucket of waste up to his hand. He untied it, still peering down into the darkness but unable to make out the face there.
 

From the darkness: “My Tyr Treygar?”
 

Tejohn recognized that voice instantly. It was Doctor Twofin.
 

“Hey!” not-Kyun shouted. “No talking allowed! Fire and Fury, this is what I was talking about, Kyun!”
 

Tejohn backed away, holding the bucket in front of him.
 

“You!” not-Kyun shouted. “What did he say? Did he give you a message?”

“No, sir!” Tejohn tried to shrink himself down and appear afraid. “I don’t even understand what he said.”
 

“Tyr Treygar!” Twofin shouted out of the bottom of the pit. “Tyr Treygar, release me! I’ve been loyal to the Italgas, I swear!
Tyr Treygar
!”

Not-Kyun stared at Tejohn, and Tejohn gave him an empty stare right back. The other guard was directly behind him, of course, and Tejohn let his fear of a knife in the back show in his expression. After a breath or two, not-Kyun sighed bitterly and said, “Put that down and get out. And there better not be any gossip about this, or it will be your head. Kyun, why don’t you do your Fire-taken job?”

Outside the tower, Tejohn saw that the flying carts were gone, and so were Tyrs Gerrit and Finstel. His head was spinning, but he knew two things: he no longer needed to find a driver, and he had to get Doctor Twofin out of that cell tonight.

Chapter 30

Compared to hauling stone, cutting and carrying wood was light work, but Tejohn still collapsed onto his little bunk at the end of the day. Even with his increased rations, he still hadn’t had enough to eat, and he needed time to recover from the grueling days on the parade grounds.
 

It didn’t matter. Doctor Twofin was held in that pit, and he’d called Tejohn’s name. The guards might have thought he was delirious, but if they mentioned it to anyone--especially to Tyr Finstel or Tyr Gerrit—Tejohn would be discovered before the day was out. Having his head mounted on a spear outside the city was the gentlest treatment he could hope for.
We’ll have nowhere to retreat.

Tonight had to be the night, so Tejohn sat on the edge of the plank that was supposed to be a bunk, and he counted slow breaths. His stomach rumbled and his headache had returned. In fact, his head felt light--he wasn’t sure he had the strength to do what he needed to do tonight, but he would try.
 

After he counted a thousand breaths, he slid quietly off the bunk and made his way through the dark.
 

“Where are you going?” a voice whispered.
 

“The ditch,” Tejohn answered. Servants were supposed to relieve themselves in a ditch behind their barracks.
 

“No, you’re not.”
 

“Don’t be stupid,” Tejohn snapped, as angry at himself for being noticed as he was at this man he couldn’t even see. “Go to sleep.” 

Tejohn went through the door and around to the back. He did have to drain his bladder, but when he finished, he headed for the road, not the barracks. He slumped his shoulders, shuffled his feet, and kept his head down. No one challenged him. No one cared.

The kitchens were empty and so dark, the smoke hole was nothing more than a faint dark gray circle against the black roof. He left the door open so dim last-quarter moonlight could shine inside. It took time for his eyes to adjust, but he felt his way slowly through the room. It took him several breaths to find the meat-cutting bench and the long, slender bronze knife he’d seen hanging above it. There.
 

No matter how comforting it was to hold a weapon again, it would be slim use against armored men with shields and iron-tipped spears. He stood in the darkness, trying to remember all the tools he’d seen that day. Had there been a platter he could use as a makeshift shield?