The Prisoner of Carronne - 16. Chapter 16

-- Chapter Sixteen --

By now the city above had become a storm of noise. Horns were sounding from the castle towers and from the gatehouses below. Torches burned in knots along the streets. Orders rang from crossroads, while men in livery ran in squads, swords out, cloaks whipping behind them.

Somewhere a bell had begun to toll. Somewhere else glass shattered and women were crying out from windows flung open to the night.

Through back-alleys and shadowed yards they fled, led by unseen hands. A shutter creaked open, beckoning them into a courtyard; a boy whistled from a rooftop, pointing toward a safer lane; a baker’s lad rolled a cart into the path of a pursuing patrol, scattering loaves and curses.

But the city of Carronne had listened to fear long enough. It did not betray its own. Instead, it had opened its doors to these heroes, coming alive with quiet rebellion, a hundred small risks strung together like stars, lighting the way.

Drake brought Luther and Prince Raemande out first, near the rocky strand beyond the lower sea wall, then cut them back through the fishermen’s quarter where alleys twisted close and crooked between leaning houses. No sooner had a patrol turned into one lane than a fishwife upended a cart of eels across the cobbles, sending soldiers slipping and cursing in every direction. At another corner an old cooper shouted that he had seen rebels running west, and sent a squad of soldiers haring the wrong way, while Drake ghosted his companions east beneath a sagging arch.

Kit’s party emerged by the tanners’ yards and would have been taken there, blind warlock and all, had not a washerwoman flung open her door and hissed, ‘Quickly, in here!’

They spent ten breathless minutes crammed among steaming linens while guards thundered past outside. Carel shook so badly Garrett had to hold him by the shoulders. The blind Warlock stood still as old stone, listening to the city shift around them like a living thing choosing a side.

Kali and the others were drawn in through a baker’s cellar. Someone shoved hot bread into their hands. Someone bound Hobb’s leg with strips torn from an apron. Bran, still dripping sewer water, stared at the people crowding around them as if unable to understand such kindness.

‘Why?’ he asked at last.

The baker’s wife, flour on both arms to the elbow, looked at him as if he were simple.

‘Because,’ she said. ‘The prince is ours too.’

Word flew faster than soldiers. A rescued prince. Knights in the city. Septimus thwarted beneath the earth. No one knew the whole truth, but everyone knew enough.

Doors opened.

Ladders dropped from lofts.

Children ran messages through lanes too narrow for armed men.

At one crossing, when a patrol almost caught Luther’s band in the open, a pair of apprentices rolled flaming barrels into the street and sent horses screaming sideways in panic. At another, half a dozen dockers began a fistfight so loud and convincing that every guard within earshot plunged toward it. A priest rang the shrine bell without ceasing until no one could hear commands for the din.

Through this rising chaos the scattered bands were funnelled, hidden, handed on, until at last they reached the rendezvous: an old stable yard behind a ruined merchant house near the southern quarter, where horses already waited in shadows for their masters.

One by one the fugitives gathered there, appearing from alleys and doors and darkness itself. Garrett with Kit, the Warlock, and Carel. Kali with Hobb and the others. Zef at last as well, mud to his ears but grinning like a feral king.

Finally, Luther arrived with Raemande and Drake, the prince near collapse but upright still.

For a moment no one spoke. It was time for them to simply catch their breath, before the next stage of the journey: the escape to Highshaw. But then the quiet broke in murmurs of relief, weary laughter, clasped shoulders, the counting of faces to be sure none were lost.

The horses stamped softly as the riders readied for the journey, while beyond the walls of the yard the city still roared. Sacks of food were thrust into the hands of some, or tied together and flung over the necks of horses; enough to last the band through several days of travel.

Drake stood very straight as Luther looked down at him.

‘I’m going back with you,’ the boy said, before anyone could speak first. ‘If you’ll have me.’

Luther’s eyes moved over the ragged youth who had outwitted Septimus in the dark. ‘You have earned your place. And I suspect there is someone already wishing upon your return.’

Drake’s mouth trembled once, then steadied.

Kit snorted. ‘Do they even make armour for someone as weedy as you?’

Drake punched his arm lightly. Kit answered with a shove. Then, before either could make a joke of it, they caught each other in a fierce embrace.

The others looked away, or pretended to.

When they parted, Kit straightened and seemed, all at once, older than his years. The others among the street children shifted subtly toward him, accepting it. Leadership had found him whether he had sought it, or not.

Luther offered his forearm, and Kit took it.

‘Know that you also have friends beyond these walls now,’ the knight said.

Kit nodded once. ‘Just send the word.’

Garrett, already helping the blind Warlock to mount, added quietly, ‘And if the word cannot be sent?’

Kit’s grin returned, sharp and brilliant in the torchlight leaking over distant rooftops. ‘Then there are ways for us to hear it anyway . . . or so I am told.’

Raemande, pale atop his horse, looked down at them with something like wonder in his face.

‘The realm will remember this,’ he said.

Kit shrugged, suddenly awkward beneath the gratitude of a prince. ‘Best it remembers why it was needed, I think.’

Prince Raemande nodded and smiled down at him.

Then the gates at the back of the stable yard were drawn open. A cold night lay beyond those gates. But so too, did an open road, and freedom.

One by one the remaining riders mounted. Luther watched as Drake mounted his pony beside him. Garrett settled Carel before the Warlock on another horse. The men swung into saddles with the heavy weariness of those who had survived too much to waste breath celebrating yet.

A horn sounded close by.

Too close.

‘Go,’ Kit said.

Luther looked at him one last time. ‘Until next time.’

‘Until then.’

Drake raised a hand in farewell to his friend, which was returned. The horses surged forward, through the gateway and out into the dark alleys, before they vanished into the quiet beyond the city, bearing a prince and heroes, and hope along with them.

Behind, in the maze of Carronne, the street urchins, heroes all, melted away exactly as they had come – into roofs and shadows and drains and hidden doors – while the city closed behind its secrets and let the night swallow all trace.

Gradually the horns fell quiet, and the guards stood down, but far off, beyond the walls, the riders did not look back as they rode with some haste, following the pale roads in the wan moonlight.

In the streets of Carronne, the people listened to the silence fall and smiled in the dark, while on the parapets of the castle, a sinister form spewed hatred, as he dwelt on that which had slipped through his fingers.

*   *   *

The three messengers, now bound to each other by more than just the task at hand, found Sir Ansel by sound rather than sight.

Steel rang – not as if in the clash of battle, but in the steady rhythm of practice. A blade cutting air, striking another blade. Jamal noted several spinning blades attached to spinning pole, which seemed to be driven by the wind. It was the oddest machine that he had ever seen, yet he could recognise its effectiveness.

Sir Ansel stood in a clearing, shirtless, alone, and moving through a sequence Jamal recognised from the Order’s oldest forms. His stance was careful, adjusted, with one leg favoured, the other bearing less weight. The limp that Chandar had spoken of was there, unmistakable, yet so well accommodated it seemed almost deliberate.

His movements were smooth as he went through the motions. His body – appearing much fitter in Jamal’s eyes than he imagined a man of his obvious age should be – seemed to be covered with a fine sheen of sweat. Sir Ansel was broader than Jamal expected, his hair silvered at the temples, his face weathered, yet calm.

The knight finished the sequence, then turned and acknowledged his visitors.

His eyes went at once to Jamal – not to the sword at his side, not to the two lads behind him, but to him.

‘You’re far from the road,’ the knight said. ‘Which tells me that you are either lost, or looking for something . . . or someone.’

Jamal dismounted and bowed. ‘Sir Ansel. I carry a message for you,’ he said, before pulling the amulet from beneath his shirt and holding it for the knight to see.

Sir Ansel’s expression did not change, but his hand tightened slightly on the hilt of his practice blade.

Breath was taken and released with care.

‘So,’ he eventually said, as he studied not the amulet, but the boy’s face. ‘Chandar has decided. He is calling us home?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

Stepping closer, the knight looked down at the amulet being shown to him, before reaching out and holding it for a moment, then turning it over. Recognition flickered across his features as he studied the object more closely – the image of the dragon on one side, the engraving on the other, before his eyes flicked back up to Jamal’s face – the set of his mouth, the way his shoulders held tension even at rest.

‘You’ve been blooded,’ Ansel said quietly.

The words struck harder than any accusation.

Jamal hesitated, then nodded once. ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Recently.’

‘Yes.’

‘He always did choose his messengers carefully,’ Ansel murmured. ‘Not for their polish, but for their heart.’

He gestured towards a fallen log. ‘Sit. If you’ve come this far, you may as well speak.’

As Jamal spoke – of the call, of Chandar’s words, of the danger stirring beyond the borders – Ansel listened without interruption. Only his leg betrayed him, shifting now and then, the old injury demanding acknowledgement.

When Jamal finished, Ansel was silent for a long time.

‘You noticed my limp,’ he said at last.

Jamal flushed. ‘Yes, Sir.’

‘Good. It would worry me if you hadn’t.’ He tapped his leg lightly with two fingers. ‘It slows me, but it reminds me, with every step I take, of a choice I made once.’

He looked up. “Do you know why I limp?”

Jamal shook his head.

‘I stayed when others ran. It was the right thing to do.’ Ansel’s mouth curved faintly. ‘It was also the costly thing.’

He studied Jamal again, more gently now.

‘You carry something like that. But not where we can see it.’

Jamal swallowed. He felt suddenly exposed, as though the birch trees themselves were listening.

‘I killed two men,’ he said. ‘To save others.’

Ansel nodded. ‘That will do it,’ he said, before rising carefully. Leaning more heavily on one leg, he reached for his real sword – not drawing it, merely resting his hand there.

‘Chandar says he has no right to call,’ Ansel said. ‘He is correct. None of us ever does.’

He met Jamal’s gaze, something like approval – or kinship – settling there.

‘But we answer anyway. Not for him. For what we swore to be. For whatever may be at stake.’

Ansel inclined his head. ‘I will ride with you. Or to wherever the road allows me. After that, we shall see.’

He looked past Jamal then, at Whip and Devon.

‘And you two – you’ll keep him from forgetting who he was before the wound.’

Jamal felt the truth of that settle in his chest, as he noticed his friends’ nods.

‘Just let me gather a few things and we will be on our way. It will be good to see my old sparring partners, Marin and Enoch,’ Ansel said, as he hobbled towards the humble hut that was his home.

Jamal watched Sir Ansel move with care, each step measured, each adjustment learned through pain and patience. For the first time since the road turned dark, Jamal did not feel alone in what he carried.

Some wounds, he understood now, did not fade. They taught you how to walk. And how to hold yourself.

*   *   *

After two days travel, they found the border downs, which were all wind and grass. The land rolled in long, treeless swells that offered nowhere to hide and no reason to try. Clouds moved fast here, shadows chasing one another across the ground like restless thoughts.

Marin the Grey stood at the crest of a rise, standing with her back to the wind and watching, as the four riders approached.

Her hair was cut short and uneven, as though she had taken a knife to it herself and been done with it. Her armour was serviceable but mismatched, bearing the marks of repair rather than display. The sword at her side was long – longer than regulation – and worn smooth where her hand rested.

She watched them approach without moving.

‘Well,’ she finally called, voice carrying easily. ‘Either I’m about to be robbed, or Chandar has run out of better messengers.’

Jamal reined in, heat rising in his chest. Before he could speak, Ansel nudged his horse forward half a length.

‘Still sharp of tongue, I see, Marin,’ Ansel said. ‘That’s good. I’d worry if you’d dulled.’

Marin’s eyes flicked to him then, narrowing.

‘Ansel,’ she said. ‘I heard you were walking crooked these days.’

‘And I heard you were still testing people you already know,’ Ansel replied. ‘Seems we’re both as we were.’

Marin strode toward Jamal, stopping far too close for comfort.

‘You,’ she said, looking him up and down. ‘You’re no knight. You haven’t been long enough at the forge for the smoke to cling.’

Jamal held her gaze. ‘I carry Chandar’s word.’

She snorted. ‘Chandar carries a great many words. That doesn’t mean I leap when he whistles.’

Sir Ansel watched this exchange with some amusement.

Jamal drew out the amulet then, letting it catch the light, but Marin barely glanced at it.

‘Trinkets,’ she said. ‘I’ve worn that mark longer than you’ve worn pants. Tell me why you stand there, boy, and not a rider with scars to speak for him.’

The wind tugged at Jamal’s cloak. He felt Whip and Devon behind him, felt Ansel’s presence to his right – steady, watching.

‘I stand because I was chosen,’ Jamal said. ‘And because I did not fail.’

Marin’s smile was thin. ‘Yet.’

Before Jamal could respond, Ansel dismounted with care and stepped forward, his limp pronounced on the uneven ground.

‘That’s enough,’ he said.

Marin turned sharply. ‘This does not concern you.’

Ansel’s voice did not rise. ‘It concerns the Order. Which concerns me.’

He faced her fully now, and though he leaned slightly on his good leg, there was no weakness in his stance.

‘You will not measure him by your standards,’ Ansel said. ‘Nor by mine. You will measure him by Chandar’s trust . . . and by the road he has already walked.’

Marin folded her arms. ‘And you vouch for him?’

‘I do.’

Silence stretched.

‘And if I don’t accept that?’ she asked.

Ansel met her gaze without blinking. ‘Then you answer to me.’

For a long moment, Marin said nothing. The wind hissed through the grass, bending it flat, then letting it rise again.

Finally, she laughed. Just once. Short and sharp.

‘Very well,’ she said, as she turned back to Jamal. ‘If Ansel the Unyielding puts his name to you, I’ll hear what you have to say. Speak, then. Properly this time.’

And Jamal did just that. Clearly, without flourish, delivering Chandar’s message exactly as given.

When he finished, Marin exhaled slowly.

‘He truly said he has no right to call,’ she murmured.

‘Yes,’ Jamal said.

Her jaw tightened. ‘That figures.’

She looked back to Ansel. ‘You riding far?’

‘As far as I’m able,’ he said. ‘Highshaw, with any luck. Further than I should.’

She snorted again, but there was respect in it now.

‘Then I’ll ride too,’ she said. ‘At least until the boy learns when to stand and when to let others speak.’

Jamal inclined his head. He did not thank her.

Ansel simply smiled faintly.

*   *   *

That night, as the fire burned low, Whip tended to his new bow, carefully whittling away at the ends, but watching the others. Marin sat apart, sharpening her blade with slow, deliberate strokes. Jamal felt her watching him even when he did not look her way.

‘You did all right,’ she said at last. ‘You didn’t fold. And you didn’t puff yourself up.’

‘Thank you,’ Jamal replied.

She grimaced. ‘Don’t make me regret it.’

Ansel chuckled softly into his cup.

Jamal understood then that authority within the Order was not a straight line. It bent, resisted, and sometimes had to be held in place by those who remembered what it was for. They were all stronger for it.

He also understood that he was learning – not how to command, perhaps, but how to be answered.

*   *   *

At this same time, in the hills to the south and east of Carronne, a weary band of ten riders found themselves camped in a sheltered glade.

Their journey had begun in haste, with them being keen to put as much distance between themselves and the chaos of the city as possible, while also being ever mindful of the risk that they may be followed by the forces of Septimus.

To begin with, they had followed the roads through that first night, guided only by the pale moonlight upon pale tracks, but when the dark skies had begun to lighten with the coming dawn, they sought cover in the forests, which bordered the roads. If they were to be followed, at least now they might be hidden and have some chance of escape.

They continued on through the day, travelling parallel to the roads, and stopping only to water their horses at the meagre streams they came to. Little was said throughout the day, as each of the riders knew all too well the risk of their being discovered, but when, while nearing sundown, they came to a sheltered nook at the base of a ridge, they knew they were ready stop and rest for the night.

With some assistance, the Prince and the Warlock, both of whom were far from peak condition, were helped from their horses and settled comfortably against a log. Drake busied himself by setting a picket line and tying their horses to it, then he and Carel began gathering sticks to build a small fire.

Water gourds, which had been refilled at each stream they had passed, were handed around, and before long, once a fire had been started, the band of men and boys settled down. With bread and fruits passed around from the sacks they had been provided with, they ate well.

‘So, where are we?’ the Warlock asked, in a weak voice that clearly echoed the strain they were all under.

‘I believe we are in the hill country at the southern edge of the Plains of Ashmere,’ Garrett answered.

‘I thought the country smelled familiar,’ the old man answered, while nodding slowly.

‘You have been here before then?’ asked his young companion, Carel.

‘It was a long time ago,’ the Warlock answered, as he reached for the boy’s hand. ‘A long, long time ago, my lad. But that is all in the past, I feel . . . it is the future that begs our attention now.’

For a long while, nobody said anything, as they mulled over his words.

‘And what is it exactly that you see in our futures, old man?’ It was Garrett who had eventually asked the question that everyone else had been thinking.

The answer didn’t come directly, but it did come.

‘I see the road to Jeebath . . . but there shall be much that will need to pass before that particular journey begins.’

Once more the silence stretched, with the only sound being the soft rustle of leaves in the trees surrounding them, as they were disturbed by a gentle breeze.

‘Then tell me this, Warlock,’ Luther said quietly. ‘Shall your visions be of assistance to our cause? Or should we leave you and your boy here, for the Dark Lord to collect and return you to the castle?’

There was a sharp intake of breath from the boy, Carel, which everyone heard, but that was soon followed by a soft chuckle coming from the Warlock.

‘My dear knight. Today, for the first time in so many years that I cannot remember how many, I felt the warmth of the sun on my face. I felt wind in my hair, and smelt the sweet fragrance of the forests. I touched another living beast, and I drank cool water from a stream. And all that was thanks only to you.

‘I cannot keep to myself what I see . . . especially if what I see concerns those of us who are here. I owe you for all these small pleasures, and I shall pass on to you that which you need to know.’

‘Thank you,’ Luther replied.

‘I cannot, of course, guarantee that everything you hear will be to your liking,’ the Warlock added. ‘That is simply the nature of my gift.’

‘That, I think we can live with,’ Prince Raemande answered, for all of them.

To be continued . . .