DREAMWIELDER Book 1 of The Dreamwielder Chronicles

Chapter 16: MISTAKES IN THE DARK

Caile paced his room frantically trying to figure out what to do. He knew what Lorentz would say—just be patient and wait for the right opportunity to escape—but waiting wasn't an option. The Emperor intended on going himself to Pyrthinia to oversee King Casstian's execution, and in all likelihood Wulfram would be there too. Even if Caile managed to slip away with his men on the road to Kal Pyrthin, the Emperor would track them down and kill them. No, if I want to get my men out of here and have any chance of saving my father, the only option is to escape tonight, Caile decided. But how?

He could use the secret passage beneath his room and save himself, of course, but he couldn't bear the thought of leaving his men behind to certain death. As far as he knew, there was only one entrance into the guarded barracks where his men were staying, and that meant getting out of his room past Lindy. There weren't any other options.

Past Lindy it is, then.

Once his decision was made, Caile moved with purpose, deliberately avoiding the gravity of what he was about to do. He pulled out his boot knife, pried up the floor-stone covering the secret passageway and tossed the stone onto his bed. He then laid down on the floor as if he had been knocked down, and began yelling.

"Help! Lindy! Help!"

The door flew open and Lindy barged into the room, battle-axe in hand.

"A man came up through the floor," Caile said breathlessly, pointing toward the hole. "He tried to kill me."

Lindy rushed forward to hunch over the dark passage, and Caile pushed himself up to stand beside him. "He jumped back into the hole when I started yelling," Caile said, pausing with uncertainty for only a moment before thrusting his boot knife into the base of Lindy's skull directly above the spine, just as Don Bricio had taught him years before. The knife stuck in Lindy's massive vertebra, though, and rather than killing him instantly, it merely stunned him. He staggered to his feet with a groan and his arms flailed about to find Caile. Caile grabbed up the first thing he could find, the floor-stone, and brought it crashing down over Lindy's head. The stone split in two over the back of Lindy's thick skull, and the giant of a man toppled face first into the hole in the floor, only to get wedged halfway in.

Caile fought back the wave of nausea and faintness that washed over him. What's done is done, he told himself. He grabbed one of Lindy's limp legs and tried to pull him up, but the man was too massive to lift. Seeing no other options, Caile instead stomped on Lindy's rump and forced him inch by inch down into the passageway. On the last kick, Lindy's body fell and landed below with the sickening noise of bones snapping. Caile lowered himself into the passageway to find Lindy's head twisted backward at a grotesque angle.

"I'm truly sorry," Caile said, yanking Lindy's cloak free and pilfering the battle-axe and a belt knife from Lindy's dead body. Lastly, he yanked free his own boot knife from Lindy's neck and wiped the blood from the blade.

With the weapons and cloak in hand, Caile pulled himself back up into the room and covered the passageway entrance with the broken pieces of the floor-stone. He donned Lindy's faded black cloak and hacked the bottom foot and half off so that it wouldn't drag on the ground. With the cloak on, he was able to tuck the battle-axe up against his chest and keep it hidden. The boot knife he stowed in one boot, and the other knife he put into his belt.

Not wasting another moment, he strode out of the room, leaving the door wide open and walked calmly down the corridor. Boldness had served well in the past, and that was his only semblance of a plan now. Back in Sol Valaróz, Caile had snuck into all sorts of places he wasn't supposed to go simply because he had learned to walk as if he knew where he was going. People rarely questioned someone who walked with confidence and a sense of authority.