The Jack of Souls (Multi-award winner!)

Chapter 24c - Trickery & Guile

Harric appreciated the guardsman's savvy. A quaver in his voice showed he was sincerely pissing himself with fear, but he also kept his head enough to maintain a difficult balance of deference and innocence so as to appear cooperative, which might mean he'd survive the ordeal.

"Open this postern, then," Bannus croaked.

"I wants to, sirs. On my life I do. But my Queen's a harsh mistress. That iron door is locked as fast as the gate, I tell you. Living here's like living in a prison: all locked and nowhere to go."

"You dog of a man. I will tear your guts from your belly and feed Gygon your liver."

"I hope not, Great Sir. But if you're hungry, might be we could send some vittles across the wall. Not what you'd call fine fare, a'course, but you say the word and I will, only I can't open no doors."

Silence, then, but for the roar of the falls beyond. Then the men on the wall ducked, and the familiar pop of spitfires sounded. A pair of fiery tails streaked above and arced into the rocks across the canyon, where resin wads made torches of bushes.

Harsh laughter from beyond as more spitfires popped and fire sprayed across the roof tiles of the cote and in several pigeon loops. The slate was impervious, but the timbers within caught fire, and soon the flames blazed in the loops like the fires of a furnace.

A man cried out inside. A blackheart flew from a lower loop. Spitfires sent streaks of fire across the bird's zigzagging path. More of the fiery comets sprayed along the parapets, sending the two men ducking and crawling.

Bannus's laughter rang above the noise. "There is no priest here, only dogs. But I shall return with men enough to scale your puny walls. And then we shall see about keys. Talbus! Make camp here on the road. Make certain no one leaves."

A knight in orange armor responded by saluting, fist to chest, then shouted orders to make camp at the foot of a massive pillar of rock at the far end of the turnabout.

On the cliff above the turnabout, Harric saw movement.

Brolli pointed to the spot before Harric could indicate it. "You see it, yes? It is a guardsman. He creeps along a ledge above Bannus's position."

Harric shielded his eyes from the growing glare of the fires and attempted to scrutinize the dark face of the cliff. After a moment, he picked out a small figure creeping across the sheer face above Bannus's position. A guard from the fort. The ledge he traversed originated somewhere behind the wall and slanted up across the cliff high above the roundabout. The man crouched literally a dozen fathoms above his enemies-if he dropped a pebble it might plink off Bannus's helmet-but the ledge on which he stood spanned no wider than a stout man's shoulders, so he was completely exposed if anyone chanced to look up.

As Harric watched, the guard halted midway across the cliff and stood frozen against the cliff. Harric soon realized why: though the darkness had kept him invisible to that point, the tower conflagration now illumined his position with increasing brightness. His shadow had begun to darken and dance across the cliff before him; he froze lest his movement betray him, and his enemies feather him with arrows.

The fires also illumined the man's destination above the far end of the roundabout. There the ledge disappeared into a vertical crack in the cliff that had formed when a massive tower of rock split away from the rest to lean drunkenly over the roundabout. The tower was easily as big as the fort itself, but leaned so severely it seemed a finger's nudge could topple it.

"Is that another trail around the mountain?" Brolli whispered. "Another path we have missed? Maybe he thinks to escape on it."

Harric shook his head. "I think they cut that path to get behind that pillar of rock. See how the ledge disappears into the crack behind it? I'll bet they've packed that gap with blasting resin as a failsafe against attack. If that guard can reach it, Bannus is in for quite a surprise."