Dragon Boy

24: Rescue

Kyle and Akora stood before the fortress gate. They took a moment to admire it all. Hundreds of thousands of stone bricks, the finest reinforced iron gates, windows wide enough to launch arrows and see, but narrow enough to lessen the chance of a loss on their side. How much blood had been spilt defending the fort, and trying to claim it?

"Well, this is it." Kyle took in the sight again. They had tried to spot potential weak points on the walk down, but nothing was obvious near the front. "Do you have any ideas?"

Akora scanned the gate much slower. "Are you alright to stand?"

He nodded, and she let go.

Akora stepped closer to the iron gate. Her gaze was at the ground, and she didn't lift her feet. She stepped forward with a slow sweep of the leg, toes to the ground, like a ballerina in the beginning of a show. She gripped the iron in her hands. The bars were crisscrossed, and the square gaps between were too small for a person, no matter how small, to squeeze through. She put her hands beneath two bars and pulled them upward, but did not have the intent to lift. "There's no traps leading up to the gate," she reported, "and this gate isn't going anywhere." She peered through the bars. "But even if we could get through here, I don't know if using the front door is the smartest way for us to enter. Let's take a walk around."

The two walked lightly around the fort. Not a sound came from within. Somehow, that was more terrifying than the alternative. They rounded to the back where they discovered a frozen lake.

Akora stopped to look at it for a moment. It wasn't very big, and was a few feet below them, with a ten or fifteen foot cliff leading down. Unlike the frozen lake they crossed to get here, there was no snow on the ice. She approached the cliff, then peered over. "I think we just found our way in."

Kyle sidled up next to her. He got down on his belly, knowing full well he would not be able to get back up, and looked down. There was nothing out of the ordinary he could see. "What are you talking about?"

Akora stood back up and helped him to his feet. "Come on. Let me show you." They walked along the cliff until it sloped down towards the lake. They tested the surface first before putting their full weight on it. It was very thick, but it was also very slick. Akora gripped the rocks of the cliff wall. "I'd recommend you do as I do," she said. She held as much of her weight as she could on the rocks, keeping it off the ice and therefore putting less pressure on her feet. She shuffled along, hand over hand, towards the center of the cliff. Kyle followed suit. He didn't have the most upper body strength, but thankfully there was not a lot of him. He sidled along the ice, slipping every now and then, but catching himself with the rocks. Runt and Sasha did not have any problems crawling across.

Akora paused in the center of the cliff. She pointed down to a mess of mud and rock. "Do you see that?"

Kyle took a closer look. "What am I looking at?"

She knelt down and pointed at a patch of dirt. "Do you see how smooth this is?"

Kyle took another look. All around, the dirt had been fairly undisturbed; it just sat in its lumpy piles, undisturbed from the position the little ripples in the lake had given it. But there was a patch where the dirt was almost smooth. "Now I do."

Akora felt around the dirt, keeping her focus on one large rock. "Our forts are like this back home. We almost always have a secret entrance, and sometimes, underground water makes the perfect secret tunnel." She wiggled the rock. It moved a millimeter in either direction. Kyle eyed the top of the cliff nervously. He glanced back and forth at Akora as she pulled, freeing the rock from its earthy tomb inch by inch. She bit her lip to keep from grunting, at least not too loud. Kyle prepared to throw himself on top of her to push her out of the way if the cliff came down, but it never did. The rock slid out of its space, revealing a small tunnel, just as Akora had predicted. "And there it is. The perfect secret tunnel."