"Go," Jarod called to Svetka as he ran toward the rocky staircase. Sebastian raced after him, quickly grabbing an abandoned hammer near the foot of the steps.
Knife in hand, Jarod ran up the stairs, clearly hoping to surprise the soldier at the door. But the guard had the common sense to keep an eye out for anyone coming his way and turned to fend off his attacker. A sword slashed toward Jarod, and he ducked against the wall to get out of the way. The soldier immediately jumped at him with intentions to kill, but this time, there was nobody to stop Sebastian from intervening. As the man brought his sword back for another swing, Sebastian hurled his hammer across the gap. It hit the soldier in the chest. His armor protected him from any serious harm, but it distracted him for the briefest of moments and brought him off balance. Jarod jumped up and drove his knife into an unprotected part of the soldier's leg. The man stumbled backward to avoid another stab and disappeared over the edge, cursing them on his way down.
Wasting no further time on the soldier, Jarod ran toward the door.
"Marek, Tom! It's us. Open up."
They all had to pull and push together before the damaged door opened. Marek and Old Tom emerged and looked at them in relief. Marek's face was unusually white.
"Are you okay?" asked Sebastian.
"He's fine," said Tom. "Just—just do not go in there."
But Sebastian could not help it. Somehow, he needed to know what was behind the door. That cursed door, that stood so painfully present above them in the hall. He looked through the little barred window and immediately regretted his own stupidity. Inside, a crude wooden table stood in the center of the room. On the ground was drawn a strange symbol, barely visible beneath the bloodstains that covered everything in the room. The atmosphere felt thick, terrifying and somehow black—even with the torches lighting the corners. Hatred, anger and despair all hung in the air; Sebastian could feel it pressing down on him. Below one of the torches, the rigid remains of several infants lay in a pile, tossed aside like garbage.
Jarod peered over his shoulder while Sebastian stood frozen in shock. He softly shook Sebastian's shoulder.
"Come on. There's nothing we can do."
Finding his voice again, Marek said, "Ca—Can't we go back through the palace?" The sound of fighting down in the cavern made his face turn even paler.
"No, the quickest way out of the mine is through the side entrance. If we go through the palace, we'll get pinned at the gate or on the mountain road. We need to disappear into the forest. It's our only chance. Circle the city and hopefully throw them off our trail," explained Jarod. He ran up the stairs, used a torch to barricade the door that led to the palace and came running down again. "Now move."
As the four of them rushed down the stairs and made their way toward the main exit tunnel, they heard a loud crash. If the main hall fight had been chaotic, the battle near the underground guardhouse was pure mayhem. The workers were destroying everything in sight in a blind rage, fed by a deeper panic of what would happen if they failed. Dozens of guards and slaves lay dead on the ground, the cave's rocky floor slippery with blood. One of the transportation wagons was a pile of rubble; their ghol'm had smashed into it to stop one of the guards who had crawled in the back with a scroll. Large iron cooking bowls and wooden planks acted as shields against the crossbow bolts that tried to pick them off one by one. But the slaves were many, and the reload time of a crossbow prevented them from firing quickly in succession. The guardhouse was on the verge of being completely overrun.
Ducking from one cover to another, Sebastian saw Svetka shielded by several of the kitchen staff as she rummaged through the wreckage of the wagon.
"What's she doing?" he asked.
"Following the plan," said Jarod. "We always knew we could never win against the soldiers. Not really. We might get this far, but eventually we'd be beaten—their position is just too strong. So we decided to use their greatest monstrosities against them. Their slaughter of innocents will be our way out."
With a heavy thud, an arrow hit the barrel they were hiding behind. Sebastian flinched and tried to make himself as little as possible. When he dared to take another look, he saw blue light glow from the wreckage.
"She found another scroll," he mumbled.
He looked around and saw they had full control over all three wagons now—well, two wagons and a wreck. Those guards able to do so had retreated into the guardhouse built into the cavern wall. Sebastian saw Black Death Setra behind one of the second-floor viewing holes, ordering his men to shoot as many slaves through the arrow-slits as possible. Several workers had pushed themselves flat against the guardhouse walls, trying to find a weakness to get inside.
Next to the small fortification, a portcullis blocked the large double doors toward freedom, its mechanism safely inside the guardhouse's watchtower next to the doors.
"What about the doors?" asked Sebastian, but he already knew the answer. "The ghol'ms again?"
Jarod nodded. "They're the last push we need."
A ring of blue light spun from the wreckage and soon a second ghol'm stomped through the clearing to carry out his order and break down the guardhouse door. A man jumped down from the first wagon, a small box in his hands. He ran toward Svetka, but only got a few feet before a crossbow bolt struck his back. The box tumbled across the ground, sprang open and threw out several sacrificial scrolls. Immediately after, a stone jar smashed close by and covered the scrolls in oil. It had come from the top of the guard tower.
Svetka yelled at those closest as she moved a ghol'm into position. A man dove forward and snatched three scrolls from the floor and threw them toward the wreckage. The third scroll barely left his hand when a flaming arrow struck the ground and ignited the oil.
The slave screamed as the flames devoured the flesh on his legs. Those scrolls still on the ground burst into blue flames. Ghostly, high-pitched screams joined the man's own horrific cry, like demons rising from the underworld. Sebastian saw a flow of blue smoke rise from the scrolls, dancing around the orange flames of the oil fire.
Jarod drove them further, diving behind one of the wagons. But it was not long before this too was soaked in oil and set aflame.
"They're trying to suffocate us. Smoke us out," he yelled at Svetka, who stabbed the third scroll into another motionless statue. "We have to hurry."
She threw him the scroll she had just used.
"Just tell it what to do!" she yelled. "Use words and thoughts!"
"Keep pressure on that tower," he called back. Sebastian saw Svetka steer her ghol'm to a pile of rocks, which it started throwing at the soldiers high above.
"Come on, Sebastian," said Jarod. "We're going to open that gate."
Together with the third ghol'm, they ran toward the portcullis. The ghol'm put its large, stone hands under it and pulled. Slowly, the portcullis began to move. A fourth and fifth light eruption announced additional help, but looking back Sebastian saw that was probably all they were going to get. The wreckage and wagon they had hidden behind now burned furiously. The heat and smoke made it impossible to get close anymore. Svetka had awoken the last two ghol'ms from the front wagon, which was now empty. So that was it. Several hundred slaves and five ghol'ms against the Stone King's guards.
"We're losing the element of surprise," said a blue-eyed worker, who had braved the rain of arrows to get to Jarod.
"Just keep them pinned inside their walls. We need to cover our escape."
A second ghol'm came to help lift the portcullis and finally it was raised high enough for them to pass beneath. Sebastian now saw three ghol'ms attacking the guardhouse. They pummeled the guardhouse door, slammed stones into the arrow-slits to block them, or punched through them to try and grab soldiers' arms. Several workers pushed the last wagon away from the fire. With their united strength, they shoved it under the portcullis to block the gate from closing again.
"Now for the doors," said Jarod, before a scream rose above the noise of the fighting.
"No!"
Sebastian jerked his head around to see Mette, staring toward the top of the watchtower. He followed her stare and saw Shaun and Troy standing on the embrasures. Both had nooses around their necks. Faces bloodied and swollen, they swayed on their feet. Before Sebastian could even blink, both men were thrown off the tower. The ropes snapped tight, instantly breaking their necks. A broken cry rose from Mette's throat.
Sebastian's eyes were glued to the two hanging men. Every time he thought he was able to cope with what happened around him, reality decided to twist the proverbial knife and showed him how little he truly knew. The madness of the entire situation spiraled down toward Sebastian, as if the mountain was collapsing in on him.
"No, we have to stop. So much death. So much fear. They're throwing their lives away. All of them!"
"Look at me," said Jarod, taking Sebastian's head in his hands. "We always knew it was going to be bloody. That not everyone was going to make it. But we were already dying. We certainly weren't living."
Sebastian's bewildered gaze darted all over the place. Jarod coughed. The smoke was starting to fill the enclosed space. Soon it would become harder to breathe.
"Listen, Seb. This is our only chance. We can do this—together. It is time to leave this place," Jarod said firmly.
"One way or another," added Old Tom, who had been watching the doors. "Do it now!"
The two ghol'ms that had lifted the portcullis both rammed into the double doors. A sea of light poured into the cavern. For a moment, all the slaves stopped. They shielded their eyes as the ghol'ms continued their barrage. The two ghol'ms disappeared into the white light, soon followed by the first scream—one that did not echo, but dissipated into the open air of the outside world.
Sebastian blinked, trying to block the light with his hands. Tears streamed down his cheeks as a fresh wind stoked his face. He blinked again. His eyes felt like they were on fire. He rubbed them feverishly and continued to blink until he could see the shape of the door's arch, through which the first few slaves now ran in their fight for freedom. Jarod, Svetka and the others stumbled outside, where the world welcomed them with color. It was not winter after all. The trees were in full leaf, the roadsides covered with green bushes and shrubs. The blue sky carried a few fluffy, white clouds; its open space was strangely frightening after all this time underground, yet Sebastian immediately felt like it was easier to breathe.
The small plaza in front of the doors—before the road went off into the forest to bend back toward the closest city gate—held a few soldiers who fought desperately against the flood of workers fleeing the mine.
"Their reinforcements aren't here yet. We need to get away from here before they do. The forest will provide cover; we'll leave a ghol'm or two to cover our escape."
A ghol'm smashed into a wooden watchtower, as if it wanted to reaffirm the plan would work. The tower tumbled to the ground with the heavy cracking of wood, sending workers and soldiers bolting to all sides to avoid the falling timber. Several escaped workers had grabbed a few of the soldiers' horses and now stormed down the road at an alarming speed. A soldier who tried to cut the legs out from under a big brown steed got trampled for his attempt. Two slaves descended upon him, slit his throat and stripped the soldier of his armor and weapons.
Sebastian jerked his head around as a second watchtower fell. It disappeared off the edge of the natural plateau they were on. Beyond the edge was the city Sebastian remembered from the night he arrived. It stretched out all the way to a wide, dark river, its many streets a maze for those who lived in them. And above them: the black walls of the Dark Palace. A looming image that watched over the city and would surely haunt Sebastian in the nights to come.
Somewhere up there was the Stone King. A man Sebastian had never seen, but who was responsible for all the misery he had experienced these last few years. For a moment, he let all the built-up anger and hate burst through his fear and insecurities, channeling it all toward those dark stone walls. He wished he could scream so loud they would topple over and bury those inside.
He had just opened his mouth to yell when someone grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the trees. The sound of fighting disappeared and was replaced by hundreds of feet running through the forest. Sebastian's anger gave way to the urge to run; to run like hell and never look back. And suddenly it hit him; they had done it! They were out. Now they only had to make certain they did not get caught again.