From Across the Clouded Range (91 page)

Men patted him as they passed, and he
heard their boots thumping up the stairs behind him. He counted
eight pats, but he had lost his momentum. He held for another
second, straining for all he was worth. There was another tap,
then, “That’s all, get the hell out of there,” released him from
his duty.

Jaret lifted the body with the last of
his strength and threw it into the guards. They did not budge, but
he used it to push himself away from the mass. His foot found the
first step a heartbeat later, and he ran up the stone stairs as
quickly as his tired legs would take him.

Several seconds passed before he heard
the sound of footsteps behind him, but it was not enough of a lead.
He scanned the men in front of him and saw that only two of them
had bows. It would have to be enough. As he rounded the first
landing in the stairs, he yelled, “Archers form up!”

He dashed past the midpoint of the
flight as the two men came to a stop on either side of him, swung
around, and gracefully pulled their bows. He stopped just behind
them. “Hit any bastard who sticks his head around that door. Aim
for their faces and make it ugly.”

Two heartbeats passed – it seemed like
an eternity – before the first of the guards made it onto the
landing. The archers were less than twenty feet away, and the
arrows that flew from the taught military bows hit with enough
force to send the bodies of those first two guards flying back into
their fellows. Two more arrows rose to and left the bows and two
more guards were thrown back. One more volley left a final guard
with two arrows standing from his eye and cheek, but there were no
more targets. They had succeeded in their goal. The stairway was as
quiet as a tomb. Only the mumbled indecision of the guards
disturbed the silence.

“
Fire once more at the
wall,” Jaret instructed in a panted whisper, “then get up these
stairs as quietly as you can. At the top, one more volley into the
wall, then follow me.”

The men did as they were told, but
Jaret was already running up the stairs and did not see the arrows
bound harmlessly off the wall. The collective gasp from the guards
was all he needed. A second later, he heard the shuffling of feet
behind him. It would be some time before those guards had the
courage to poke his head around the corner. It would not be enough
time to escape, but it would buy them a few precious
minutes.

Jaret sprinted to the top of the third
set of stairs and turned down the hall that issued from either
side. A flash of steel brought him up short. By instinct alone, he
deflected that flash away from his throat but caught the sword with
his own in such a way as to redirect it down into the top of his
leg. He watched as if in slow motion as the sword slid down his own
and into his thigh, slicing all the way through the thick muscle to
the bone beneath. He looked into the eyes of a half-clothed noble,
who had thought himself a hero a few seconds before but now
realized that he had crossed the thin line between hero and fool,
just as one of the trailing legionnaires slashed open his
throat.

As the body fell away, the sword
dislodged, and Jaret clenched his hands over the wound to quell the
flow of blood. He cursed himself but did not feel any of the fear
or anger that should have accompanied the wound. The pain was
equally far away, trapped by the barrier in his mind, so he just
watched without concern as his hands were soaked with
red.

A legionnaire grabbed Jaret's arm and
slung it over his shoulder. The thin man practically lifted him
from the ground and half-carried him. Jaret’s eyes rose and watched
six more legionnaires pound furiously on a polished wooden door,
but they were at the farthest end of a hall that seemed to stretch
forever. Behind him, boots slapped against stones, spears rattled,
armor jangled. The guards were ascending the stairs, would be upon
them in moments.

Jaret focused on the door, put all his
effort into reaching it, but his leg was worthless, and even with
help, the run was a staggering, grunting procession of futility.
When the legionnaires – working now with a marble bust of the
former Emperor – broke through the door, he was only halfway there
and losing momentum. At that same moment, a yell rose from behind
him, and the sounds there changed. The guards were off the steps.
They were in the hallway and closing fast. They would never make
it.

He was turning to face the
guards – better to face death than feel a spear drive through your
back – when another set of hands grabbed him from the other side.
Between them, the legionnaires lifted him from the ground and
carried him at full stride to the momentary sanctuary. At that same
moment, three streaks of black raced past them, charging toward the
approaching guards.
A suicide
mission
, but Jaret could not make himself
feel remorse for the men who would soon die to save his
life.

The clash of steel on steel and the
screams of men meeting their ends issued Jaret through the
threshold of the door. The men who carried him threw him into the
room then followed as the door slammed behind them. Two other men
pushed a huge wardrobe the final few feet to cover the
entrance.

Jaret landed on the floor of the
lavish room next to the crumpled figure of a woman dressed in
seductive silk nightclothes. Next to the body was a knife; its edge
glistened with a sheen of blood. The woman’s chest was rising and
falling. She was not dead, but Jaret doubted he would have felt
differently about her either way.

Two legionnaires lifted him from the
floor and carried him to the canopied bed in the middle of the
room. The men looked at him with concern as they forced his hands
away from what should have been a gaping wound. It was everything
but.

Jaret stared in disbelief. He had felt
the sword strike his bone, had felt it slice through his flesh, had
felt the blood pulsing over his fingers. A blow like that should be
nearly fatal from the bleeding and leave him with a lifelong limp
at the least, but as he and the legionnaires watched, the blood
cleared, muscles reformed, pulled together, and stitched tight. The
skin followed until a scab formed across the wound and slowly faded
to leave only a vicious scar. The men who had been assigned to tend
the wound were left holding makeshift bandages as they watched the
spectacle in wide-eyed awe.

“
What kind of sorcery is
this?” one of the men screamed. “Lord Commander, what have they
done to you?” He leapt away and struggled to wrest his sword from
its scabbard. He shook as if Jaret were one of the monsters they
had just fought.

“
Put the sword down, man,”
Jaret scolded. “There is no time for that now. That door’s not
going to hold forever.” He stared at his leg again. He suspected he
had Thagas'kiula to thank for his rapid recovery but didn’t spare
it any more thought than that.

The legionnaire did not seem
convinced. He looked from Gal to Jaret in indecision. His fellow
backed away, holding his bandages in trembling hands like a shield.
Jaret was growing impatient, but Gal’s voice cut through the
bewilderment. “Soldier, you just received an order from Imperial
Warlord Jaret Rammeriz. You had better follow it before I cut you
down myself.” The legionnaire with the sword, looked at his
commander, remembered himself, sheathed his sword, and saluted. His
fellow turned to Gal and began wrapping the bandages around a long
gash on his arm.

“
Bitch surprised me,” Gal
chuckled. “Can you believe it? I fight a hundred chamber guards and
their hell-spawn minions without a scratch only to get sliced by
some overpriced whore. I wish I could pull off your trick. That was
something, but I don’t think I want to . . . .”

A pounding at the door ended the
conversation. Two men pressed their backs to the wardrobe, but it
shook with each blow and crept ever so slightly from the jam. They
had a few minutes but nowhere to go.

Jaret turned to Gal, happy to change
the subject. “Mind telling me what you had planned for the
finale?”

Gal did not answer. He grabbed the
only lamp in the room and placed a black cloth over it. He carried
it to the room's one large window where he methodically lifted and
replaced the cover.

Jaret joined him, scanning the
darkened landscape outside. They were on the third floor of the
Great Chamber in what must be the southern wing because the canal
that ran by the building defined the entire scene below. The broad
canal had been built long ago to link the city’s huge port to the
Vasuki River several miles before the mud-clogged delta that formed
to the south of the city. The lights of countless boats moved up
and down the canal even at this late hour – during the daylight
hours, the canal would be crammed almost to the point of
immobility. Jaret scanned those boats and found Gal’s finale. The
light on one of the boats was flashing in a cadence that matched
the lamp in Gal’s hands.

“
That’s our ride.” Gal
smiled. “Do you feel like a swim?”

Gal put the lamp back on the
nightstand and returned to the men at the door. There were three of
them now, with two others pushing furnishing across the room to
obstruct the entrance. The men were fighting a losing battle. The
wardrobe was slowly jarred away from the doorway with each blow
from outside. “When the Lord Commander and I are clear, you will
hold that door as long as you can,” Gal ordered, calm and steady.
The eyes of his men showed the same resolve. “Then you will follow
us out that window. You will swim to the docks, not the boat. Make
your way to a safe house. They will have new orders for you there.
Pauli, you will be first, followed by . . . . ”

The door, wardrobe, and legionnaires
were engulfed in a fiery ball then erupted in a rain of flaming
splinters. Jaret pulled his hand up just in time to catch the
shrapnel before it slashed into his face. Gal was not so lucky. He
was riddled with shards of wood then burst into flame where he
stood several paces closer to the door. The fire shriveled Jaret's
hair and charring his skin, but the pain was far away along with
the fear and shock he should have felt. He looked with clear eyes
at the exposed hall and saw the black-robed figure he had expected
standing there with an outstretched hand. Guards and more of the
creatures stood behind the wizard as if they were
necessary.

Jaret knew that they were not. The
little man stretched his hand out again. His lips worked through
the shadows of his cowl. The gift that very man had given him was
the only thing that saved Jaret. In the split second that normally
would have been lost to shock, fear, and indecision, his body
acted.

Flames engulfed him as he leapt from
the window and exploded from their embrace. He could feel his skin
crisping as he fell in a fiery shroud, but the burning was only
there for a moment before it was replaced by the cooling comfort of
water as he knifed beneath the surface of the canal.

A superior swimmer, Jaret soon found
his bearings and paddled toward the place where he had seen the
flashing a moment before. He reached the side of a shallow-sided
boat quickly and several sets of hands silently pulled him from the
murky depth and laid him on the hard deck. A soft voice whispered
commands somewhere behind him, and his saviors
scattered.

Jaret thought he recognized the voice
but could not place it. He did not try for long. He just lay on the
deck of the small boat watching fire and smoke boil from the window
where he had made his escape. Soon, a dark figure was silhouetted
against the light of that window despite the fire dancing about
him, but it was too late. There was no way to differentiate Jaret’s
ship from the hundreds of others that crept up and down the
canal.

Chapter 39

Rain pattered along the outside of
Ipid’s tent in a rhythm that overstated its misty intensity. He
searched anxiously through the percussion of tiny drops for the
sounds of battle in the distance. Any moment now, Thorold’s horn
would mark the beginning of the Battle of Testing, and all he could
do was sit, wait, and listen.

Yawn after yawn racked him, but he
fought the sleep that weighed on him like a stone blanket, dragging
down his eyelids, slumping his shoulders, and pressing his head
time and again toward the ground. He had not slept in two nights,
and the deprivation was starting to show. After two days and a
night preparing the city for the testing, he had ridden through the
worst downpour he remembered so that he could sit in an
interminable Ashüt meeting. It had ended hours ago, and he had been
fighting sleep ever since. He knew that if he slept, he would not
wake, and he could not allow himself to miss the battle, even if he
could only listen to it from the confines of his tent.

He had hoped that he would, at least,
be allowed to be with the village boys during the testing, but Arin
had told him that they were being punished because some of their
number had murdered a clansman in an attempt to flee the camp. It
was a crime that had been heavily debated by the Ashüt with Arin
barely holding off the faction that would see the te-adeate killed
for the crime. In the end, it was the Battle of Testing that saved
them – te-adeate could be collectively punished for the crimes of
their fellows but other classes could not – and that made what
would happen in a few minutes all the more important. If the people
of the Kingdoms remained te-adeate, it was likely all the village
boys would be killed for the crimes of a foolish few.