Scar Felice (The Fourth Age of Shanakan Book 3) (28 page)

She managed to stand, sliding her body up a wall by the door. Their predicament looked equally hopeless from this new vantage point. There were sacks, crates, bottles that could not be broken, two doors, a barred window, and three prisoners tied with rope.

“Seer Yanno,” she said, addressing the inert bundle of cloth and rope that was a Shan. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Alas, I am not accustomed to such trials. Your own wisdom must suffice,” the bundle said. Well, that was not a lot of help. She hopped carefully over to the outer door. She gripped the rough edge of the lower of the two beams that held it fast. She lifted it. It was heavy, and it tilted to the right. She shifted a little right and tried again. Not far enough. A few tries later she had it balanced on her fingers and lifted it clear of its cradles. Holding it as steady as she could, she edged towards a low pile of sacks, moving her feet heel and toe. Her wrists hurt. The beam was too heavy for her, and she gritted her teeth, continued at her steady pace, toe and heel, across the room. It was only a few paces, but it seemed to take forever. By the time she dropped the beam onto the sacks she was out of breath, and she could feel sweat trickling down her face.

She leaned against the sacks, panting.

“The door’s locked,” Carn said. “I saw them check it.”

She ignored him. The man had a particularly smug brand of despair, and she did not want to deal with it. It was hard enough to manage her own sense of helplessness. It was all about probabilities, though.  If she made it possible for someone to break down the back door, then perhaps someone would. If she could make it more difficult for them to kill Carn or the Shan, then perhaps they would not be killed.

She wanted to wait for her strength to come back, but someone could walk into the room at any moment, and time was passing. She pushed herself upright again and edged towards the door. The second beam was higher, and more difficult. She could not lift it with her hands because her bonds would not permit her elbows and wrists to go that high. She stopped and rested against it. She closed her eyes and thought.

Crouching a little she could get her shoulders lower than the bar, and she rested there for a moment more, fitting her thin shoulders to the task. She pushed upwards, and the bar raised, tilted, and began to slide away from her. If it struck the floor it would make a noise, a loud noise, and maybe it would not be heard in the tavern, and maybe it would, but she could not risk it. She slammed her body against the door, pinning the beam between her shoulder and the thick planks. It hurt, and the noise was louder than she had hoped. She stood for a moment, pressed against the tilted beam, waiting for the door to the kitchen to open, waiting to be discovered. It didn’t happen. She moved again. Her fingers groped, found a piece of the beam and began to work it across to where she could grip it better. She allowed it to slip a little at a time, lowering it until it stood upright on the floor behind her. She crouched again and gripped the beam with her hands, lifting it as she stood. She moved carefully across the floor again, depositing it on the grain sacks by the first beam.

They would serve as weapons if she could wield them, if she could free her hands. She looked around the room again. She had made the outer door as weak as she could, so perhaps she could make the inner door stronger. She studied it; saw that it opened outwards, into the rest of the tavern. That was a pity. She sat again and pushed at the grain sacks with her feet, shuffling one of them across the floor until it rested just before the door. She was afraid of touching the door in case it moved and attracted the attention of those beyond.

She moved a second sack, a third. Carn seemed to catch on, and he began helping her. If fact he took over the task. He was far stronger, and she was quite played out by now. He legs and arms shook from the effort she had made. The salt of her sweat stung her eyes, tasted on her lips.

Was there anything else that she could do? She peered around the small room in the gathering dark. The door to the tavern was partially blocked. Someone entering would stumble, and for a moment they would be at a disadvantage. She had no idea how long that situation would prevail, but a few seconds would be enough to engineer a longer delay. The outer door was as weak as she could make it. That was all. It was pitiful, she realised, no more than a clumsy gesture in the direction of a plan, but she could think of no other course. There was nothing that she could say to these people because she had no idea what they wanted of her. Any words she spoke were as likely to hasten her death as to delay it. She was not even certain that they knew what they wanted of her. It was Haken who had marked her out, and he alone knew the reason why.

Voices approached. She could hear them through the door, coming from the tavern side. She pushed herself upright again and stood to one side of the door, the open side where the door would not block her view. She was altogether too tired and too weak to do what she was about to attempt, but Carn would help. She could see that he had moved closer to the door, close enough.

The door opened, and lamp light spilled into the room for just a moment before the man’s foot caught on the sacks and he stumbled forwards. The lamp escaped his hand and flew forwards, smashing on the ground against a grain sack, flame seized upon the dry sacking and licked upwards.

Felice jumped at the man’s back, her weight, slight as it was, enough to tip the balance and bear him to the ground. She tried to pass her hands over his head, but he was no fool and saw that coming. His elbow slammed into her ribs, knocking her backwards, driving the breath out of her body. He sprang up, none the worse for his tumble, and aimed a kick at her. She tried to roll away, but the man’s foot connected with her thigh, and she cried out with the pain of the blow.

Carn had not been idle, however, and as her assailant had kicked her, the clerk had lashed out with his tied feet, catching the man’s planted foot. He went down again, and not on soft sacks this time. He crunched into the floor, landing on an arm. Carn kicked again, and again, but the man rolled away, and they could not follow. He stood, and in the light of the burning sacks they could see that his arm was damaged, his right arm. He held it close to his body and hissed at the pain it caused. She hoped that it was broken.

Now he had the advantage. He kicked the door with his foot and called out.

“Jarrow, get in here.”

There was a pause while he eyed the two of them, nothing but hatred and pain on his face. Jarrow stumbled into the room.

“I told you to watch these,” broken arm rebuked him. “You’re a fool, and you’ll pay for this. Now go and get some water to douse this fire and bring your blade.”

Jarrow looked afraid, but he jumped to obey and disappeared again. The blade could be for only one thing.

“You,” he was talking to her. She met his angry stare. “If you weren’t asked for I’d kill you, but you can be certain that you’ll suffer for this.”

“You are already dead,” she replied. There was nothing to lose now. She needed more delay, more time for others to act.

“Me?” he laughed. “And who will kill me?”

“The Mage Lord,” she said.

“The usurper? He is a friend of yours, I suppose?” The man’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “You are his lover, no doubt, or perhaps a great colonel in the guard?” The usurper? That was an interesting name for the Mage Lord. She had not heard it before. Did these people support the Faer Karan? But she must not think of it now.

“No,” she said. “I am Felice Caledon of East Scar.”

She could see at once that her words had struck home. He knew the name. He knew who she was. Her accent was as it should be. She was a stranger.

“You are lying,” he said, but there was uncertainty in his manner, and perhaps she only imagined it, but also a touch of fear.

“No,” she said.

The man kicked the door again. “Jarrow!”

The younger man was there at once. He set a lamp on a shelf near the door and poured a pail of water over the burning sacks, which hissed and steamed, clouding the room further. Broken arm took the lamp in his good hand and held it above her for a few moments, studying her face, then her turned to the waiting Jarrow.

“Kill them all,” he said, and stepped through the door, leaving it to close behind him.

The cold shock of the words stunned her. She watched Jarrow as he stood, unmoving, by the door. He, too, seemed surprised, and looked from the three of them to the door as though he wanted to ask broken arm if he had meant what he’d said. Felice felt the anger rising in her. All the planning, all the delay, all the pain she had suffered, and they were to be killed by an idiot youth with the intelligence of a inbred dog. She had done what she could, and nobody had come. She had been failed by her friends.

Jarrow seemed to master his doubts and drew his blade, a short sword, plain and functional; cheaply made. He turned and looked at the Shan, began to pull the blankets aside so that he could see it clearly to strike a blow, to stab at it.

She reached for the beam that lay beside her on the sacking, ignoring the pain of the blows she had taken, and was surprised to see that the ropes at her wrists were loose. She shook them free and seized the stout piece of wood, standing slowly, slipping her feet from the ropes that had held her ankles so tight. She took the one step forward that was needed; Jarrow was turned away, concentrating on the Shan; and swung the beam with all of her strength. Jarrow sensed something, a whisper in the air, a noise, the slightest movement at the corner of his eye. He turned and raised an arm just before the blow struck home.

Felice was weak, and Jarrow’s arm had taken the sting out of the blow, but he was shaken and surprised. And so they stood facing each other, a woman of no more than eighteen, slim and bruised, armed with a three foot piece of wood, and a tall, strong man, armed with a sword. Jarrow smiled, his confidence returning quickly. He stepped forwards, and she stepped back, trying to remember the few things that Ennis had taught her, summoning up what remained of her strength.

Just at that moment something very heavy crashed against the outer door, and there was a sound of cracking wood. They both looked towards the door, and she could see that Jarrow realised, in that moment, just what it was that she was holding, and that the door was unbarred. He stepped towards the door, but she swung at him again, forcing him to step back to avoid the blow.

The door was struck a second time, and this time it failed, bursting open as something large and white fell through onto the floor. Pieces of broken wood and metal lock scattered across the room, and whatever had burst through fetched up against the sacks by the door, close to where Carn lay.

It was a wolf.

No, she corrected herself, not just a wolf. It was a wolf to end all wolves. It was massive, and white. As it rose from the floor she could see that it stood half a man’s height at the shoulder, its chest was deep and heavy, and its eyes were blue.

It glanced down at Carn. That was all. He was dismissed. It looked across at Jarrow, and she saw a flicker of a snarl, a raised lip, large white teeth. Jarrow stepped back, and its eyes came to rest on Felice. It stared at her with an expression that she could not read, and the thought occurred to her than animals do not stare, they lower their eyes and look away because they do not have the will to stare. She looked deep into the blue eyes, dark in the light of a single lamp, and they stood in each others eyes like this for a moment, or longer, because it seemed that time stood still.

Finally, she thought she could read desperation in its gaze, fear, life or death. In a wolf? She held out her hand to it, and it walked towards her, hesitantly, never taking its eyes from her face until it stopped and dropped its gaze beneath her outstretched palm. For a moment she could not move, but stood with her hand above the creature’s bowed head.

Without knowing how she knew, the knowledge of what this thing was came suddenly to her mind, quite completely, and with utter certainty. What she had asked for had been done. She was the cause, and this was the effect. She dropped her hand onto the white head and allowed her fingers to caress the silken ears. She felt tension go out of the wolf, a doom lifted from it.

“I accept you,” she said.

The silence was broken once more as figures followed the wolf’s path through the debris of the shattered door. She saw guard uniforms, swords, and she saw Ennis.

She turned to Jarrow, who stood now at the back of the room, pressed against the wall by the fear writ large on his face and his sword held out before him as though it was a charm to ward off evil.

“Put your sword down, Jarrow,” she said. “I will see to it that you live.”

The man looked at her, he did not understand, she could see that, but he believed her, and put his sword on the floor, raised his hands to show that he was not armed. The guardsmen took him and led him from the room. Ennis was at her side frowning at her cuts and bruises, but she had known worse.

“I am happy to see you,” she said to her friend.

“You really must stop doing this,” Ennis replied, shaking her head in mock exasperation. “You are not wounded?” There was real anxiety there. Felice could hear it.

“Only what you see. Karnack saved me from further harm.”

“Karnack?” Ennis seemed confused and Felice realised that she did not know.

“The wolf,” she said. “Karnack the wolf.”