The Hekamon (10 page)

The guards would investigate the crime, but he would be
long gone and back in Coralai, even before the body was found.

Twenty
yards, He tightened his grip on the dagger and saw the gap in
the tree line he would bolt from. He thought of his escape and risks
to himself, the guards would ask questions, questions in the town, of
the passersby, at the trading posts—

Immediately Decarius began to slow. Two, three, four
heavy footsteps, they seemed unavoidable, his speed hard to
dissipate. It had been easier to run downhill quietly than slow down
with similar stealth. His momentum threatening to carry him on past
the man ahead of him and putting him in plain sight.

Yet he wasn't
slowing, not enough. Tansley hadn't seen or heard him but in a few
seconds he would be impossible to miss. The large tree was now right
in front of him and a little to the left, he could still emerge from
behind it. Should he continue the attack? He was committed, it might
be his only option. Then he saw another possibility, and took it.

At
the last possible moment, Decarius stepped to his left and collided
with the tree, using outstretched arms to cushion the impact as best
he could.

The size and bulk of the tree meant it gave very little,
the branches hardly shook, the trunk reverberated imperceptibly.
Decarius absorbed the full force, ensuring it was helpfully quiet and
bone jarringly painful. The tree that had stopped him, now concealed
him, he was no more than ten yards behind the tradesman. One tree and
a short stretch of road separating them.

He remained there, pressed against the trunk. Winded by
the collision, all he could do was lean against the tree and recover.
His bones ached and his muscles were numbed from the force of the
impact. But were Tansley to look around on hearing the dull thud, the
man would see nothing untoward, the tree was helping him for a second
time.

Decarius took some deep breaths and managed to stop
himself from coughing or gasping. He would hold
position, give the merchant time to get further down the road again
and re-evaluate his plans while he did.

The guards would ask at the trading posts.

Once Tansley's body was found they would question the
other merchants, curious if they'd seen anyone acting suspiciously.
There was no compulsion for them to co-operate with the guards, but
they would surely look out for one of their own. They would tell of
the two Coralainians that had been asking around, he couldn't chance
that they wouldn't.

Word would spread both sides of the pass. The murderous
means that had been exacted would reach the saceress. Her son
implicated as an accessory in a violent robbery. The intention was to
discredit the saceress, her judgment, her authority. Not to burnish
his reputation as loose canon. It was something he would need to
avoid if at all possible.

If he could prove Tansley had been an accessory to the
theft of the Plautius Gauntlets then it would be less of an issue,
but he couldn't be certain that Tansley had the gauntlets in his
possession right now. They might be back at his hut, with Gregario
recovering them at this very moment. If he was going to use lethal
means, then he needed to be more certain. As he continued to catch
his breath, he realized he was going to need to find a different
approach.

After twenty seconds had passed, Decarius chanced a look
around he tree. He could see that Tansley's progress was what he
would have expected. The tradesman hadn't heard him, or if he had,
hadn't felt alarmed enough to break into a run. Perhaps the fact he
was getting close to the turning to the town had given Tansley some
sense of security. If so, he was probably right, any assault on him
now would be far more risky, with many potential witnesses. He would
need to follow him instead and see where he went.

It was a childhood memory, he would have been about nine
or ten, and before him, the dense web of a large spider. In would go
the lure, found hiding beneath a nearby rock; a beetle, a woodlouse,
it didn't matter what, and the spider would emerge. A swift blur of
limbs, leaping onto its prey and binding it tightly.

Only, it didn't always work like that, sometimes the
prey seemed to know. Some base instinct telling it that the trick was
not to move but to remain completely still. Still, that is, until
some prodding with a stick complicated its primitive survival
strategy.

Why had this memory come to the fore? Gregario
didn't know. Maybe his mind hadn't been sabotaging his attempts to
think after all, but searching for an experience from which to draw
inspiration. Perhaps it was a measure of his predicament, that being
cruel to an unfortunately woodlouse, was what the deepest recesses of
his mind had come up with. He didn't know what disturbed him more;
the choice of memory, that the memory existed or that it had worked.

He lay completely still, he was safe while he didn't
move. He took a few deep breaths and composed himself.

"Are you making progress?" Aegis called along
the tunnel.

"I'm working on it," his voice sounded
stronger than he felt. He drew some comfort from it all the same.
With his body cooperating once again, he turned his mind to the
problem at hand.

He tried to understand why the end of the tunnel seemed
impossible to open. Could this be a way out only? A bolt hole.
Allowing Tansley to escape but leaving him needing to re-enter his
hut by the normal way, when whatever danger that had prompted him to
make an emergency exit had passed. That was worryingly possible.

Gregario could never use a route that worked like that.
What if the trapdoor at the other end had become blocked by a fallen
branch, or heavy rain had caused a partial collapse of the tunnel.
The obstruction would not be visible until the moment it was
encountered, and by then, the occupant would be caught like a rat in
a trap.

There would have to be a way back in, he was sure of it.

The fear which had paralyzed him was now heightening his
senses and sharpening his mind. The merchants here were wily, if
Tansley was clever enough to have an escape route beneath his hut, he
would be equally shrewd to make sure it didn't become his grave.
There had to be a way in.

Gregario tried the hatch again, he was sure it had to
open outwards, so pushed against it a few times. There, he heard it, a
metallic rattle and felt the door give a little at one side. It was
held shut by a bolt or a catch. How could the man have bolted it
behind him? Could there be someone else in the hut? If so, might they
have closed it after Tansley had left?

It seemed unlikely, since it
meant one person leaving and not the other. Maybe the tradesman had
left with the gauntlets, while someone stayed in case the hut was
broken into. That seemed plausible and he would keep it in mind. Yet
he was still sure the hatch would be operable from the tunnel, due to
the risk of getting trapped.

He tried to imagine what it might look like from the
other side. He pictured a latch, attached to some wire, fed around
the frame of the door into the tunnel. That might be a workable
arrangement and it would be very hard to find unless you knew it was
there.

Feeling a sense of optimism, Gregario started searching
around the frame of the door, but found nothing that could
conceivably activate a door latch. He moved his search to the sides
and top of the tunnel. There were some wooden posts about two feet
back from the frame, they were supporting a beam and holding up the
roof of the tunnel. He ran his fingers around the posts but couldn't
find anything there either.

The sense of foreboding began to return, so far he had
only needed to move his arms but it looked like he might have to move
further along. Even the slightest movement caused some dirt to fall,
triggering the prospect of being buried alive with each dusting he
received.

He calmed himself again.

Was there anything between the door frame and the first
support beam? Patting down the walls, told him there was. Another
wooden post but this one set into the compacted earth that formed the
wall of the tunnel. This one was only a foot high and seemed to serve
no purpose. It didn't support the roof and there was no obvious
reason why it should be there.

He ran his hand over it, the surface
felt smooth but was not completely so, there was a hole. Pushing his
finger inside he felt a wire, taut and cold to the touch, he applied
some pressure and felt it give. In front of him there was a click and
he pushed the door with his head and it opened effortlessly. He took
a deep breath and wanted to laugh manically, but made do with a less
satisfyingly wry smile.

Gregario crawled through the hatchway, onto a stone
floor and stood. He was in.

The room was dark but some light entered through cracks
in the wooden clapboard walls, and from around two doors, the outline
of which he could just make out.

The gap under one door was large and
the draft that came through suggested it lead outside. He tried the
handle, it was sturdy and it was locked. He felt for a key in the
lock but there was none.

He tried the other door and it opened. It lead into
another dark room which was partially illuminated by some light that
found its way down from upstairs. With the door open, there was
sufficient light for Gregario to see that the room he was standing in
was a woodshed.

Standing quietly in the doorway, he listened for any
sounds but heard none. The trading post was empty, and he could now
see why the merchant had a locking mechanism in his escape route.
Once you were in the woodshed, you were in the house.

Just then and from behind him, he heard a click, as the
small hatch that gave access to the tunnel closed. He walked over and
examined it.

When closed, the hatch it blended well with the wall
that it was built into. Gregario operated the latch and saw that the
small door was angled, so as to swing shut under its own weight.
Crouching down, he opened the hatch wider and looked along the
tunnel. By the light at the other end, he could see Aegis's legs. His
cohort was still standing at the far end of the tunnel and holding
the trapdoor open.

"I'm in," he called.

Gregario watched, as the light at the end of the tunnel
dimmed and went out, as the trapdoor closed.

Moving away from the muddy stream and on to the top of
the embankment, Alyssa started looking for the trapdoor. It proved
much easier to find this time and not only because of the daylight.
The door was not so well concealed. Had she and her brother left it
like that? She didn't think so, but it was hard to be sure how it had
looked in the darkness.

Reaching down, Alyssa took hold of the handle and held
it, feeling the cold metal ring in her hand. She hesitated. It wasn't
that she had a bad feeling, she had no feeling.

Alyssa was used to
things that were alive, things that had lived, or at the very least
had been imbued with life. Wood, leather and a multitude of fibers
from plants and animals. The heavy, rusty, iron ring felt unnatural
and inert. She could glean nothing from it, there was no hint of what
lay beneath. Its base metal had not been crafted with love like her
necklace had been.

Her necklace. It was made from no ordinary metal and was
no ordinary piece of jewelry. It even had a name. It was called the
Ettinshel and it was beyond this forbidding barrier.

The thought restored Alyssa's determination and she
started to lift the heavy trapdoor, before positioning herself on the
edge of the hole. The silent, darkness of the tunnel gave her a sense
of foreboding, even more so now she was alone.

She took a few deep breaths and found the courage to
climb inside, before allowing the door to close above her. Crouching
and turning, Alyssa started crawling along, patting the earth in
front of her and feeling along the width of the tunnel as she went.

Every time her hand swept the damp earth, she awaited
the touch of the necklace on her finger tips. With each movement, her
expectations rose and she anticipated how it would feel.

When it was
on her person it was as warm as she was, now it would be lying cold
and lifeless but that would all change in the blink of an eye. It would
come to life in the instant it returned to her and that was about to
happen at any moment.

Working
her way along the tunnel, a feeling of pessimism gradually started to
take hold, the feeling grew stronger, until she eventually reached
the wooden hatch at the far end.
It
isn't here
.

Alyssa
remained still, as the realization slowly began to dawn on her. She
had not expected her search to bring her this far, yet here she was,
and now she was going to have to alert the merchant.

Should she bang on the hatch? Enter his hut alone? She
didn't want to.

Although she had only met the man briefly, she didn't
trust him. The man had run his fingers through her hair, it was the
first thing he had done on seeing her. She had accepted the momentary
and minor discomfort as a useful warning. Should she heed that
warning now? If the merchant had found her necklace, would he even
tell her? The man might deny any knowledge of it and keep it for
himself. It was very valuable and obviously so. It would be a
considerable test of his honesty.

Alyssa sank down and rested her head in the crook of her
elbow.

For the first time, a thought occurred to her, it may be
lost forever.

With that thought, the memory of her mother came into
her mind, the strongest memory she had of her. It was the moment she had
first been entrusted with the Ettinshel. It had been so revered, so
powerful, that when her mother placed it in her hands, she knew the
situation was serious.