The Way Into Chaos (60 page)

The door swung open and two figures rushed inside. One held a lantern high, panel open at the front to illuminate the room. Even such a weak light was enough in this darkness. Tejohn had been discovered.
 

But these weren’t guards. He lowered the knife back and stood upright, letting the light shine on him in full. He knew who had come to meet him even before he recognized her voice.
 

Weshka said, “What are you doing?”

“It has to be tonight,” he answered. “I know who they’re keeping in that pit, and I have to get him out before morning.”

“Who is it? And why?”
 

Tejohn glanced at Weshka’s companion. He was just a silhouette, but from what Tejohn could make out, he was tall and painfully skinny, with a long fringe of hair around a bald scalp. Tejohn didn’t recognize him, but he assumed this was the voice in the darkness.
 

A servant’s treasure became less valuable the more it was shared, but Weshka was asking and he wouldn’t withhold information from her. “His name is Oskol Twofin.”
 

“My great-grandfather came out of Twofin lands,” Weshka said. “So, he’s some minor tyr’s favorite second cousin? That makes him important?”

Tejohn shook his head. “Back in Peradain, he was the scholar who taught magic to the king.”

“Fury guide us, we have another scholar-king?” Weshka’s tone was bitter.

“Lar Italga is no... This isn’t the time for this. Doctor Twofin is one of the most accomplished scholars in the empire. If Tyr Finstel turns him... Twofin can create blocks and translation stones. With most of the Peradaini scholars killed, Finstel could establish a new Scholars’ Tower in Ussmajil and declare himself king.”

“One king or another makes no difference to us,” the companion said.
 

Weshka sighed and shut the door behind her. “But war in the Waterlands does. The tyrships to the east have already fallen to the grunts; could the others really be turning on each other?”

“They already are,” Tejohn told her. “Witt spears took Fort Caarilit for a short time, and ranged throughout the Sweeps, scooping up mining scholars. Finstel soldiers only took it back when the Witt spears marched for their holdfast, probably to deal with the grunts.”
 

“But why tonight?” Weshka asked.
 

“Doctor Twofin called me by name. It meant nothing to the guards, but if Tyr Finstel or Gerrit hears...”
 

“You will be tortured and executed,” Weshka said.
 

“I still don’t see how this concerns us,” the companion said. Tejohn wanted to rush across the room and punch him in the throat. “We’re strained enough as it is.”
 

“Lar Italga gave me a mission,” Tejohn said. “I need Doctor Twofin to complete it.”
 

“Describe this mission.”
 

“I can’t,” Tejohn said. “I swore an oath.”
 

The companion hissed. “Every oath you’ve ever taken was forsworn when you became a servant and again when you entered our cupboard.”
 

“Tejohn,” Weshka said, silencing the man with a wave of her hand. “This mission of yours will hold together the Italga empire, won’t it?”
 

“It will defeat the grunts,” Tejohn said, which was a bit of an exaggeration, but he couldn’t take it back. “I don’t know what would hold together the empire at this point. I doubt that anything could.”

“Can this Doctor Twofin do healing magic? Can he create a sleepstone for us, in secret?”

Tejohn immediately saw the wisdom in that. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so. I’m sorry. Medical scholars wear a special badge on their robes, and he doesn’t have one.”
 

Weshka nodded grimly, as though used to disappointment. “I will help you, but in return, someday I will come to you to ask for a favor, and you will grant it to me.”

Why not? “Agreed.”
 

She set the lantern on a work bench. “Being servants, we have heard the stories about you. Can you take all five guards? We have no armor or bows to give you, nor can we return your youth.”
 

Tejohn would have been stung by that comment a few months ago. “I’m hopeless with a bow, but if I can get close enough and fight them one at a time, I can kill them.” Or they could kill him.
 

“You can not use a knife from this kitchen,” Weshka said. “The overseers keep track of our tools, and if you killed a guard with one of these knives, it would cost the life of every man, woman, and child who works in this room.”
 

A small price to pay
was his first thought, but he dismissed it immediately. He’d killed more men and women than he could count in battle, and he’d ordered more to take positions he knew would likely lead to their deaths. A series of faces flashed back into his memory--people he hadn’t thought of in years--all of them dead because he’d ordered them to hold a particular position or mount a diversionary assault.
 

But they had been solders. Having lived among the servants, he couldn’t toss away their lives. Not like this. He set the long bronze knife on the bench beside him.
 

“I can get you close, I think. Come here.” Weshka led him to the back door, then pulled a folded black cloak off a shelf. The hood was large enough to hide the wearer’s face, and there was a large white circle on the top.
 

“Sometimes,” she said, “when a servant is desperate for money or food, he--or more often, she--will visit a guard post wearing this. Sometimes, she earns enough to bribe the medical scholars to let her use a sleepstone, or to acquire extra food for her child. Approach the tower wearing this and they will not make you stand and announce yourself. If you survive, it would be best if this was not found anywhere near the tower afterward.”
 

Tejohn took it from her and threw it over his shoulders. The hood was long enough to shadow his face, but he had to crouch so the hem covered his large feet.
 

“Clasp it here,” Weshka told him, “to hide your beard. Men are sometimes turned away. Women almost never are. Do you need food?”
 

“This is ridiculous,” the companion said.
 

“Food would help.”

She offered him a hunk of cold lamb that was as large as his fist. Just a few bites were enough to steady his hands and clear his head. He wrapped the rest in a piece of old linen and tucked it into his shirt in case Doctor Twofin needed it.
 

“Remember your promise” was all Weshka said to him as he slipped out of the kitchen onto the cart path.
 

The journey to the meadow, which seemed so long when he pulled a cart of firewood behind him, now seemed to take no time at all. He was so surprised to come upon the edge of the meadow that he paused there, staring at the looming, blurry shape of the tower ahead. Fire and Fury, the wind off the river was cold.
 

Tejohn forced himself to keep moving forward. He couldn’t see how many guards were ahead of him. What if they tripled their numbers after dark?
 

But no, as he came close, he could see that wasn’t so. There was still the one guard standing outside the entrance and two more patrolling the open second floor. All held the ridiculously long spears that seemed to be in fashion here. Jeering came from up above as Tejohn shuffled toward the guard at the gate, his body shrunk as much as possible. But inside, his desperation was churning, becoming that old feeling again.
I am going to kill you.

“You’re visiting late tonight,” the guard at the gate said. “You two up there! Get back to your rounds. You’ll get your turn, if you have the coin for it.”
 

Tejohn slowed as he approached, expecting to be led into a secluded place. Instead, the guard waved him closer, toward his guard position. He had no intention of leaving his post.
 

“New, are you?” the guard reached up to throw back the black hood. “Let’s see who—”
 

Tejohn punched him in the throat. The man didn’t have a chance to make a sound. His hands went to his throat out of instinct, and Tejohn yanked his sword from his scabbard and plunged it deep into his armpit.
 

There was no way to hide the sound of a sword being drawn or an armored body falling. Tejohn grabbed the spear before it hit the ground and lifted it upright, so the tip was near the ledge of the second floor but not above it.
 

As expected, one of the guards leaned over the wall. He was several paces to the right of Tejohn’s spear point.
 

“What are you fools—”
 

Tejohn lunged to the side, holding the spear awkwardly by the very end. There was some sort of metal ball on the back end of the shaft. A counterweight?
 
The guard above seemed frozen for a couple of breaths as he tried to make sense of what he was seeing. Tejohn thrust upward with the spear and caught him below the chin.
 

He gurgled and fell backward into the tower. Someone cried, “Alarm!”
 

Tejohn yanked the short sword out of the guard’s chest and, with all his might, stabbed it through the gate latch into the jamb. It wouldn’t hold the soldiers inside for long, but he hoped it would be long enough.
 

The guard above leaned over the ledge with shield and spear. Tejohn jabbed upward, but the man easily deflected his spear.
 

Someone inside the tower yanked at the door. For a moment, Tejohn thought the sword would tear out of the wood, but it didn’t. It wobbled more than he’d like, but the door held.
 

In the moment he looked away, the guard above struck. Only the fact that Tejohn had been trained to move constantly prevented the spear from stabbing through his collarbone. The weapon slipped between his chest and his left arm, the flat of the blade striking the side of his thigh.
 

“Agh,” he cried, “my leg!” and began to crumple toward the ground. The guard above sneered in triumph and leaned far over the ledge to stab a second time.
 

Tejohn leaped upward and to the side, stabbing all the way through the guard’s neck. The man made no sound at all as he slid forward, spear and shield falling nervelessly from his hands. The weighted end of Tejohn’s spear wedged against the ground; the falling body bent then shivered the shaft.
 

Tejohn picked up the dead guard’s spear and shield, then his sword. Peradaini soldiers preferred their spears, but a fight inside would be sword work, just like at the mining camp. He took up a position beside the door, then stabbed the sword into the dirt. He held the spear near the blade and crouched, swaying side to side, watching the sword in the latch waver back and forth as the men inside tried to open the door.

He was bleeding. He touched the front of his chest with his shield hand. It came away wet. It was a shallow wound, the sort that could be healed with stitches and a poultice, but it never failed to startle him to realize he’d taken an injury without feeling it.
 

Just as the wooden jamb around the sword began to splinter, Tejohn threw his shoulder into it. The door burst inward. The point of the sword, still protruding from the latch, struck the shield of the man who’d been pulling at the door. He raised his shield as though meeting an attack, and Tejohn stabbed low, plunging the spear tip into his inner thigh.
 

Blood fountained in the firelit room. The man cried out and fell back onto the stone floor. Tejohn was already spinning, bringing his shield around, when the second man stabbed at him. Tejohn deflected the attack, but his own spear twisted out of his hands.
 

He scrambled backward through the doorway, the guard jabbing at him as he retreated. He struck the back of his head against the doorjamb, then slipped through, knocking aside the spear point with the edge of his stolen shield.
 

His vision partially obscured by spots, his strength draining away, Tejohn yanked the sword out of the dirt and leaped to the side. He wasn’t sure how much exertion he had left, but it would have to be enough to take on one more man. He could still feel the battle lust inside him, as irresistible as a falling blade.
 

The guard he’d stabbed in the leg lay moaning against the wall, trying to pinch off the blood flow. The other man stood crouched in the entrance hall, spear point facing forward. This wasn’t one of the ungainly spears the others had held outside. This was the shorter spear that Tejohn had fought with in his youth, and he suppressed an absurd urge to ask the man to let him hold it one last time.
 

Tejohn rushed through the doorway, slamming the edge of his shield against the man’s spear, batting it aside. He tripped over the spear on the ground as he advanced but managed not to fall. The guard cast his spear aside and reached for his sword, while at the same time slamming Tejohn aside with his shield.
 

Finally, someone who knew how to use a shield correctly. The metal rim struck painfully against Tejohn’s forearm but he didn’t lose his grip on his short sword. Then, both blades were bared, and the two men clashed. Their faces were lit in red by the flames in the hearth, and they could see each other. Something in Tejohn’s expression must have given the guard confidence, because he suddenly grinned.

Tejohn wedged his shield against the other man’s, prying it away from his torso. The guard swung overhand at Tejohn’s unprotected skull, but he felt the attack coming and ducked low and to the right. The guard felt his shift in position and pivoted away from Tejohn’s sword thrust.
 

Fire and Fury, Tejohn was fading, losing his quickness and power. Still, the guard’s arm was high over his own shield, and there was another artery there--
 

White hot pain pierced Tejohn’s low back, just above his right hip. He gasped and looked down; a spear point protruded from his lower abdomen, dark bloodstains all over his tunic.