“No,” Gar replied, “but he says I appear in his.” Gianni digested that as they went down a few more steps. Then he asked, “What was that object?”
“Magic,” Gar answered.
“Of course,” Gianni said dryly.
CHAPTER 11
As they were coming down, another pair of guards came out of a side passage and started up the stairs. They saw Gianni’s party and stared. “Captain!” said one. “Why are the prisoners…”
“That’s not the captain, you dolt!” the other snapped, and thrust with his halberd.
Gar reached past Feste and pushed the weapon aside, just as the fake “captain” drew his sword and put the tip to the man’s throat. The guard’s mouth opened to shout—and froze in silence.
The other guard did manage a shout, just before Gianni closed his mouth with an uppercut. He fell back down the stairs and struck his head against the wall, but the helmet protected him enough so that he was only groggy as he tried to climb to his feet, croaking, “Alarm! Prisoners … escaped …” until Gianni jumped down beside him, caught up the man’s own halberd, and held the point to his throat. “Be still!” The man looked up at the gleaming steel and the hot, angry eyes above it, and held his tongue.
Gar stepped forward and touched his fingertips to the first guard’s temples. The man jerked, staring; then his eyes closed, and he slumped. Gar caught him and eased him down. “We still have two men out of uniform. Take his livery.” Then he stepped down to touch the other guard’s temples. As the man sagged back onto the stone, Gianni asked, “What did you do to them?”
“Put them to sleep.”
“I can see that!” Gianni reddened. “How?”
“Believe me,” Gar told him, “you don’t want to know.” He went on down the stairs, leaving Gianni to follow, seething—but also wondering. He’d been suspecting for some time that there was much more to Gar than met the eye, and that he didn’t like what he wasn’t seeing.
As they came out into the courtyard, the only three not wearing Prince Raginaldi’s livery were Vladimir, Gar, and Gianni. “Join us,” Gar said softly to Bernardino and Vincenzio as he beckoned to Vladimir. “Gianni, hold your arms behind you, like this, as though they were bound. The rest of you, level your halberds at us—that’s right. Now, Feste, march us all together to the gatehouse, and tell the porter and the sentries that you’ve been ordered to take Gianni and me out to hang us from a tree, because the prince has judged us to be rabble-rousers too dangerous to let live.”
Feste frowned. “Will they believe that?”
“Why should they not?”
Feste gazed at Gar a moment longer, then shrugged and went forward to lead the way. The other men clustered around Gianni and Gar and moved toward the gatehouse.
“What if the guards recognize us from the Gypsies’ descriptions?” Gianni muttered.
“Then they’ll be sure the prince knew what he was doing,” Gar muttered back. “In fact, we just might come out of this with everyone thinking we’re dead.”
“Not when they don’t see our bodies hanging from a tree near the drawbridge, they won’t!”
“True,” Gar sighed, “and when they find a half-dozen naked guardsmen.”
“In fact, they’ll be after us even harder!”
“Don’t let it bother you,” Gar assured him. “They can only hang us once.”
Gianni shivered at the casual, offhand way he said it. For a moment, he imagined he could feel the noose tightening about his neck—but he shook off the fantasy and plodded angrily after Gar.
As they came to the gatehouse, Feste barked, “Halt!” The rest did a creditable imitation of a soldier’s stamp-to-a-stop. “Drop the bridge!” Feste ordered the real sentries. “The prince has commanded that these two be hanged at once!”
The sentries stared, and one said, “He can’t wait till dawn?”
“Who are you to question the prince’s orders?” Feste stormed.
“I don’t know this captain,” the other guard said doubtfully.
“ ‘You will,’ ” Gar muttered to Feste.
“You’ll know me soon enough, and better than you like, if you don’t obey orders!” Feste raged. “The prince wants these two hanged outside as a warning to any who would defy him! Now lower that drawbridge!”
“As you say, Captain,” the taller sentry said reluctantly, and turned to call into the gatehouse. Gianni waited with his heart in his throat, hearing the huge windlass grind away, thinking the bridge would never stop falling, thinking crazily that the sentries must see through them, their disguises were so transparent. How could they possibly accept Feste as a new captain when they had never seen him before? He couldn’t believe experienced soldiers could actually be persuaded by so obvious a lie!
So when the sentries stepped aside and waved them on, he followed mechanically, amazed—and, as they came out across the moat, he found himself wondering how it could ever be that the soldiers had obeyed. He could only think that Feste was far more persuasive than he seemed.
“No shouting,” Gar said, his voice taut, “not a sign of victory till we’re half a mile away! Just march us back into the woods over there, and keep marching!”
Silently as a funeral procession, they marched through the moonlight and into the trees, with Gianni expecting any minute to feel a crossbow bolt in his back. But they came into the blessed darkness unscathed and marched on for twenty minutes more until they came to a clearing, where Gar stopped and said, “Now.”
The men cut loose with a howling cheer, throwing their borrowed helmets up into the air, then running fast to avoid them as they came down. Gar turned to grin at Gianni and slap him on the shoulder. Gianni felt himself grinning back, all his nervousness sliding away under the triumph and sheer joy of being alive and free.
When they calmed a bit, Gar said, “They’ll be searching for us by daybreak, if not before. Drop those soldiers’ clothes right here and hide them in the bushes. Keep the belts and boots—you can trade them to peasants for whole suits of clothes.”
“What about the halberds?” Rubio asked.
“A dead giveaway,” Gar said, “and if you let them give you away, you’ll be dead indeed—soldiers take a dim view of peasants beating up other soldiers.”
“But that leaves us unarmed,” Vincenzio protested.
Gar hesitated a moment, then said, “Break off the handles so you can thrust the heads into your belts as hand axes. That way, you’ll each have a walking staff, too. You’ll need it.”
“We will?” Feste looked up at him alertly. “Why?”
“Because as long as you’re on the road, you’ll be in danger. You need a refuge, and the one place that’s sure to take you in is Pirogia.”
“Pirogia!” Rubio cried indignantly. “I, a man of Venoga?”
“There’s a lot of country between us and Venoga,” Vincenzio reminded him, “and most of it’s infested with Stilettos.”
Feste frowned. “Why should Pirogia admit us?”
“Because I’ll vouch for you,” Gianni said. “You can join our army.”
“I didn’t know Pirogia had an army.”
“We don’t, but we will,” Gianni said grimly, “and very soon, too.”
“But each pair of men go by a different route,” Gar counseled. “Find different bypaths within this wood, and come out at different points. The more of us there are together, the more the prince’s men will be sure we’re the fugitives who stole their clothes. At the very least, if you absolutely must go by the same road, let one pair go out of sight before the other starts from this wood. If you can, trade your boots for the clothes of a woodcutter or a poacher. Go now, and meet us at Pirogia!”