Liam snorted. “How are you going to do that?”
Very easily, as it turned out. Gar produced a heavy knife that he had hidden in the folds of his cloak. Liam stared. “How did you get that past the guards?”
“They were much more interested in my sword and dagger,” Gar explained. “When it’s dark, boost me up to that window.”
Before dark, he and Dirk went quietly among the men, giving them the names of their cells—there were tawny owls and banded owls, chimney swifts and barn swifts, gray squirrels and red squirrels, on and on through the animal kingdom. Coll wondered how Dirk could ever remember so many and be sure he had it right.
Then darkness fell, and five men stood against the wall with four men on their shoulders and Gar on top, picking at the mortar between the stones around the window. Liam was just beginning to growl about wasted effort when a shower of mortar silenced him. It took an hour and four changes of men, but at last Gar handed down the barred window, followed by blocks of stone two feet long and a foot thick. They came and came, six, twelve, eighteen. Then finally Gar climbed down, and the last pyramid of men groaned and rubbed their bruises.
Liam could only stare at the empty hole above him. “Who would ever have thought that mortar would have weakened so?”
“No one,” Gar told him, “so no one ever checked it.”
“You could have had us out of here the night you came in!”
“I could have,” Gar agreed, “but you would all have been killed or caught again. Now there’s a chance most of you will make it to freedom.” He turned around, his voice stern. “When you get out, creep to the back of the castle and swim the moat. I’ve been watching the moon, and it’s new—there won’t be any moonlight tonight. Those who can swim will pull those who can’t. When you reach the far side, sneak down the hill from bush to rock to bush. No noise, understand? Absolutely no noise! And no taking revenge on the lords or their soldiers—save that till the eggs hatch! When you’re five miles away from here, go where your cell’s been ordered to go—some to the greenwood, some to the towns, and your cell leader has been told the name. There, start new cells. If you’re caught and go to another prison, start cells there! Everyone understand? … Good. Time to go.”
13
The escape went without a flaw; the plan was, after all, very simple. Even the most fearful of the prisoners wanted his freedom so desperately that he managed to hold his jaw tight against cries of fear as his friends hauled him over the moat and out onto dry land. If any sentry did look down and see silhouettes flitting from shadow to shadow down the slope of the motte, he must have dismissed them as of no consequence—he was watching for people trying to get into the castle, not for people slipping out. The fugitives gained the cover of the trees and began to move off, not stopping to say good-bye or to congratulate one another on their escape. They knew they had only begun, and were far from being clear.
Coll, Dirk, and Gar slipped past the King’s Town through ditches and behind hedgerows on the surrounding farms. Then, out in the countryside, they walked down the broad, packed-earth thoroughfare—having been in the dungeon for only a fortnight, they were far better dressed than most of their fellow prisoners, so they dared take the chance. They stayed alert for the sound of hoofbeats, though, or the sight of moving shadows. They saw none, of course—no one else was abroad in the darkness of the night.
“You seem troubled, Coll,” Gar said gently. “Isn’t it good to be free again?”
“Very good!” Coll said. “But … doesn’t it bother you, Master Gar, that you may have loosed murderers and thieves upon the world?”
“Not a bit,” Gar assured him. “I’ve taken the time to talk with most of them, and Dirk has chatted with the ones I’ve missed. There were three killers in there, it’s true, but the men they slew were trying to kill them, or to ravish their wives or daughters.”
“Soldiers?” Coll could feel his blood growing hot again. “Two. The rest? Well, yes, most of them are thieves. They stole a few loaves of bread or a joint of mutton to feed their families. Some lost their tempers and cursed a soldier or a knight, and were thrown into prison after they’d been beaten. A dozen were poachers—again, out of sheer hunger. No, I don’t feel badly about loosing them on the world. The only people they’re apt to hurt are lords, knights, and soldiers.”
Coll’s faith in his masters was restored.
“You’ll have your chance to strike back yet,” Dirk assured him. “Besides, remember: Ciare is out there somewhere.”
The blood sang in Coll’s veins at the mere thought, but in the next instant, a feeling of doom fell over him. “She thinks I betrayed her,” he muttered. “She hates me now.”
“What could you do but follow our orders?” Gar said gently. “We’ll explain that to her. She’ll understand.”
Coll hoped he was right—though he doubted he would ever meet Ciare again. just thinking of it made his gloom deepen further.
They washed both themselves and their clothes in a small river by the pale light just before dawn, then filled their stomachs with nuts and berries and lay down in a thicket to sleep until twilight. That was the pattern of their lives for the next week: they walked by night and slept by day in caves and thickets, one always awake and on watch. Twice they bumped into their former prison mates and traded news. The whole group had managed to stay in touch, single members traveling from one cell to another even in just these few days. Not a one of them had been caught; all were safely hidden. Some had taken shelter with robber bands. Coll wondered how long it would be before each band housed several cells.
Coll watched the sun and the moon, and realized their path was curving, heading back toward the royal demesne. Finally he asked Gar, “Are we going back to the king?”
Gar nodded. “We’ll tell him we were split off from his army in the battle, and have been trying to make our way back to him without being caught. It’s almost true.”
“But it’s been two months!”
“It could take that long, believe me,” Gar assured him, and he had so much the air of a man who had done it before that Coll subsided, and didn’t question him further.
Gar judged they were far enough from the duke’s castle to risk being seen, so they began to travel by day and stop to exchange news in the villages they passed. He bought horses, too, so they traveled faster. After a few days, they began to come across the signs of soldiers passing—trampled crops, bruised peasants who told them they had no food to give or even to sell because the soldiers had taken it all, and here and there, a burned farmstead—so it was no great surprise when they came into a woodlot and heard screams ahead coupled with angry shouts, overlaid by gloating laughter.
Coll kicked his horse and charged ahead. Dirk caught up to him, calling, “Make sure you’re not fighting for the bad guys!”
“If there are soldiers,” Con called, “I’ll know!”
Then they rounded the curve and saw the players’ cart with one ox dead in the traces, and laughing soldiers carrying away Ciare and the other actresses, who were s screaming in rage and fear while they struggled and lashed out with foot and hand. Androv and the two other greybeards of the company were already stretched unmoving on the ground.
Coll roared with anger and charged straight at the soldier who held Ciare around the waist. His spear struck the man in the buttock; the soldier howled, dropping Ciare to clap a hand over his wound, then saw Coll raising his spear again and yanked out a huge dagger.