While Mont daydreamed, Shaa considered logistics.
First, they would have to land the boat. Second, climb the wall and get into the palace complex. Third, act unobtrusive long enough to sidle undiscovered into the dungeons. Fourth, free the prisoners. The right prisoners, Shaa amended sourly, remembering an annoying exploit that had come to involve an axe-murderer some years before. Fifth and subsequent, no doubt overpower the troops, overthrow Kaar, and overcome the inevitable apathy of the populace. By then, it should at least be time for breakfast.
“We’re getting pretty close,” Mont said.
Shaa glanced to his left as he faced the stern of the boat, at the long sweep of shadowed wall now immediately downstream, and surveyed its height. The shadows were surmounted sixty or seventy feet above the water by an abrupt line of twinkling torchlights and the shifting forms of men, the line broken by silhouettes of catapults and troughs for boiling oil. Water foamed a faint glowing blue at the base of the rock. “Look there,” Shaa said.
Just ahead of their position, a narrow bar of sediment protruded from the tip of the island, built up by the current behind a lee in the rocks. “That?” Mont squeaked. “You’ve got to be -”
“Quiet,” Shaa said. “Please.” The spot would be big enough for the boat, barely, but only if the boat could be made to arrive there. Shaa angled the prow and dipped with one oar, and the current propelled the boat in roughly the right direction. The noise of the water increased: waves crashed against the rocks on both sides. The boat bounced. Again the boat leaped, something grated under Mont’s feet, the wood vibrating angrily, the bow rose up and came down on a rock, timbers boomed and splintered, and then another wave lifted the keel cleanly and set the boat down on the beach. Mont fell over the side and clutched weakly at the cracked prow. It came away in his hand. “Augh,” Mont said in a thin voice. “You - you - how lucky can you expect to -”
“Skill, my friend,” Shaa said distractedly. He was standing on a log protruding from the packed gravel, looking up at the rocks and the wall.
“But the boat - it’ll never sail again. How are we going to get -”
“You did plan to free prisoners, yes? Perhaps deal with Kaar in the bargain? Obviously the route of our departure would be different.”
“Ah,” Mont said, “ah, obviously, of course. Ah, what now, then?” He tilted his head back, too; the rocks went upward at an angle that approximated the vertical. Water splashed around his ankles.
Shaa brushed spray from his eyes and squinted. “There, look there. Halfway up and somewhat to the right.”
Then Mont saw it too - a small area of the cliff face splashed with a gentle orange glow. The glow did not come from the battlements above.
“A window,”· Shaa said, “of some type.” From under his cloak, shrugging off a shoulder strap, Shaa produced a leather bag the length of his arm. He undid the thong at one end and withdrew a squared-off cylinder of wood bound with metal bands and other attachments. Several smaller parts followed. Shaa swung two supports out from the sides of the cylinder, and its form became apparent.
“A crossbow?” Mont said.
“Indeed.” Shaa placed the butt end against the log embedded in the ground, snapped out a small pedal on the underside of the body, now several feet in the air, positioned his foot on the pedal, and stood up on it. With a smooth metallic whine, barely audible over the crash of the river swells, the pedal sank slowly down. “The mechanism works, I believe, on an armature of nested springs.” Shaa again consulted the leather bag, which now yielded a lumpy arrow and a reel of thin cord. “Observe,” he said. He clipped a fastener from the cord to the arrow’s trailing end, held the arrow in front of the fletching, and struck its blunt point sharply against the remains of the boat. With a sharp “sproing”, half-a-dozen rods snapped outward from the front half of the arrow to stick out radially from the tip, like spokes. Shaa displayed the grapnel, then folded the hinged arms back against the shaft and engaged the locking device.
“That’s the most improbable thing I’ve ever seen,” Mont said incredulously, “but it’s never going to hold our weight. We’re both gonna die.”
“Prepare to be surprised,” Shaa said dryly. “The fabricator specializes in such devices. He has a remarkable obsession with the mechanical.”
“What friend is this one?”
“Max,” Shaa said, “the same Max.”
The same one who’d taught Shaa his fencing? That sounded pretty farfetched, but so did most everything Shaa said. Mont decided Shaa must be testing him again in some weird way. He figured he’d better be noncommittal. “This Max guy sure must get around.”
“Yes, he does at that.” Shaa had now attached the reel of line to a socket at the butt end of the crossbow and carefully seated the arrow within its guides. He backed out along the log to the edge of the lapping water, raised the crossbow, sighted down the mark at the brighter spot in the cliff, and sprung the catch. The arrow lunged out, the reel of cord humming busily behind it, and disappeared into the rocks. Shaa had cocked his head to listen, and now he nodded with satisfaction. “I will go first,” he said.
“Where? How do you know where it is? How do you know the thing’s even holding?”
“All I ask is some modicum of trust,” Shaa said testily. He collapsed the crossbow and stowed it in its bag, slung the bag back under his cloak, and put his weight on the cord.
The cord held. Rocks reared their jagged edges invisibly in the darkness. Shaa, wary of fraying, kept the rope high. Several person-heights above the river the jagged rocks became large stones set more neatly together, and the climb evened out. Shaa pulled vertically with his arms and walked up the stones with his feet. The glow, its location and distance uncertain in the dark, drew closer, and then was suddenly abreast.
The arrow had gone through the interlaced iron bars protecting a small square ventilation hole, springing the grapnel against the wall of the shaft within. Torchlight flickered up the shaft. Shaa, looking through it, saw that it slanted down to meet a corridor. It would be a squeeze, but should be passable. He found a piton, wedged it into a space between the stones above the hole, and belayed the cord around it, removing his weight from the grapnel. The grapnel was well-made and he certainly trusted Max, but it was better all around not to push things to their limit. Again fumbling beneath his cloak, Shaa with a small grunt of satisfaction produced the bladder of the small southern amphibian he had employed to such effect earlier, in their escape from the Bilious Gnome, and squirted foaming liquid on the iron bars. Shaa held his breath. The liquid hissed. The grating sagged, tilted, and swung free to dangle from Shaa’s cord, caught at the end of the grapnel.
Shaa lowered the grating into the shaft, then followed it. The squeeze was indeed tight, but not nearly as bad as such things sometimes were. The incline was fortunately not steep. Mont appeared at the window and flopped headfirst over the edge. “You do this sort of stuff for fun?” he whispered.
“Why, don’t you like it?” Shaa said distractedly. “Quiet.” He pushed himself further and slid down to the shaft’s outlet. The corridor below was silent. Shaa eased his head out of the shaft and glanced quickly around.
The corridor ran parallel to the outer wall, then angled back into the interior of the castle. Dust was thick on the narrow floor. The torchlight they had glimpsed outside was still little more than a orange glow, though it was brighter at the turning on the left. Shaa dropped to the floor and came up in a crouch, his hand on his rapier.
Nothing stirred. “Well, you know this palace,” Shaa whispered back into the shaft. “Which direction do we take?”
Mont, who had been getting tired of being scrunched uncomfortably up the shaft behind Shaa, appeared in the opening, then lost his balance and slid free. Shaa caught him with an arm and managed to lower him soundlessly to the floor. Mont shook his head, cocked it to one side, closed his eyes, and appeared to listen. It occurred to Shaa that Mont had probably been doing the same thing in the shaft, thus distracting himself enough to make him lose his hold. Still, it was entirely possible that whatever inner tunes he was hearing might indeed make his distraction worthwhile. Mont chewed his lip and opened his eyes; they were vague and unfocussed.
“I think it’s better on the right, away from the light,” Jurtan Mont said. “Let’s go right.”
Shaa finished stowing the grapnel, loosened the iron bar in his belt, and headed down the corridor to the right.