“Not enough force.”
“He was hit by a cannonball, walking the front. It shattered on him! Killed half a nearby gun crew and a colonel.”
Goutlit had begun to talk louder. His voice was high-pitched, and he breathed heavily. His whole body began to tremble. Taniel shook him by the front of his jacket. It didn’t seem to help.
Taniel realized he had a problem. He would need to scale the walls of the keep. Easy enough by himself, but impossible for Goutlit.
The simplest thing would be to just kill the man. He was an enemy, after all. A Kez. Their field marshal.
Taniel lay a hand on his knife. Goutlit didn’t seem to notice. A quick stroke, silent as can be. It wouldn’t be the first man Taniel had killed, nor the last.
Then again, this was butchery. Goutlit was his prisoner.
“Take off your clothes,” Taniel said.
Goutlit seemed to snap out of whatever fear had been racing through his mind. “I beg your pardon?”
“Clothes. Off.”
“I refuse.”
“This is me saving your life,” Taniel said. “I can either tie you up, to be found in the morning, or I can kill you. Tell me now, but decide quickly.”
Taniel thought for a moment that Goutlit would cry out. Was this the indignity to break him? Goutlit watched Taniel in silence and then removed his jacket.
“You can keep your underclothes on,” Taniel said, “but make it quick.” When the field marshal had stripped to his underwear, Taniel motioned with his knife at the tree. “Climb.”
Goutlit’s eyes widened. “I can’t possibly…”
Taniel grabbed Goutlit by the back of his neck and shoved him at the trunk of the giant oak. Goutlit scrambled up to the lowest branch awkwardly. Taniel gathered Goutlit’s clothes and followed him up.
“Keep going.”
Goutlit was about thirty feet in the air before he clutched a thick branch and absolutely refused to climb farther. His eyes rolled wildly, and Taniel could hear his teeth chatter.
“I won’t go higher. Kill me now.”
“This will do.” Taniel fastened Goutlit to the tree branch tightly, using Goutlit’s own belt and pants as restraints. “It’s not comfortable, but you’ll live.”
Taniel stuffed one of Goutlit’s socks into the field marshal’s mouth.
He ignored Goutlit’s squeals of protest and began to descend. By the time he reached the ground, he couldn’t even hear the man, and once he’d taken a few dozen steps, Goutlit was all but forgotten.
Taniel timed the Prielight patrols around the base of the keep and slipped up to the wall after the last patrol had passed. The keep had once had a moat, but that had long ago filled in, leaving only a swampy lowland and a few ponds behind.
The walls of the keep were easily sixty feet high, and the one leading up to the tower that was Taniel’s target couldn’t have been less than a hundred. No small climb.
He left the musket in some weeds and secured his pistols and dagger before beginning the climb. Immense blocks of granite, half Taniel’s height, were stacked at a slight incline, each one with a lip that gave his fingers a couple inches of room to hold on to. Taniel tested his grip with both hands, then hauled himself up.
He was halfway up the wall when a Prielight patrol passed under where he’d been. He hung off the wall, breathing quietly and praying they’d not stumble across his musket. A raised voice, even a suspicious glance upward, and he’d be finished. He silently cursed himself for taking the dead guard’s uniform. The Kez military tan stood out against the dark granite of the keep like a beacon.
The patrol kept moving, and Taniel resumed his climb.
He reached the top of the wall, just under the parapets. He could hear the steady tread of a patrolling guard just above him, and then another sound. It seemed quiet and distant at first, and then grew louder.
Taniel pressed himself against the stone, his fingers and arms aching from the climb. What was that sound? He looked down. Far below, another Prielight patrol. Was someone sounding an alarm?
He let go of the wall with one hand and carefully dipped into his pocket, taking a powder charge between his fingers. He’d make noise if he snorted it, so he crushed the end of the charge and sprinkled it in his mouth.
That infernal sound would not go away.
His powder trance intensified and he clung to the wall for a moment of dizziness.
Taniel almost began to laugh.
The guard above him was whistling.
A scream shattered the quiet of the night, nearly making Taniel lose his grip in surprise. It came from one of the windows below him.
His heart hammering in his ears, Taniel heard the guard on the parapet curse softly to himself, and then the sound of running footsteps as the man went to see what was wrong.
There was no time to waste. Taniel couldn’t be sure if the scream had been Kresimir, or one of the god’s victims, or even someone raising the alarm on Taniel. He pulled himself up to the parapet and peeked over. No one.
On the parapet, Taniel padded quietly toward Kresimir’s tower. He could make out other guards on the opposite walls of the keep, all of them looking down toward the source of the scream. None of them seemed to have noticed him.
He reached the tower and swore. No door on this level. He looked up. Another fifty feet of climbing, in full view of the guards on the parapet. Wait. A window, not fifteen feet above him.
Taniel threw himself up the stone wall, climbing as quickly as he dared, and in only a few moments he was through the window.
He found himself in the spiral staircase of the tower. He glanced back the way he’d come and had to stop to blink away a dizzy spell.
It was a long way to fall.
Taniel climbed the tower stairs until the stairs ended in a thick iron-bound door. He paused there and wondered what kind of a ward a god would put on his bedroom. He looked down and was grateful that his hands were not shaking. No sound of footsteps below him. No breathing from inside the room. Kresimir must be out.
Taniel pressed gently on the door. It opened with a single long creak that made him cringe.
He paused at the sight of the room.
Taniel had expected something like he’d seen in Kresimir’s palace on South Pike: a fine bed with expensive silk and lush carpeting and wall hangings, preserved against nature and time. But this… this was not the opulent quarters of a god.
The rug was nothing more than a soiled sheet. The curtains – perhaps once fine – were now torn and bedraggled. There was a full body mirror, shattered. A four-poster bed lay slanted against one wall, two of the posts destroyed.
Was this really Kresimir’s room? It showed signs of habitation. There was a table by one window, set with a meal. Taniel crossed to that and glanced out. He was just above the Addown. On the table was a tankard, half full of beer. A mouse, unafraid of Taniel, nibbled on the bread.
This had to be a mistake. Taniel had seen Kresimir’s palace. He’d seen Kresimir’s city. The god who created those things would not live in a tower like this.
What could he do? Goutlit must have lied to him. Taniel gritted his teeth. He’d climb back down and go skin that worm. Half the night, wasted, just because…
His eyes fell on the bed. The sheets were covered in blood; spattered rust-colored stains.
Taniel opened his third eye.
He dropped to his knees, staggered by the kaleidoscope of colors within the Else. Thousands of pastels swirled and moved, as if sorcery itself was born in this room. Taniel had to breathe deeply, suppressing the urge to vomit. The whole mountainside of South Pike hadn’t looked like this after months of Kez Privileged slinging their strongest sorcery at Shouldercrown Fortress.
Taniel forced his third eye to close and slowly got back to his feet. He drew his dagger and staggered to the bed.