Wulfgar awoke to sounds of a key in the lock of his cell door, and a thin, flickering light outside in the corridor. Having lost all track of time in the dark, he thought the morning of his torture had arrived. How surprised he was to find Lady Meralda staring in at him though the bars of his locked cell.
"Can you forgive me?" she whispered, glancing over her shoulder nervously.
Wulfgar just gaped at her.
"I didn't know he'd come after you," the woman explained. "I thought he'd let it go, and I'd be-"
"Safe," he finished for her. "You thought that your child would be safe." Now it was Meralda's turn for an incredulous stare. "Why have you come?" Wulfgar asked.
"You could've killed us," she replied. "Me and Liam on the road, I mean. Or done as they said you done."
"As you said I did," Wulfgar reminded.
"You could've let your friend have his way on the road, could've let Liam die," Meralda went on. "I'm owing you this much at least." To Wulfgar's astonishment she turned the key in the lock. "Up the ladder and to the left, then through the larder," she explained. "The way's clear." She lit another candle and left it for him, then turned and ran off.
Wulfgar gave her a lead, not wanting to catch up to her, for he didn't want her implicated if he were caught. Outside his cell, he pulled a metal sconce from the wall and used it to batter the lock as quietly as he could to make it look as though he had broken out of his own accord. Then he moved down the corridors to the ladder and up into the kitchen.
He, too, heard the guards arguing and rolling bones in a nearby room, so he couldn't similarly destroy the locks and bars up here. He re-locked and barred the trap door. Let them think he'd found some magical assistance. Going straight through the larder, as Meralda had bade him, Wulfgar squeezed through the small door, a tight fit indeed, and found a precarious perch on wet rocks outside at the base of the castle. The stones were worn and smooth. Wulfgar couldn't hope to scale it, nor was there any apparent way around the corner, for the tide was crashing in.
Wulfgar leaped into the cold water.
*****
Hiding in the kitchen, Meralda nodded as Wulfgar heightened her ruse by securing the trap door. She similarly locked the larder, washed all signs of her subterranean adventure from her feet, and padded quietly back to return the keys to Steward Temigast's room without further incident.
Meralda was back in her bed soon after, the terrible demons of guilt-some of them, at least-banished at last.
*****
The breeze off the water was chill, but Morik was still sweating under the heavy folds of his latest disguise as an old washerwoman. He stood behind a stone wall near the entrance to the short bridge leading to Castle Auck.
"Why did they put the thing on an island?" the rogue muttered disgustedly, but of course, his own current troubles answered the question. A lone guard leaned on the wall above the huge castle gate. The man was very likely half asleep, but Morik could see no way to get near to him. The bridge was well lit, torches burning all the night long from what he had heard, and it offered no cover whatsoever. He would have to swim to the castle.
Morik looked at the dark waters doubtfully. He wouldn't have much of a disguise left after crossing through that, if he even made it. Morik wasn't a strong swimmer and didn't know the sea or what monsters might lurk beneath the dark waves.
Morik realized then and there that his time with Wulfgar was at its end. He would go to the place of torture in the morning, he decided, but probably only to say farewell, for it was unlikely he could rescue the man there without jeopardizing himself.
No, he decided, he wouldn't even attend. "What good might it bring?" he muttered. It could even bring disaster for Morik if the wizard who had caught Wulfgar was there and recognized him. "Better that I remember Wulfgar from our times of freedom.
"Farewell, my big friend," Morik said aloud sadly. "I go now back to Luskan-"
Morik paused as the water churned at the base of the wall. A large, dark form began crawling from the surf. The rogue's hand went to his sword.
"Morik?" Wulfgar asked, his teeth chattering from the icy water. "What are you doing here?"
"I could ask the same of you!" the rogue cried, delighted and astounded all at once. "I, of course, came to rescue you," the cocky rogue added, bending to take Wulfgar's arm and help pull the man up beside him. "This will require a lot of explaining, but come, let us be fast on our way."
Wulfgar wasn't about to argue.
*****
"I shall have every guard in this place executed!" Lord Feringal fumed when he learned of the escape the next morning, the morning he was planning to exact his revenge upon the barbarian.
The guard shrank back, fearing Lord Feringal would attack him then and there, and indeed, it seemed as if the young man would charge him from his chair. Meralda grabbed him by the arm, settling him. "Calm, my lord," she said.
"Calm?" Lord Feringal balked. "Who failed me?" he yelled at the guard. "Who shall pay in Wulfgar's stead?"
"None," Meralda answered before the stammering guard could begin to reply. Feringal looked at her incredulously. "Anyone you harm will be because of me," the woman explained. "I'll have no blood on my hands. You'd only be making things worse."
The young lord calmed somewhat and sat back, staring at his wife, at the woman he wanted, above all else, to protect.
After a moment's thought, a moment of looking into that beautiful, innocent face, Feringal nodded his agreement. "Search all the lands," he instructed the guard, "and the castle again from dungeon to parapet. Return him to me alive."
Beads of sweat on his forehead, the guard bowed and ran out of the room.
"Fear not, my love," Lord Feringal said to Meralda. "I shall recall the wizard and begin the search anew. The barbarian shall not escape."
"Please, my lord," Meralda begged. "Don't summon the wizard again, or any other." That raised a few eyebrows, including Priscilla's and Temigast's. "I'm wanting it all done," she explained. "It's done, I say, and on the road behind me. I'm not wanting to look back ever again. Let the man go and die in the mountains, and let us look ahead to our own life, to when you might be siring children of our own."
Feringal continued to stare, unblinking. Slowly, very slowly, his head nodded, and Meralda relaxed back in her chair.
*****
Steward Temigast watched it all with growing certainty. He knew, without doubt, that Meralda was the one who had freed the barbarian. The wise old man, suspicious since seeing the woman's reaction when Wulfgar had first been dragged before her, had little trouble in understanding why. He resolved to say nothing, for it was not his place to inflict unnecessary pain on his lord. In any event, the child would be put out of the way and in no line of ascension.
But Temigast was far from easy with it all, especially after he looked at Priscilla and saw her wearing an expression that might have been his own. She was always suspicious, that one, and Temigast feared she was harboring his same doubts about the child's heritage. Though Temigast felt it not his place to inflict unnecessary pain, Priscilla Auck seemed to revel in just that sort of thing. The road to which Meralda had referred was far from clear in either direction.
Chapter 24 WINTER'S PAUSE
"This is our chance," Wulfgar explained to Morik. The pair were crouched behind a shielding wall of stone on a mountainside above one of the many small villages on the southern side of the Spine of the World.