With a last look at his orderly workshop, the place that had been the center of his life for more than twenty years, Bradok cinched his pack closed, slung it over his shoulders, and walked out, shutting the door behind himself.
When he reached the foyer again, he found Sapphire there, waiting for him. At the sight of the sword on his belt, her face fell. Some of her haughtiness melted away.
“It’s true, then,” she sniffed. “You’re really planning to leave.”
“Yes, Mother,” he said. “There’s a cooper in the Artisans’ Cavern who had a vision. He’s building a boat, or he was until they arrested him. It’s partly my fault that he was arrested. I want to make amends. I’m going to his shop to finish the boat.”
“Madness!” Sapphire scoffed. “You’ve always been a sensible boy, Bradok. You know there’s no such thing as visions.”
“No, I don’t really know that, Mother,” he said, turning to look her square in the face. “I’m beginning to doubt everything I thought I knew. Perhaps I don’t know anything much at all.”
“Well, I can agree with you on that,” she returned. “But what makes you think this cooper has any answers? What makes you think helping him will make one bit of difference?”
“It’s just a feeling I have in my gut,” Bradok said, opening his front door. “I guess it’s something you’d have to take on faith.”
He left Sapphire standing in the hall with her mouth agape as he turned and strode briskly down the steps to the street. In his haste, he didn’t even shut the door.
CHAPTER 7
We should have grabbed him when we had the chance,” Jon Bladehook said one week later, pacing around the front of Mayor Arbuckle’s office. “We had a nice, easy plan until he came along.”
“I agree,” the mayor said easily, leaning back in the hard, wooden chair behind his desk. “But it’s too late for that now. We just have to let things play out. Bradok and the rest of those fools can’t stay barricaded in the Artisans’ Cavern forever.”
“They don’t have to,” Bladehook fumed. “Today is the deadline, and anyone who doesn’t renounce their beliefs needs to be dealt with. If Bradok Axeblade can defy us, even for a single day, it will sow the seeds of rebellion among the people. They’ll see us as weak.”
“How will they see us if we lose twenty or thirty guardsmen in an assault on that barricade?” Arbuckle demanded. “The whole guard is only one hundred or so dwarves. How will we be seen by our enemies if a third of our soldiers are killed?”
Bladehook scowled but made no answer. He doubted Bradok and his little band of boat-builders could or would kill thirty guardsmen, but he had to agree with Arbuckle: it wasn’t worth the risk.
“So we’re just going to leave them down there?” he asked.
Arbuckle nodded. “They’ll get hungry sooner or later,” he said, smiling broadly. “Besides, every day that passes without any ‘wrath’ from their god only makes them look more and more foolish. I predict it won’t be very long before their followers start deserting them.”
Jon sighed. “I wish this day were over,” he said, flopping down on a padded couch that sat against the back wall. “This day of doom! The sooner it passes, the sooner we can get back to reality.”
“Patience, Jon,” Arbuckle said, consulting the tall clock that stood in the corner. “In six hours it will be midnight and we will have won. The government will be all ours, without interference from those busybodies in the temple.”
Jon grinned at that.
Arbuckle rose and crossed to the cupboards behind his desk. He took out a crystal decanter and two short glasses, and poured some amber liquid into each glass. “You and I, Jon,” Arbuckle said, handing him a glass. “We’ll rule this city like kings. Just like we always talked about.”
He held up his glass, and Jon clinked his against it.
“To the kings of Ironroot!” Bladehook said with a chuckle before he pitched the drink back, downing it in one gulp.
“Care for another?” Arbuckle asked, holding up the decanter.
“Why not?” Jon said, holding out his glass.
At that moment, the door to Arbuckle’s office burst open, admitting the captain of the city guard, disheveled and out of breath. Arbuckle and Bladehook were startled by the sudden appearance of the captain and spirits sloshed down Jon’s front.
“What’s the meaning of this?” Jon demanded, hurriedly brushing the liquor from his expensive shirt.
“The … prisoners,” the captain gasped. “They’re … uh, gone.”
Jon exchanged a worried look with Arbuckle.
“What do you mean, ‘gone’?” he asked.
“They disappeared,” the captain explained, finally catching his breath. “Right out of their cells. Every one of them.”
“You mean the street preachers?” Arbuckle demanded.
The captain nodded.
“Damn it, man,” the mayor said. “Call out the guard. Seal off the city. I want them found. And I want to know who’s to blame!”
“I know,” the captain said. “I’ve already ordered those steps taken. But there’s more. You see, I thought they might have taken refuge in the temple, so I had my men search the building.”
“And?” Bladehook asked.
“And the priests are g-gone too!” the captain stammered. “All their belongings are there: the candles and fires are lit, there’s even a meal on the table, but the priests have vanished.”
Arbuckle swore in a long streak of barely-related expletives. For his part, Bladehook felt like he’d been punched in the gut.
“We can’t let them get away!” the latter said quickly. “If they all escape, the believers will claim it was some kind of miracle, and then we’ll be back where we started.”
“Or worse,” Arbuckle agreed.
“I’ve got men stationed at the upper gates and on all the side tunnels from the main cavern,” the captain said. “We’re stretched pretty thin, though. If only we knew where they were headed.”
“They must be trying to reach Bradok,” Jon said. “They’re the only support left for believers in the city.”
“Then we have to stop them,” Arbuckle said. “Captain, assemble as many men as you can and meet us in the Artisans’ Cavern.”
With that, the three dwarves charged out of the room, leaving the liquor bottle standing open on the desk.
Bradok blew the dust and shavings from the hole he’d just finished drilling in the front end of the ship’s keel. He slipped a long brass bolt into the hole and hung a small lantern on it, bolting it in place. The lantern held a glowstone, a rock that had been blessed by a priest so that it gave off a bright purplish light.
He straightened up, leaning back to crack his spine, then strode proudly to the ramp that led down from the completed ship. When Bradok arrived the week before, work on the ship had all but ceased. News of Silas’s arrest had dispirited those who believed him. Since then, Bradok had rallied Silas’s friends and family, convincing them that he would finish what Silas had started.
The job was finally finished.
They’d had to tear down the shop and some of the nearby walkways to find all the necessary wood, and they’d had to virtually barricade themselves inside there, away from the increasing encroachment of the city guard, but they’d done it.
“How much food do we have left?” he called to Perin.
The human looked up from where he’d been stacking their meager supplies. “Not more than three or four days, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully.
“Better hurry up; get it all loaded,” Bradok said. “At the risk of repeating myself, this is the day. I’m afraid we’d better get ready. Things are liable to get ugly before too long.”