She heard the two guards exchange words but she could not make them out. What she did hear though was one of the guards scrambling down the ladder. She backed up slightly and peered upward to see which one left. Mistake felt a shudder of excitement as she saw that the second guard had left his post. She swiftly moved back to the wall and pulled the second knife from her teeth. Grabbing the knife already embedded in the wall with her left hand, she pulled herself upright with one arm. When she had raised herself as far as she could, she reached up and imbedded the second knife in the wall and hung on it as she pulled the first knife out. She repeated her movements by pulling herself upward on the second knife and embedding the first even higher. She continued this until she could grasp the top of the wall. She hung there and shoved one of the knives back into her boot. The other knife returned to her teeth.
She pulled her self upward until she could look over the wall. There was no guard visible to her right and the one to the left was intently watching the drama outside the fort unfold. She pulled herself up until she could lie atop the wall and then gently lowered herself to the platform. She couldn’t reach the tree as she had planned and the ladder was much too noisy to use, so she lowered her self to the floor of the platform and eased towards the edge. She bent her head over the edge and looked below. There was nobody in sight and she started to slide her body to the edge.
She froze when the nearest guard’s feet scuffed and she looked towards him and saw that he had just shifted his feet. Keeping her eyes on the guard, she slid her body off the edge and dangled from the platform. Still seeing nobody below her, she moved hand-over-hand away from the guard. Her arms grew tired and eventually she let herself drop.
Her landing was not as quiet as she would have liked and she heard the guard’s feet shuffle quickly to see what the noise was. Mistake swiftly backed under the platform and pressed her body against the wall. The guard moved towards her and leaned over to look below, but he soon grew disinterested and returned to observe the commotion outside.
Mistake moved quietly under the platform to the next ladder. There was a rack with weapons there and Mistake stole a coil of rope and slung it over her shoulder. She looked out across the compound and realized she was fairly close to the corner of the fortress. The only buildings around that she could see were a large, high-roofed building and some storage sheds behind it. Mistake stole across the open space to the first of the sheds. She tried the door and it opened. The shed was empty but there was evidence of it having been used for storing farm goods, probably plunder from the villages the bandits extorted.
Mistake decided to work her way down the row of sheds and then check to see what buildings lie beyond the large one. All of the sheds were empty except for the last two. She turned her attention to the large building and saw that it had a crawlspace underneath it. She slid under the building and realized that it was huge. The sides of the building had planks coming down over the crawlspace, but the front and back were open. The only obstruction under the building was a large round section towards the rear of he building that protruded through the floor into the ground. It was warm and smelled of smoke.
She crawled up to the front of the building and peered out. She saw men returning through the open gate and splitting up. She recognized one of the men as the leader who captured Rejji and he was walking straight towards her. She was tempted to start crawling backwards to get away from the edge of the crawlspace, but she realized that her movement would be detected more than she would, so she lie still.
The man marched straight towards her and mounted the steps above her head. She held her breath as he climbed the steps and slid backwards as soon as he passed overhead. She turned around and followed the sound of his footsteps towards the rear of the building. When he stopped, she heard muffled voices but could not make out what they were saying. Mistake removed the coiled rope and placed it on the ground. She crawled to the rear of the building and checked for anyone coming by, and then crawled out and decided to check further into the compound.
Mistake spent the next two hours surveying the entire fortress before returning to the only building that looked like it might be a place to hold Rejji. She gazed up at the trees and decided to climb one to get a better view of how things were laid out. As she worked her way higher into the tree, she noticed that they had cut the wall guard in half. Nobody was walking around the compound either, which probably meant they felt fairly safe here and everyone was sleeping except for the few wall guards. She looked down at the large building and noticed the hole in the roof to allow smoke to escape. She scurried back down the tree and under the building to retrieve her rope, figuring nighttime was the best time to go exploring inside.
The young thief picked a sturdy branch that overshot the roof and started crawling out on it. When the branch started to sag appreciably, she tied a loop in the rope and passed the free end around the branch and through the loop. She worked the entire rope through the loop and lowered the free end to the roof. She flattened herself on the branch and wiggled until her body dropped and she hung from the branch by her hands. She grabbed the rope and silently lowered herself to the roof. She walked a short distance to the large opening, dragging the rope behind her. She flattened herself to the roof and inched towards the hole and peered down into the large room to see if anyone would notice her entry.
She saw a body on the floor of the room and stared at it. A lump formed in her throat when she recognized the body and realized it was Rejji. She stuck her head in further and scanned the rest of the room. It was too dark to see anything past the patch of moonlight and Mistake decided to chance an entry. She slowly fed the free end of the rope into the hole until it was taut. She swiveled so that she was sitting on the roof with her legs dangling inside the room and grabbed the rope with both hands. She lowered herself almost to the floor before realizing that she was over an open fire pit, which explained the structure under the building. She twisted her body to make the rope swing from side to side. When the arc was wide enough to carry her over the pit to solid floor, she dropped down and held the rope to stop it from swinging back to the pit.
Mistake looked around the room again and swiftly moved to Rejji’s body. Rejji jumped when he felt Mistake touch him and she whispered his name. Rejji sat up and turned to face Mistake.
“How did you get here?” he whispered as he looked up at the rope hanging from above. “You should be long gone on your journey to find the Sage.”
“I am not going anywhere without you,” she whispered back. “I made a pledge to Brontos and I intend to keep it. Come on, let’s get out of here.”
“Go without me,” Rejji said. “Go find your Sage. I have to stay.”
“Are you crazy?” she scowled. “You are no more a bandit than I am a priest. Get on that rope or I’ll wrap it around you and haul you up.”
Rejji smiled strangely at Mistake and reached out and held her hand. “I believe that you would,” he grinned, “but I must stay. I must avenge my village and countless others that these people prey upon. To do that, I must learn their ways. Here they will teach me to use a sword, to ride a horse, to think like they think. I overheard them talking about me tonight. They plan to use me for their own ends, but that works both ways.”
“Rejji,” Mistake pleaded, “you are not cut out to be a bandit. You will die here. These people do not care about what happens to others. They care only for themselves. Trust me on this because I know. I used to be just like them. Brontos in his strange way made me see that. He knew right off I was a thief. He didn’t hate me for it. He was saddened because he thought I deserved better and he convinced me of it too. All my life I have been the object of hatred. You can’t imagine what that does to you. It makes you return the hatred, not only to people who despise you, but to everyone. I don’t want to live that way anymore. If you stay here you may learn to ride a horse, but you will suffer for it. You will become one of them. Don’t do it.”