Philippe looked again around them. ‘Those last words do not exactly make me feel better.’ But the anger left him in a long sigh, leaving abject acceptance in its place. ‘We both knew something like this can happen; does happen. Everyone in our… our line of work knows that. You just have to think it will not happen to you or those you love, or you could not carry on.’ He smiled weakly, humourlessly, grimly. ‘I know, that sounds stupid.’
Brann walked over. ‘Not to a fighting man, it doesn’t.’
Philippe nodded, and drew strength into him with a slow breath. ‘Eloise, my darling, we need to go.’ He leant in close and spoke into her ear, and his words gradually had effect. She unwound her body to stand, leaning on her brother.
‘Yes,’ she said, her tone as flat as her eyes. ‘Go. We must get go. Away from here. Far, far away.’ She looked at him. ‘Take me away.’
Konall lifted a cloak from a hook on the wall and wrapped it around her as she passed, while Gerens took her free arm, supporting her at that side as well.
Brann glanced around the room. His attention had been so caught by Eloise that he hadn’t noticed a large opening in the floor: a stout wooden hatch lying open and allowing him to peer cautiously over the edge. Steps led down and, as Brann moved to a better angle, he could see a wide square room, the central features a slab of a table with metal restraints set into the wooden top stained with blood old and new and, around the sides, barred cells.
Memories stirred at the sight of the cells, and he pushed them away. Approaching footsteps indicated that another room lay beyond his vision, and he held his breath, reaching for the hatch. When the three guards came into his vision, though, they walked across the way, never thinking to look up the stairway. It was the prisoner held between two of them that caught his attention and stayed his hand on the hatch. A young woman, her build athletic and strong, her hair the colour of the summer sun and framing a face golden of hue and heart-shaped, who moved as can only a dancer or a warrior. When pale blue eyes turned to meet his, he knew she was no dancer.
On impulse, he slid the knife from the sheath strapped to his right forearm, and reached down to set it on the step at the extent of his reach. A slight frown creased the space between her eyebrows, then a nod was the last he saw of her as the guards continued their way to a cell. He suspected that his knife would be put to use before long, but whenever it would be, they would be gone by that time. Still, it pleased him that it would be put to use by her.
His intention had been to close the hatch and bolt it to trap any guards below, but instead he rested it back open as he had found it. If events in the cells reached the conclusion he was sensing they would, there would be no guards able to exit in any case.
The others were already out of the guard room and he ran quietly to catch up. They moved as quickly as Eloise could manage, down the steps at the front of the tower and straight for the gate.
Brann looked around. The courtyard was empty – all must be around the rear of the tower, at the Duke’s body. There was certainly enough noise and consternation echoing from that direction. He fixed his eyes on the gate.
Thirty paces. Twenty. Ten.
It was at five paces that two guards ran around the corner of the building. They saw the bedraggled group and veered away from the tower entrance to face them. They stared at each other.
‘Philippe,’ Grakk said from the corner of his mouth. ‘How many guards are there here in total?’
‘At least two dozen, maybe more,’ he said, his voice starting to tremble.
‘We can’t engage these two without them raising the alarm,’ Brann said. ‘And we can’t take on all of them without at least some of us dying.’ He looked at Eloise. ‘And we can’t outrun them.’ The men were coming towards them, shouting across questions. ‘So maybe we need to wrong-foot them.’
He waved his arm frantically, urging the guards to hurry over. ‘Please, hurry! There is someone else hurt. We need to get them to a healer.’
The guards stopped, one with his spear lowered, the other with a sword held warily. They both eyed the four armed men before them. ‘What are you talking about?’ one said.
Brann automatically ran his eyes over them. A spear thrust would come across the attack line of the swordsman, hampering his movement forward. Neither had a shield. The distance could be closed in moments. They were not even wearing helmets, dishevelled hair as if they had just woken all that lay between a blade and a blow to the skull. Their eyes moved nervously…
He paused. The faces seemed familiar. The hair… as if just out of…
They were two of the three men they had run into in the stairwell. They had just been roused from sleep. They knew nothing about Eloise’s arrival at the tower. It opened up a possibility.
‘It’s this young woman,’ he said, pleadingly, indicating the figure hanging between Philippe and Gerens. ‘She seems to have been brought in for the Duke. We don’t know what happened, but she is in a bad way. She needs help.’
The guards looked at each other, and one nodded at the other. ‘Well, it’s not as if the Duke has any need of her now.’ The spear lowered and the sword was sheathed.
The older of the two, a bearded man, smiled slightly. ‘Look, friend, I have no idea who you are, or what the Duke wanted of this girl, though I could come up with a few suggestions. But he’s not in a position to want anything any more and some would say that’s not a bad thing. Probably best for all if we open the gate to check the street outside and you just go about your business. Better for us, better for you and,’ he looked at Eloise, ‘best of all for her. Take her as far from this tower as you can.’
Brann relaxed. ‘Thank you.’
The man shrugged, unbolting the gate and swinging one half inwards. ‘Sometimes straightforward is as complicated as life needs to get.’
They all breathed a little easier.
Then Eloise lifted her head. She did not see the faces. She had not heard the words. But she saw the tabards, and the Duke’s insignia. She shrieked and hurled herself at the nearest guard, Gerens’s knife in hand. Before he could react, she had sliced across his throat, blood spraying beneath a face frozen forever in disbelief. She launched herself at the other, who had stumbled back in shock, his spear coming up in defensive reflex. The point took her in the chest but her momentum took them both down, the spear ripped from his hands in the fall. Amid screams and snarls that turned to coughs, she stabbed three, four five times into his chest and throat and horrified face. She stabbed for the few short moments that she had left to live, then lay still in the shared mess of their blood.
Grakk and Brann reached her just as she stilled, Gerens and Konall casting around for danger with weapons drawn. Sophaya kept the child’s head turned from the bloodbath. Grakk bent over Eloise and checked the obvious, then shook his head to confirm it. Philippe was on his knees, hands held in supplication, eyes struggling with comprehension, every part of his face straining, a silent scream tearing itself from his soul.
‘So what now?’ Konall said.
Brann took a last look at the scene, as Konall hauled Philippe to his feet.
‘Now we run.’
When he had ruled, the world came to the Emperor. Now it seemed that some things had relaxed.
Arrogance that relaxes standards