Vol.6, Ch.4, P.4
“I believe we’ve found our rabbit hole,” I whispered, peeping out from between the brush. Beside me was Björn, rubbing his moustache as he keenly scanned the same scenery yonder: a small lumberer’s shed guarded by two Quiremen. This was what we’d been barred earlier from getting to, like as not, and it’d taken a deal of tracking down to find it—a search that’d led us into the thick coppices here at Merkulov’s north end.
By the look of them, the two sentinels ahead seemed seasoned enough. Salvators they could even be, but under the shade of the trees, it was difficult to glean the trademark glint from under their garbs. Nevertheless, seasoned or no, assailing them ought prove a simple affair. Rub was, more enemies might come springing and assailing us in turn, and out of where but from within the shed itself, which was closed shut. Worse still, a reckless pounce might even imperil the hostages inside.
Yes, indeed: chances were, someone was captived therein. At the least, it couldn’t have been some-thing, given the situation, nor some enemy superior sitting snug inside. No one would humour a humble shed as a command post, I should think.
“…A hole for hostages,” Björn similarly guessed. “Howbeit ’tis not Her Highness they hold inside, if so.”
He spoke the right of it. Why imprison the princess after all that work to blast her to smithers? And suppose they did have her bound and gagged; certainly would they keep her elsewhere more walled, at the very least, if not more watched. She was the princess, after all, the acting sovereign of all the realm of Londosius. Nay; were I to guess, the hostage they held inside was rather bait for that same princess to come and bite.
“Alas,” said Björn, “my time is wasted here.”
With that, he stood and turned to leave. But I to stay him whispered back, “Hold your horses. We ought save them, I say.”
I then heard a sigh filter through his moustache. “I would,” conceded Björn, “but caprice decides not the priority. My underlings understand this; they had a stern teacher.”
Setting free a few hostages at hand… for Björn, he would assume the pitiless Praetorian and abandon that deed if ever he reckoned the risk too great. Also, by his mention of them, little doubt he’d guessed one or two subordinates to count amongst the captives.
“They may,” I began debating, “but what of the princess herself? She might rather weep, I imagine, upon learning how wilfully you consigned her subjects to these hyaenas.”
As Alf had put it, the princess was a prudent sort, wise in the ways of politicking after her own fashion; more so still than the Quire gave her credit for, at any rate. Thus was it scarce conceivable that she would misreckon the weight of the Crown and imperil her royal person, all for the sake of some hostages.
Even so, from what she’d shown at the meeting, I should think her quiet and composed manner more the product of self-suppression—of silencing the spring in her heart to let reign the wintry calculation that her position so required. Yes, she might forsake a hostage; but the deed, I doubt not, would haunt her dreams for many, many a year thereafter. And what might she whisper on those sleepless nights?
“Had I only saved them.”
Björn eyed me dubiously. “Is that all you have to say?” he returned. “I expected more from your cobwebs, sicarius.”
“Fair enough,” I conceded. “Here it is, then: save the hostages, and that’s one less card in the enemy’s hand.”
The captain scoffed. “Card!” he growled. “Was the princess’s compassion one of yours, as well, wolf?”
“Come, Björn,” I insisted. “Just as you would wholly risk your deck for Her Highness, so would this ‘sicarius’ for his own cause. That shouldn’t be so hard to see, should it?”
Björn had me scried, but only half so. Hostage-saving is hazardous business, and he knew it. Thus sure enough, I could not gamble life and limb merely to serve his princess’s secret sympathies, gracious though both they and she herself might be. I’d got my own duties to look after, my own people to protect. And for them, if even at great peril, would I divest of the enemy as many of their cards as I could.
“Well? What’s your mind, then?” I pressed the Praetorian.
“That thou art a man most repulsive,” he snarled, falling back into his belligerent register. “Thou, and thine impawning manner of speech withal.”
“Then run along. Seek your princess, and her opinion whilst you’re at it,” I said. “Indeed, were she now here, how would she have commanded you?”
“…”
Björn fell silent. And with hostility as unhid as ever, he stared daggers at me. But despite himself, he then formed on his face an uneasy frown.
∵
“Halt! Who goes there!?”
“Wh—you! The treacher!”
Cries from the Quire-guards cracked the coppice air as they sighted me stepping not-so-stealthily nigh. I’d got a mind to answer the first’s challenge with a dramatic introduction, but the second’s astuteness stole that chance away very swiftly.
There was nothing for it. “Aye, that’s me: Rolf in the flesh,” I declared myself anyway. And then, purposefully I slowed my pace to a sure and steady strut.
A Quireman drummed the shed with his mace. “Oy! We’ve got company!” he exclaimed, and—ga-tack!—the shed door swung wide open, revealing a third enemy standing armed and alarmed at the threshold. Quickly now, I scanned behind him, discovering one more enemy to be nesting inside… and, just as Björn and I had prevised, hostages. Two of them there were, huddled and bound. One appeared to be a Praetorian, the other a maidservant.
I came to a stop, but not without bringing a furtive hand to my back. With it, I drew one finger, and two next—a signal to Björn hiding in the brush a ways behind. He could scarce peer into the shed whence he was, but no longer did he need to.
A soft rustle stirred thence under the sighing foliage. The captain had made his move, slinking from covert to covert as he circled towards the side of the shed. To preserve his stealth, I further entertained our foes.
“Stuck here babe-sitting, are you?” I loudly taunted them. “Understandable; you all ooze with utter uselessness.”
To pique their nerves even more, I then unsheathed the soot-steel and held it low. If the Quiremen weren’t heeding me before, well, they certainly were now. At the corner of my eye was Björn, spotting the chance and stealing further forth.
With a scowl, a Quireman stamped his foot. “Ach! Mind that tongue, or it’s the first to go!”
Vexedly, the Quiremen then began creeping nigh in formation. Yet they numbered three; the fourth stayed behind in the shed, showing no sign of budging from it. Even with the infamous ungraced alone and afore them, these men would not leave their charges unattended.
A rather bright move. The three in approach, too, seemed frightfully cautious. But I would have them baited as far from the shed as they dared; in so doing, their fourth man might grow anxious and part from his post. Decided, I dangled my dark sword flauntingly at the three men, and ventured half a step forth. They answered with puckered faces, along with two or three impetuous paces of their own hither.
“Flank ’im, fools!” came a cry from the shed. It was the fourth man’s—the leader of the group, to judge by his tone. The three afore me complied, spreading left and right before edging ever closer; and in so doing, they presently and unwittingly came within reach of my sword.
But I made no move. Not yet, even as the men began to surround me. Rather, I kept the soot-steel low and continued biding my time. From one Quireman to the next I turned, stepping forth and back, forth and back, stealing space in one moment, yielding it in the next. In time, the circling and staring had brought us a good deal away from the shed—a fact not lost to the leader who, in his impatience, emerged at last.
That was it: our chance.
—Kasack-kasack!
The shrubbery stirred from beside the shed, and out sprang Björn, hurling a stone hither as he went. And as it flew, I espied at once its purpose.
—Tup tuh-tup.
“Hn?”
Unto the turf it tumbled, alarming the two men betwixt whom it landed. The surprise lasted for merely an instant, but it sufficed: for in another, there then thundered a noise of slashing wolfsteel. And soon enough, two Quiremen lay cloven and dead.
“Krrah!?”
That next noise echoed from afar. Glancing quickly to the shed, I found the leader, too, taken at unawares, losing his life right along with his riven lacqueys as Björn drave a dagger into his bosom.
So sudden was the turn of events that the very last Quireman stood startled. Unto him I pounced—“Seht!”—and swung the soot-steel full. Straight and true it flew, even as my flank shrieked in pain. The Quireman collected himself at once and answered with his mace, but too late: the black blade had flashed through his flesh. And vomiting blood, the Quireman collapsed in demise.
Now all the enemy lay dead, slain most timely and speedily. Indeed, I reckoned it was not two seconds since Björn had bounded from the brush.
After cleaning and sheathing my blade, I came by the shed, only to find Björn making quite the chafed and cheerless face as he glared at me. “…Never has a play unplanned gone so unspottedly,” he grumbled.
“Was that a compliment?”
“Ah pish! Thou flapping gadfly!” Björn erupted. “A reeking privy’s worth more praises than thee!”
As usual, the captain furrowed and fumed, refusing unto the last to commend the sicarius afore him.
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