A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (31 page)

To consider a rescue is unreasonable, no doubt, for the princess does not even know in what part of the building the prisoner lay, nor has she given any thought at all as to how she and the Baron could safely escape the country. Perhaps it is fortunate that her ignorance is complete in this matter. Has she known more, she might have recoiled before the difficulties, to say nothing of the impossibilities, of the enterprise.

Any escape from the Tower has up to then been considered impossible, and with good reason. The Iron Tower occupies one side of a rocky terrace. When leaning over the parapet of this terrace, one’s eye plunges into a large, deep gulf, whose rugged sides, covered with thick entanglements of creepers, are absolutely perpendicular. At the bottom roars the rushing waters of the Moltus River. Nothing overhangs the wall; there is not a step to enable anyone to ascend or descend, not a prominence to seize hold upon in any part of it; nothing but the vertical lines, smooth, eroded and irregular, which mark the oblique cleavage of the rocks. In a word, it is an abyss that attracts, fascinates and has never returned anything dropped into it. Above the abyss rises one of the side walls of the Tower, pierced with a few windows giving light to the cells on the different floors. Were a prisoner to lean out of one of these openings ‘if he was not prevented from doing so by heavy iron bars), he would recoil with terror, seized with a vertigo that threatened to drag him into the void below. And if he fell? His body would be dashed to pieces on the rocks at the bottom, then swept away by the irresistible torrent of the Moltus.

The front of the Tower, the side opposite that which overlooks the gorge, possesses the single entrance, or exit, to the donjon: a massive iron door that is perpetually and heavily guarded. To leave the Tower by that door would, assuming one has gotten past whatever obstacles lay on its further side, entail avoiding the several Guards posted outside, at either end of the drawbridge, and passing through another locked and guarded gate, this one in the spike-topped wall surrounding both Tower and moat.

Bronwyn turns back when her observations begin to draw the attention of one of the outside Guards. She is deep in thought and walks with her chin sunk onto her chest and hands plunged deeply into her pockets, unmindful of the cold drizzle that is soaking her.

She lay awake a long time that night, wondering what she can do. She has to find which cell in which the baron is being kept, she has to discover some way of releasing him from that cell and then some way to arrange his escape. She has to do something the most desperate prisoners of the last three hundred years had been unable to accomplish.

The next morning, when she enters the kitchen to forage for her breakfast, she is greeted by the laughter of the cook and his assistant.

“What’s so funny?” she asks.

“Oh, nothing much, I suppose,” answers the fat cook.

“It’s just a couple of guests that checked in yesterday, that’s all,” says the skinny assistant. “Well?” Bronwyn prods, ladling a helping of porridge into a bowl.

“Never have laid eyes on them,” continues the cook. “Haven’t come out of their room since yesterday.”

“I think they’re queer for each other!” says the assistant, a leer further disfiguring his pimply face.

“You’re a pervert, Skeeter Pelfo! You haven’t even seen them! No, what’s so funny, Miss Bronwyn, is that they’ve just sent down for some food.”

“And?”

“Well, one of them asks if he can have a salad on the side.”

“So what?”

“He wants a
moss
salad!” The cook collapses in laughter once again. “D’you think maybe he’d like a few twigs and dried leaves on the side? Or should we send out to a florist for a banquet?” This witticism breaks the assistant up and soon both of them are wiping away tears.

Moss
? She has met only one person in her life who likes to eat moss. It is simple enough to discover the number of the strangers’ room; the cook knows what it is.

She tries as subtly as possible to get a description of the newcomers from the desk clerk, but the old man never notices anything, only enough of his brain functions to allow him to show guests the register and to hand out keys. Beyond that the world passes by him like a grey mist. He allows Bronwyn to examine the book but the name scrawled on the line opposite the number 12 is indecipherable; in fact, it looks like little more than a random squiggle. The mark of someone whose handwriting is abysmally terrible, of someone who is trying to disguise his name...or of someone who has never before handled a pen...and possibly doesn’t know how to write in the first place?

It can’t possibly be, can it? Bronwyn tries to not get her hopes up. She knows full well who she hopes is in that room, but she doesn’t dare believe in it too much. How could they have gotten here? They have to be either dead or in prison. To be here just isn’t possible! There is only one way to find out.

She sneaks past the desk clerk, a wholly unnecessary maneuver, engendered by the demands of guilt, since the old man would not have noticed a locomotive passing through the lobby, and up the narrow stairs. The two men had been assigned room 12, which is on the fourth floor back. Her heartbeat increases in proportion to her proximity to the door at the end of the passage. By the time she faces it, she feels as though she has a snare drummer trapped within her chest. She raises her hand and gives a cautious rap on the door with her fingertips. There is no answer but there are sounds from within. She raps again and this time the sounds stop. She summons all of her courage and, pressing her face close to the wooden panel, whispers, “Thud? Is that you?”

The door opens so suddenly she topples into the room. Looking up from the floor she sees looming above her like a menhir and an obelisk the amazing figures of Thud and Gyven.

“What are you doing here?” she cries.

“Well, to tell you the truth,” replies Gyven, “we are trying to avoid being recognized by anyone.”

Bronwyn is hoisted to her feet by Thud and she says, hugging as much of him as she can, “Thud! I’m so glad to see you!”

“Me too, Princess.”

“I didn’t know what’d happened to you! I thought you might be dead!”

“I was worried about you, too.”

“We’d better get this door shut,” says Gyven, glancing nervously up and down the empty hallway. “No one knows you’re here, do they?”

“No, no...of course not!”

“Then how in the world did you find us?”

“I work here!”

“What?”

“I work here, in the kitchen; I wash dishes,” she says, a little defiantly, a little proudly, a little reluctantly.

“I don’t believe it!
You
?”

“What do you mean by ‘you’?”

“Is it a good job?” interjects Thud. “D’you think there’s anything I can do? No one’s died here, have they? I’d give a lot to get my hands on a good sarcophagus.”

“Not now, Thud,” says Bronwyn. “I can’t believe the coincidence, that you’d stay at the same hotel I’m working at.”

“It is the name.”

“What? Oh.” The name of the hotel is The Stoneman House. “It’s so good to see both of you,” she went on. “I was so afraid that I was just letting my hopes and imagination get away with me. Thud, you look wonderful!”

Thud shuffles his feet in embarrassment at the first compliment his physique has ever earned. No one had ever before said he looked wonderful.

“And Gyven, well...you’ve certainly changed.”

He has, indeed. His hair has grown out thick and black, and he is several shades pinker than his original chalky white, though how he has managed that not only in the winter but in prison as well, she cannot imagine. If it is possible, and Bronwyn, for one, never imagines it could be, the man is even handsomer than when she last saw him. But the difference is more than just physical.

“You sound so different...”

“I’m a fast learner,” he answers.

He must be. He speaks better than I do.

“What happened to you?” asks Thud, and she explains what has occurred since they parted at Piers’s camp as succinctly as she can.

“What do you plan to do now?” asks Gyven.

“Well, just these last couple of days I’ve had the idea of trying to get Baron

“Sluys Milnikov?” asks Thud. “
The
Sluys Milnikov? I think I’ve read every one of his adventures!”

“
You
?” Bronwyn asks, not noticing the unkindness of the italics.

“I’m sure you have,” says Gyven. “And I take it I’ve been missing something.”

“Oh yeah, they’re just great! Gee, you oughta read one sometime. If we can get the baron to help us...”

“You say you want him to help you get out of Tamlaght?” interrupts Gyven.

“Yes; you see, I believe that if I can get to my uncle in Londeac, he’ll be able to give me the help I need. Maybe even raise an army.”

“Your uncle?”

“My uncle Felix, Felix XII, the king.”

“I see...”

“It’s all very complicated and goes back for generations, but, you see, Londeac was once a possession of Tamlaght. Even though they’ve been separate countries for a long time now, the throne there is still held by a distant branch of our family. I’ve never met my uncle, but I know he doesn’t approve at all of either Payne or my brother.”

“But what do you expect him to do?”

“He and I’d have to talk about that, but I’m sure he’d want to do something. But tell me, I’m anxious to know what the two of you have been doing.”

The two men are now sitting, one on the bed that bends under his weight like a swaybacked horse, the other on the room’s only chair, and Bronwyn cross-legged on the floor facing them.

“The story’s easily enough told,” begins Gyven. “We were made prisoner by the prince’s troops and taken, along with a great many other men, to the town of Biela-Slatina.”

“Biela-Slatina?” Bronwyn interrupted. “Were there any gypsies there?”

“Gypsies? No, not that I know of. Why?”

“You're talking about Janos and...” begins Thud.

“Never mind now. Go on with your story, Gyven.”

“There we are put under guard in a large compound. We are soon separated from the others because it has become fairly apparent that we are...well, not like them. In fact, there is eventually some little difficulty in convincing those in charge that we are not members of your cousin’s army at all. You will recall that my education is still rudimentary and combined with Thud’s misleading appearance they considered us somewhat feebleminded. We would probably have been released except for the misfortune of someone realizing that Thud matched the description of the man who had helped you escape from Blavek...a description, you will admit, that would be hard to mistake.”

“I’m unique,” put in Thud.

“Since we were obviously together we were both put under heavy guard and sent back to the capital for questioning. We’ve been here ever since.”

“But how did you escape? And what about this education of yours?”

“Oh, well...our captors didn’t reckon with the rather unusual vocational experience Thud and I possess. ‘Stone walls do not a prison make’ certainly holds true for a pair of Kobolds, or, rather, a Kobold and a demikobold.” He smiles a little ruefully, a little secretively...the first time Bronwyn has seen him smile and her heart gives a disturbing quiver, like a dreaming kitten.
Oh my
... Gyven’s face is no longer the soulless mask it had once been, his eyes no longer expressionless spheres of glass, with neither intelligence nor personality. His language is stilted and formal, and he speaks to her like a schoolmaster, he holds himself rigidly and correctly erect...but there is
life
to him now. Where there had been merely movement before there now is energy; where his eyes has once been distant they now possess depth, the features that once looked like a woodcut now look like a steel engraving. It is difficult for Bronwyn to rationalize, though she thinks much about it later. It is as though the Gyven she had first met had been shaped and animated by entirely external forces, like a puppet, where this new Gyven is self-animated, like an internal combustion engine.

“We decided,” he continues, oblivious to her confusion, “not to attempt running from the City. We are, obviously, rather conspicuous individuals. We had managed to find some money during our escape, so it seemed to be a clever idea to find a hotel to stay in...it would be, we agreed, the last place the Guards would look. We chose this particular establishment because, as you now know, the name was peculiarly appealing.”

“
I
chose it because it is close to the palace,” adds Bronwyn. “Another reason, I guess, why no one would look for you here.”

“I suppose the princess would not object to our offer of help in releasing this baron?”

“Of course not!”

“It sounds like fun to me,” adds Thud. “It’s been awful boring.”

“I must be forthright and explain that my offer of help is not entirely unselfish. I’m not wrong in presuming that the princess has not forgotten her obligation to take me to Londeac?”

“Oh! Of course not!” she lies since it has never crossed her mind.

“Then if she’s planning to have this man aid her, it can only be to my own benefit to help in any way I can.”

Bronwyn explains the situation of the Iron Tower to her friends, drawing a plan for them: