A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (32 page)

“It does seem formidable,” comments Gyven. “I think the first order of business would be for you to determine which cell the baron is being held in. We can’t make any plans until we know that.”

“I have no idea how to do that,” replies Bronwyn, “but I’ll see what I can find out.”

What she eventually discovers is that while security is excellent so far as the person of the baron is concerned, and so far as permitting the coming and going of visitors to the Tower, there are far fewer restrictions on inanimate objects. The administration of Kaposvar, after three centuries of escapelessness, had grown to believe that impregnability is a quality inherent in the Tower itself. They has therefore gradually narrowed their responsibility to simply maintaining the impossibility of physical escape. That is: so long as windows are too small for egress, doors are made of iron and kept locks and barred at all times, lavish use made of Guards at all points, day and night, and anything large enough to contain a human being forbidden entry or exit...then nothing else need concern them. All to the end that Bronwyn can, if she is clever enough, get a message to the baron.

She thinks about how to do that for several days. She seeks advice from Gyven, but he is at a loss. He is obviously clever enough and his spoken vocabulary is mysteriously excellent, but both of these qualities are neutralized by his lack of experience of the outside world. In the meantime, there is terrible news. The coronation is finally going ahead. A firm date is set, only a fortnight hence, and preparations are set in motion ‘most of which had been only marking time since the last postponement). What irks Bronwyn is that the event is to be held on Saint Wladimir’s Day, what had once been her favorite holiday of the year. She has a collection of stuffed toy momraths in her room ‘which she wonders if and when she would ever see again), traditional Saint Wladimir’s Day gifts accumulated since her birth. Wladimir, the patron saint of Blavek, had been a gentle hermit priest of some five hundred centuries earlier. He lived in the bole of an enormous tree high in the Toth Molnar Mountains, above the Zilheroum. His only friends were the momraths that roamed the dense forests, in much greater numbers than they do today, of course. The orphaned ones the kindly old man took in, feeding and clothing them, selling a few on the side as fuel. One day the poor saint is mistaken for a momrath and martyred. It is just like Payne and Ferenc, she decides, to use such a revered and festive holiday for their own low purposes.

The coronation is to be the gala event of the century and the palace’s propaganda machine is going to make the best of it. Dozens of public works projects are announced and commenced, so the people would associate civic improvement with the new regime. Some of these are genuinely useful, while others are purely cosmetic, such as new parks, statues and murals, or ephemeral, such as banners, flags and posters. In the bleak, grey days of early winter and recent misfortune, the sudden and intense work adds a badly-needed gaiety to the city, a sense of purpose and hope, however superficial and impermanent it actually might be. Bronwyn can see and feel the morale of the citizens rising daily. The propagandists made the most of this and every new number of the
Intelligencer
carried increasingly enthusiastic notices and editorials, underlining and applauding the palace’s “firm commitment to roll up its sleeves and get to work creating a new and even better Tamlaght.” Not mentioning, naturally, that outside the city limits things are as bad as ever and getting worse.

The Church is recruited into the effort, and sermons are delivered whose texts leave the impression that if Tamlaght is being shunned by Musrum, then it is only because the nation is, technically, without an ordained ruler. Once the coronation can be held and the prince be made king both legally and spiritually, Musrum would once again look benevolently upon the benighted country. This is convincing to the uncritical lower and lower middle classes, but is only so much superstition to the business class. For them, the
Intelligencer
and the financial newsletters ran plausible analyses arguing that the national depression was mostly the fault of the prince’s powerlessness. Uncrowned, he simply hadn’t the authority to take the necessarily strong measures required to restore Tamlaght’s high standard of living.

All of the surviving aristocracy had been invited and the hotels and inns are beginning to fill to capacity, and beyond. As a public token of accord even the remaining barons are invited, a private thumbing of the royal nose, since of course none would dare refuse. Fearful that the influx of members of her class would increase the chance of meeting someone who knew her, Bronwyn quits her job and convinces her friends to join her in moving to a small roadside inn on the north side of the upper Moltus, between the northbound canal and the Iron Tower. It took all of her meager savings, but she doesn’t expect to be there long.

“The night of the coronation will be perfect for the baron’s escape,” she tells her friends. “The confusion’ll be intense; it’ll be a perfect diversion for us. The chances of getting away will be increased a hundredfold.”

“I can see that,” replies Gyven. “But we still need to know where Milnikov is being held before we can even consider how to get him out.”

“Come on with me. I think we might find out this afternoon.”

The little inn lay at the edge of a woods that abuts the deep gorge above the falls. Directly opposite this point, on the other side of the river, looms the Fortress of Kaposvar. Bronwyn, Gyven and Thud can safely observe it from the shelter of the heavy foliage that grows to the very brink of the abyss. The chasm is narrow here, only a little more than a hundred yards or so, but very deep, its precipitous black walls dropping without relief into the boiling water below. Anything falling into the river would be instantly swept away, to be carried over Pordka Falls less than a quarter of a mile downstream. The roar of the river is tremendous and the air is wet with mist. Within the shadowed gorge, the rock walls are glazed with ice and the limbs and branches surrounding the watchers are sheathed in glassy, transparent tubes, as complexly interconnected as a chemist’s esoteric apparatus.

From their viewpoint the fortress presents a single, nearly featureless wall, continuous with the cliff below it, pierced by a dozen small windows, looking terribly small in the vast smooth expanse of stone, like open pores on some vast, smooth face. The roof is steeply pitched and covered with heavy slate shingles. Lightning rods on the gables stab skinny iron fingers into the sky. Cables run from these down the face of the wall and drop into the chasm. To either side of the façade are two wings where the surrounding wall joins the building. One wing has a semicircular opening at its base through which pours the overflow from the moat, creating a monstrous icicle a hundred feet tall.

“He may not even be in one of those cells,” says Gyven. “Perhaps he’s in one facing the other way.”

“Just a moment,” says Bronwyn. “I’m looking for something...Ah! There! See?” She points to a window near the left center of the wall. It is distinguished from the others by a small white patch. Gyven strains his eyes, trying to pierce the mist. “There’s something tied to one of the bars.”

“That’s just what I thought.”

“What is it?”

“That’s Milnikov’s cell.”

“How can you know that?”

“I figured out how to get a message to him. You’ve seen all the religious tracts that have flooded the city? Most of them telling about how wonderful my idiot brother’s reign is going to be? I don’t know why, but I was browsing through one, for laughs, I suppose, when a passage caught my eye. It said, ‘By a sign I shall know thee; by the symbol of thy purity shall I know thy place.’ I don’t know what it's supposed to mean; it's probably referring to my brother, Musrum forbid, but it gave me an idea. I marked that passage and sent it, along with a few others as camouflage, to the baron. I’m sure that his mail is severely censored, but I don’t think that they’d hold up anything of a religious nature. I was right.”

“Well,” said Gyven, “if that is his cell, now what?”

“Well, since I found out that much, at least, I was hoping you’d be able to think of something. You’re the expert at jailbreaks.”

“Let me give it some thought.”

“Don’t be too long about it.”

That night, Gyven asks, “Do you think you can get one more message to the baron?”

“I don’t see why not. What?”

“I’d like for him to put a candle in the window.”

“A candle? Whatever for?”

“I’d rather you that see when the time comes.”

This annoys the princess, who loathes mysteries, but Gyven flatly refuses to discuss it any further. Scowling, Bronwyn begins to shuffle through the brochures and leaflets. It takes her an hour to locate a passage in one of the tracts that she hopes would give the baron the right idea. It says, “Against My coming, make of your soul a lantern to guide My way.” Not exactly obvious, but it would have to do. In the morning, she sent it off by the first post. It would be at the fortress within a few hours.

Gyven has vanished at first light, leaving the princess and Thud to entertain one another, an interesting task for both. It is Saint Wladimir’s Day, the day of the coronation. Before the sun set, her brother would be king. There would be no stuffed momrath for her this year.

The inn is deserted, as is most likely the case with every hostelry in the city. Most of the population would be crowded into the vast plaza in the center of Palace Island. The ceremonies and festivities would continue all day and well into the night. If there is to be a perfect time to effect an escape from Kaposvar, it would be now. Gyven does not return until late afternoon. The sky has been growing ever more threatening all that day; thunder rumbles in the distance and the air is charged with electricity. Bronwyn’s clothing and hair crackle with every movement; sparks pop from her fingertips whenever they approach metal and the inn’s cat avoids her in horror. A storm of extraordinary violence is clearly promised.

Gyven is carrying a pair of enormous bundles, which he deposits on the floor of the room with a heavy clatter.

“What’s all this?” Bronwyn asks.

“You will see. There’s not much time for explanations. Get your things together. We must be prepared to leave immediately.”

Bronwyn wordlessly packs her few belongings into her rucksack. Neither Thud nor Gyven possess anything to take, other than what the latter has just delivered. They leave the deserted inn unseen. In a few moments they have crossed the road, entered the woods, and are soon again within sight of the fortress. The trees surrounding them are swaying erratically in gusts of wind that blow from every direction. Between the roar of the river, the thunder that reverberates from the walls of the canyon and the rustling trees, Gyven has to shout to be heard.

“Look!”

In the dark mass of the fortress glimmers a single pale light.

Gyven begins unwrapping the bundle he’d been carrying. He reveals a crossbow of huge proportions.

“Where did you get that thing?” Bronwyn asks.

“Never mind!”

He takes one of the heavy ten-inch steel quarrels. To its nether end he ties one end of a ball of string, then unwinds several hundred feet it.

“What’re you going to do?”

“Watch!”

Placing a foot in the stirrup that terminates the wooden stock, he cranks a two-handed winch that pulls back the wire until the steel bow, as massive as a carriage spring, locks. He inserts the quarrel with its trailing string, then, bracing the weapon atop the stump of a broken tree, takes careful aim at the fortress.

“Wait a second!” cries Bronwyn, realizing what Gyven intends doing. “What if you hit the baron?”

“I don’t think I will! He must surely be expecting something like this!”

“How can you
know
that?”

Gyven ignors her. He adjusts his aim microscopically, takes a deep breath and pulls the trigger. The quarrel shoots into the darkness with a wicked hum.

“Did you hit the window?”

“I think so! There! Look!”

The candle makes a circular motion, then disappears.

“Quick, Thud! Tie the rope to the end of the string! Hurry!”

Thud has already dumped a coil of heavy rope from the bag he is carrying. Without any wasted motion, he ties its end to the remaining end of the string. Gyven, meanwhile, has taken from a pocket a stub of candle and a large box of matches. Hunching over to shelter it from the wind, he attempts to light the candle. Unfortunately, he has not counted on the storm and the erratic wind blows out his matches as fast as he strikes them. Bronwyn, seeing what the point is, cries, “Give me those!” and takes the box from his hand. “All you want is a signal, right?”

“Yes!”

She takes the box and opens it so that its contents are exposed. She sees that it contains at least a hundred large matches. She picks up a small rock and strikes it across the heads. The entire mass ignites at once with a flash and a foot-long flame. Bronwyn drops it from her scorched hand with a cry. But it seems to have done the trick: the string begins to move again, drawing off into the darkness of the abyss. When its end is reached, the rope to which it is tied begins to move, sliding across the wet grass and over the edge of the precipice like a suicidal anaconda.

“All right, Thud!” Gyven shouts. “Get the rope secured!”

Thud ties their end of the cable in an elaborate if uncouth knot to the bole of a massive oak. A moment later the rope is taut, a nearly invisible, tenuous bridge linking the two sides of the gulf. The baron has evidently tied his end of the rope to the bars of his window.

“I hope the baron is as intelligent as you say, Princess! Thud, are you ready?”

“Yes!”

“All right, then,
pull
!”

The two men grasp the rope and do just that.

“You’ve got to be mad!” cries the princess, realizing what their scheme is. “That won’t work!”

But they pull just the same. Under the strain, Thud seems to grow more compact and massive. His broad, flat feet dig six inches into the earth. Gyven, at the same time, is transformed into a kind of industrial machine, all steel and cables, pistons and drive rods. The whole operation would have looked far more ludicrous had it not been performed by such superhuman creatures. The rope thrums like an organ pipe and the princess cannot imagine what keeps it from snapping, even though it is nearly an inch thick. She peers into the gloom. When the clouds of mist part she can see the window clearly in a flash of lightning. By Musrum! There are cracks showing all around it. She watches a large flake of masonry fell into the chasm. But that is all.