Betrayal at Falador
Read Betrayal at Falador Online
Authors: T. S. Church
T.S. CHURCH
TITAN BOOKS
COMING SOON FROM TITAN BOOKS:
RUNESCAPE: RETURN TO CANIFIS
BY T.S. CHURCH
RUNESCAPE: BETRAYAL AT FALADOR
ISBN: 9780857682918
Published by Titan Books
A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd
144 Southwark St
London
SE1 0UP
First edition October 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
Printed and bound in Great Britain by CPI Group UK Ltd.
To my grandparents, parents, and the Giraffe, and to my nephews, who I hope will take as much enjoyment from the book as they do from the game. And also to the talented staff at Jagex who have devoted so much of their time to this project.
CONTENTS
ONE
“Get some light over here! We need some light!”
Master-at-arms Nicholas Sharpe shouted loudly into the wind in order to be heard by his fellow knights on the bridge. A fair young man ran forward, shielding his blazing torch from the anger of the winter storm.
“Thank you, Squire Theodore. Now, let us see what damage has been done.”
Half a dozen men stood around as firelight flickered over the fallen masonry. It was a life-sized statue of a knight which had come crashing down from the castle heights an hour after midnight, when the storm had been at its most ferocious. The crash had been loud enough to raise the alarm.
“That’s more than a thousand pounds of solid stone,” Sharpe said, peering up into the darkness from whence it had plummeted. “Must’ve been a wicked gust to move it.
“We can’t leave it here,” he added. “Get hold of it. On three we’ll lift.”
There was some jostling as the knights moved closer, every man packing himself as close to the statue as possible.
“One... two...
three
!” Sharpe counted out, and on his last call the small group of men lifted the marble statue with a collective groan of effort. “Carry him to the courtyard. We can’t leave one of our own out here in the cold!”
The men staggered under their burden, moving slowly from the exposed bridge toward the open gates, Squire Theodore lighting the way.
The statue will be safe there until the morning,
the master-at-arms mused,
as long as the damage wasn’t serious enough to break it into a thousand pieces as they moved it.
And as long as nothing more comes down on our heads,
he added silently. It wasn’t safe in the streets of Falador that night; several people had already been killed by falling debris, and the quicker their party was back inside the castle, the better.
But the pessimistic thought turned to prophecy. A sharp crack, a sudden cry, and the statue dropped again to the paving, scattering the men who had lifted it. Only two had retained their grips on the polished marble, and now they held the right leg between them, detached from the rest of the figure.
“Get the torch back here!” Sharpe hollered, his temper rising. He swiftly noted the anxious faces gazing toward the courtyard. “Where’s the torch?” he called. “Where has Theodore got to?”
A sudden gust of wind, biting cold in its journey south from Ice Mountain, swept across the bridge. The squire emerged from the gatehouse, bringing the torch with him and carrying a heavy bundle under his arm. As soon as he reached the shivering party, there was a crack from above and a cry of warning rang out.
“Watch your heads!”
Each man instinctively looked up, crouching low in readiness. Spinning from the rooftops, a tile crashed onto the bridge and exploded on the stonework scant yards away, sending sharp chips of slate into the turbulent moat below.
“Come on; we must not stay out here any longer,” Sharpe said decisively. For all the statue meant, it wasn’t worth the lives of the young men who stood close to him. “Theodore, don’t run off again. We need the light to see what we’re doing.”
He noted the look of disappointment on the young man’s face. Theodore was an excellent squire; the master-at-arms couldn’t recall any better. Yet he took himself too seriously, making him an easy target for any of his peers who envied his dedication, or even despised him for it.
“I have blankets, sir,” Theodore said. “We can carry the statue on that. It will allow more of us to help lift it and prevent any more accidents like the last one...” His voice trailed off as a couple of the knights regarded him coolly.