Dawn of the Dreamsmith (The Raven's Tale Book 1) (76 page)

Scaling the cliff, inching his way closer to their target, Adelmar smiled ruefully despite the pain in his hands and limbs. He wondered what Fiske would make of the doubts that had assailed his mind in recent days. If the old tyrant had still been alive, that is. No doubt he would box his ears and tell him that regret was a luxury only the victorious could afford.

Mostly, though, he suspected that the old warhorse would be pleased that his lessons had remained so ingrained in at least one of the youths to have passed through his hands. All these years later, and he was still applying the same principles.
The towers are their greatest strength,
he thought.
How then to turn them into a weakness?

In his mind’s eye, he was again stood in that training square, this time a man grown. Fiske, ten years in his grave, was hectoring and lecturing him as he had so often in his youth.

“What if your enemy lies within an impregnable barrier?”

“Giving up already, boy? There is no such thing. Find the weakest point, and strike there. Hard and fast, while his confidence in his protection keeps him complacent.”

“What if there is no weak point?”

“There always is, if you have the wit to find it. The snail believes himself invulnerable within his shell, yet the starling always finds a way to crack it. Think!”

“It’s impossible! A hundred men guard each tower, ten miles apart. A ring of steel, encircling the entire land. It cannot be done.”

“Perhaps your brother is right, maybe your brains
are
addled. Think it through, before I knock some sense into you. For all the good it might do.”

“Five hundred towers at least... fifty thousand men in all, if not more. Egads, their numbers...”

“A colossal army to be sure. Maybe you should give up already, beg your father for a post more suited to your ability. A milkmaid, perhaps.”

“No... not an army. They’re spread too thin. It would take weeks to cross from one side of the country to the other, and even then...”

“Now we touch upon the heart of it. Continue. What does it tell you?”

“They cannot have a standing army, the numbers are too great. Perhaps a small militia in their cities, wherever they are, but the bulk of their forces must be spread around their border.”

“Keep going, boy.”

“If you could capture just one tower, without alerting others, even a moderate force would be enough to gain a foothold. Even after we are discovered, it would take at least two days for them to muster even a thousand men, and by then we could have brought in our full strength safely by sea.”

“Good. It is easier to crack a nut than crush it in your fist. But how would you capture that tower? Your strategy hinges upon that first step.”

“There is one place. Its guards are garrisoned half a mile away. But it sits at the top of a cliff, an army could not climb it... and without an army we are doomed to fail.”

“That’s it then? I was right to be disappointed in you.”

“No... wait. An army cannot scale the cliff, but a small enough squad could. If they could raise the gate, and enough men waited below for their signal... it could be done.”

“It sounds as though you found their weak point, my lad. I may make a commander of you yet.”

You did, you mean old bastard,
Adelmar thought, with a faint smile. With a grunt of effort, he pulled himself further up the cliff face, edging nearer to their goal. His arms and shoulders by now were racked with pain; the tips of his fingers raw and bleeding where the rock had begun to bite into his skin.

Just then, an urgent hiss from above his head caused him to look up. A pale face stared down at him framed against the moonlight, only a dozen feet above. For just a moment, he wondered why or indeed how Bergen had got turned upside down, but then his perspective shifted and he realised his adjutant was leaning out over the edge of the cliff. Somehow, while his mind was elsewhere, he had climbed almost to the top. The realisation that he was so close made him forget his weariness, and only a few minutes later strong arms were hauling him onto flat ground.

“It’s a shame we didn’t lay money on you being the first to the top, my lord,” Bergen said with a grin while Adelmar caught his breath. “I might have been able to retire a rich man.”

Adelmar clapped a hand to his shoulder. “There’s a difference between losing and choosing not to win,” he replied, still breathing heavily. “I merely decided that if their guards were awaiting our arrival, I’d rather that the first neck their blades found was not my own.”

The breeze was stronger at the cliff’s summit than it had been at the bottom, and Adelmar steadied himself as he leaned forward to peer over its edge. He was just able to see dark shapes on the water below them. They would be invisible to an unsuspecting lookout, but when you knew what to look for, the boats were there. His eyes travelled to the horizon, where a dim grey line the breadth of a hair divided the sea from the sky above it. Dawn was not far off.

“We must make haste,” he whispered to the three men arrayed behind him. Trayner stood closest to him, the same strange expression he had noted during their climb still on his face.
Whatever is wrong with the man?

Slightly rattled, he stared up at the stone walls of the tower, trying to decide the best way to proceed. It was perhaps fifty to sixty feet tall from its base to the tip of the unusual apparatus that protruded from its top, but less than half the distance up its side was a small balcony overlooking the ocean.

At his signal, Carsley, the young private, unwrapped a length of rope they had brought for just this eventuality. At its end was a grapple, like that which the sailors had used below to secure their boat. When Adelmar was satisfied that no guards stood upon the balcony, the young man twirled the rope around and flung it towards the opening. On the first two attempts, the hook fell back down towards them. On the third attempt, however, it caught upon a stone balustrade and held firm when Adelmar tugged upon it.

This time, he went first. Excitement sent his blood pumping throughout his body, chasing the fatigue from his limbs. For now. Adelmar knew that his ageing body would exact its price for this night’s work eventually, but at this moment he felt as though he could fly. He shinned up the rope in moments, and landed softly upon the balcony.

Taking care to make no sound, he lifted the strap from his shoulders and quickly removed Duty from its cloth wrappings. While he waited for the others to join him, he took a step towards the doorway that led inside the tower.

As he did so, there was a sharp intake of breath. Adelmar found himself face to face with a dark-bearded man, his eyes opened wide in fright. Without even the need for thought, Adelmar’s hand shot out and clamped over the man’s mouth, slamming him back against the archway and knocking the air from his lungs. At the same time, his other arm drove forward, thrusting his blade deep into the man’s midriff. Still with a rough hand held firmly over his face, he made no sound as his life drained from him, covering Adelmar’s sword-arm with a thick, cloying warmth. When his terror-filled eyes finally glazed over, Adelmar dragged him out onto the balcony. Bergen and Carsley had already climbed up, and watched wordlessly as he heaved the body over the rail and sent it plummeting down towards the distant waves.

One down
, he thought, while they waited for the last member of their party to join them. Once they were all stood upon the balcony they split into pairs. Trayner took Carsley, and together they disappeared up the flight of steps that led to the top of the tower.

On the wall opposite the balcony they had entered through was a door, and with Bergen following close behind him, Adelmar tiptoed across to it and eased it open a fraction. The room beyond was dark, but in the dim light cast by the embers of a fire on the far wall he saw the outline of several bunks. In the silence, the soft regular breaths of sleeping bodies could be heard.

Adelmar signalled to Bergen to follow, and carefully pulled the door wide enough to allow them inside. As he did so, there was a minute creak from the hinges. He froze on the spot, but when it was clear that the sound had not disturbed the sleepers he crept inside.

Three of the bunks were occupied by man-sized mounds huddled beneath blankets. It was the work of but a few moments to silence the first two. However, as their lifeblood seeped into the sheets and blankets of their beds, one of the dying guards let out a rattling gurgle that roused the third. He sprang from his bed, clothed only by a loincloth around his waist. Adelmar was upon him in an instant, vaulting over a bunk and hauling the guard to the floor. Before he could cry out, Adelmar clapped his mouth closed and drew the sharp edge of his sword across his throat just beneath his jawline. When it was done, he grabbed the blanket from the guard’s now-empty bed and wiped the blade clean. They had made more noise than he had intended, but thankfully the rest of the tower was still.

As they left the dormitory and stood once again upon the spiral steps leading up and down the tower, Adelmar heard a muffled thump from the floors above. If Trayner and Carsley were enjoying similar success, they had already cleared at least half the guards without raising the alarm.
So far, so good.

Adelmar crept down the stone steps one at a time, straining his ears. As they rounded a corner, the stairwell was filled with an orange glow from the level beneath them. Suddenly, a man’s raucous laughter pierced the silence, followed by animated conversation. The language was unfamiliar and harsh to his ears, but he could tell there were at least two different speakers.

Adelmar cursed inwardly. Whatever unseen force had guided them thus far and ensured their passage into the tower was smooth had evidently abandoned them at last. A solitary guard caught by surprise, even three sleeping men were one thing, but a room full of awake and alert soldiers was a different prospect altogether.

Tentatively, Adelmar crept down another two steps, until he stood one above the step bathed in light. Cautiously, he leaned forward until he was able to peer down into the room below. Four men sat at a wooden table in the centre, playing cards. A quick look was enough to tell Adelmar that it was the bottom level of the tower; the steps came to an end there, while a heavy oaken door in the wall opposite had the look of an entrance to it.

The men seemed mesmerised by the game they played, and he took a further moment to study them. They were all dressed similarly in light mailed shirts, while a variety of weapons lay around them; leaning against pieces of furniture, or placed haphazardly on the ground. Had he been their commander they would have been flogged for such sloppiness; it was clear that in this tower at least the guards had grown complacent, lulled by their confidence in their seemingly unassailable position.

Two more details caught his attention. Near the bottom of the steps, a round metal shield leaned against the wall. Meanwhile, another doorway stood open, this one revealing a separate flight of steps leading down through crudely carved rock. A winch stood at its top.
Four men are all that stand between our success and failure,
he thought. It would surely only be a matter of moments before they were joined by Trayner and young Carsley, to match their numbers. But could they afford to wait?

The question was answered seconds later. One of the men slapped his cards angrily onto the table and pushed back his chair. As he rose, reaching for a curved sabre that leaned against the wall behind him, Adelmar knew that if they were to act, it had to be now. To delay any longer meant risking discovery and losing any advantage that surprise had given them.

Whenever Adelmar fought on a battlefield, he always entered a state that was almost trance-like. It was as if his mind separated from his body, watching from afar as it went through the motions and movements that had been drummed into him all those years ago. He had never felt fear in battle, his conscious mind had always been too removed from what was taking place around him. It had been a long time since he had felt that last; until then, even that night he had been so focused on stealth that he had been intensely aware of his every action.

But as he flew down those remaining steps to the ground, that familiar feeling returned. He embraced it like an old friend, settling into the controlled violence that had always come so easily. As he entered the guardroom, for what seemed an eternity the men at the table did not react. Likely, they at first believed him to be one of their fellows, coming to join their game. Adelmar watched with strange detachment as he reached for the metal shield. He didn’t think about what to do with it, his body already knew and was shaping itself for the next move even before he had taken a firm grip. Another step, and he swung the shield viciously in a flat arc at the head of the man sitting with his back to him. It smashed into the guard’s skull with a sickening crunch of bone, sending him sprawling across the table in a spray of blood.

To those still seated, it must have seemed as though a vengeful demon had suddenly landed in their midst. One of the fallen guard’s comrades collapsed to the floor, his feet becoming tangled beneath him in his haste to escape. The part of Adelmar’s brain that remained calm and collected in battle instinctively disregarded him for now, prioritising the guard whose sword was already in his hand.

The curved blade flashed towards him, but he deflected it easily using the shield he had by now taken a proper hold of. The sound of steel meeting steel rang out across the room. However, the guard’s strike had been poorly aimed and ill-timed; the deflection caught him off-balance and he stumbled. That was all the opening Adelmar needed. Duty hacked downwards at the man’s exposed neck, severing his spine and killing him instantly.