The City (41 page)

He had known many women, from the grimiest whores who patrolled the harbour front to ladies of wealth and leisure, and once, deliciously, a general’s daughter. He had become attached to none of them. They were just a resource to him. He used their bodies in the same way as he used the female soldiers he sent to their deaths daily. He did not despise them, as he knew many men did. He liked some of them and disliked more than a few. He only had one rule, one ethic, as Mason would put it, although Fell saw it as common sense like keeping your sword honed, or sleeping when you had the chance. His rule was never to have sex with female soldiers in his company. So he had watched Indaro hungrily, covertly. His eyes dwelled on the long line of her thigh, the curve of her hip. At a distance he burned for her. But when they spoke up close he was always drenched by the icy water of her arrogance, her argumentative nature, her inability not to answer back. He always walked away from her frustrated in body and mind.

Frustration had been the overwhelming emotion of his time in captivity. Indaro strode into his thoughts at all times, as arrogantly as she had done in his life. The thought that she might be in the next cell, separated from him only by a stone wall, was disturbing and tantalizing.

The kiss she had given him shortly before they were captured had been cool and perfunctory. He had no idea what it meant. When they got free of the fortress he would be sure to find out.

But first he had to escape. Outside the walls he would find somewhere to hole up, waiting for the search teams to leave in his pursuit,
assuming he would be running for the far City. Then he would find a way back in and free the other men, and Doon, and Indaro.

So he waited patiently for the right time. He knew his guards would eventually become sloppy. More than two months had passed since he made his last escape bid. In the meantime he had practised calm submission. When they came for him he took on a shambling gait, fixing his eyes down to the stones. He occasionally muttered to himself or stared wildly at the sky. He knew experienced guards would not be fooled by this; indeed, would tighten the security around him. But these men were not experienced. He was convinced now they were a group of peasants dressed in uniforms and given cheap swords. They even looked alike, so he guessed they came from the same village, perhaps one raided by the Blues, their men taken captive and pressed into soldiering.

Occasionally they sent only five guards rather than the usual six. Fell took no advantage of this when the weather was bright. He was waiting for a time of rain and mist, of which there was plenty in Old Mountain. At last a day came when the low wet cloud seemed to touch the ground, and there were only five guards at the door of the cell. Fell meekly allowed himself to be chained, his hands behind his back, and they set off.

The route was always the same. They marched along the corridor and up steps to the outer courtyard. This they crossed, two guards in front of Fell, usually four behind. Today there were just three guards behind him.

The keep was fronted by a wide ditch, and the steps up to the oak door rose high above the ditch, which now had a foot or so of water lying in it. As they marched towards the steps Fell raised his head slightly and squinted at them. The uneven stone was puddled with rain and muddy from the boots of many soldiers going to and fro.

As they climbed the steps Fell lagged slightly until he sensed the first of the rear guards closing on him. Then he stumbled on an uneven stone and, as the guard came up to him, stuck out his boot and deftly tripped him up. The guard fell against him and the two of them tumbled off the stairway into the ditch.

They landed in soft mud and neither was injured, but both were winded and Fell still had his hands chained behind him, his body trapped beneath the weight of the guard in his heavy rain-soaked uniform. Before the guard could scramble up Fell pulled hard and
twisted and, with an agonizing crunch, his left arm came out of its shoulder socket.

Fell gave an anguished yell, only partly exaggerated. The shoulder had been dislocated so many times over the years that the bone popped out and in again quite easily. It was painful, but tolerable. He yelled again, as the guard got to his feet and gave him a couple of kicks in the ribs. The other men came pounding down into the ditch.

‘My shoulder!’ Fell gasped, as they grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. ‘My shoulder!’ Knowing they couldn’t understand him, he indicated with his head until the platoon leader tore off his shirt and looked at the crooked limb. The man glared at him, clearly suspecting a trick. Fell knew the man was in a quandary. To put the shoulder back in place meant extending the arm first, which they could not do with Fell’s arms chained. The man almost certainly had orders not to unchain the prisoner on any account. On the other hand he believed Fell to be incapacitated by pain, and there were five of them. He drew his sword and ordered his men to remove the chains.

They were deployed all around him. The leader faced him, sword unsheathed but point downwards in a relaxed grip. One man held Fell’s right bicep with both hands. One held his left arm, about to raise it to pop it back into the socket. This one had a knife in his belt and Fell concentrated on its exact position, its angle in the belt. He hoped it was sharp. Fell was uncertain of the two guards behind him. Under the sound of the drumming rain he had heard one other sword being unsheathed, but he did not know on which side of him the man stood. The other could well have his sword out already, or a knife. He had to assume they were both armed.

He calmed his mind, relaxing his body, letting his knees unlock, loosening his shoulders. He took a deep breath, sucking it in sharply as if preparing for anticipated pain.

Time slowed. He felt the man’s calloused hand grip his wrist. There was an endless pause, then he twisted the arm. The shoulder went back into place with another audible crunch and Fell shouted out and leaned towards the guard at his right. When the guard on the left dropped his arm he was tensing it already. He threw his weight against the man on his right, who automatically braced to support him. With his left hand Fell grabbed the knife from the other guard’s belt. He swept it round, arcing down and up again. It slashed down through the great artery in the inner thigh of the leader, and up into
the throat of the man holding him. As the leader raised his sword, shock slowing him, Fell spun out of the grasp of the right-hand guard, reversed the knife and threw himself backwards against the leader, the knife plunging into the man’s belly. Two down.

The guard who had popped his shoulder, now on his right, was still struggling to get his sword out. The two unknowns were in front of him. One had a sword raised, and was bringing it down towards his neck. Fell rolled off the leader’s body and the sword thudded into the corpse. Fell sprang to his feet. In one smooth move, he snatched up the leader’s sword and leaped over his body, plunging the sword into the chest of the man who had fixed his arm. He dragged it out again. Three down.

The two remaining guards hesitated as Fell faced them, sword in hand. Then they both turned and ran, clambering up the bank of the ditch and disappearing into the mist.

Fell laughed shortly, then bent and grabbed the leader’s sword belt and knife. He sprinted up the side of the ditch and ran in the opposite direction to the two fleeing guards.

That, he knew, was the easy part. He had come this far before. Getting out of the fortress, when he had only the haziest idea of its geography, was another thing. He had spent hundreds of hours standing by the high window of the cell, watching the traffic of troops, and the small female servants, their routines and the movements which were not routine. Unless they had spent months creating an elaborate hoax for him, which he thought was quite possible of Mason, the entrance to the fortress was in the south. So, keeping close under walls, hidden by the mist and heavy rain, he made his way to the west, towards a low tower he had seen and marked in his mind. Like the other squat stone towers within view of his cell, this one had narrow unshuttered windows. And the tower appeared unused, for he had never seen movement there. He needed some height, so he could see the layout of the fort.

He made his way to the tower with little difficulty. It was not only unused, but long abandoned. The door was padlocked, but the wood of the frame had crumbled in the damp air. Fell spent a few precious moments digging around the hinges with the knife. Then, having dug some fingerholds, he pulled hard and the door came easily off its hinges. He squeezed through the gap and pulled the door back into place as best he could. A casual glance would see only an unbroken
padlock. He felt his way up slimy stone steps in the gloom; then, as thin daylight started to reach him, he raced up to the highest floor. Cautiously he peered out of a narrow window.

He grinned. As he had calculated, from this vantage point he could clearly see the south wall of the fortress and the main gate. He watched for a long time, until darkness fell.

Dawn was just a possibility in the eastern sky when Fell was awoken from an uneasy sleep by the rumble of cart wheels. He rolled to his feet and looked out of the tower’s narrow window. The main gates were lit by just two torches, but in their dim flicker he could make out three pony carts crossing the courtyard towards them, bound for outside. Fell snatched up the swordbelt and raced down the steps, reckless of falling in the pitch black. This might be his best, his only, chance.

He took a moment to pull the broken door neatly shut behind him, in case he had to retreat there again. Then he ran to a low building on the corner of the courtyard and peered round. The first cart had reached the gates, and he could hear the murmur of conversation between the gate guards – a dozen or more – and the carter. Laughter came to him on the night breeze. He ran lightly, silently as he could, across the cobbles to the rear of the third cart. Before he got there the gates groaned open, just wide enough to permit the exit of the carts, and the first went through. The other two rumbled forward, then stopped again as the second carter reached the gate. The third lagged behind a little, leaving its load still in darkness.

Fell was baffled for a moment, for it seemed the carts were empty. Then he saw the low, long shape lying on the cart bed, and realized it carried a corpse wrapped in a shroud. The carts were taking three corpses outside the rocky fortress for burial. He took no more than a heartbeat to wonder at the reverence for the dead implied by three carts for three corpses. Then he dragged the body off the rear of the cart and ripped off the shroud. He left the dead man lying in the dust, then climbed on the cart and wrapped the fabric around him as best he could, hoping darkness would cover its meagre fit.

Almost immediately the cart jolted forward a few paces and stopped again. The carter and guards spoke to each other in their alien tongue and Fell, who could now see the glimmer of the torches through the rough weaving of the shroud, held his breath, gripping
the sword to his side. After a moment the cart moved forward, then someone yelled out and immediately the cart lurched to a stop. The shroud was snatched from Fell’s face and he found himself staring into the angry eyes of a guard.

Instantly he rolled off the cart on the other side from the man, then rolled back under it, catching out the guards, who were running the wrong way. Fell leaped up, speared two men, one in the chest and one in the throat, then jumped back up on to the cart. The sudden commotion startled the pony, which started forward, blocking the gates from closing. Swords slashing at his legs, Fell leaped up on to the carter’s seat and held his sword down at the man’s throat. The frightened carter dropped the reins and threw himself from the seat. Fell leaped on the back of the pony, reaching behind to cut the traces. Then he kicked the pony and it set off as fast as it could out of the gates and into the night.

It was a thin, poor beast which could barely take Fell’s weight, and as soon as they were in darkness he slipped from its back and slapped its rump. It trotted off, following the main road. Fell dropped off the side of the road and headed west.

It didn’t take him long to realize why Mason had claimed Old Mountain was impregnable. Once off the only road, winding narrowly up to the fortress, he found the land was steeply sloped, almost vertical in parts. Fell scrambled across the slope, forced downwards all the time. At first there was plant growth clinging precariously to the rock, and he clambered from bush to bush. Then the undergrowth dwindled and vanished, leaving Fell on the exposed side of a mountain, with no way back up and few handholds. The prospect of going down was grim, but he had no choice. It was starting to grow light and far below he could see a shining river, its banks clothed with trees. There had clearly been a recent landslip and the vertiginous mountainside beneath him was covered with shifting shale.

He sat for a moment to get his breath. He was not built to be a rock-climber; too heavy and with a high centre of gravity. And his boots gave him no purchase on the scree. But he took a deep breath, then launched himself on to the slope, trying to cling on with all four limbs. He immediately started sliding and slithering, stabbing his knife into the shale at intervals to slow his progress. At one point he slid for twenty paces, picking up speed fast until his foot knocked
against a protruding rock. He tried to get his boot to it but it slipped off. Sliding further, he reached out with one hand and grabbed the rock, gripping hard and tensing his body and slowing his slide to a stop. The shale carried on roaring past him and he feared he had caused another landslip, but at last it too came to a halt. He was sweating heavily and his heart was racing, and he stayed there for a while, clinging to the side of the mountain, until his heart slowed. Then he let go of the rock and continued down.

At last he made it to the point where the landslip ended, and he could climb down the rest of the way. He was far from the fortress now, at least in altitude, and he thought it unlikely they could find him. But his original plan, to hole up somewhere then find a way to sneak back in and free the others, had to be abandoned.