The Rope Dancer (24 page)

Deri shrugged. “I must go and ask someone.”

Carys shook her head. She knew she should go because one boy in shabby clothes more or less would not be noticed, and a boy’s asking for the minstrel would imply no more than an eagerness to hear the tales and songs.

“I will go,” she offered, but despite her efforts, her voice broke and she trembled.

“You will stay here and well out of sight,” Deri ordered, glaring at her.

“But, Deri—” she began, fearful of hurting him but driven by a greater fear for him to remind him he would be immediately noticed and marked as the minstrel’s man.

“And if I do not return,” he interrupted grimly, “take the coins and jewels out of the old hollow harp and try to get out with whoever leaves in the morning.”

He left the stable as he spoke, before Carys could protest or reply—not that she could have anyway, for her throat had closed with terror. She stood with tears pouring down her stricken face, watching the dwarf walk directly toward the hall. Deri, she realized, thought Telor was dead. He believed that Telor had said or done something amiss because of Eurion, and the lord had killed him on the spot. That was why Deri insisted on going. If Telor was dead, he would take his revenge on as many as he could before they killed him too.

If she could have moved or screamed, she would have pursued Deri, but her grief and the terror of being alone were so powerful that she was paralyzed and mute. She saw Deri enter the glow of the open doorway to the hall. Then, because time had stretched out for her and it seemed he was inside a long time, hope began to thaw her—just enough so that she was doubly stricken when the tumult broke out in the hall.

She heard roars of rage and several screams of pain, and great tearing sobs racked her as she clung to the edge of the stable entry. The battle seemed to go on and on, and Carys heard her life being broken into tiny shards and ground into useless dust. She could not move away to hide. What use to hide, she thought, as the tumult died and the only sweetness she had known since childhood died with it. Better the quick kiss of her own keen blade…

But as the thought formed and Carys tried to find courage to reach for the knife, a man’s body darkened the door, dragging another body by a too-short leg. Transfixed by pain and grief, she followed with her eyes until the man passed out of her range of vision. Her hand slid down toward the knife hilt again, but uncertainly; something about the body being dragged was not right. Then it came to her—it had no arms. Carys shuddered. Had they hacked off Deri’s arms? But the noise, the shouts and screams…none were Deri’s. She almost cried out when the answer came to her. They had tied Deri’s hands. One does not tie the hands of a corpse. Deri was alive!

Carys slid around the edge of the stable entry in the direction Deri had been dragged in time to see the man stop by a stone outbuilding. It was not possible for her to see what the man was doing, but she heard a faint sound, which took a moment to identify as the scrape of metal on metal, then the unmistakable dull thud of a soft, heavy weight hitting the ground, and last the scrape of metal on metal again.

Before that sound died, she was back inside the stable, and from the entryway she marked the return to the hall of the man who had locked up Deri. The sound of loud, excited voices, which had been somewhat blocked by the side of the building while Carys had watched Deri carried away, rose to a slightly louder pitch, and Carys waited to hear no more. Softly as a hunted mouse, but swiftly, she ran to where their belongings lay, seized the old harp, which she hung round her neck, patted her shoulder to make sure her rope was safe and without loose ends, and climbed up the nearest post.

She was just setting the harp firmly into a crotch of the beams when her ears caught the faint sound of voices, not more than three or four. That could only mean that a party was approaching the stable, and
that
could only mean that they were searching for her. Carys ran across the beam to the side of the stable opposite where Telor’s animals were tied, just as the first glimmer of the approaching torches brightened the entry-way. Had it been daylight, she would have leapt the distance between the cross-beams; in the dark, she did not dare. But where the roof beams met the sidewalls, there was a tiny ledge. Carys crept along this, her heels on the ledge, her body bent forward by the angle of the roof, her hands gripping each roof beam in turn, to keep her from falling.

It was agonizing work, far harder than hanging from her hands, and she had progressed no more than two crossbeams when the increasing light and voices told her she must stop moving. She forced herself as deep as she could into the angle where the roof beam met the crossbeam, bent her head onto her knees and rested her arms along her cheeks so that her pale face would reflect no light, and breathed carefully through her open mouth to make no sound.

With one eye raised just a little above her sleeve, she saw a man with a torch stop in the entryway while three more entered the stable. They turned sharply right and went about halfway down along the near side. There, they kicked awake the grooms.

“Where are the minstrel’s horses?” one growled.

“At the far end,” a groom answered, hurriedly getting to his feet to show the way.

“Where is the boy who came with them?” the first speaker demanded when they had lifted each piece of drying cloth, poked the nearby heaps of straw, and looked behind the bales.

“Was there a boy?” the groom asked in a frightened voice, and then called the same question to those who were sitting and watching the searchers.

“I remember the minstrel and a dwarf,” a second groom admitted, rising and coming closer reluctantly. “I wanted to ask from where they had come and saw the dwarf asleep, but no one was with him then.”

“There
was
a boy,” a second man-at-arms said. “There are three beasts.”

“But only two saddles,” the groom pointed out timidly.

“I swear there was a boy,” the second man-at-arms insisted. “He clung close to the minstrel to shelter from the wind when they came through the gate, but I know what I saw.”

“One of the other grooms spoke to the dwarf when they came in,” the groom offered pacifically in response to the rising anger in the man-at-arms’s voice. “I could fetch him—”

“What difference does it make, Diccon?” the third man-at-arms interrupted irritably. “Do you want to stand here all night while these idiots think about what they saw? If there was a boy, he may have run away when he heard us bring down that damned dwarf. In any case, he can’t get out of Marston. We can ask Captain Henry when he wakes tomorrow.”

“If he ever wakes and is not all about in his head,” the second man growled. “I wonder what will happen to the minstrel if Captain Henry dies.”

The third man laughed. “Nothing worse than will happen to him anyway, since Or—er…Lord Orin means to have him apart piece by piece.”

The second man nodded. “Who would have thought a minstrel could hit so hard, and with a lute too?” The reminder of Captain Henry’s misfortune seemed to pacify him, and he nodded at his companion and said, “Right. The boy can’t escape, so there’s no need to bother searching for him. I’ll tell the guards to watch for him tomorrow. He’ll be caught soon enough.”

The first man, who had not spoken after his initial questions to the groom, now raised his voice loud enough for the men sitting on their pallets to hear as well as the two who were standing near them. “Lord Orin will send someone for the minstrel’s goods tomorrow, so don’t think you can help yourselves to anything. I know what’s here. If anything is missing, you’ll pay for it.”

The two grooms hurried away from the forbidden loot, and the men-at-arms joined their companion, who merely shook his head when asked if he had seen anything. Still arguing among themselves, but not with any animosity, the four men went out—back to the hall, Carys presumed. She eased her position so that she was sitting more comfortably on the beam, careful to be quiet, although the grooms were now talking nervously among themselves and probably would have heard nothing. When she was secure, Carys hugged herself with joy. Telor was alive as well as Deri!

The first flood of happiness did not last long. Carys did not doubt her ability to get
to
Telor and Deri, but it had occurred to her that both might be too badly injured to escape. That damped her spirits, but she would not allow herself to dwell on it or to consider what she would have to do if that were the case. Instead, she tried to devise ways for herself and Deri to help an injured Telor escape or herself and Telor to take with them a helpless Deri.

Even after the grooms were asleep and the hall was all dark, she waited, watching for whatever she could see through the slit in the eaves. It was a very dark night, with only rare breaks in the clouds, although the rain had stopped. During a few minutes in which there was a glimmer of moonlight, Carys was able to see one of the guards on the wall. There was no slackness there. The man paced a certain distance right, then left along the wooden walkway, watching intently, clearly making an effort to stare through the gloom—but all his attention was directed outward.

When she was certain that even the most restless sleeper and most ardent coupler must be asleep, Carys came down from her perch and passed silently to the entryway. There she paused, listening, straining her eyes into the darkness, trying to make out any obstacle that might be between her and the stone outbuilding that held Telor and Deri. Despite her precautions, as she slid along the stable wall she tripped over a log lying near it. The only sound was the very faint one of soft flesh striking wood, for her lips were set grimly against just such an accident and she did not even gasp.

Opposite the stone outbuilding, Carys paused to look and listen again. All she could hear were the thud and creak of the pacing guards on the wooden walkway above her. Carys stood at the corner of the stable staring across at the outbuilding. Should she climb the side near the wall, which was sheltered from the courtyard but exposed to the guard? Was it more likely that someone would come out of the hall or another outbuilding to use the privy and see her, or that she would slip and make a noise and draw the guard’s attention?

Telor became aware first of pain in his head and in his limbs, which slowly intensified to an excruciating peak through which he heard himself groaning and weeping. The sounds brought a shock of surprise—he was alive! At the moment, the surprise was not pleasurable, nor did he become any gladder as the pain in his arms and legs began to diminish into numbness and the agony in his skull became a dull ache. The ability to think, which soon followed, brought no comfort. Telor was under no delusion about why he had been kept alive. A common man who attacked a lord was not granted an easy death.

Still, he did not regret what he had done, only the fact that he could not remember whether he had succeeded in avenging Eurion. His blood boiled again at the memory of that stupid, common churl’s contempt of Eurion’s offer to sing. William of Gloucester, who was a king’s grandson, would not have scorned that offer. He would have known it to be worth much more than old Sir Richard’s harmless life. Instinctively, as rage flooded him, Telor struggled against his bonds and opened his eyes. The former was useless; the latter sent new, sharp pangs through his head, but he recognized his prison. He was in the small stone building where Sir Richard had stored extra arms and armor. If a spare blade had been overlooked, he might free himself. That idea made him lift his head, regardless of renewed agony, and force his numb heels into the ground to push him around.

After a rough survey, Telor stopped moving abruptly. He had not yet given up hope of finding some forgotten tool or weapon, but something far more important had suddenly occurred to him. He was alone! Not that Telor had expected guards in this secure building, but had Deri and Carys been taken they would surely have been imprisoned with him. So they were still free. No one knew he had had companions! Only the limping man, the guard at the gate, and the indifferent grooms had seen Telor’s party, and there was a good chance that the gate guard had hardly noticed them and the grooms would not be questioned. Although the motion hurt his swollen face, Telor smiled. At least he had been successful in silencing the limping man, which had been his purpose.

He rested awhile. His mind shied away from his own fate, but knowing that he had not brought a like horror on his innocent companions, he was content. There was still the hope of finding something that would free his hands and give him a quick death. If not, whatever torment awaited him, there would be peace at the end.

Comforted, Telor managed to flex his elbows enough to tip himself over onto his stomach. Then, humping his body, he was able, with infinite effort, to move across the dirt floor to the wall. If a knife or sword blade had been left behind, the most likely place would be the dark angle where the wall met the floor.

How long it took him to go around the whole place did not matter. The effort of moving was so great that Telor could think of little else. He was not much discouraged by finding nothing. He never had much expectation of there being a whole weapon left behind. What Sir Richard’s men had not used in their defense of Marston, Orin’s would certainly have removed and taken for themselves since there was so little other booty. Now, he thought, the really important search must begin. Broken weapons and armor had also been dumped into the building, and Telor had some real hope of finding an odd piece of metal or the shard of a blade with which he could try to cut the thongs that bound him or, failing that, open his wrists and find a peaceful end.

It was only when he realized that he could no longer see at all that Telor understood time had been important. He had been moving around the walls, a body-width away from his first circuit, examining every inch of the floor. The place was so small that one more circuit would have covered all the floor space except for a bit at the center—but it was too dark for that, and he had found nothing, not even a stone. With a sigh, Telor dropped his head to the floor. He was sick with terror, but he was also so exhausted that he fell asleep.

Telor was awakened by a heavy blow on his back. For an instant, he was simply surprised. Then, as memory returned, he stiffened in the expectation of other blows, but none came, and whatever had hit him had not hurt him. He tried to raise his knees to squirm out from under the weight, but every muscle screamed a protest, for he had used them in ways they had never been used before and they had stiffened while he slept. Then the weight on him shifted.

“Telor?”

“Deri?” he gasped. “Oh, Deri, why? Why? Did I not tell you to take Carys and go?”

“Do not be a fool,” the dwarf sighed. “The servants here may be strangers to each other, but all must know there was no dwarf. She will be safer without me. I told her to take the money and other things in the hollow harp. She will have enough to keep her until she can find a troupe.”

There was a silence, and then Deri said, “I killed three before they dragged me down, but I missed Orin.”

“The devil takes care of his own,” Telor muttered.

“God’s truth,” Deri growled. “The stone flew true, but there was another man at his table who leaned over just at the moment, and it struck him instead. I saw the skull bend in and the stone lodge fast. I do not think he will live. The other two I took with my knife—one in the belly and one in the neck.”

“So, if the one I brained with my lute dies, we have a profit of two.” There was another period of silence, during which Telor realized that two were not as helpless as one. “Deri,” he said, “turn on your stomach and I will try to undo the knots or, if I cannot, gnaw through the thong.”

“Why? My head is already on your back. Let me try to undo your bonds.”

“No,” Telor replied, “and it is not nobility on my part. My hands are so dead that I would not be able to untie you, even if you got me loose. Also, I have been pulling and straining at these thongs so the knots are likely much tighter.”

There was too much good sense in Telor’s argument for Deri to continue to protest, and he wriggled himself onto the ground and over onto his face. Then it took a little time for Telor to find him in the blackness, and he had to quest for the dwarf with his head. It was soon apparent that undoing the knots with his teeth would be impossible, but chewing through the leather strip began to look hopeful since Telor could get the whole knot into his mouth and use his back teeth. Hope made them eager, but there was a limit to how long Telor could use his jaws before resting.

At first they talked while Telor rested, planning what they would do if they were free when Orin’s men came to get them, but neither spoke as Telor worked and, as the hours passed, they found they had said everything there was to be said. The walls of the building were thick and cut off all outside sound so that a strange scraping and slithering on the thatched roof was magnified. Both men froze into puzzled stillness as the slithering sound was replaced by a soft creaking, which was followed by a very gentle pattering.

“The thatch,” Telor whispered. “Someone is cutting through the thatch.”

“Carys,” Deri breathed. “Damn that girl, I told her to get out and save herself.”

“She would not do that,” Telor said, “not unless she thought we were both dead. I tried not to think of her. I was sure if she made an attempt to get to us, she would be caught. I never thought of coming through the roof!” His shoulders began to shake. “She is the most
ingenious
girl—”

His voice failed as he tried to choke back slightly hysterical laughter, and in the silence, there was a distinct thud as the straw bindings were cut through and a bundle of thatch dropped to the floor. Two other bundles fell in quick succession.

“Telor? Deri?” Carys whispered, letting her head and shoulders down into the hole she had made and grasping a cross-beam to support herself upside down. “Can you answer me?”

“Yes, we are both here, and not much hurt—I think,” Telor replied.

“Oh, Lady, thank you. Thank you,” Carys breathed, as she walked forward along the beam on her hands to draw the rest of her body silently through the opening she had made.

It took only a moment then for her to lift her rope from her neck, divide the coil in half, wind the middle portion twice around the beam she was on, and drop the two halves to the ground. The beams were so low, since the outbuilding was for storage, not for living, that she was down the rope almost at the same time the coils, not half undone, hit the floor.

“Where?” she whispered, but before Deri or Telor could answer she had tripped over them, backed off, and sunk to her knees.

Carys wasted no time. Having drawn one knife as she knelt, she felt with her other hand for a body, down the body to the bound wrists. She gasped when she felt the way the flesh had swollen over the bonds, but she did not hesitate. All she could do was slide the keen blade down along Telor’s inner arms, pressing the flesh aside as well as she could with her fingers, and cut. Blood slicked the blade and Carys, not Telor, whimpered, but she continued to saw, and the thong gave. She withdrew the knife, because every cut she made increased the danger of severing something important, and she struggled to unwind the thong from his wrists.

It was no easy task. Carys could not see to find the cut end of the thong or to discover how it was wound. The leather, slippery with blood, kept sliding through her fingers, and it was so deeply buried in the swollen flesh that it felt as if Telor’s skin were tearing loose when she pulled. There was no way to tell how much damage she was doing—and she had to do the whole thing over again on his ankles. Carys would have been sick again and again, only her terror of the passing time, which seemed to be hours, was more powerful than nausea.

Telor had spoken only once. When he realized how long it might take to free him, he had told Carys to work on Deri first. She had not replied, but Deri had murmured, “No, you fool, you will need the extra time to get some feeling back in your hands.”

Since it was plain that Carys was not going to listen to him, Telor did not argue, but he was sick with fear that his hands and feet were dead for good. His arms and legs, though numb, still had some feeling in them, so he knew when he was free, and he rolled over and levered himself up on his elbows to sit upright against the wall. Although he could see nothing, he heard Carys’s quick breathing and a couple of hisses from Deri as the knife nicked him. Later he heard a low-voiced litany of obscenity from the dwarf, which Telor was certain was Deri’s reaction to the agony of returning feeling in his hands. But Telor himself still felt nothing.

“Telor?”

That was Carys’s voice, and he replied, “Here,” and then again, “Here,” as he heard her patting the ground, feeling for him. Her hand brushed his leg, felt upward, and seized his arm. In a moment he realized she was rubbing, squeezing, and kneading his hand, but he knew only because of the way his arm moved.

“Never mind that,” Telor whispered. “For God’s sake, open my braies and let me piss, or I will foul myself.”

He felt his tunic being pulled up and fingers fumbling at the tie of his braies, and he pushed himself sideways, sighing with relief as the cool night air on his belly told him he could relieve his bladder. Carys moved back to work on his feet, and when he was finished, she helped tug him along the wall well out of the wet before she re-tied his clothes and began to work on his hands again.

“I do not think you can help me,” he said softly. “They are dead for good. I wish I could have loved you just once, Carys.”

“They are not dead,” Carys protested. “They are warm.”

Telor did not believe her, but he only said, “It does not matter. I will never be able to climb the rope.”

“No,” Carys agreed calmly, “but Deri and I can raise you.”

“And carry me?” Telor remarked. “I cannot walk either. It would be stupid. We would all die. You and Deri—”

“I do not go without you,” the dwarf said, crawling nearer. “I am willing to slit your throat if Carys will cut mine, but—”

“Fool!” Telor exclaimed. “Even if they do not rot, I cannot believe my hands will ever be the same. If I cannot play—”

“There will be time enough to consider that when we are out of here,” Carys interrupted, her whisper trembling with tension. “Deri can cut your throat anytime, you know. Meantime, Deri, see if you can climb that rope.”

A small, shocked silence ended in a burst of choked laughter from Telor. He did not think Carys meant to be funny, which made her response all the funnier. Simultaneously, Deri said, “Not yet. I cannot yet close my hands tight.”

But he could use them well enough to work on Telor’s feet, although he grunted with pain as he squeezed and rubbed, doing himself as much good as Telor. The pressure and motion were helping to drive out the confined fluids that had caused his hands to swell. The delay was necessary, but they were all shaking with fear before Deri, after two unsuccessful tries, managed to climb the rope. Between his attempts they had worked on Telor’s hands and feet frantically, for despite what Carys said, needing to carry him would complicate their escape immeasurably. And all of them kept glancing nervously at the hole in the roof, sure each time the sky would be light and doom them. However, time passed more slowly in reality than in their anxious perception; it was still dark when Deri, gasping with pain and effort, at last straddled the beam on which Carys had tied her rope.

Before that, Telor had begged them once more to kill him, to which their only reply had been to redouble their efforts to bring some life to his dead limbs. The stubborn devotion was rewarded. Between Deri’s first and second try at climbing the rope, Telor exclaimed with a sob of joy that he felt a tingling. Soon after that he had to grit his teeth against screaming as the pangs of returning feeling racked him. Even so, there was no question of his being able to make the climb by the time that Deri was ready, but he could stand with help and knew that in a little while he would be able to walk.

Getting Telor out of the building was like a brief sojourn in hell. Because the beams were so low, however, Deri and Carys did manage to raise him. It was not that Telor weighed so much; Deri alone could have lifted him, had he been standing on solid ground instead of sitting on a narrow beam. Having got Telor up, it was much easier to steady him on his knees so that he could push himself through the hole in the thatch and then to let him slide down the roof and to the ground, braked by the rope. Still, Deri, who had not been treated gently in the great hall, was so exhausted when the pull eased off and Telor was down safe, that he nearly toppled off the beam. It took a little while for Telor to unwind himself and to loosen the slipknot, which had not cut him in two only because Carys had looped the rope around him several times under and over the knot. And the need for utter silence, for moving slowly and keeping to the deepest shadows, now that he was out of the stone outbuilding complicated the minstrel’s clumsy efforts. One thing gave him hope; although it had seemed that many lifetimes had passed since he had wakened in prison, a glance at the sky and the few stars showing in the rifts told Telor that there were still some hours before dawn.