Falconer's Quest (28 page)
A young man’s terror-stricken face, half covered by a matted black beard, blinked in the light. He croaked a single word. “Who…?”
“A friend of your mother’s.” Falconer reached in and gripped the young man’s arm. “Come quickly.”
The young man scrambled in petrified confusion out the door.
Falconer shouted the girl’s name. Again. “Have you seen a young girl?” he asked the man.
But Byron was too terrified to make sense of Falconer’s query. “My…my mother?”
“Listen to me.” He shook Byron as gently as his own nerves allowed. “We don’t have much time. A young girl. Blond. Her name is Kitty.”
“I…No.”
“Come on, then.” Falconer debated whether he should have moved further down the tunnel. He glanced behind them. The cavelike passage snaked back to be enveloped by its own gloom. Falconer opted to head back toward the opening.
“Kitty!”
The stairs appeared ahead of them. The young man allowed himself to be led forward, until he realized that Falconer intended to head down the other dungeon passageway. “No!”
“Come on, man. There’s another—”
“No!” Panic granted him such strength he almost managed to weasel free of Falconer’s grip. “I want to get
out
of here!”
Falconer had no time to be gentle. He took hold of Byron’s neck, wheeled about, and pressed him into the stone wall. “You must be still and listen to me.”
“No! I want—”
Falconer lifted him free of the wall and slammed him back. A motion of less than six inches. But it carried enough force to shock Byron into immobility. “It’s your foolhardiness that brought us here in the first place. You
will
obey me. Now
be still
.”
The strength of Falconer’s grip, or what the young man saw in Falconer’s face, caused him to whimper and go limp.
“That’s better. Now listen carefully. I am here to find
two
of you. Do you hear me? Two. We leave when I’ve located a young girl. Blond haired. Nine years old. She is named Catherine but she goes by Kitty.” When Byron’s eyes tracked upward toward the dusty night, Falconer thumped him again upon the wall, but gently. “Pay attention. Do you know her?”
“I-I might have heard the jailer say something.”
“Did he say where?”
“I…No…” His eyes could not help but track upward again, but this time he pointed down the other corridor. “Perhaps down that way.”
“Good lad. Let’s hurry now.” Falconer peeled Byron from the wall and returned his grip to the man’s arm. “Believe me, I want to get out of here as much as you. So do us both a service and add your voice to mine.”
The young man was so shattered by his ordeal he could produce no volume at all. But Falconer had said it mostly to focus him upon the task at hand. He shouted for the both of them and led them down the smoke-stained fetid tunnel.
After ten paces, he halted and pressed a hand upon Byron’s chest. “Quiet.”
A whimper came from another six paces or so down the tunnel. “Kitty!”
The whimper was louder now. Not really a word. But definitely a child’s voice.
“Kitty, lass, we are friends of your mother’s. If it’s you, please, please, raise your voice.”
She did not give it much strength. Just the same, Falconer clearly heard the word
Here
.
Falconer ran to the next door. “Is it you inside there?”
“Y-yes.”
He rattled the keys, trying one after the other. His hands fumbled and grew sweaty as he went through them all.
“Why are you taking so long?” Byron fretted.
“Because none of them work.” Falconer thought furiously as he tried yet another, certain now all had been fitted at least twice. “La Rue must have decided the jailer wasn’t to be trusted. The admiral has kept this key for himself.” “
Who?”
“Never mind.” Falconer turned to the man. “There was a pike propped on the wall next to the jailer. Run fetch it.”
Byron’s trembling grew worse. “B-back?” He sagged against the wall.
“Hurry now.” Falconer slipped his dagger from his belt. “You can’t get free without me, and I’m not leaving without her.”
Byron pushed himself away from the wall and staggered away. Falconer attacked the frame around the lock. He feared he chipped as much of his blade as he did the stone. “Kitty, lass, or would you prefer I called you Catherine?”
Her voice was a faint whisper, but more audible now. She had lowered herself so that she spoke directly through the hole at floor level, through which food would have been passed. “Kitty.”
Falconer struck and struck and struck. He tried to keep his voice calm, but the panic and the effort made it difficult. “Your mother sent me after you. You remember your mother’s name, don’t you, lass?” he panted out between blows.
“A-Amelia.” She broke over shaping the word. “Mama sent you?”
“Aye, that she did.” Where was Byron? Falconer’s chipping had revealed a lighter colored and harder stone beneath the first layer. Another chip, and the dagger blade broke off an inch from the haft. He resisted the urge to shout and rage at the obstinate lock.
“Byron!”
“Here.”
“Good job, excellent.” Falconer gripped the pike, his hands fitting comfortably around the wooden haft. “All right. Go back and stand at the base of the stairs. If you hear anyone coming, you give us a shout.”
“W-why aren’t there any guards?”
“My friends caused a bit of a diversion. Go on, now. Kitty!”
“Yes?”
“Stand well back of the door, lass.” Falconer stepped back himself. The pike was tipped with a steel arrow eight inches long and shaped like a nine-pointed star. He took aim not at the stone, which he feared would break this blade as well. Instead, he aimed for the lock itself. He braced himself against the opposite wall and pushed off as hard as he could.
The blow resounded through the tunnel like the booming of a great drum. Falconer retreated and rammed it again. A third time. Over and over, the booms pounding and echoing through the stone corridor. He was roaring now, giving the attack every bit of energy he could summon, hoping and praying there was no one around to hear the din he was making.
The lock exploded from the wood, punching a hole through the door. Puffing hard, Falconer dropped the pike with a clatter, gripped the hole with both hands, and tore the door open. “Lass?”
A filthy little waif with matted blond hair crouched beside the rear wall.
Falconer swiped at his face and forced his voice down to as gentle a rumble as he could manage. “There’s nothing to fear from me, Kitty.”
She whimpered and crouched more tightly still.
“Remember what I told you? Your mother sent me. Amelia Henning. She’s waiting for you, sweet little darling.” Falconer reached out one hand. “Now you just come and let me get you free of this hole.”
Falconer lifted her quickly into his arms, and they scrambled up the winding stone stairs and into the starless night. The storm thrummed in the air above the parapets, with dust falling in a constant fitful stream. Neither of Falconer’s charges seemed to notice at all. Byron sobbed great tearless breaths of air. He gripped Falconer’s arm with both hands and stumbled on faltering legs. The girl clung limpetlike to his neck and whimpered continually.
Falconer found the rope by finding the door. He unlashed the rope, an action made awkward because Kitty refused to release him. He handed the rope to Byron. “Follow this to the wall. Climb.”
Byron started forward, asking yet another of his oneword questions as he moved. “Climb?”
“Our way to safety lies up and over the wall. It’s not far to the top. But you’ll have to do it yourself.”
Byron arr ived at the wall and looked up with an expression lost to the gloom. Falconer understood. “I can’t manage you and the lass both.”
From somewhere beyond the gloom, a voice shouted words in Arabic. Byron stiffened in panic. Falconer urged, “Hurry, now.”
Byron’s panic granted him the required strength. Falconer watched him scrabble up the wall. There were more voices now. Falconer did not know if they were raising an alarm or if it was soldiers returning from the fire. Perhaps keener eyes than his own had managed to pierce the dark and spot their escape. He gripped the rope and hissed, “Hold me tight as you can.”
Kitty clutched him with all the strength she could muster, arms and legs both.
Falconer gripped the rope and began to climb. He found the going easier than he had dared hope, for the half-ruined stones offered ample stepping points. Even so, when he reached the ramparts he was puffing hard and his limbs had gone rubbery. “Byron?”
“Here.”
“Find us a hook or bar or…Wait, I have one.” Falconer had to kneel this time, and even so his weariness and the girl’s weight almost pulled him prone. He lashed the rope’s end to an iron hook imbedded in the stone. Rust flaked off in his grip. He tested it with his full weight, then handed it to Byron. “Let yourself over and down.”
“I…I…”
“A friend awaits us. His name is Bernard. Hurry.”
How Falconer made it down that wall, with the girl clinging to him and his legs as weak as water, he had no idea. Nonetheless he did, and at the base there was Bernard. The young man hefted Byron onto the donkey, then tried to pull Kitty away. But the girl began wailing and Bernard relented. He guided Falconer over to the horse and used his back as a support while Falconer heaved himself into the saddle. Bernard slipped the reins into one of Falconer’s hands and a waterskin into the other. Falconer settled Kitty so that most of her weight was taken by the horse. She loosened her grip enough to glance about, and then to drink. Then her eyes closed and her head disappeared onto Falconer’s shoulder. He could not tell if she was asleep, only that her whimpers grew fewer and softer.
They held to a straight, easterly course. The streets remained mostly empty. A few people rushed past, all headed toward the dimming glow behind them. Falconer felt enormously exposed. He knew those who passed would not help but notice them. A young man led two beasts. One, a donkey, held a bearded man dressed in rags and prison grime. The other, a horse, held an equally filthy young girl who looked to be a Westerner with hair that might be blond beneath its matting of dirt, who clung desperately to a tall stranger dressed in black. No, their only hope lay in leaving the city well behind.
The storm began to abate. The tightly wrapped awnings of shuttered businesses stopped drumming out their angry beat. As the wind’s noise died, Falconer could hear a rising swell of voices behind them. The entire city seemed drawn to the havoc around the port.
Falconer recognized their turn by the stench. It was precisely as Nebo had described, a smell so vile not even a desert storm could mask it. Falconer drank from the waterskin, then spoke for the first time since their journey began. “Here. We turn here.”
Bernard wordlessly turned the beasts south.
They entered the quarter occupied by the city’s butchers and skinners and tanners. It was the same in every desert city Falconer had ever known. These people had not just their own quarter but their own wells, market, temples, and taverns. Anyone who noticed the group’s passage would be loath to report anything to soldiers, most of whom would pay gold not to enter. Or so Falconer hoped.
Neither of Falconer’s charges gave any sign they even noticed the stench. Or the direction. Which was very good, for Falconer could not risk explaining what they had planned.
The tanners’ quarter ended by a broad, shallow lake. To the south and east rose hills, a jagged silhouette against the gradually clearing sky. Beyond the hills, Falconer knew, rose the newer part of Tunis. To the south and west was a flat, empty wasteland that stretched on for hundreds of miles.
The southern city wall had long been robbed of stones to be used for houses and corrals. Only one watchtower remained of the former parapet, and it rose from the desert like a ragged thumb. Without instructions from Falconer, Bernard left the road and headed toward the moonlit mound.
Figures separated themselves from the tower’s silhouette and started toward them. Falconer recognized the bowlegged shape of Soap, who led a donkey that held one of the former slaves. Next came the tall, lean form of Wadi, who led two more mules piled high with provisions. Another of the whalers walked. Nebo led two more mules carrying the last freed man.
The walking man came in close enough for Falconer to recognize the whaler called Randall Sands. He peered at Falconer’s charges a moment, then asked, “This them?”
“Aye.” Falconer’s voice sounded low and ragged as the last trailing wind.
“So you broke into the dungeon and freed them both.” Sands’ teeth flashed through his beard. “Glad you’re on our side, mate.”
Nebo pulled his mules around. “Dawn comes soon.”
“We go,” Falconer agreed.
They passed the tower and headed away from both the city and the road. South by west. Away from people and water and food and the sea.
Into the wasteland.
The desert held a multitude of moods, all of them distinctly their own. The wind rose again soon after dawn, blasting the travelers with the tail of the storm’s final assault. Falconer quickly helped those new to the desert to fit burnooses and accepted Wadi’s assurance that this storm would not last. They forced the animals to kneel in the sand, then shielded themselves behind the beasts as best they could. No one complained. Falconer leaned his head against the mule and slept through the heat and the wind, easy in mind and body for the first time since scaling the fortress wall. Even the wind was his friend now, even the biting grime.
When the wind vanished and there was only the heat, they rose to continue their flight. Falconer and Nebo glanced behind, then shared a weary smile at how their trail was now obliterated.
They rested once at noon and again at midafternoon. Falconer walked now, for the horse’s flanks were lathered in sweat. He had to be very firm with the little girl, refusing her cries to be held. She did not protest in words, nor was he certain she actually understood his explanation that he was too exhausted to hold her. But she remained on the horse only so long as he walked beside her, close enough for her to reach out every now and then to touch his shoulder.