The Warlord's Legacy (4 page)

Watching through tired eyes as they neared, Cerris began to whisper under his breath. His hands opened and closed, the rhythmic stretching serving to hide the subtle twitches of his fingers.

It was a simple enough spell. A shimmer passed over his left leg, so faint and so swift that even Cerris himself, who was not only watching for it but
causing
it, barely noticed. He shifted his posture, standing rigidly, feet together, keeping his real—and now invisible—leg outside the phantom image. Not a comfortable stance, but better that than to have the guard bump a knuckle into something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

The guard approached—yawning as he knelt—clasped the manacle around a length of absolutely nothing that looked and felt an awful lot like a human ankle, and continued on his way.

Cerris continued his whispering, new syllables replacing the old. He saw the manacle fall to the dust, but to everyone else, it was invisible, appearing instead to be firmly locked around the equally illusory leg. It was enough to fool the second guard, who passed his length of chain through the nonexistent ring without so much as a heartbeat’s hesitation.

Struggling to conceal his smile, Cerris knelt briefly as though massaging
a sore foot and slipped the real manacle around his arm so as not to leave any evidence behind. Then, matching his shuffling step to the prisoners who actually
were
chained together, he allowed himself to be led away.

Not far from the road crouched a simple wooden hall of slipshod construction. Thrown together by Cephiran soldiers, it served as bunk for the road workers, far more convenient than herding them back through the city gates every night. Cerris wrinkled his nose as he passed through the wooden doors, the miasma of sweat and fear, waste and watery stew an open-handed slap to the face. It had long since soaked into the wooden walls and the cheap woolen blankets on which the exhausted prisoners slept away their fitful nights. Bowls of that stew, which contained as much gristle as meat, already awaited, one bowl per blanket. Foul as it was, nobody hesitated to down their portion in rapid gulps. While their companions watched from the doorway, two guards moved through the hall, one collecting bowls, the other fastening the end of the long chain to a post that punched through the wooden floor and deep into the unyielding earth. Thus secured, the prisoners could shuffle around the room—clanking and clattering the chain like a chorus of angry ghosts, more than loud enough to be heard from outside—but even if they could somehow force open the door, they wouldn’t have sufficient slack to pass through.

It was a simple arrangement, but an efficient one … assuming, of course, that the prisoners were actually
fastened
to the chain.

Cerris lay back on his blanket and waited, though he yearned to be up and moving. In a matter of moments, the snores, grunts, and moans of exhausted sleep rose from all around him. He found himself halfway tempted to join them—the accommodations were hardly comfortable, but damn, he was tired!—and it was only sheer force of will that kept him from drifting off.

After what he judged to be about an hour and a half, Cerris was certain that every man in the hall was deep in slumber. Sitting up, he glanced around to confirm, and then rose, wincing at the faint popping of joints that were, despite his fervent demands to the contrary, growing older. Hefting the manacle in one fist, he stepped over the length of chain and crept on silent feet toward the door.

It was slow going indeed, for the room’s only illumination was the occasional flicker of the campfires outside, slithering in through tiny gaps in the wood or the handful of six-inch windows that prevented the air within from growing too stale. More than once, Cerris stumbled, and though reflexes born of a violent life kept him upright and silent, he still cursed his own clumsiness.

‘
Getting decrepit, old boy. Slow and clumsy. Even just a few years ago, you’d never have …
’

Then he was at the door, the time for bemoaning over, and Cerris gleefully shoved that voice back into its burrow in the depths of his mind. He knew that the door boasted no lock, but was held shut by a heavy wooden bar in an iron bracket. More than secure enough, since even if a prisoner could slip his chain, he had no tools at hand with which to lift that bar.

Except, of course, for the manacle that was
supposed
to be linking Cerris to the others.

For long moments, he listened, struggling to judge the number of guards by the occasional shifting of mail or bored sigh. Possibly only the one, he decided eventually, certainly no more than two. He contemplated a spell to cast his sight out beyond the door, but even after several years of practice, he found clairvoyance disorienting and difficult. He might learn what he needed to know, only to find himself in no shape to take advantage of it.

Ah, well. He’d faced worse odds, in his day.

‘
Yeah, but you always had help facing those odds, didn’t you, “Cerris”? You never were worth half a damn on your own.
’

He frowned briefly, pressing his lips tight, forcing himself not to respond. It had been
years
since he’d banished the vile thing that had once shared his thoughts, yet
still
he swore he heard that mocking, malevolent voice in his head. And all the more often, these past few months. He must finally be losing his mind.

‘
Not that you ever had much of one to lose …
’

“Shut up!” he hissed, even though he knew, he
knew
he was berating himself. He forced himself to relax with a steadying breath, then opened the manacle and began working the rod—a length of iron
nearly six inches long, and almost as thick around as his thumb—through the gap in the door.

And thank the gods the Cephirans had been in such a hurry to throw this place together! It was tight going, but the narrow rod indeed fit. Cerris slid it upward, slowly, wary of allowing it to screech or grate against the wood. Inch by inch, carefully, carefully …

The rod touched the bar with the faintest of thumps. Cerris held his breath, waiting to see if the guard—guards?—had heard. Only when a full minute had passed was he confident enough to continue.

Here we go. All I have to do is lift a heavy wooden bar, with no leverage to speak of, toss it aside, throw the door open, and take out a guard or two before they have time to react. Nothing to it
.

He allowed himself another moment to bask, almost to revel, in the insanity of what he was attempting. Then Cerris whispered a few more words of magic, one spell to alleviate a modicum of his exhaustion, another to cast an illusory pall of silence that might grant a few precious seconds. Then, squeezing both hands around the tiny length of metal, he tensed his back, his arms, his legs, and heaved with everything he had.

For a few terrifying, pounding heartbeats, he
knew
he’d failed. The bar had to weigh close to a hundred pounds, and trying to raise it with a few inches of iron felt very much like trying to lift a house by the doorknob. His hands ached where the metal bit into flesh, sweat masked his face, and a gasp escaped his lungs and lips despite his best efforts toward silence.

And then, praise be to the ever-fickle Panaré Luck-Bringer, his problem was solved for him. Something of his struggle—a breath, a twitch, a shiver in the wood—passed through both the door and his phantom shroud of silence. Uncertain of what (if anything) he’d actually heard, unwilling to look the fool in front of his comrades, and thoroughly convinced that the prisoners remained securely chained within, the soldier standing beyond did not signal for help. He did not raise an alarm.

He lifted the bar himself and pulled the door open a scant few inches, just to take a look and reassure himself that all was well.

The iron weight of the manacle—the cuff itself, not the fastening
rod—made for a poor weapon, but better than none. Gripping the inner curve of the U, Cerris punched. The prong that broke teeth and tore up the back of the soldier’s throat might have left him capable of screaming, if inarticulately. So might the other, even as it crushed an eye to jelly against the back of its socket. But the both together proved too much, and the guard fell with a sodden thump, unconscious if not dead from shock alone.

Glancing around furtively, Cerris stepped through the doorway and slid the bar back into place behind him. Moving as swiftly as he could manage with the awkward load, he dragged the soldier away from the prisoners’ bunkhouse, easily avoiding the few wandering patrols that remained awake so late at night. He dropped the body behind a mess tent only after taking the man’s own sword and driving it several times through the corpse’s face, hiding the true nature of the fatal wound. He couldn’t avoid rousing suspicion, not with a dead soldier in the camp, but at least he left nothing behind to point directly at an escaped prisoner.

That bloody business aside, Cerris rose and chanted yet another illusion beneath his breath. The chain hauberk and gryphon-stitched tabard that shimmered into view over his prisoner’s tunic wouldn’t stand up to close observation, but they would do until he could find another guard—one who, unlike this useless fellow, was near Cerris’s own build.

O
NCE SAID GUARD HAD BEEN LOCATED
, and throttled from behind, the sheer size of the Cephiran occupying force actually proved an advantage. Unable to memorize the face of
every
soldier, secure in the knowledge that the prisoners were under control and that the highway patrols would prevent infiltrators from beyond, the men-at-arms at Rahariem’s gates waved Cerris through with scarcely a glance at his uniform.

Within the walls, Rahariem didn’t actually look all that different. Crimson pennants flew from flagpoles, yes. Many of the people wandering the streets wore tabards of a similar hue, and atop the walls and
makeshift platforms rose an array of engines—mangonels, ballistae, even trebuchets—which had served to aid in the Cephirans’ conquest of Rahariem, and served now in its defense. But those streets seemed no less busy, the laughter in the taverns no less raucous. While the bulk of Rahariem’s working-aged commoners had been hustled into work camps throughout the city, the young, the old, and the infirm were permitted to continue their daily lives. Shops still fed the local economy, taverns and restaurants provided services to citizens and invaders alike, and of course the officers
definitely
knew better than to deprive their own soldiers by shutting down the brothels or taking the prostitutes off the streets.

Cerris strode casually along those streets, offering distracted nods to his “fellow” soldiers, salutes to the occasional officer, glowers to those citizens who had legitimate business being out after curfew. He made good time, as he knew he would. Intended to facilitate merchant caravans, the city’s broad streets were smoothly paved, running in straight lines and recognizable patterns. It was a layout that had served the city well—right up until it facilitated the invading troops just as handily.

‘
It’s astounding these people even have the brains to know which end of themselves to feed. Ants and termites build more defensive communities than this. Serves them right, what happened.
’

“They didn’t deserve this,” Cerris argued with that voice—
his
voice?—under his breath.

‘
Oh, I see. They only deserved it back when it was you who was—
?’

“Shut up!” He barely retained the presence of mind to whisper the admonition rather than shout it to the heavens.

Glass lanterns on posts burned away the darkness, accompanied by stone-ringed bonfires the Cephirans had constructed in the midst of major intersections to illuminate the night more brightly still. Nobody was going to be sneaking around, not on
their
watch.

Nobody lacking a stolen uniform, anyway.

His back quivered with the strain of maintaining a steady walk when every instinct lashed him with whips of adrenaline, demanding he break into a desperate sprint. Every few steps he rubbed the sweat from his palms on his pant legs, and his eyes darted this way and that with such spastic frequency that he was sure he would soon learn what the
inside of his skull looked like. Cerris wasn’t one to succumb to fear, and frankly being found out and executed as a spy would be a far more pleasant death than many he’d courted, but something about the need to remain so godsdamn
casual
got his dander up.

‘
Or maybe,
’ he swore he heard that demonic voice whispering, ‘
it’s that you still believe, deep down, that they should be afraid of you.
’ A moment of blessed silence, then, before ‘
Even if you and I both know that there was never any good reason to be. Not without me doing all the heavy lifting. You never were much more than a porter, when you get down to it, were you
?’

Finally, after a few more minutes during which Cerris was certain he’d exuded enough sweat to float a longboat, he neared his destination. The streets grew smoother still; some avenues even had mortar filling in the gaps between the larger cobblestones, to prevent carriages from rattling. The houses here were of a larger breed and stood aloof from one another, boasting sweeping expanses of lawn behind wrought-iron fences or stone walls. Here, in the city’s richest quarter, most traces of invasion vanished—except for the guards who stood at the entrance to each gated estate. These were clad in the ubiquitous crimson and boasted the night-hued gryphon, rather than the various colors and ensigns of the noble houses.