Broken Rule | Chapter 14
This post is chapter fourteen of my not-previously-published epic fantasy novel Broken Rule, which I'm serializing here on Steemit.
The story so far:
Chapters: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Lorne stumbled out the window and the world seemed to slow down. There was a shingled roof below him, the armory, if he remembered the layout of the castle properly. It angled away from the side of the keep. Would that hurt more or less than if it had been flat? Lorne twisted his body around to see the window he had exited, but it was like he was moving through molasses. He had to turn farther than he expected to see the window, and then it just kept getting farther and farther away. Why had he taken the window? The window had never been part of the plan. Back out the door and into the alcove around the corner. That was a good plan, wasn't it? So why wasn't he doing that right now? The wizard wasn't supposed to be awake. That wasn't part of the plan either. That's where it had started to go off course. And the wizard certainly wasn't supposed to blind Lorne and pummel him while he was on the ground. Getting away had seemed so very important at that point, especially after the wizard shouted the alarm, and he saw the window. Why hadn't his brain warned him about falling and cracking his skull this time?
Before he could ponder that question, he hit the roof he had been falling toward. The world spun, and Lorne's body screamed in pain. Somehow, even though he had hit, he still seemed to be falling. That wasn't right, was it? And when you fall, you fall down, not along the ground. He pieced it together a moment later, the spinning, the unusual sort of falling: he was rolling off the angled roof of the armory. But by the time he realized it, he wasn't doing it anymore, just falling again. He had run out of roof and now he was heading for the ground, although he was facing the wrong way and couldn't see it coming when it hit.
On the ground he missed the simple terror of falling. He hurt like never before, and suspected he had broken several ribs, at least. He considered how badly things had gone. Could things get any worse then this? Ah, yes they could. He heard several men in heavy boots walk up to him, although he didn't have the energy to turn his head to look at them.
“Hey, isn't that Petro's friend?” asked one.
“Yeah, I think so. Hey buddy, what happened?” asked the other.
Lorne's mind boggled for a moment. They were asking him? “Assassin,” he croaked. “I tried to stop him, but he got away, that way.”
“I'll go get the surgeon,” said the first man.
Lorne let his pain overtake him and blacked out.
He woke later on a cot in a tent. “Oy, back amongst the living!” Petro yelled, slapping Lorne on the shoulder, sending agonizing waves of pain through him.
“So it would seem,” Lorne answered.
“You wait here. Sir Ronnel wanted me to get him when you woke up.” Petro made his way out of the tent, and from the light through the flaps, Lorne guessed it was late afternoon. Petro returned some time later, how long Lorne really couldn't say, with Sir Ronnel Towne.
Towne was the commander of Petro's troop. Lorne's troop, too, he had to remind himself. His plan of action against the wizard included abandoning his cover story after it was finished, but he'd never gotten to that part of the plan. When Lorne had first arrived at Thornwood he saw that many foreign mercenaries had joined up with Gavril and decided that would work far better than his original plan to pass himself off as a messenger from a business interest in Old Harbor. Petro had been so enthusiastic with his war stories and so unstinting in his praise of Duke Gavril that Lorne found it easy to play the part of someone who had been enticed into joining Gavril's army for gold and glory. With two veterans to vouch for him, it had been easy to convince the duke's officers that he was up for the job. With his own position in the guard rotation, he was able to study the layout of the castle's keep and learned the ins and outs of the guards' routine. Getting into the wizard's room unnoticed had been simplicity itself. And then things had gone so badly wrong.
Towne entered and sat down on a stool next to Lorne's cot, bringing Lorne's mind back to the present. “So, Lorne Barrowman, after his scuffle with you, the man you fought escaped the keep without detection and has eluded all our patrols,” Towne said. “Do you remember anything distinctive about him? Any badges or colors?”
“No, sir,” Lorne answered. “It was dark.” He thought back to the night before, and concocted a story that he hoped was believable. “I was walking to the latrine when I heard the alarm from above. I saw a man descending from the roof of the armory, so I tried to stop him. I had no weapon, and he was lightning quick. He knocked me to the ground, and ran away into the night.”
“Hmmm,” said Towne, “from what the surgeon said, he did more than merely knock you to the ground.”
“In my native land we do not boast about how badly we are beaten, sir.”
Towne let out half a chuckle. “Well said, man. Still, it's quite a puzzle. The wizard Jonas Terra raises an alarm about an assassin in the night, but then in the commotion he kidnaps the duke's son.”
“The duke's son, sir? I don't understand.”
“Nor does anyone else, I'm afraid. We can't fathom whether the wizard was in league with this sneak or if they were working separately. Indeed, if you hadn't fought the fellow, some would believe that he was a fiction invented by the wizard to cover his crime. We hoped that you noticed something in your fight that would shed light on the mystery.” He stood up from the stool and made ready to leave. “Still, the duke thanks you for your vigilance. He will continue your pay as if you were on active service while you recover from your wounds.” With that, Sir Ronnel made his way imperiously out of the tent, and Petro took his place on the stool.
“Ha! That's quite the feat, earning a soldier's pay while you do naught but sit on your backside. I knew you was a good one, since the first day I met you. I said as much to Trapper, too.”
“Thank you, Petro. I think I'd like to get some more sleep.”
“The duke's paying you good money to do it, so you'd better get at it!” Petro slapped Lorne's shoulder again and made his way out of the tent.
Lorne had never heard of a mission botched as badly as he had botched this one. Even if Lorne had the strength to get out of bed, he had no idea where the wizard had gone, or any idea about how to track him down. The Eyes had always taken care of that. He had failed as the Hand. The sureness of a visit from the Hand of the Black Circle was the foundation of the whole system. If the Black Circle developed a reputation as bumbling oafs, who would fear them? There weren't enough Eyes to catch every crime and not enough in the Hand to punish even half of those that were caught. The Black Circle depended on fear to keep everyone in line, fear that they would be seen, that they would be punished. But who would ever fear him, if they knew what had happened here? Could he ever return to Old Harbor, that city he loved so much? Would he receive a message in the night? Faber had said there were Eyes in Tarkannan, and it would not take long for news of what had happened here to get back to the Heart. Lorne had trusted the Black Circle his entire life, trusted the Heart to make the right decisions. Lorne lay in bed pondering whether it would take longer for his body to heal or for the Black Circle to render judgement on him. Neither prospect seemed promising, but both required waiting.