A Midsummer's Saga Pt. 08

She took the clothes. The leather armour she left behind. This was a flight, not a fight.

The clothes bundled under her arm, she retreated from the room. Though the door creaked like a million screaming demons, nobody stirred.

She knew this place so well she navigated in the dark with ease. Some way down the narrow corridor behind a door to the left was the scriptorium, where the chapel's books and papers were kept. She closed the door after her. She would have to light a candle here to find the right map. She listened intently for any noises, but only heard faint snoring from the chambers on the floor above - Pelagius, probably. Okay, quick. There is no time.

She lit the candle and found a shelf on which treatises on geography could be found. She started looking through folded pieces of parchment which could credibly be maps.

She hoped Aerin knew what he was doing. She could only trust him - in the end, though she was Harmeni and he Kontarian, he grew up close from here while she was from far away. He said that their best chance was to make it through the wilderness to the north. It sounded risky, but what didn't?

Suddenly, her movements faltered. For him, the least risky thing would be to pass the gate with two horses, leave her here and just dash east for the nearest border.

Well that's a good time to revisit her doubts! She'd been afraid to let him touch her too, and look how that turned out. He wouldn't leave her here. He had feelings for her, she knew that. And he owed her, a whole lot.

Yet as she was leafing through the papers, the thought refused to keep quiet. He has feelings for you, but he has feelings for being free, too. His chances are a lot better if he's alone, and with two horses. Besides, for real, you still don't actually know him. You wanted to help him, but why? Because he's hot, and because you pitied him. Fair enough, as long as the plan was to ship him away in an ox cart and go on with your life. Now you're no longer just doing him a favour. Now you're asking for a favour back, you're asking him to lower his own chances of survival so you can tag along. Now you're going to wager your life on him, and not on his pretty eyes or on his hard cock, but on who he is. You don't know who he is! He seemed alright when you talked to him, but damnit, everyone would seem alright in a dungeon! Even Clement seemed human and relatable with that truncheon hovering over his skull!

She found the map she had been looking for. It was a fairly detailed representation of the land between Behem, the City of Ys, and the Kontarian border.

She stood motionless for a moment. Then she blew out the candle and left the room. She wanted to think, but there was no time.

*

"Yes, I'm telling you, this room is very spider-proof."

Clement looked incredulous when Aerin led the two docile men into his erstwhile cell and locked the door behind them. He then disappeared for several minutes, and returned with a bunch of blankets.

"Take these, it gets chilly here," he said, pushing them through the bars. "Well, goodbye then, Dodo. You are pretty alright, I guess. Sorry about tomorrow."

Dodo looked at him benignantly and smiled. Aerin looked down at Clement.

"Totally not sorry about you, though. Hope your ass freezes off by morning, dickhole."

With these heartfelt goodbyes, he took away his lamp and left them in the dark.

Heading back to the foreroom, he passed by his original cell. He paused, put the candle on the floor, and entered it.

He knew every inch of it so well. He traced the shapes of the floor stones with his toes. He patted the fetters hanging from the ceiling. He put his foot in the familiar crack and lifted himself up to the window where he and Gabrielle had spent so much time. He walked over to the bars where she had chained him and taken him. He positioned himself exactly as he had stood then, and relived the memory for a moment. He smiled to himself.

He walked over to the door. It answered to his push and opened before him. He'd never take this for granted again, he thought to himself. This is like having a divine power.

He turned around, and gave the place one final look.

"Bye, cell," he murmured, and returned upstairs.

*

She watched him thoughtfully as he took off his prison rags and started putting on the clothes she brought.

"Are you ogling?" he asked.

"Mhm." No matter what second thoughts she was having, the sight of his naked body could always cheer her up.

He wrapped his belt over the dark hooded vest. In the wooden chest by the wall they found a good length of thick hempen rope. It was time to get going.

*

Grass yielded softly under his feet. He lifted up his head. Above, the vast and distant and eternal sky glittered brilliant with a million stars. He grinned in the dark like a moron.

They went up the wall over the chapel garden. There would be a guard making rounds, but she knew there was only one - most were only looking out over the walls of the inner courtyard, inside which anyone important stayed. Where they now stood, the wall was only about twelve feet high, and below it a steep and shrub-covered slope descended into the dark.

Aerin tied the rope around a crenellation. It reached all the way down and was almost invisible in this night, the same shade as the rock.

"You'll be fine?" he whispered. She nodded.

She left him with the largest keys, which should match the heavy locks of the stable and the larder. They went back down to the dungeon door, where after a bit of trial and error she unlocked the entrance to the armoury.

"I'm off to the fireworks. Meet you here in half an hour."

"Be careful, Gabrielle." He grabbed her and kissed her. "For luck," he said.

She smiled. In the darkness of her eyes there was something distant, searching.

*

In the armoury, he picked a decent pair of boots for himself, a pair of knives, and a hatchet. Back in the courtyard, he circled away from the gatehouse to where the stable was. He found it by the smell. There was nobody about, and all the windows were now dark. Up on the gatehouse, in the torchlight, he saw two guards stand motionless.

The stable door opened without much fuss. He now had to select a good pair of horses in near total darkness.

He liked the ones with the orange and yellow caparisons stowed in their stalls - the ones that Oren's troop arrived on. But, alas, these were very tired.

He ended up picking two of the local horses that appeared both sturdy and reacted to him with calmness. He led them out of the stalls and saddled them. Then he took the saddlebags and, quietly, went outside and ran for the larder.

The kennels were nearby and some dog sensed him, and started barking. Aerin cringed and held his breath in his sinuses, trying to will the stupid bastard quiet.

He could only rely on Gabrielle's directions in the dark, and wasn't sure he was breaking into the correct building until after he managed to open the door. It was, indeed, the larder. He groped for viable food. Into the saddlebags he threw some loaves of bread, apples, and pieces of dry meat. He also found two waterskins. Locking the door behind him, he returned to the stable, cursing the dog which was still insisting on making noise, and loaded the supplies onto his horses.

Now he rummaged about for materials for the final part of his preparations. He sliced up one of the fine heraldic caparisons and wrapped the strips of material about the horses' hooves. He carved out bits of hard leather from a saddle he'd found and tied them to the sides of their heads, so that they could not see anything around them and only the little bit of space directly ahead. He finally tore lumps of wool from an old vest hanging by the door and stuffed it in their ears. If the animals were beginning to question his sanity through all of this, they were tactful enough not to display it; they merely shook their heads and twitched their ears in mild annoyance.

*

The round room had two large windows, one facing towards the inner courtyard and one facing the world beyond the walls. The fireworks were stacked all over the shelves by the wall. There was an awful lot of them.

There were also many yards of spare fuse. She cut off several inches, lit it with her flint, and tried to guess how much delay she would get for every inch. To her satisfaction, it turned out the fuse was high quality, burning evenly and predictably.

She arranged the fireworks so that most of them were facing the window to the outside - this way they would explode some distance from the castle and not give too much light to the courtyard, where Aerin would be waiting. She gave them different lengths of fuse, to prolong the whole thing and give him more time. Some would be exploding in the room, causing a lot of noise and maybe even a fire.

She thought that the shortest of the fuses she prepared would take about twenty minutes to burn through - enough time for her to return to her chamber in the Great Hall.

She looked at her finished job with apprehension. The fuses were whirling black on the floor like a mass of snakes. The fireworks would surely attract the guards' attention for a while. Whether they could divide their attention, and whether the while would be long enough, she couldn't know. But this was all she could do to give Aerin a chance. All he needed was maybe two minutes to get through that gate.

And should he succeed, what would he do then?

*

One of the guards on top of the gatehouse stretched out his hands and yawned.

"What's that dog yapping about?" his companion said, addressing the question more to the universe on a whole than in his particular direction.

"Iunno, man. Dogs are stupid." He walked over to the inner side of the wall. Beyond the circle of torchlight, the outer courtyard was utterly black below him. Only a handful of windows yet lit up over at the Great Hall and the torches at the inner courtyard walls testified that there was still a castle around him. "Shut the fuck up, dog," he said.

Night shifts at the gatehouse were the worst. They were more ceremonial than practical, too. They had all those border forts and signal fires that would give them an advance warning if any raiding party was approaching, there had been no reports of active bands of thieves recently - and certainly not ones stupid enough to attack a fucking castle - and this was the most boring province in the world, even with a war raging just outside of it.

He contemplated the night-drowned courtyard for a while still. His mind kept imagining shapes in the mass of shadows. A vague unease crept over him. He felt like he was guarding darkness against darkness.

*

Slowly, carefully, Aerin led the horses towards the dungeon tower. He'd judged their characters well - they were calm and obedient. One was brown, the other black - good night-time escape colours.

He stopped by the tower and waited. Soon enough, a brighter shape appeared in the dark of the courtyard and resolved itself into Gabrielle's white dress. Decidedly not a good night-time escape colour. The girl walked up to him and smiled stiffly.

"We're ready." Her heart was pounding like mad. Her fingers felt cold even in the warm night.

He exhaled. He looked towards the gatehouse. A minute to walk over there. Then he'd need to open the gate, let the horses out, and close it again behind him to remain unnoticed. Then it was just the drawbridge between him and freedom.

He looked to the stars. They were blazing white, but did little to illuminate the world below. The moon had set.

"So you'll wait in the woods under the castle," she said.

"Yeah. Below where the rope is." He was tense with apprehension now. How did he end up here? Were they really going to pull this off? So many things could go wrong.

"Aerin."

He kept visualizing his progress through the gate. He'd have to pass right by the guards. Hopefully the fireworks will be really loud.

"Aerin, promise me you won't leave me here."

He blinked and looked at her. "What?"

"Your chances are a ton better if you just leave alone with both horses, and we both know that. So please, please don't leave me."

He took a moment to work through this. Well, shit. So you think I can leave you to live here? He grabbed her by both cheeks. Her body was trembling, just a little.

"What kind of a person do you think I am?" he asked, in a tone he hoped was reassuring. She just exhaled unevenly. "Hey. You've done a lot for me. I want to give back... besides, I'm not done with you, remember?"

"Not done...?"

"Clement interrupted us just as you were going to come, right? I'm still gonna give you that orgasm."

She laughed quietly. He gave her a good long kiss, and a good long hug. "I'll see you on the other side of the wall. I promise. We're gonna get right out of here."

She leaned on his chest and patted him on the shoulders. Alex would give her similar reassuring kisses, she remembered.

Ah well. It was too late now. She'd given the boy back his freedom. She could not control what he did. She could only trust. She pulled back from him and looked him in the eyes.

"Yeah," she said. "I'll see you on the other side of the wall."

*

Pelagius's snoring was unbearable, even from the adjacent chamber. Valdemar kicked off his bed linens and got up. Looks like another night with little sleep and lots of grim thoughts.

With a groan he walked over to his open window. He rubbed his eyes. The cicadas were warbling away in the garden below. In front of him, the massive tower with the armoury and the dungeons was pale in faint starshine, its limestone lighter than the granite of the rest of the castle.

His eyes wandered around for a short while and then suddenly, at the base of the tower, stopped. Some shapes were outlined against the dim rock. He gripped the windowsill.

There were two saddled horses standing there. Next to them, a figure in white, which he immediately recognized as Princess Gabrielle, and talking to her - someone he couldn't recognize, not in all this darkness. A lean, tall boy. He'd seen him before. Where?

Suddenly he realized. The Kontarian prisoner! Valdemar opened his eyes wide. The couple kissed, and embraced. Valdemar looked from them to the saddled horses. They were about to elope! They were going to get those horses through the gate somehow and run away!

He looked to the gatehouse. He breathed in, ready to shout out a warning to the guards.

That awful girl! Falling for the first boy that comes her way again, and plotting an escape like that! What debauchery! What outrage! What a disgrace!

The gatehouse was fortified, the passage narrow, the guards armed. Were those two truly going to attempt to get through it?

Well. What daring. What guts! She's going to abandon her whole life, he's going to face off all these guards somehow, in some reckless and desperate attempt! What courage! Just like in the old days.

He clicked his teeth together. He shifted from foot to foot. A multitude of disjointed impressions, associations and notions, deep private memories that fed his heart of hearts, rose up and swarmed in a sudden conflict. He glanced from the pair to the gatehouse, from the gatehouse to the pair.

Gabrielle let go of the boy and started walking through the courtyard.

Cicadas sang. Pelagius snored.

Valdemar raised his hand, his fingers outstretched.

"The gods keep you and guide you, you mad idiots," he whispered. Then he turned from the window and went back to bed.

*

Let there be a light show.

The lit fuses hissed. It smelled of sulphur. Gabrielle locked the door and hastily went down.

Back in the courtyard she looked to where Aerin would be standing, but she couldn't see him now. Praise the moonless night.

She walked past the gate to the inner courtyard, where the torchlight was. Some servants were still scurrying around on the ground floor of the Great Hall. She climbed up the great staircase and found herself in her dim corridor. She went up to her chamber and entered it for the last time.

She opened the window and looked out. She could see the top of the outer gatehouse, but the view of the gate itself was obstructed by the roof of the chapel. She saw no movement from the guards. It would still take several minutes for the first fireworks to go off.

She could not bear it. She turned around and sat stiffly on her bed, staring at the wall. Her fists were clenched at her sides.

*

He thought that he saw her walk off, a pale shadow in the dark. He stepped from foot to foot. His knees felt weak. The gatehouse was far away, but he didn't dare get nearer to its lights. The whole plan seemed ridiculous now. Maybe he should just dump the horses right now and run for the rope. He couldn't remember why had he been so opposed to escaping on foot.

*

She breathed in. She breathed out. It should have started by now. Why wasn't it starting?

*

The black horse snorted quietly. He patted it lightly on the soft skin of the nose. Easy, boy. Easy. Easy.

*

Nothing was happening. Nothing kept happening. She was now convinced nothing would ever happen and she'd sit here staring in the dark until the end of time. That's why in the first moments she thought she was only imagining it; the hiss; the whistling whine; the bang; her shadow, huge on the wall, beset in shocking red light.

She suddenly felt very cold.

*

For an instant, all of Behem was illuminated. Then the light within died, but smoke and sound kept rising from the turret, and more and more explosions were flashing away from the castle like many-coloured lightning, outlining the walls.

Out of the gatehouse, two guards ran into the inner courtyard and stared at the turret.

His feet were not his feet when he stepped forward. His body was not his body. He felt like he was just a passenger, a watcher from far away. He felt himself move towards the gate more than he actually did the moving.

It was a hundred steps away. The guards were right by it, with his backs to him. They were pointing.

It was sixty steps away. The barrage kept coming. He could now smell in the air the residue of burnt sulphur. The horses twitched their ears. He could hear the guards' voices.

It was thirty steps away. A particularly large white firework exploded, again illuminating the courtyard. It didn't matter anymore. He was close to the gatehouse's torches now, and exposed in their light to all the world.

It was ten steps away. "It can sometimes explode on its own when it's hot," one guard said. "Can it though?" remarked the other, turning his head so that Aerin could see part of his nose and one eyebrow and the glitter of the corner of his eye. The boy bit his lip and looked on the ground, in some ridiculous deep-held belief that he couldn't be seen if he couldn't see. The horses were huge and loud like dragons of the sagas. The thundering noise continued from the turret. He was at the gatehouse. The nearer guard was seven or eight feet away.

He entered the shadow of the stone passage and walked under the lifted porticulus and ahead he saw the unbarred gate. He turned around and leaned on it with his back and pushed from his legs, and after several strained moments the several hundred pounds of oak wood moved with a great groan on the iron hinges and so breathless he ushered the horses out, black one, brown one, and then he himself left the castle, let go of the animals for a moment, and pushed the gate closed again. Now there was a solid barrier between him and the men on the ground, but the ones up on top could still see the bridge plain, should they only glance away from the lights. Beyond the bridge, the ancient trees grew. If he could reach their shadow, he would be free.

He grabbed at the harnesses and walked on. Though the hooves were wrapped in cloth, the wooden bridge was like a giant war drum, and every step a great resounding hollow bang. He didn't turn to look what the guards above were doing. He didn't want to know. He held onto his tunnel vision, the ever nearing darkness.