A Midsummer's Saga Pt. 08

Behind him, the whistling and the cracking continued, and faint flashes of colourful light were reflected in the treetops.

His foot hit solid ground.

He walked until the shadow of a great tree swallowed him. Only then did he turn around.

There were the two guards on top of the gatehouse, bent over the inner side of the wall, talking with the ones which he had passed just a minute ago. He now heard shouts from within the castle. The gate stood just as he had left it. He stared, expecting some sort of an alarm to sound, or for the gate to open and the guards burst out pursuing him. But Behem was oblivious to him. He stood in the dark, hands full of horses, unseen, unheeded, and as free as he had been that moment when he started creeping for the Eagle of Titulus.

"No way," he whispered to the horses. "No fucking way."

*

The chambers in Gabrielle's hallway had been given to Oren's knights, and as the first firecrackers sounded she heard the doors and windows open and an animated talk break out. A minute or so afterwards, Mista knocked and entered.

"My lady, there's a fire in the tower over the stables!"

Gabrielle stood up. "Let's go see," she said flatly, and passed the girl servant in the doorway.

She walked downstairs mechanically, among a growing crowd of both locals and guests throwing coats over their night gowns and all heading to get a closer look. She was in a dreamlike, detached confusion. Aerin would have started moving the moment the first fireworks appeared. By now, he's either escaped or got caught. He's either won everything, or they both lost everything. She walked among the curious people and did not know in which of her possible realities she was.

As she was passing the inner gate, she braced herself. Immediately as she entered the outer courtyard she looked to the gatehouse.

The guards were there, and they were looking towards the fireworks. A flash threw brief light all over the courtyard. There was nobody under the dungeon tower. She kept a straight face, even though all her insides leapt. He fucking did it. He actually got the horses out. Shit. Holy shit.

She looked to the place over the garden where she knew the rope was, her own way out. "Wait for me," she whispered.

The crowd stopped near the gatehouse. The clamour was unbelievable. The fireworks whistled and cracked, in the stables the horses screamed, in the kennels the dogs whined. The people all talked one over another. Some brought torches, and in their light Gabrielle saw their faces, some worried, some amused, some just puzzled.

Then the people stopped talking and turned in one direction. Covering herself in a great dark blanket, with Oren following her close, among the crowd went Lady Paula.

*

He made a quarter of a circle around the castle, along a wide path under the trees, until he found the place. To his left, above the treeline the escarpment sloped, and from it rose the walls of Behem. The rope was there somewhere, though he couldn't see it.

The fireworks seemed to be dying off. He plucked the wool out of the horses' ears and relieved them of the blinkers; he took the cloth off their hooves and waited. She should appear soon.

But what if she didn't show up? Every minute counted now. Every mile he made before they discovered his escape could mean a difference between life and death.

How long would he wait? An hour? Two?

And if she still didn't show up, a voice inside him asked, would you tie the horses here and get back in there? Climb that rope and try to find out what happened? She came for you today, she found you in the dark.

It would be completely useless to try to come back. He didn't know the castle at all. He wouldn't even find her. He'd just get himself killed.

He answered himself. Of course he'd still do it. He was, after all, a stupid idiot.

He licked his lips. Come on, girl. You've got this. Come on.

*

"What is happening?!" Paula demanded. There was a general indecisiveness on who should answer.

"The fireworks, my lady..." a soldier started, eventually.

"I can see it's the fireworks, idiot! How did they catch fire?!"

Nobody could answer that. Beside Paula, Oren was watching the display with calm curiosity. Gabrielle suspected that Paula was upset not because of the risk of fire spreading - there was almost none - but because she couldn't bear the thought that Oren could find her little empire imperfect, accident-prone, bizarre.

The Lady then ran her gaze around the crowd. "Where's Clement?!" she demanded.

Gabrielle's heart skipped a beat.

Fuck planning in haste! You get all the details nice and tidy and then you forget the most glaringly obvious thing in the world! Of course Paula would look for Clement first thing anything happened! How could they possibly not have thought of that?!

What the fuck now? They'd start looking and someone would bungle into the dungeons and there went the entire crucial fucking head start!

"Clement!" Paula shouted. Suddenly, Gabrielle remembered.

"Wasn't he supposed to go out and test signal fires or something?" she said. Paula looked at her, fireworks glinting in her eyeballs, lower teeth bared, looking like a predatory fish. Gabrielle endured the look, stone faced.

Then Paula turned away. "Damned signal fires! Out of all possible nights! Someone grab water buckets already and go extinguish this!"

And this, Gabrielle decided, was the moment to go.

"Mista," she said, turning to her servant, "I won't be able to sleep now. I'm just gonna go up a tower, watch the stars for a while. Don't wait for me."

"Alright, my lady. I will see you tomorrow."

"Yes. Until tomorrow."

And as she was walking out of the crowd, she turned her head and had one final look at the castle folk. Paula stood in the middle, stocky, enormous and dark, staring at the turret, and all the colours of the rainbow were reflected in her face.

Goodbye, you monster, Gabrielle thought. She then broke into a trot, passing Valdemar without noticing him, and headed for the garden.

The rope was where they had left it. She grabbed it and looked down. Her palms grew sweaty.

Fuck planning in haste, exhibit two: why didn't she get some normal clothes for herself? She'll now have to ride in this shit dress and these indoors shoes, assuming she won't kill herself on descent here. And assuming Aerin's down there.

Clutching the rope, she threw her legs over the edge and then turned herself around, toes to the wall. The shoes offered a thoroughly awful grip on the stones. She began progressing down in tiny steps. Fortunately, it wasn't too long.

A minute later, her leg touched the ground. There, she thought. Safely down and totally alive.

As she put down her second leg, she slipped. "Shit!" she yelped, tumbling down the slope, trying to grab at the shrubs but able to only slightly slow down. Eventually, she reached the bottom, and lay still on her back, damage to dignity more serious than to her body.

And then she heard footfalls hurrying towards her.

She grinned at the night sky.

In her field of vision, Aerin appeared, and leaned down to her with his hands on his knees.

"Are you well?" he asked. "Do you have brain damage?"

"Aerin, this plan was the worst plan."

"Oh, agreed. It fucking sucked." He glanced up. The sound of the fireworks had stopped. From the inside, they could vaguely hear the voices in the courtyard. "But how about we talk about it somewhere really far away?"

*

The countryside was deserted. There was no one on the farms around Behem to see two horses trotting north in the night. An occasional dog by a farmstead would perform an occasional and only token course of barking, and then lick its snout and get back to sleep.

The land sloped very gently upwards. The valley of the Lene River, which provided fertile and flat land for farming, stretched wide from west to east, and did join the plains of Harmen heartland to the south, but it did not extend far to the north. Behem overlooked the borderland, both to the east, where the forests and lakes of Kontaria spread in the lowlands, and to the north, where hilly and unfarmable grasslands rose higher and higher towards the distant mountains.

The summer night was very brief, and already three hours after midnight the stars were fading and the sky greying, and the world around them rose from darkness to blue murk. What they lost in cover they gained in speed, as they and the horses now saw the road ahead of them. And so they pushed, and as the landscape grew less dim, they could also see that signs of human habitation grew more sparse, and the road narrower and more overgrown.

About four hours after midnight, they scaled the top of a large hill. The sky was a clear blue and the undersides of clouds a vicious pink; the sun was about to rise. Aerin stopped his horse and dismounted.

"Are we taking a break?" Gabrielle asked.

"Yeah," he replied. "Come over here."

From his saddlebag he took out the map which she had stolen from the chapel. The road they were on was marked, though it was a mere trail by now. They were surrounded by grass, field flowers and sparse trees. Below and behind them, the Lene valley stretched far away. In a good distance, more than twenty miles away, Behem Castle stood pallid on its hill.

"This is the last time we see it," Aerin said. "Once we get past this hill, we're in the grasslands."

Gabrielle looked over his shoulder to the parchment. There were still some sparse villages in the grasslands, but they were a little off the road they were to follow. This was a land of shepherds. She tracked the trail with her eyes. According to the map, it was heading for about eighty more miles northeast towards the Blue Cliffs, and then swerving sharp northwards as it reached them, into a forest, to finally end up in the Free City of Ys. From Ys, it was only half a day's ride to the Kontarian border. Aerin tapped the map.

"We should reach that forest, north of the Blue Cliffs, around sunset tomorrow. And then we're safe. They won't find us there."

She looked at him. "You think we'll make it?"

"I think they'll look for us on the road east first, the shortest way. They'll lose a few hours there, then figure it out, and come looking here. They can exchange horses in every village they find." He rubbed his head. "I dunno. We have a decent chance."

She smiled and reached for the waterskin tied to her saddle. She uncorked it, smelled it, and laughed.

"Uh, Aerin. You didn't steal water."

Aerin took his own and opened it. It was full of red wine.

"Um. Yeah, it was weird that they'd keep water in the larder." He smiled. "Let's keep this. There are plenty of streams along the way anyhow. We'll drink to our survival when we reach that forest."

And as he put away the wine, his vision was filled with light. He looked towards its source, to the hilltops in the east.

The sun was rising. He felt its warmth on his skin for the first time since that day they dragged him into the dungeon. He looked directly at it, until it hurt, and then closed his eyes; his eyelids blazed bright red around a luminous teal afterimage.

Just some fifteen hours before, he had been beaten, thrown down in the dark cell, and denied all hope. The redness of his vision grew more intense. His throat contracted.

Gabrielle walked over to him. "So we'll ride for a couple more hours before resting the horses, right?" she said. "They're good ones, they can keep going for—"

She yelped as he suddenly grabbed her with both hands and pressed her to him with all his strength.

"Thank you, Gabrielle," he whispered, and kissed the top of her head. "Thank you, thank you, thank you thank you thank you."

For a moment she stood helpless, compressed against his chest. Then she carefully reached around him and patted him on the back.

"Yeah," she said. "You're welcome."

He kept still for a moment yet, then sniffed, let her go and turned around. He looked like he wanted to say something more, but changed his mind and just walked over to his horse. "Yeah, let's keep riding. They aren't very tired yet."

She looked at him, and her own eyes stung for a moment; she shook her head, blinked and smiled.

Then she turned around. Below her, far away, stood Behem. Sun rays were now reaching its highest towers.

She raised both her hands high above her head and extended both her middle fingers, looking at the castle for the last time, and she stood like that unmoving for a good minute in the rising sun. When she felt she had made her point, she turned around, mounted her horse and followed Aerin, to the northeast, further into the grassland.

*

And a few hours later, Wala, the boy helping in the kitchens of Behem, took some bread, cheese and water, and brought them to the dungeon like he did every morning.

To his surprise, there was nobody in the foreroom. This was very strange indeed; he never before saw Dodo move away from here. Perhaps he was down in the actual dungeons for some reason? Better let him know his breakfast is here.

Wala opened the inner door. "Um... hello?" he said into the stairway leading down.

In response, he thought he felt distant muffled groans.

He hesitated. "Mister Dodo?" he called out. There was definitely some weird voice coming up from below. What the.

He lit a torch and very slowly, ready to retreat at a short notice, started going down. The voice was coming from deep within the dungeon. He passed the large cell with windows opening to the chapel garden and navigated a turn to the right, entering a very dark, very chilly corridor. After a few steps into it, the light of his torch suddenly discovered, laid on the floor and chained to the bars, Clement, the mighty majordomo of Behem.

"What the," whispered Wala. He trotted over to the man. Clement was gagged, goggling at Wala, and furiously if muffledly shouting. Behind him, locked in the cell, were Dodo and the other guard; the guard, apparently awoken by the torchlight, sat up uncertainly and looked around.

"I, uh. Um," said Wala.

The guard suddenly opened his eyes wide, bent over, and threw up all over the floor.

"I, uh. Oh dear."

*

Will our plucky idiot heroes escape the wrath of Harmen? Or are we in for one of those downer endings? And will all this plotting pay off with some decent sex scenes? Find out next week-ish on the final episode of A Midsummer's Saga!