“Will we be enough?” Senna Vannarshel asked. “There might be scores of Council Guards guarding the hall.”
“Do not be concerned about them,” Sarth said. The tiefling smiled coldly. “Their numbers will not avail them.”
Mirya nodded in the dim light. She’d seen Sarth in battle before, when Geran dueled his cousin Sergen on the decks of a warship drifting through the skies of the black moon. The tiefling wasn’t boasting when he spoke in such a manner. “Up the stairs,” she told the others. “And try to be quiet about it.”
They climbed up the steep, dusty stairs. At the top there was a brief delay as Brun had to force the door open against the heavy barrels that had been left in front of it. Hamil quickly slipped past the burly brewer and went to the storeroom’s door, brushing a clear spot in one dirty pane of the window. After a quick peek, he opened the door a handspan and stuck his head out to look up and down the alleyway. The drumbeat of rain grew louder, and a breath of cold damp air-cool and clean after the close quarters of buried Hulburg-flowed into the storeroom. “No one’s around. Follow me!”
They filed out into the alley and splashed across through the cold puddles, gathering in a knot against a door in the back of the Council Hall-Hamil, Sarth, and Mirya to the left, and Brun, Halla, Lodharrun, and Senna Vannarshel to the right. The halfling gave everyone a look of warning, and then stealthily tried the handle. The door didn’t open. “Locked,” he whispered. “Give me a moment.” The halfling kneeled by the lock and drew a small pick from his sleeve.
“I don’t suppose we’ve any idea of where to find Lord Geran?” Senna whispered.
“In the prison below the hall. I saw him taken there. A guardroom blocks the way to the cells; there’ll be Council Guards there.”
“There it is,” Hamil murmured. He silenced the group with an upraised hand, and carefully peeked inside the door. A dim yellow light shone out into the alleyway. Motioning for them to wait, he slipped inside.
“Remember, we’re not here to pick fights. The quicker and quieter we go, the better our chances of reaching Geran and getting out again,” Mirya told Brun and the rest of her band as they waited on the halfling. “When the time comes to withdraw, we’ll try to find our way back to this door and retreat into buried Hulburg. It’s our best chance to lose any who chase after us.”
“We’ll give away the secret of the buried ways,” Lodharrun muttered.
“By tomorrow night we’ll have won or lost, and we’ll be done with sneaking through cellars,” Mirya replied. “If we give it away, we give it away.”
“Remember, the runehelms speak to one another,” Sarth added. “From the moment we meet one, all the runehelms in the city will know of our presence, and likely Rhovann as well. We must not be delayed.”
Hamil reappeared at the door, and motioned for quiet. There are a lot of Council Guards here, he said silently, his eyes flicking from one face to another. I think we can get to the guardroom without a fight, but we’ll need a distraction, something to draw Marstel’s soldiers away.
Mirya thought for a moment, and looked at her band of rebels. “What if we shoot a few arrows or bolts at the guards by the front door?” she asked. “Either they’ll come out and give chase, or they’ll close the doors and fort up, but they’d be out of our way.”
Hamil considered it, and nodded. Mirya turned to Senna and Halla; the fletcher was a skilled archer, as one might expect, and Halla was nearly as good with her sling. “I think that’ll be work for you two,” she said. “Stay well back in the shadows, and move between your shots. If they come out after you, you know what to do. We’ll give you a two-hundred count to let you get into position.”
“We’ll do what we can,” Senna replied. Halla bit her lip, but nodded. Together the old fletcher and the young woman hurried down the alley into the rain. Mirya said a silent prayer to the gods of mercy and good fortune that she hadn’t just sent the two women to their deaths. She waited with the others for a short time in the alleyway, silently counting off. Inside the Council Hall she could hear occasional footsteps, the sound of voices, the creaking of doors as they opened and shut, but none sounded very close by. Then Hamil motioned to the small band and led the way as they crept in from the rain.
They were in a large kitchen, currently unoccupied. For a moment Mirya wondered what in the world the Merchant Council needed with a kitchen, but then she realized that the prisoners in the cells below and the guards who watched them had to have their meals fixed somewhere. For that matter, the Merchant Council likely hosted banquets here when the occasion demanded. They quietly filed through the room to a servant’s hall on the far side, proceeding past several doors opening on either side until they reached a door at the end of the hall.
Here Hamil paused. Now we wait a moment for Mirya’s friends, he said. If they get the guards’ attention by the front door we should be able to cross the hall outside this door and duck down the steps to the guardroom without being seen.
Carefully, he opened the door a finger’s width to peer out. The voices and movements of the soldiers outside grew louder, and Mirya steeled herself for violence. But then a sharp scream sounded from a short distance away. Cries of alarm and angry curses echoed from outside. Hamil gave them all a quick wink, and darted out from his hiding place. Sarth, Brun, and Lodharrun followed; Mirya brought up the rear, after the dwarf. She risked a single glimpse to her right as they crossed a wide, open hallway. Several Council Guards clustered around the building’s front door, some peering outside, others tending to one of their fellows, who was on the ground with an arrow in his stomach. Then they clattered down the stairs leading to the dungeons below the great hall.
Ahead of her Hamil vanished around a bend in the stairs, knives gleaming in his hands. An instant later another cry of alarm echoed from the room at the bottom of the stairs, followed by the sudden clash of steel on steel. Sarth rounded the bend after Hamil, and she heard the tiefling’s rough voice snarling words of magic; Brun and Lodharrun leaped into the fray after the two heroes. With a quick glance back up the stairs behind her, Mirya turned the corner after her friends, crossbow ready for a shot.
The violence of the scene appalled her. One guard was on the floor, vainly trying to staunch the blood pumping out of a murderous stab wound in his upper thigh, and Hamil was systematically slashing and stabbing his way through a second guard whose weak efforts to defend himself couldn’t last more than another moment or two. On the other side of the room, another pair of guards sprawled in frozen gore, pierced through by a blast of icicles that riddled them and the wall behind them. Brun Osting and the dwarf Lodharrun attacked the remaining two guards, the big brewer using his axe with his hand choked halfway up the haft, the dwarf fencing with his opponent. From her vantage on the stairs, Mirya had a clear shot at the smith’s foe, and before she could second-guess herself, she leveled her crossbow and took it. The thick quarrel suddenly sprouted in the fellow’s right shoulder, spinning him half around; the dwarf stepped forward and ran him through while he was distracted. In moments, the room was still again.
Brun Osting looked up from the man he’d felled, and grinned. “Well, that wasn’t so bad,” he said.
“It’s not the breaking in that’s difficult,” Hamil told him. “It’s breaking out again.” With that, he seized the keys clipped to the guard-sergeant’s belt and hurried over to unlock the door leading to the row of cells beyond.