Sterne, the officer in charge of the guard, allocated the duties with a few silent gestures as he left the room and then ran softly towards the staircase. The others were less ordered in their departure, but Arwain had barely gone ten paces through the gloom before they were running alongside him, pulling on helmets and fastening straps and buckles.
At a corner, Arwain hesitated, momentarily confused by the fog.
'This way,’ he said, almost to himself. And then he was running, with the three guards following anxiously. Briefly, Arwain cast a glance up towards the window of his bedroom. Whatever was happening, it was moving away from him this time, but it reassured him to know that Sterne would be quietly guarding Yanys.
It occurred to him for a moment that perhaps he was being foolish. Perhaps the figures he had seen were no more than lingering figments of his strange dreaming? But he dismissed the thought. He had been awake, and the figures had been real, and armed. And just as they were not apparently moving against him in his isolated wing of the palace, so they were moving into the main body of the palace, and that might bode anything.
Reaching the far side of the courtyard, Arwain peered into the glowing fog for some sign of the three figures, his head craning forward anxiously as though, like a hound, he might catch some elusive scent. But nothing was to be seen.
'Sir.’ One of the guards took his arm. He was pointing towards a small door at the bottom of a short flight of stone steps. It was an entrance to part of the palace's labyrinthine cellars and it should have been bolted from the inside. Now it stood ajar.
Arwain nodded towards a nearby torch rack and then ran down the steps. They were damp and treacherous due to the fog and he slipped as he reached the bottom. Reaching out to recover his balance, he bumped into the door and it swung wide open, striking the wall with an echoing thud.
He cursed to himself. Little chance of a discreet pursuit if they're still nearby, he thought. But no sounds of alarm or sudden haste reached him and, taking a torch from one of the guards, he stepped inside. The guards followed.
The door opened into a cavernous cellar with a low vaulted ceiling supported on rows of squat, square columns. Each was scrolled about with ornate carved patterns and capped with a wide flaring stone, from which peered carvings of strange, watching faces, all of them different.
A vanguard of the fog had preceded them into the cellar, as if searching for its natural home, and a faint yellow haze hovered like a miasma among the barrels and kegs, and anonymous piles of materials too precious to be discarded but for which no other place could be found. Through it the flickering torches cut great swathes of dancing black shadow, bringing the stillness abruptly alive.
Arwain's gaze, however, was drawn almost immediately to the damp footprints which moved down one of the wider aisles. He set off in the same direction.
'Should we sound the alarm, sir?’ one of the guards asked. Arwain shook his head. ‘No. Their coming down here shows that they know the palace and that they're on some ill errand. If we sound the alarm it'll be easier for them to move around in the confusion. We must find them quickly.’ And, his actions following his words, he began to run.
The damp footprints soon disappeared, but not before they had clearly confirmed which aisle their creators had taken and, for a while, the four men ran on as silently as they could past the host of carved, watching faces.
Arwain hesitated as they passed under an arch at the end of the long chamber to find themselves at a junction of four aisles. The head of some kind of demon had been carved on the keystone of the arch and in the torchlight its gaping mouth seemed to laugh silently and malevolently at Arwain's doubt.
'Hood the torches, and be quiet,’ one of the guards whispered urgently.
Blackness and silence closed round the group, then, as the dull glow of the hooded torches began to appear, ‘There.'
Arwain felt rather than saw the pointing arm come past him to draw his gaze to a faint light in the distance.
'Quietly,’ he whispered, fearing that one of the guards might suddenly shout out a challenge. ‘They don't seem to have heard us. Unhood one of the torches a little so that we can see where we're walking.'
Cautiously he drew his sword and started forward, keeping the light ahead only in the side of his vision so that he could still see the floor faintly in front of him.
As he drew nearer he felt his heart begin to pound. So far, the heat of the chase had protected him from more sober considerations, but now he was closing, sword in hand, with a possibly armed group about whom he knew nothing, except that they were sufficiently desperate to wander the palace grounds at the darkest time of the night, and knew their way through the palace cellars.
'Mistake,’ part of him said. ‘Starting a battle without proper intelligence.’ But his reason just managed to hold the reproach at bay. It was no mistake. He had three palace guards with him and he himself had faced men in combat before now. To have sounded the alarm might indeed have enabled these … conspirators? … to escape, or worse, to fulfil their mission quietly amid the confusion. He had had no alternative.
Abruptly he found he was angry at having to justify himself to himself. He found too that he was baring his teeth and loosening his sword arm.
The light was coming from around a corner ahead, throwing the faces on the column heads into silhouette. And, as if the faces themselves were talking to one another in the gloom, there came the sound of lowered voices. Arwain turned to the guards and whispered a brief order, then, suddenly, the torches were unhooded and with the guards at his back Arwain stepped around the corner with his sword levelled.
'Stand, in the Duke's name,’ he shouted authoritatively. There was a gasp and a scream, then someone dropped a torch. Finally came the sound of a sword being drawn as a figure pushed to the front of the surprised group. The three guards brought their pikes down alongside Arwain's sword.
'No, wait, Dirkel,’ came a stern voice from the group. Arwain took in his quarry at a glance. There were five in all, but they were not what he had expected. True, the man who had stepped forward looked sinister, with the hood of his cloak hiding his face, but from the guard he was presenting with his sword it was clear that he was no swordsman; and he was faltering, either at the sudden command or the sight of Arwain's grim face and the three pikemen with him. Behind him stood two others, an old palace manservant who looked as if he had been running and who had obviously thrown on his livery in great haste, and another man with his cowl pulled forward. Between these two and leaning heavily on the hooded man was a young woman. Her head was bowed and her long brown hair had fallen forward hiding most of her face, but Arwain could see blood on her gown and her hands. At the rear of the group was an old woman, wringing her hands; another servant, Arwain guessed, probably from the laundry or the kitchens.
With an irritable gesture, the man supporting the young woman threw back his hood to identify himself.
Arwain stared in disbelief. He had thought the voice was familiar.
'Drayner?’ he exclaimed. Then, after an awkward pause, ‘What's my father's personal physician doing prowling the courtyards and the cellars in the middle of the night?'
'Nearly suffering an early demise thanks to young men leaping out of the darkness and waving swords at me,’ the old man replied acidly. Arwain winced a little at the characteristic tone, but having delivered his barb, Drayner turned fussily to practical matters.
'Dirkel, put your sword down,’ he said. ‘You're only going to cut yourself and I'm going to have enough to do tonight without sewing you up as well. And someone pick up that torch for mercy's sake, there's enough fog outside without making more in here.'