Rialla slipped back through the tunnel, locking the doors behind her. She tucked the key ring back into the guard’s pocket and started over the wall.
Unlike the part of the wall that she’d crossed to get into the hold, here there was a newly built, though obviously temporary, catwalk. The guard who slept on the newly constructed stone stairway shifted uneasily as Rialla started up the stairs. He was a veteran, and not one to sleep on duty no matter how tedious. She turned back to the base of the stairs and reinforced her suggestion to give her time to get over the wall before he woke up.
Just as she lowered her protective barriers to project sleep onto the guards again, someone nearby died in an unpleasant, terrifying manner. Rialla tried to shut it out, but was unable to stop before she’d projected what she’d felt. She heard the guards cry out with their comrade’s death throes. So much for escaping unnoticed.
She would have sworn if there had been time for it.
The first guard who saw her and attacked was inexperienced, and slowed her only minimally as she staggered for the stairway, and left him to wake up with a headache in the morning.
Before she could gain the stairway, where the veteran soldier waited patiently, two more guards came out of the gatehouse. They moved apart to flank her, one quickly climbing the first few stairs to gain the advantage of height. She ran directly at the one on the stairs, then quickly changed direction, ducking under the stroke the other guard had intended for her back.
Failing to find the anticipated target for his sword, he lurched forward, trying desperately to regain his balance. Using a neat backhand, Rialla hit him on the head with the pommel of her sword and flashed a bright smile as she turned to face the second guard, still standing on the third stair.
He had obviously expected an easy victory and stood peering at the still, silent shadow of his associate. He quickly shifted his attention to Rialla and began to descend. Before he could close with her, she set him on his backside by sweeping his feet out from under him with the flat of her blade. She didn’t have to knock him out—he did it himself. Breathing harshly, Rialla ran up several steps to face the warrior who waited for her there.
The first three men had been inexperienced, and unaware of what they were facing. This man had watched her take out his comrades and knew that she was Sianim-trained—it didn’t take Rialla long to discover that he was too.
He was good, but she was better, just not enough better that she could get behind him and knock him unconscious. Several times she could have wounded him fatally, but she couldn’t force herself to take the opening and end it. Not because she was overly squeamish, but because she remembered what it felt like to kill a man when her empathy was barely functional. She had no intention of killing when her gift was working well.
If she killed this one, there was a fair probability that the act would kill her too. She already had a thundering headache thanks to the three prone forms strewn behind her.
The guard knew as well as she did that she was the better swordsman, and she could feel him thinking of the fate that would fall to his family if he died. His young wife had just given birth to their first child. The widow of a guardsman would have no one to care for her, and he worried.
She might be the better swordsman, but he was stronger than she was and she was beginning to feel a deep weariness—perhaps the effect of Tris’s healing, as he had warned. If she did not finish this fight soon, she might not win it.
Her face grim with concentration, she began to force the guard backward up the stairs. While she fought, she reached out lightly and touched the presence that she knew to be Tris—later she would wonder why she found him easier than Laeth.
Sweat trickled down her neck, and she worried that she wouldn’t have the stamina to do what she was going to try. The guard reached the top step, and stumbled when he reached for a higher step that wasn’t there.
He caught himself quickly, but his stumbling gave Rialla a chance to press home her advantage, until both of them were on the battlement. The wooden boards of the walk creaked underfoot. If they fought too long, someone would look over and see them.
She waited anxiously for Tris to leave the hold, aware that her thigh was beginning to show definite signs of weakening. Her sword arm ached with the force of the guard’s blows. He was starting to believe that he might face another day, though he was puzzled that she hadn’t finished him when he stumbled over the nonexistent step.
The wall was crenelated to allow archers to fire through the low sections and dodge back behind the higher merlon. Though the top of the wall was well over Rialla’s head, the crenels were only hip high. When she knew that Tris, hopefully towing Laeth behind him, was safely out of the castle, she feinted. The guard drew back, giving her the room she needed to jump onto the crenel wall and, in a step, over the other side, landing some distance below, on the slanted platform of the scaffolding.
She slid and stumbled to the ground and called Stoutheart to her by focusing her gift. Only when she was mounted and heading for the cover of the woods did she look to see if the guardsman had followed her leap. Seeing no one, she assumed that he had realized that his heavy mail shirt would hamper his leap, and had retreated to sound a warning.
The clear tones of the alarm bells followed her into the woods.
5
After Rialla left for the stables, Tris made his way carefully through the courtyard, taking advantage of each bit of cover as if he were stalking game in the forest. He was too well known at Westhold to strike out boldly as Rialla had, but stealth was second nature to him, and his progress was only minimally slower than hers. He was amused to discover that he was enjoying the challenge of this adventure as much as a boy half his age.
The tallest structure at Westhold, the tower stood midway between the hold wall and the keep, overshadowing the squat structure of the nearby guardhouse. It was half again as high as the great wall. Although the tower was older than any other structure in the keep, having been part of the main building of the original fortress, the ancient stones still rested squarely where they had been placed.
He was crouched in the shadow of the guardhouse when the sound of men’s voices caused Tris to freeze where he was. He kept his breathing shallow and his body still against the rough-finished wooden wall as three guardsmen passed close to him. Too close for Tris, who wrinkled his nose at the sour smell. He waited until they were safely inside their living quarters before he moved from the darkness and crossed the short open area that separated the tower from the guardhouse.
There was no door into the tower, only a wide opening onto the main floor. One guard stood just inside the door, staring at the night. He was a young man, with the nervous air of a green recruit. His hand rested on the wooden hilt of his sword, clasping and unclasping slowly.
Tris called to his magic, humming under his breath to lend power to his summons. When the magic came, he pulled it around him in a curtain of silence and shadows. He slipped cautiously between the guard and the edge of the aperture.
The inner room of the tower was cramped and bare; the high ceilings made it appear almost empty. It was lit by a number of slow-burning torches that sent shadows dancing against the gray stone walls.
In the center of the room was a circular stone pillar with another doorless entrance, through which Tris could see a narrow, winding stair reaching upward. Just past the central stairway, a man, obviously more experienced than his fellow guardsman, sat on the floor, leaning against the banister of a descending staircase. Patiently he ran a stone in small circles against the edge of a knife blade.