“Then what?”
“Get me a horse.”
He picked up the mug and drank again and finished it and looked at hers and she nodded and he slid it over to himself. Perhaps knowing all along how it would go and what he needed from it.
“I'm telling you,” he said. “They'll find you faster on a horse. They're on the roads already.”
“You've seen them?”
“No, but I know how this goes.” He drank again, set it aside. “I know how it goes and I know how it ends.”
“You think.”
“I know.” He looked back toward the door and she saw how he was now a part of this and all the things in his head and for the first time she wondered if he'd said he'd meet her when still he thought it would never happen and where loyalties went at times like these. A man always loyal to the crown, but perhaps she just mistook that as loyalty to herself from a bodyguard who was and had been loyal to only the crown.
But she could do nothing for it. If he wanted her, he had her and there was nothing else.
Then he looked back at her and nodded. “Go at dusk, when they change the guard. Take the Trappers' Gate. Do you know it?”
“By the river.”
“It's smaller and so is the road. But get off of it as soon as you can. Go through the vineyards and up through the forest and go as fast as you damn well can and get into the mountains. He'll only hold the net for so long and if you're through it, you may live. He'll come looking, though. He'll hunt you.”
“I'll figure something out. Where can I get the horse?”
“He'll be at the gate.”
She reached out then and touched his hand. The shackle coming free, rattling on the table like a dead thing. “He's going to war.”
His eyes widened at that. The knight he'd been still alive within him and those words the cry of his blood he'd heard all his life. “With who?”
She shook her head. “I don't know. Anyone he can.”
He cursed, took up the second mug again and finished it. Scowling now and his teeth not as white as they had been and the scar turning the skin by his eye. “We'll be slaughtered. Erihon's standing army is ten thousand companies and the Island Kingdoms control the seas. Everyone thinks the Whispermen are ghosts, but they'll rally if needed and no one knows how strong they are. They haven't fought a war in five hundred years. Any way he turns, we'll die.”
“I know,” she said. “I know.”
“And you've told him.”
“It's past that.”
“He's a damned fool.”
“I know and that's what I told him.”
He leaned forward with his elbows on the table in the heavy leather and his sword swinging at his side to clank against the table leg. “What'll you do?”
“I don't know yet, but I have to stop him. I have to get the word out and tell the people what he is.” She shrugged, the task sounding so simple and yet enormous and impossible when she thought of the size of the land and the people within it and what they'd believe.
“You have some time,” her old bodyguard said. “He'll have to drum them up. Nationalism, patriotism. Some damned thing. You don't tell people to go to war. They'll never follow you.” Scowling now as a man who knew too much and hated what he knew and knew it anyway. “You make them want to go to war and then you simply lead them to the field.”
“How long?”
“Depends how he does it. Months at least. Winter will fall and he can't fight then. The soonest he'll field an army—a real army, not the standing one—will be next summer. Maybe the spring if the people are behind it and he has to march.”
“It's not as long as it sounds.”
“I know.” He sat back then and looked at her. “How'd you know I'd still come here?”
She smiled. “I didn't know. But I know you. So I came here and I hoped. And here you are.”
He laughed. “Makes me sound like an old drunk who used to be a knight.”
“Then it's an old drunk that I need.”
“I hope so,” he said. Standing then and nodding to her. “Don't worry about the shackles. Just get to the gate at nightfall. The horse will be there. Ride hard and where I told you. He's going to hunt but you can get beyond him and he can't hunt you and rally the people both. Make him choose and hope he chooses his war.”
“He will,” she said. “He's a damned fool.”
She sat in the tavern ten minutes after he'd gone and held the mug with just the smallest trace of ale so it'd look like she was drinking and then got up and went out the back. Down the alley, across a short stone bridge, up a twisting street with on both sides the close walls of homes and the doors shut. No one walking here now and all the sound down toward the water. Her footfalls loud and hollow on the stones.
It was not hard to become lost in this place, if that was what you wanted, and she fell from sight. Taking the small street to a long and gnarled stair that ducked into darkness and came back out again and everything the same. A ladder with iron rungs set into the stone wall before her. Sitting for a time on a roof looking out at the water and the little boats coming and three soldiers riding down the street and the leftmost one scowling and kicking at a child who got too close. Crossing the rooftops and jumping down when she thought no one was looking and going through a market square. No money on her at all but the smell of the food driving her to something close enough to insanity that she never wanted to know the real thing. Garments hanging on strings outside shops, people coming and going.
Always stepping aside at the sound of horse or boot. She had not been out like this in years and still she fell back into it easily. Always able to tell when they were coming for they thought it unnecessary to hide themselves and made no effort and she had found that often it was the one who made the effort who ended up the victor. Regardless of skill or any other advantage. This true in many pursuits and this game they played just one of them.
Working her way always toward the gate. For she had to give him time, but she knew how sharp that time was. Like the blade of a knife. Too soon and the guards would see, too late and the horse would be found. Either way she'd hang and these same people would come to see her with her legs jerking in the hot afternoon air and none would remember her now as she passed them in the street. Or perhaps they would and they'd say nothing for fear of joining her and feeling how coarse a rope was.
She came to it at last as dusk fell and she could hear the boots and talk on the wall. Always the guards from the day switched with those for the night. There wasn't much to be done, but there was enough. Lighting the torches atop the wall, checking the chains for the main gate, talking about the quiet. The system of shifts the only thing that kept them alert, but also their weakness. Not for an army or ambush, but for one trying to get out. In those few minutes, she could move through and out and perhaps, perhaps, not be seen until she was riding hard and near the forest.
There she could lose them in land she knew, land she'd seen many times. Outside the gate the road ran down along the river for a short distance and then went up into a low, thick forest. To her left the water and on her right the open fields and then the short foothills. A break with no forest or cover where she'd have to ride hard. But then the hills and the true forest and in there she could lose herself and never be found.
She crouched and looked at the low stone arch. One of the oldest gates in the city and seldom used now for trade as it had been. A forgotten passage of weathered stone and iron doors left open now for years. Closed only in times of war. He should have closed them when he knew she was gone but he was a fool and thought he would have her either way. Or perhaps he'd ordered them closed and the guards had forgotten or the order had not come down. Or maybe a certain knight had countered the order and a frightened foot soldier hadn't stood up to him. There were many ways it could have played out, but she looked now and they stood open.