Rod raised an eyebrow skeptically. "They don't doubt your loyalty?"
Big Tom chuckled deeply. "They ha' no need to, master. I disagree only on means, not on goals. But I disagree, and for that, soon or late, they will slay me."
"Rod," said in a quiet voice that only he could hear.
Rod held up a hand. "Hold it! Late news on the Rialto!"
"Rod, the Prince of the Elves has arrived. He is leading a squad of elves toward your cell." There was a touch of laughter to the robot's voice.
"All right, what's so funny?" Rod muttered.
"You have a surprise in store, Rod."
Two gnarled, bent, white-bearded figures scurried up to the window. Rod frowned.
"Fess, those are gnomes, not elves."
"Gnomes? Oh, yes, metal-working elves. Purely semantics, Rod. They are still incapable of dealing with iron."
The gnomes pulled out a hammer and cold chisel with a faint bronze sheen, then stepped back and handed them to a larger, darker figure that blocked out the sunlight.
The Loguires, chained under the window, craned their necks backward to try to see as the first blow sounded.
Big Tom frowned. "There be something that pricks at my memory about that form at the window. Ah, for light, to see his face!"
Rod frowned. "What's so great about his face? Probably pretty ugly."
Tom gave a toothy grin. " 'Twould be excellent fine to tell my children, good master, if I should live long enough to sire them. No mortal has yet looked upon the faces of the royalty of the Elves, though they are said to be aged past believing. They are… uh… ah… mmmmmm!"
Tom's head lolled forward; he began to snore.
Two other snores answered him. Turning, Rod saw the Loguires, chins on their chests, sleeping blissfully.
Rod stared.
A metal bar dropped from the window and bounced on the floor. The ends were sheered through.
Rod whistled. This Prince of the Elves might be old, but he certainly wasn't languishing—not if he could still cut through inch-thick iron with nothing but a cold chisel and a mallet.
The third bar fell down. There was a scrabbling sound, and the squat, broad form shot through the window and leaped to the floor.
Rod stared, squeezed his eyes shut, and shook his head. Then he looked again, and understood why Tom and the Loguires had suddenly dozed off.
He swallowed, fought for composure, and smiled. "Well met, Brom O'Berin."
"At your service." The little man bowed, smiling maliciously. "I owe you a rap on the head, Master Gallowglass, for the way that you spoke to the Queen: a rap on the head, or great thanks, I know not which."
He turned to the window and called softly in a strange, fluid tongue. The cold chisel arced through the air and fell to his feet. He reached up and caught the hammer as it dropped.
"Now, then." He dropped to his knees and pressed Rod's forearm flat against the floor. "Stir not, or thou'lt have a gouge out of thy wristbone." He set the chisel against the first link of chain and tapped lightly with the hammer. The link fell off, sheared through. Brom grunted and moved to Rod's other side.
"Thou'lt wear bracelets when I've done," he grumbled, "but no chains. The manacles must wait till we're at the castle smithy."
"Uh… that's pretty hard bronze you've got there," Rod ventured, watching the chisel slide through the iron.
"Most hard," Brom agreed, attacking the ankle chains. "An old recipe, known long in my family."
"Uh… in your family?"
"Aye." Brom looked up. "There were elves in lost Greece, too, Rod Gallowglass. Didst thou not know?"
Rod didst not; but he didn't figure this was the time to mention it.
He stood up, free of the chains at least, and watched Brom cutting the others loose. The Prince of the Elves bit explained a lot about Brom: his size and bulk, for one thing.
"Never knew you were royalty, Brom."
"Hm?" Brom looked back over his shoulder. "I would have thought thou'd have guessed it. Why else am I named as I am?"
He turned back to his work. Rod frowned. Name?
What did that have to do with anything? Brom? O'Be-rin? He couldn't see the connection.
"There, the last," said Brom, cutting through Big Tom's foot shackle. "Do thou now lend me aid of thine shoulder, Master Gallowglass."
He jumped back out through the window. Rod got a shoulder in Tom's midriff and, staggering, somehow manhandled him over to the window as a rope flew through.
Rod tied it under Tom's arms, threw the loose end out, and called "Heave!"
He heard Brom grunt, and marveled again at the little man's muscles as Big Tom moved jerkily up the wall, still snoring happily.
What with the beerbelly and the muscles, and the minimal size of the window, Big Tom was a tight fit.
"Why don't you just wake him and let him shove himself out?" Rod grunted as he shoved at Tom's ample rear.
"I have no wish for my office to be known among mortals," came Brom's muffled reply.
The window now framed only Tom's sizable posterior and sequoia shanks. Rod eyed the former, weighing the merits of a well-placed kick, and decided against it.
"So, why'd you let me stay awake?" he grunted as he pushed.
"One amongst you must needs aid me with the others," answered Brom, but Rod had a notion that wasn't quite the whole story.
He left off the questions, however, until his cellmates were deposited on the ground outside the window. Tuan's shoulders had proved even more of an obstacle than Tom's belly; they had to back him up, feed his hands through in front of his head, while Rod wondered fleetingly about brachiator ancestry.
Then Brom hauled Rod out, muttering something about the fish being undersized these days. Rod snarled a return compliment as he gained his feet, then bowed double, putting his head on Brom's level.
"And what's that for?" Brom growled.
"For belting," Rod answered. "You owe me a rap on the head, remember?"
The dwarf chuckled, clapped him on the shoulder. "Nay, lad; you did only that which I should ha' done myself years ago; but I had never the heart. But come now, we must away."
Brom caught up Tuan's midsection. The gnomes took his shoulders and feet, and bore him away toward the ruined fountain in the center of the courtyard.
More gnomes materialized out of the stonework and tucked their shoulders under Big Tom.
Rod shook his head wonderingly, and stooped to sling Loguire over a shoulder.
Brom fumbled with a stone at the fountain's base and pulled it away to disclose the dark mouth of a small tunnel three feet in diameter.
Rod tapped Brom on the shoulder. "Wouldn't this be a little easier if we woke them first?"
Brom stared, scandalized; then his face darkened. "We go to Elfland, Master Gallowglass! And no mortal may journey there and remember it!"
"I have."
"Well, truth," Brom admitted, turning back to the Tuan problem," but then thou' rt not so mortal as some. Thou'rt a warlock." He disappeared into the burrow.
Rod started to reply, then thought better of it. He contented himself with a few grunted reniarks about discrimination and a report to the Human Rights Commission as he lugged Loguire into the tunnel.
Two gnomes started to swing the stone back into place, but Rod stopped them with an upraised hand.
"Fess," he murmured, looking at the stable, "we're on our way. Get out of that hole and meet me at the castle."
There was a moment's silence; then a crash and the sound of splintering wood came from the stables. The door crashed open, and the great black horse came trotting out into the morning sunlight, head held high, mane streaming.
Heads popped out of slit-windows in the inn as a bleary-eyed hostler came stumbling out of the stable in Fess's wake, screaming for the horse to stop.
"Come on, get moving!" Rod growled, but instead, Fess stopped and looked back over his shoulder at the hostler.