The Great Escape
This chapter is named for a supposedly true story about prisoners of war escaping from a camp, with each of them using an unique set of skills to confound their captors. I suppose I should dedicate it to Steve McQueen too, though few reading this will know who he is.
If anyone else shows up claiming to be from another world, you can have them explain, because I'm not going to.
Given what happened, it seemed the only appropriate name. Even with the discovery I made during the course of the action, which was distracting to say the least. Regardless, our own antics escalated quickly from just myself and Julie escaping, which was itself an increase in the ambition of my initial plan.
Julie agreed to escape with me quickly after I had explained the general idea. No surprise there, her fate if she stayed was likely to be gruesome. Worse than mine, if the way Baldy talked wasn't just bluster.
The plan was simple; break out, get out of the prison, head south from the city and onwards to freedom. Of course, I omitted the part where I find the large cache of highly advanced weapons that I hid in the caves, then try and get back home. My cellmate would soon have a plan of her own too, though at this point not even a hint was known to me.
After a bit of experimentation, we were pretty sure we could get out of the cell if we worked together. The sharp edges of the cell bars would have cut our hands to ribbons, but we didn't need to touch them ourselves. We worked out that we would be able to lift the door if both of us applied our weight, using the thick wooden bench to do the actual lifting and ourselves as counterweights.
Maybe.
I had seen it done before, but it might have been a longshot. Not getting caught after we got out was the next thing. If the door itself crashing to the ground wouldn't bring someone running, the other people in the cellblock probably would. Getting out of the building at night would probably be less difficult. Yet all of that that was the easy part, getting out of the city fast enough was the bigger challenge. One we couldn't plan much for.
However, with my lying ass likely to be ordered strung up the next day, and Julie facing hard labour, prison and worse, we confirmed we had no choice but to go. We decided to wait for nightfall.
We almost got caught out when Baldy came by to deliver water and a food substitute that looked like a mangled rat. We had a plan to keep the fiction of my cooperation up, as Julie had doubted that our gaoler would settle for simply thinking that she was being dealt with. At some point, she said, he would make sure to see. He wasn't a man to leave things to chance.
I didn't think that was the case, but I agreed to her plan, though frankly I still think it was unnecessary. The idiot liked me, after all. Or maybe he just liked having people carry out his whims.
Regardless, Baldy waddled into view with a plate, his presence long announced by the jeering of the others. He even helped out, by speaking with our big friend with the horned helmet next door, which helped immensely with the timing.
By the time he arrived outside our cell, Julie was laid down on her back on the bench, clothes appropriately in disarray, and I was between her legs. It sounds almost exactly how it was. We were pretending to be in the middle of "making love" in the dark. It was an awkward experience, my own immediate attraction to her being obvious. Like I said, her idea. Kids, don't read that part.
She managed to cool me off pretty effectively though.
The madamoiselle delivered her perfectly timed and swift fist to my face, as planned. It was a miracle I wasn't very badly bruised. She enjoyed it a little too much, smirking before it landed. I flinched backwards. As I said before, Julie is no weakling.
Despite it not being quite as painful as her first effort, I was barely able to continue the façade, having trouble doing up the button on my trousers again. My eyes watered and I had to blink away the haze in my vision, my jaw moving like I was chewing something to get rid of the numbness. I thought it was no wonder the thugs wouldn't do their own dirty work. They'd probably lose an eye or a tooth.
Our gaoler found the performance extremely entertaining, laughing from the bottom of his bastard heart. My cellmate had been right. He was a perverted little cockroach at heart, and what he had just seen would probably hold him over until the morning.
"Looks like you're getting there," he grinned, placing the cup and plate down just inside the bars, "Or maybe she's playing you for a fool, letting you get close so she can whack you like that."
"Go screw a sow," replied Julie in Orlesian, gathering the top of her workshirt onto her shoulders again.
"Careful girl, you're sour like a sow," growled Baldy, his face's features tightening into a sneer, "I might mistake you for one if you're not careful."
"Tut tut, friend," I interjected, leaning against the bars, "She's mine." This was stupidly defensive and I wanted to kick myself for saying it. I didn't even really know Julie.
My 'friend' didn't seem to catch on thankfully, taking it as a defence of my wish to have her body rather than stop her being abused. Instead, Baldy's smile returned, just within slapping range. I was sure that if I hit him on one side of his face, the fat on it would ripple all the way around again. Grabbing him and taking his tubby self hostage also presented itself as an idea.
The temptation was great, but the prize of getting out was more so.
"I guess there's some use in a feisty one," he grinned at me, "Just as long as she's the most sore piece in all of Halamshiral by night's end, I don't care. She needs to understand what awaits her if she keeps this up. She doesn't talk in the morning, then we'll have to throw her to the work camps."
That moved our schedule up with absolute certainty, if it wasn't already. There was still a slim chance I wouldn't be hanged the same day I was discovered as a fraud, but evidently Julie's time had run out. It occurred to me that local knowledge would be vital in getting away from the authorities too.
"It's not like I'm going anywhere," I shrugged, agreeing so he'd get lost quickly, "I'm probably a dead man tomorrow anyway."
Baldy nodded and left, again doing his signature rattling of the cell bars with his baton as he passed. King of his own castle, he thought.
Breathing easier without his presence, I turned back to Julie and began to speak, but stopped myself immediately when I noticed something that could have given us away. Or maybe the bastard did notice and thought it was some kind of fetish? To this day, I'm not sure how we escaped notice or why he would let us off with it.
The problem was this: She was still wearing my boots. On feet that had been in the air when Baldy arrived, as plain as day. It should have raised awkward questions.
When I brought this to Julie's attention, she wasn't bothered at all.
"I don't think he was trying to look at my feet," she intoned coyly, sitting down to fix her hair into a few braids at the sides, "One interest he doesn't seem to have, at least."
I let out a laugh, glad that Baldy's own vices had screwed him, and picked up the plate of "food" that had been delivered as she stood up again. Juile came over and grabbed my face with a cheeky smile, looking into my eyes for a moment before examining where she had hit me the second time.
My heart pumped faster and I probably flushed a bit, though I bit down any other reaction as best I could. I think it was at this moment that I went from smitten to head over heels. Alas, I am a fool for a good woman.
Julie had to tease, of course. "You did seem to be enjoying yourself though. Maybe we should practice our deception in greater detail," she said, taking and squeezing my hand, "When things are less tense." She waggled her eyebrows in a deliberately comical way.
Irresistable as an idea, but impractical at the moment. "Should we invite Baldy?" I asked, unable to contain a joke pointing out where we were. She shook her head, and slapped me on the cheek a little. She was still smiling as she lay down on the bench again.
Stomach rumbling, I took a whiff of the contents of the plate the bastard had delivered. It was putrid, whatever it was, seeming to be a gruel of some kind laced with red spice. I asked my cellmate if she wanted it, to which she informed me that she hadn't eaten anything since arriving. Said it was dangerous. Agreeing, albeit probably for a different reason, I chucked the mess out of the window-privy.
I was pretty damn hungry at this point. The last time I had eaten was breakfast at least two days earlier, on another world. It was a classic set too; bacon, sausage, toasted bread with butter, black coffee. I tortured myself thinking about it for a little while, as I sipped the tepid and probably dirty water out of the cup to console myself.
Justice in Orlais, ladies and gentlemen.
With nothing else to do, I sat down in the corner opposite the bench by the bars and slept for a couple of hours. It was awkward, but comfort would have seen me sleep for a full twelve hours by that point. Julie woke me to when the nightwatchman came on guard, and not our favourite voyeur's minions. However, as the rest of the prisoners weren't asleep yet, as far as we could tell, it wasn't time yet.
Once we had decided that, she asked to hear more about my country. I told her about what cities I had visited both in my homeland and in other countries, talking about things like what the people were like, what you could find in each one, how exactly I travelled there.
She seemed pretty interested in that for a while, then inquired about food, as I had said before that the country had all sorts. I declined to answer this, as I said, I was too hungry to be thinking about food. I guess that was her way of dealing with hunger, provoking it deliberately so it didn't sneak up on her.
Eventually, we heard the sound of snoring, and the time to leave had come. The nightwatchman did a final patrol before heading off behind the door at the end of the corridor to read or do something less sanitary, probably in the guardroom I had seen into on the way to the court. There was no way to be sure if any but one of the prisoners were asleep, but it was midnight by my reckoning.
Julie had a look down the corridor herself, and nodded to me that it was definitely clear. I grabbed the bench, flipped it and pulled it over to the door, positioning one of its supports under the lowest of the crossbars. The whole arrangement was a simple lever. As we readied to apply force to it, I couldn't help but chuckle at a certain irony. My companion turned to me, wondering what was so amusing and a little afraid that I'd draw attention with the outburst.
"You know who gave me this idea?" I whispered, "The judge. He said that I didn't have any leverage left." The man had given me the idea, or reminded me of it as I had seen it performed in a movie once.
We both snickered quietly as we applied our weight to the bench, levering the door upwards off its hinges. In hindsight, it wasn't that funny a joke, like many of those we had told each other, but the tension of the moment made it so. I felt more anticipation then than I had the first time I had gone into combat, strangely enough.
The metal groaned a complaint as it moved, the inside of the hinges scraping off the door's pins and the bolt of the lock tapping off the sides. For a moment, I thought it would stay stuck at the very top of the pins. Afraid we weren't going to get the job done, I leaned my knee on the bench and pushed against the bars beside, relying on the combination of my weight and my strength to get it moving.
At last, the door came off the hinges, sending us flying to the floor with the bench. It fell outwards and collided with the doorframe of the storage room, ringing like a chantry bell for a few seconds. I winced at the noise, but the ring stopped quickly.
Julie and I looked at each other gleefully. Step one complete, a piece of cake. Now for the dangerous part.
I really have to say that our plan was as cheeky as a bare ass.
We rushed out of the cell, and instead of getting the hell out of there, we picked up the door. Hoisting it back into place took a lot of effort, and we had to act quickly. Taking a side each, we replaced it as close to where it had been as possible, while keeping off its hinges. A lot of grunting and heaving, and we had the outsides fitted snugly into its frame.
To anyone who didn't look closely, it was as if nothing had happened.
Ready, we waited for the inevitable. The other prisoners had awoken, and poked their heads through their cell bars to see what the ruckus was, shouting questions down the line towards us. I followed suit, pretending to do the same, even though I was entirely sure that our next-door neighbour had seen us leave the cell. Thankfully, they remained quiet as the nightwatchman entered in a fuss.
The man was furiously tying a belt with a baton and a long dirk hanging off of it around his black robes, clearly having slipped into them after jumping out of his bed.
"What in Andraste's tits was that noise!" he shouted, "One of you better tell me, or so help me, you will choke to death on my..." You get the picture. He continued like that for some time, straighting his robes and waving a fist around. Julie had a good laugh at the rant, whereas I was too absorbed with what I had to do next.
"Hey!" I called down once the man was in earshot of me over the sound of the prisoners insulting his mother, "It came from this storage room." I leaned through the bars and pointed at the door where my equipment was kept.
The nightwatchman grumbled curses to himself as he stumbled around looking for who had spoken, something about the place falling apart. The bluff had worked.
The moron came down the corridor with a flame torch, dangling his keyring, searching for the right key to unlock the door. I watched carefully as he flicked through each one, mumbling about flaying people alive as he did so. Julie gripped my hand from behind, for reassurance. As he walked past our neighbour's cell, he finally chose.
I took note of which key he had ready as he turned, and gave my companion's hand a squeeze back to signal that I had what we needed to know.
He really must have still been half asleep, because he began loudly knocking the key around the lock's plate clumsily rather than putting it in. It gave us the opportunity to get the door out of the way again without being heard.
Julie and I sprung into action. We took him from behind as brutally as possible, not taking any chances where his baton or knife was concerned. The first strike was a full body punch to the back of his head from my dear self, which sent him forwards against the wall beside and the other prisoners cheering. I winced, not out of pain but the noise the latter had made. Were they trying to get us all caught?
The torch fell to the ground, and seeing that the guard reaching out pick it up and swing it at us, I kicked it away so he couldn't use it. Julie did most of the rest of the work, sending punch after punch at the man's jaw, gut and neck. She had wrapped some leather around her own hands to protect them, and it showed.
His hands kept reaching for his weapons, but the next blow from my cellmate forced them away again to try and protect himself. Without the benefit of armour or any sort of fighting skill, he collapsed after about six or seven blows, either dead or very badly hurt. He was bloody and bruised in every place I could see, and plenty I could not.
It was probably a bit excessive, I thought, but my new friend needed to vent. When it was done, I rubbed her on the shoulder as she inhaled and exhaled deeply. She put her hand over mine as I did so. She had appreciated the gesture.
"Hey you, get us out of here!" called a prisoner, managing to half-shout and half-whisper, "Don't you dare leave us in these Maker-damned cells!" An attitude that made me want to do exactly that, despite my better nature.
"We will, just stay quiet and we're all leaving!" I replied, "Warn us if anyone else comes." If they wanted out, they might as well work for it.
One of them made a gesture from down the corridor indicating that they would do so, and I immediately felt relieved. The trustworthiness of our fellow prisoners was a factor we couldn't account for, but everyone on the block must have been sent away for a greater crime than evading arrest. Laying their bets on betraying us to the authorities wasn't something they were about to do.
I picked the keyring and the dirk off the nightwatchman's body, and handed the latter to Julie. She took the long knife in hand but reached down for belt and scabbard too, tying it around her own waist quickly as I handled the next part. She had no qualms about sticking someone with the blade and intended to bring it with her. As for the baton, she tossed that down the line with contempt, a wooden clattering issuing from it as it bounced along the stone floor.
With some trepidation, I selected the storage room doorkey, praying I had the right one. God must have been listening. It slid in smoothly, and opened the lock despite requiring some force to turn. The door swung open with a creak, to reveal a large room with a number of chests and large crates, barely visible in the light of the now-recovered torch.
"Which one is yours?" Julie asked, "That's mine there in the corner. Not much inside but I'd like some of it back, if you don't mind."
I considered the situation with a glance around the space. "We'll open all of the chests," I said, remembering the half dozen prisoners waiting for release, "Might need the extra help. Don't think we can get into the crates without a crowbar, we don't have time for it."
My companion nodded, as we began trying to open chests. The first we opened turnout out to be hers, and she took out a toolbelt and a bag, confirming her profession as being a craftswoman of some sort. Inside was also a bunch of rolled up papers, which I guessed were her case files.
Julie set them on fire with the nightwatchman's torch, before placing it on a sconce attached to the wall. She smiled as she did so, watching the evidence of her crimes go up in flames. I didn't complain, there was no reason to take them and it was probably some sort of ritual for her at this point. I doubted it meant there was no record of her tax debts, and it got me thinking about records of my own activities.
The next chest held a large bow and two quivers of arrows, some sort of paint tin, a large curved dagger, and a large leather bag with survival tools inside. No papers of any kind. I wondered what the paint was for, and who the owner was. I reached in to check out the tin, but didn't really have time to ponder it and so left it alone.
I turned to Julie, to see if she wanted the bow. As I hadn't really used one before, I didn't want to bother taking it. She shook her head. "If someone sees us walking around with a bow, they'll stop us," she whispered, "Leave it."
So we left the second box untouched, and my own equipment was better by my own reckoning at any rate.
We went to the third chest. I opened it and found everything that had been taken off me inside. I breathed easy, my spirits greatly raised by the sight. My pack was untouched, as was my combat webbing. Even the spare water bottle was still full.
Most importantly, my weapons and ammunition were there. Goldie's scribe had placed his notes in a side section too, for good measure, and I had every intention of flicking through those as soon as I was safe. I pulled the webbing and Fraser's boots out and put them on, buckling the belts to me. Julie watched with a curious face, as I gleefully chuckled to myself.
I remember thinking about all the smug pricks who had insulted and mistreated me since my arrival, and how I would make them cower in fear if I ever saw them again. It was that sort of night.
Unfortunately, my self-indulgence was cut short by the sound of another cell door coming off its hinges. It clanged against the wall or floor outside without any warning at all. Julie and I looked at each other in surprise. The sound of the broken door being moved aside along the stone of the floor echoed around.
Not knowing what sort of maniac had just been let loose with us, I quickly grabbed my firelance from the box, checked that it was loaded and flicked the safety off with my thumb. Boots knocked on stone for a minute, before our guest ducked through the low doorway and into the room, illuminated by the torch.
It was definitely a woman.
Little doubt of that, given her... bounty... I suppose that would be the polite way of saying it? She was wearing a crossing double weave of bright white cloth with red edges over her neck and across her chest, that left her belly, shoulders and presumably most of her back naked.
Black trousers started at her waist with another strip of white and red cloth, ending with what I can only describe as cousins to my own boots on her feet. Her eyes were violet and wide open with caution, her skin appeared to be silver-grey and her shoulder-length hair was a white-blonde. She was taller than me by at least four inches. Her physique was athletic; she looked like she could run twenty miles and fight a battle at the end of it.
It occurred to me that this was the occupant of the cell next to ours, now without her cloak, on account of one particular detail about her. Namely, the two damned horns growing out the sides of her head, curved things, smooth and black. What I had mistaken for a helmet before was actually part of the woman's skull.
This was my first meeting with a Qunari.
There are certainly none on Earth. I raised my firelance to fire, stepping back as I felt my eyes nearly go out of my head. Julie pulled out the dirk again and pointed it at her, standing just behind me.
She raised her hands at once as a peace gesture, regarding both of us warily. I'm not sure if she was trying to calm us down by standing still, but it was having the opposite reaction because of her silence and her recognition that what I was pointing at her was a weapon. I had to ask.
"What in the name of God are you?" I growled, "Answer now."
She inclined her head to the side, looking at me as if I was stupid. She glanced at Julie, who was speechless at the time, to my weapon, and then back to me.
"I have overheard your conversations," the horned woman said, in an unidentifiable but pleasantly husky accent, "Every word since your arrival, Sam Hunt."
I exhaled pure exasperation for a moment. "What, and you just decided not to wait for me to open the cells?" I asked, not bothering to keep my voice down anymore, "For a nice little chat about me being an alien in this closet?"
The woman remained calm in the face of my irritation. "I couldn't take the chance that you would refuse to let me go," she explained, "I take it that this is the first time you have seen one of the Qunari?"
"It's the first time I've seen one either," Julie interrupted, aiming her words at me, "They're invaders, who want to take our land and turn us from the Chantry's faith. There was a big war against them, and some countries are still fighting them."
I didn't like the sound of that one bit... But I doubted we were anywhere near the front line. Julie would have seen one long before now otherwise. If anything, the notion that the woman was an enemy of the state raised her stock in my books.
Our guest didn't seem perturbed by the description of her people, however. "You are not wrong," she replied softly, "I have seen these things happen."
I tightened my grip on my weapon, wondering what I should do.
I could just riddle the 'Qunari' with a burst from my firelance and walk out of the prison over her corpse. But that seemed a little harsh, considering she was a prisoner too and was offering no resistance. That wasn't how soldiers of my country were supposed to act either, though it did happen.
Leaving her wouldn't have been an option either, she had heard too much, yet I could not help but act a bit irrationally. She was so unusual that I kept my weapon's aim on her. Until she glanced at it, not seeming to think it strange. Which was strange in itself. Did she think I was a mage despite overhearing our conversations?
"Can you lower your weapon?" she asked, "I mean you no harm. Quite the opposite. I promise."
Adding up her identity as a known enemy of the country I was in and its religion, her not trying anything stupid and our common problem of being locked up, I decided I believed her. Begrudingly, I grit my teeth and lowered the firelance. She had displayed no real hostility, and frankly, if she heard everything I had said to Julie without thinking I was crazy, then she deserved the benefit of the doubt. Or at least, she could be dealt with later.
"I'll take you at your word that you mean no harm," I said, "We're leaving, and since you overheard about what and who I am... We could use some help." I thumbed over my shoulder and stepped aside to let her into the room. She lowered her hands and moved past quickly, making her way to the second chest with the bow. Saw that coming, she definitely had the muscle for the longbow.
Julie and I watched her closely as she began rummaging in the box, before looking at each other in a sort of bewilderment. We quickly remembered that we were in the middle of an escape attempt. Although walking around with a huge archer could compromise us as easily as Julie taking the bow, at least it looked like the Qunari could have real skill with it.
Proceeding with the rest of the plan, I went about stuffing the notes of Goldie's scribe into my pack, before hauling it up out of the chest and onto my back. It was heavy and unwieldy, but I could hardly drag it either.
In the mean time, Julie checked the hallway to see if it was still clear, while I ran my hands over my webbing to make sure the combat knife, ammunition and various grenades were still there. With that complete, that just left disguising it all as a priority. I looked around and had an idea.
"Are there any cloaks in here?" I asked, "This is where they'd be stored, right?" It was the middle of summer, on Earth as well as on Thedas, but I couldn't imagine the guards would let prisoners freeze to death in winter. Not before the riotous lawyers had their chance to make speeches about their cases, anyway.
Julie grabbed the torch off the wall again and searched, quickly locating a shelf with large woollen blankets. Good enough, I decided, and through one across my shoulders and pack to disguise my face and strange clothing.
Both my companions followed suit, Julie sheathing her new dirk to do it and the Qunari putting it over her ridiculously revealing outfit. I was getting more interested in the latter for the obvious reason, but also for a grander one.
She was the first non-human I had ever met.
"You, what is your name?" I asked our new companion.
She seemed troubled for a moment, her lips pursing as she thought about it. "I was Tamassran," she said, "But I now have no name, I have become Tal-Vashoth."
Nautrally, I had no idea what she was talking about. I guessed incorrectly that Tamassran was her name before. I was unaware of Qunari culture about names. Was Tal-Vashoth her new name, or was she nameless? Was it a title, a description? I wasn't bothered to get the detailed answer at that particular moment. Neither was our other accomplice.
"Alright Tam, will you help us get out of here?" said Julie, asking before I could, "Because I don't want to spend another minute in this place." Count on her to cut to the chase.
Tam worked as a name, we all agreed. The woman herself was seemingly satisfied with her new soubriquet too.
"That was my intention," Tam replied, seeming a little more upbeat now, "You have somewhere to go after we get out, I'd like to come with you."
I almost slapped my own face off at her answer though.
"Then freakin' say so the first time," I replied, "I almost killed you."
"Apologies, I thought it was obvious," said Tam, smiling for the first time, "Leave your killing to the guards. They deserve it." She was wearing the smile of a killer as she spoke the last sentence. It sent a shudder down my spine, but one thing was for sure, I was more confident of escape with her than without her.
Both my companions and I left the storage room, sliding past Tam's cell door, laying discarded against the wall of the corridor, propped up. I glanced inside, and saw that she too had used the bench as a lever. I wondered for a moment just how much she had heard, as we passed to the next cell. Dodgy Guy No.1 was parked right up against the door.
"Unlock it, what's taking you so long?!" he urged, motioning with his hand for us to come closer, "Get me out of here you bitches!"
In response to this challenge, Tam drew her curved dagger, and stepped forward. Dodgy Guy No.1, being much smaller and unarmed, stepped away from the cell bars. I found my attitude towards her warming already. The trouble she had nipped in the bud could very well have ended with us all getting discovered, and she was smart enough to see that coming a mile away.
Though I was still a bit in awe out about the horns, whereas Julie seemed to have the same problem for a different reason. I vowed to have a little interview with both of them later. There was obviously a lot I needed to know if I was going to keep them around after the escape, no matter how beautiful I found them.
Despite it being better for humanity to leave such a person behind bars, the distraction of his escape was too useful a factor for us. Given how dark it was and how we were covered up with blankets, it wasn't like the guy could have identified us anyway.
"Calm down or I'll leave you in here," I said to the pushy prisoner, unlocking the door and moving to the next cell, "You stay in there until we're past the door or she'll gut you like a fish." Tam twirled her dagger in her fingers, to emphasize the matter. The guy nodded his assent to my command, parking his ass way back next to the arrow-slit on the back wall.
The others were much less demanding, stepping back like they would if it was a guard opening up the cell, and only leaving when we had vacated the area around the door. The three or four prisoners seemed to congregate a dozen paces away, wondering what to do no doubt. Keeping in mind that the more of them that escaped successfully, the better it would be for our own chances, I threw them the remaining chest-sized keys.
"Here, get your things and get out of here as quietly as possible," I said, motioning to the door at the opposite end to the one I planned to use, "And if we see each other again out in the world, just keep walking." Not that they knew what my face looked like.
The group nodded like a bunch of chickens, picked up the keys off the floor, and walked down to get into the storage room. Satisfied, I recalled the layout of the prison past the door I had been brought through to get to the courthouse and unlocked it.
First, up a winding staircase. The guards' quarters were here, along with the documents room. The bunkroom doors were shut, unlike when I had passed them in the afternoon, but I signalled for Julie and Tam to be absolutely quiet as we passed. The idea of the guards waking, streaming out of their quarters to kill us filled the air, making every movement and sound we made difficult, but we got past the six or seven doorways before the stairway to the exit without incident.
Julie and I had already discussed what we would do if we got this far.
The documents room, where I thought the case files on both of us were being kept, was right beside the stairs. We planned to destroy them, as they were the last evidence we were ever there that we knew of. She pointed at the door, and I nodded. She opened it slowly, with Tam keeping watch behind and myself watching the spiral stairwell.
There was a row after row of scrolls and stacked wads of paper on shelves, writing desks being similarly stocked. Definitely something important, as the few opened documents I could see were all stamped with the same relief of a woman with the sun behind her as I had seen displayed in the courtroom.
Julie began searching the files for her case, but I stopped her with a whisper of a laugh. Maybe our files would be easy to find, but there was an even easier way to deal with them. I indicated for both she and Tam to leave the room, and then to come closer so I could speak without waking the building.
"Get ready to go down the stairs quickly," I said, at a volume barely above a breath, "I've got this."
Julie made a doubting face, but both of them watched me from the steps, as I went back into the room. I pulled as much paper off the shelves and onto the floor as possible in the space of a minute, piling it up into a nice pyramid of combustible material in the middle of the room. When I was satisfied that I had enough thrown about, I left and readied myself to run, as I pulled my chosen implement off of my belt.
It was a thermite incendiary grenade, designed to destroy things in a small enclosed space with molten metal and heat. Think of an Antivan firepot, and you're still not thinking hot enough. Not even dragon's breath comes close. One can melt through a block of metal more than three feet thick with no problem at all. In a room filled with paper, in a room with wooden floors and shelves, you can imagine how quickly flames would spread.
I only had two of the ingenious little devices, but I needed to destroy what was in that room with total certainty. Otherwise, we'd never get clear of the bounty hunters and men of fortune that I imagined would have chased us with the help of the information there.
With no small amount of satisfaction, I tossed the weapon inside after priming it, and half-closed the door. I heard it detonate with a fizzing sound, as I hurried Tam and Julie down the staircase. Smoke started to spread as we moved, but I heard no shouts of alarm. We wound down and down, three floors to be exact, until we reached the final stretch of corridor leading to the courtyard. We were almost home-free.
Until Baldy came around a corner, bumping into me. What I thought as I realised it cannot be repeated in polite company. He seemed to bounce off me, almost falling on his backside as he did so, staggering away like he was drunk. Perhaps he was, now that I think about it.
"What in the... you!" he said. Not the sharpest knife in the box, that one. Nor the fastest on the draw, and it cost him.
Tam stepped in front of me quickly, moving to attack. She plunged her dagger into the gaoler's belly, putting her other hand over his mouth with such force that his head slammed against the wall. I couldn't help but flinch as she drew the blade upwards slowly, tearing a long wound in him from button to sternum, before removing it in a smooth motion. She then stabbed through the throat to silence him as the coup de grace, before pulling it out quickly and moving to the side to avoid what happened next.
Baldy's eyes rolled upwards, and he fell down in a pool of his own blood. I had seen some brutal things in my life, people being burned alive or beheaded being among them, but this was a fatality unlike anything I had seen before.
The Qunari proceeded to drag the body by the leg into a side alcove, like it was a sack of grain, well hidden in the shadows, before coming back with what I think was a curtain. She dumped it on the ground and soaked the blood into it, using her foot to move it about. When she was satisfied that most of the evidence was cleaned away, she tossed the curtain into the same alcove, over Badly's broken body.
Julie and I just stared at Tam as she wiped the blade clean, pinching both sides of it with the blanket around her and drawing it through her fingers.
"He threatened to have me raped," she said quietly, "He deserved worse."
Julie looked to the newcomer with a new look of respect on her face, eyes wide. The Qunari looked back, understanding that what she had just done had earned serious points. My own mixture of stunned silence and amusement notwithstanding, given my own violent intentions towards the man, Julie had evidently seen a lot of violence before. I wasn't surprised. After all, she was a commoner in an absolute monarchy, it isn't exactly a thing that respects the lives of ordinary people.
That kill was revealing of Tam's motives too; brutal to enemies, supportive and willing to take a chance on potential allies. As long as I didn't betray her, I figured I would be safe, and the more I thought about it, the more I was willing to have another companion on the road. If Tam would agree to come after we left the city. As it turned out, she positively demanded to come along, but that came a little later.
Both women waited for my reaction to the kill, afraid that I had been offended somehow. They needn't have bothered.
"I guess I did say he was the most disgusting man I had ever met," I said with a shrug, "Can't complain." Julie smirked at that, whereas Tam sheathed her dagger and looked away to the exit. It was less than twenty paces away, open.
Bells rang out, echoing through the space from the outside, and cries in Orlesian started from somewhere above us.
Not rushing out the doors, which might have been the natural thing to do on hearing the alarm, I instead gestured for everyone to wait a bit. They did so, though drew their weapons again, while I listened to work out if we had been discovered yet.
It was hard to do over the sound of the bells, but I caught a few words. Luckily, those shouting were yelling about fire, not escaped prisoners, as I hoped they would be. Knowing their contempt for the accused, I was sure they wouldn't bother to check on the inmates until the flames were out too, buying both ourselves and the other group a little more time.
With the guards more than likely going to start their own escape from the building, we hurried out the door into the courtyard.
Men that appeared to be city guards appeared through the gatehouse at the other side of the space, but we simply stood out of sight behind the base of a large statue as they ran past us to start fighting the fire. No heed at all was paid to us by anyone else either, as we slipped out of the prison compound and onto the streets of the city itself. They didn't imagine that we were escaped prisoners. Or maybe they were worried about firefighting only.
Regardless, we passed the gatehouse without incident in the chaos of the moment, the blankets wrapped around us. And that's how we escaped, with no clue as to the significance of what we had set in motion.
I never so much as looked back at the inferno I had created.