Break
Arthur crouched once more beside the bottom of a staircase, only the lightness of his hair betraying that he was not simply part of the shadows surrounding him. There was no time to disguise it; it wasn't that distinctive anyway, and he could always throw some mud on it on the outside. There was no time to hesitate, mourn Maggie, or think about anything except the plan. Get in. Get out. The hallways felt like the gullet of a massive snake that had swallowed him whole.
The stairway currently sheltering him was outside of the quarters of the captain of the guard, currently snoring away due to the strong herbal extract Arthur had dropped in his milk when he'd "bumped" into a tray-carrying servant in the hallway. Having made absolutely sure the man had drunk his tea with milk and was out cold, Arthur turned and stole on soundless feet back down the corridor toward the dungeon, the soles of leather boots barely touching the floor. This time, all knives were at the ready.
It was half past two in the morning when a dark cloud drifted down the staircase to the prison antechamber. The six guards were at their post, embroiled in their usual game. Arthur slipped off his cloak to reveal the guard uniform Maggie had bought for him off of one of the more money-grubbing men at the wall, whose secrecy she'd ensured with both gold and threatened steel. With only a bit of dirt disguising his face, the disguise wouldn't hold up long, but he just needed them to let him get close enough without calling out. Once he had made it five steps into the circle of light, it would be all over.
It was eight steps to the outer edge of the warm yellow ring. Thirteen in all. Arthur counted in his head.
One. Two. They hadn't noticed him yet.
Three. Four. Five. A man with a scraggly goatee won a toss and loudly celebrated.
Six. Seven. One of those at the table looked up. An expression of surprise and confusion passed visibly across her face.
Eight. Nine. Ten. "You there!" she called out to the dim figure, whose face was still in shadow but whose uniform was visible. The others looked up as well, registering his presence.
Eleven. Twelve. "Hey! I'm talking to you!" the original guard squawked. The others shifted nervously halfway into defensive stances. The slightly short, silent guard was getting uncomfortably close. He was in the light, and did the expressionless face looked a little familiar? One of the guards suddenly, got it and he opened his mouth to sound the alarm.
"Int–"
Thirteen.
Arthur exploded into motion. First, he lunged for the one yelling, who stood in the back of the group, and jammed a hard sword pommel into his throat, effectively shutting him up. He squatted low and backhand stabbed his left-hand knife into the man's stomach, exposed under a sloppily-secured breastplate, as he he whirled around to face the next two assailants. They had barely turned around before he'd thrust a sword into the vulnerable side of one and kicked the other in the stomach, doubling him over to where he could wrench off his helmet from the back with the knife hand, leaving his throat open to the sword's bite.
The remaining three processed enough to get a little distance between themselves and the lightning-quick attacker. The woman who'd spoken first approached cautiously, sword drawn, eyeing his unprotected head. The other two seemed frozen but would soon remember to yell for help. Arthur would have to make this quick.
Parry, riposte. An uppercut, easily blocked. A swing for the side, also blocked. She was good, but she was a traditional two-handed broadsword wielder; she had never faced someone with his style of fighting, blending fencing with a light sword and back-alley knife sparring. His father was an end-justifies-the-means sort of ruler. A violent but clumsy slash down, requiring both hands to throw off. In the split second before she can give ground, slip the knife under her guard.
The two guards still standing turned to flee. They didn't make it to the base of the steps.
~o8o~
Having grabbed the keys from above the guards' table, Arthur sprinted through the prison area. He hoped to get out quick to save his own skin but also for the guards' sake: only two or three should be dead, and the rest had life-threatening injuries but could be spared with proper medical attention. Regardless of his father's philosophy on eliminating dangerous future variables, Arthur didn't like to kill unnecessarily. That said, he didn't have many qualms. These were hard times. The twist in his gut was just another thing to toss to the back corners of his conscience.
Arriving at the last cage, Arthur hurriedly jammed key after key from the medium-sized ring into the lock, succeeding on the fourth try. He roused the sorcerer, which was pulling itself to its feet while drowsily and indignantly asking what was going on, with a flat, clipped "We're leaving. Now." It was awake in an instant.
Arthur swung open the cell door and stepped inside for the first time. The lamplight, usually so amiable, only threw the shadows of the bars in stripes over everything, and there was a faint smell of mildew almost smothered by the stinging cold.
Hurriedly, the thing stepped out of the way to indicate the chain that was padlocked around a cage bar, keeping it from approaching the door. It was apparently no longer on time-out, since now its hands were only cuffed in front of it with about two feet of chain providing decent mobility. Arthur wordlessly tried the keys again on the padlock bolting the longer chain to the wall, which gave with a satisfying crunch-click. The sorcerer quickly reeled the now-dangling chain in and wrapped it around the knuckles of its right hand, then turned toward Arthur for further instructions.
He would have to touch the thing again, wouldn't he. The concept sent shivers down his spine: he knew that without all the cold iron around, a magical creature could kill or curse a person on contact. Well, there was no time for that sort of thinking just now; at the moment it was simply an asset, nothing more. Arthur grabbed the sorcerer's wrist (which some part of his mind noted just felt like a person's wrist, if slightly cold) and, pausing only to grab Arthur's discarded cloak at the bottom of the stairwell and throw it over the shoulders of the boy-creature, this time they both ran like hell out of the dungeons.
~o8o~
They had almost made it, with minimal stumbling, to the second phase of Arthur's plan when the sound of clattering footsteps and raucous voices drifted around the corner of the winding, darkened corridor they followed. Damn. Damn, damn, damn. Monsieur Greasy must have changed the guard patrols after catching onto Maggie: no one was supposed to come down this hallway until morning! There were very few branch-offs to escape down as well, and they were all up ahead. Arthur felt as if he was finally reaching that giant snake's digestive tract.
The sorcerer was doubled over and breathing hard next to him, but at the sound it straightened up, a look of pure terror twisting its features and causing the tattoos on its face to seem to writhe. Arthur could hear his own heartbeat loud in his skull. Wait, no, that wasn't his heartbeat; was it the asset's? Could the guards hear it, too? Oh my god, they were going to die, there was no escape, the walls were closing in to crush them, get away getaway getawaygetawaygetawayGETAWAY!
Oh. It was just like that first time in the dungeon. With effort, Arthur steadied his inhalations; the boy next to him was barely breathing in shallow bursts. With effort, Arthur switched back to thinking tactically and silently pulled him further down the corridor to the first unlit split-off from the corridor, where they both crouched, listening. The heady, dizzying fear surged and crashed, making Arthur's vision swim.
Up ahead they could still hear the sentries' voices, slowly becoming clearer and more distinct but no longer raucous. They sounded tentative, and nervous laughter issued forth at every halfhearted joke. The clacking of boots on stone diminished, then stopped altogether.
"Oi, mate, why'd you stop?" rumbled one drifting voice (very close too close!).
"Well, I was just thinkin', what if we skipped out on shift tonight and slipped down for a pint? Patrol schedules are so messed up, 'ent nobody's gonna notice we's gone if we 'urry back before mornin'!" There was a subdued chorus of approving grunts.
A tenor voice with a bit more refinement in its accent rose above it. "And if we do get caught, it's our jobs and maybe our heads, lads. You willing to stake your livelihood for a drop of watery ale?"
A woman's voice now piped up, "But 'Arry, none of us 'as 'ad a drop to drink all evening! It's three in the mornin'; we're all half awake. A little somethin' would pick us right up and put us back on alert. And really, wot're the chances we get caught?"
Murmuring again broke out, and this time it seemed like the tenor guard (sergeant, probably) was about to break. The stentorian first voice lifted above the din. "You're all just afraid to go down the corridor! Wot, big, strong guards like you 'fraid a the dark?"
This engendered an even louder chorus of indignant dismissals, and Arthur's heart sank as the burning feeling in his throat retreated.
The footsteps came a few more steps down the hallway, and then the second man's voice spoke up again. "I 'ent scared of no empty hallway, but I do really fancy somethin' for me dry throat, and I'm sure you feel the same, Sarge."
The sergeant's voice was definitely dripping with watery, breathless fear this time. "Uh...yeah, I guess one trip wouldn't do us ill. Rolfe, you in agreement?"
The deep voice scoffed. "Yeah, sure, if all you sissies want to go get stumbling drunk I've got no objections."
"But if we're all such cowards surely, big, brave Rolfe wants to finish patrol by himself, doesn't he?" mocked the woman's voice.
There was a pregnant pause. Then Rolfe responded, his practiced relaxed tone not at all hiding the tremors of terror in his voice. "No, I might as well come with you lot. I like my ale as much as the next man. And somebody owes me just enough from that last dice game for a good, 'efty tankard."
There was an ardent denial, and then the good-natured bickering and footsteps got farther and farther away until they faded out entirely. The boy next to Arthur caught his breath.
Not a boy, a creature. Its, not his. No longer caught up in the danger of the moment, Arthur collected himself and jerked away from the trembling thing, pulling it roughly to its feet. "Come on."
They reached their destination fairly quickly after that. The laundry room was a cavernous space with none of the flickering torches that had lit the last corridor (though only enough to make out grey shapes in the space between two sconces). A web of clotheslines hung low under the weight of rows and rows of tunics, trousers, and capes for the rich and fashion-conscious. Some of the dangling sleeves were still wet, and an eerie drip, drip echoed off the monochrome stone walls of the wide space. It took Arthur's eyes a few moments to adjust, and then he quickly strode forward. This was the most time-sensitive part of the plan. Clean laundry return started at three in the morning, but sleepy workers without fail didn't make it in until ten minutes past, so Arthur had five minutes to prepare.
Releasing his death grip on the sorcerer's arm, Arthur jogged to the nearest dirty clothes vat and shed his armor, hiding the guard uniform under a towering pile of soggy tunics. He snatched a (comparatively) clean servants' uniform from a heavy, drooping clothesline and yanked the beige tunic over his head. Luckily it was only slightly damp. Finally, he jogged over to the giant, wheeled wax-sealed wicker baskets used to cart around large loads and, most importantly, to deliver in the mornings. He wheeled it over to the sorcerer, who hadn't moved, and bumped it against his–its!–leg. "Get in."
The creature whipped around and backed up a step. "In where?"
Arthur huffed impatiently. They were taking too long; this was not good. "Wheelbarrow. By your left leg."
With agonizing slowness the sorcerer felt the rim and then pulled himself into the basket. It made a small noise of surprise when Arthur started dropping clothes on it but otherwise lay still in the bottom, seemingly having grasped the plan despite never having heard it explained. With about a minute to spare, a young, blonde servant wheeled a basket full of brown groomsmen's uniforms out of the echoing laundry room with its eerily dangling weights and into the hallway that would take him to the gate and freedom.
~o8o~
Arthur took a final left out of a hallway smelling of stale cinnamon, pushed open a door, and gratefully inhaled the icy, fresh air. It was a chilly morning, with soft grey light just beginning to bring out a contrast between objects below and the star-flung sky high overhead. Without sunlight to kiss the yellowish stone walls of the fortress, it was simply a pile of greash rocks at his back, no longer feeling quite so massive or claustrophobic in the face of the infinite sky.
A young woman dressed like him with a similarly piled wheelbarrow came out of another servants' entrance to his left and called quietly to him with a friendly wave. He nodded back with a smile as she split off to deliver her laundry and he headed toward the side gates.
As soon as he had a chance, Arthur stopped next to a recently-watered potted sapling to rub some dark earth on his face and hair. It wasn't very effective with regard to the latter, but it did do a good job changing his complexion. The no-longer-ambassador hoped it would be enough. There were two more tests left, two more opportunities for everything to go sour (well, he was smart and experienced enough to know that every tick of the clock was an opportunity for everything to go sour, but he preferred not to think about that). He would have to pass inspection at the castle's inner gate, pass through the lower town market, and then again be assessed at the outermost gate of the citadel, where his disguise and alibi would have to change if he wanted to pass through without suspicion or detention. From there it would be a straight shot to Hunter's Wood, where his father's men could take over. All things considered, the escape was progressing smoothly.
The lump of clothes in the false servant's basket shifted once with and audible sigh and then again lay still, perhaps sensing the change in the air. Arthur wondered if the thing underneath knew he was outside. Arthur supposed it was all right to think of him as a him; in a few short hours he wouldn't be Arthur's problem anymore, anyway. And it seemed pointless (Arthur's first thought was "needlessly cruel," but that was a stupid thing to think about a sorcerer) not to let him know they had made it through the doors, especially if it would warn him not to move around like that again.
Arthur kicked the side of the basket lightly to get his attention, then, with a final glance around for witnesses, leaned down to whisper.
"We're out."