Chapter eleven: Travellers in the Night
From Finding Their Voice, by Oswine Odmundson, F.A. 610
History is not just one story. History is a thousand stories that come together to make a whole. Where one person's story ends, another begins. Sometimes they intertwine like yarn on a loom, and weave a solid cloth. Sometimes they pass each other like travellers in the night. Drawn by the light, they share a few words together, and then go their separate ways.
"When I was eight," writes a young girl of Gondor, "my father was killed by the clans from the east. I was there, they tell me, but I can't remember it. My uncle fled with me and took me to the nearest garrison. I can't remember that, either. I can't remember anything, any of the bad things. I can't remember arriving. I can't remember waiting to be rescued, never knowing if the clans were going to find us again. I can't even remember the king arriving, although for years afterwards, my uncle wouldn't stop talking about how the king had spoken to him, asking his opinion of the situation in the east. Something began to heal inside my uncle then, something that had been broken. I can see that now. I didn't then, of course. At least I don't think I did. I can't remember anything.
"But I remember the men-at-arms who escorted us back through Ithilien. I remember one of them in particular. He was only seventeen, but of course he seemed so much older to me then, because I was just a child. I thought he was very handsome.
"Ten years later, when I saw him again, I thought he was even more handsome still. We've been married now for forty years. Since our wedding, I've never left Lossarnach. I've never returned to Minas Tirith or Osgiliath. I've never seen Ithilien again. I've never gone back to the east. I've never seen the king or the queen or the Steward, except for that one glimpse of the king, the glimpse that I can't remember.
"I was just a little girl, nobody important, and he was just a humble man-at-arms, and his name will never be mentioned in the songs that they sing of those times. But when I look back on those dark days, he is all I remember. This was where our long story began, so many years ago."
Just one story out of many. Just one story out of the hundreds that were written down for us, and the tens of thousands that are now lost to us.
Elessar took his army into the Brown Lands, and in Minas Tirith, Faramir strove to find the agents who aimed to wreak havoc in the city. With every decision that they made, other stories were born and other stories died. Friendships were formed in the army, some of which lasted until death, and changed those friends' lives forever. In the tense fear of the city, sometimes people found each other, and sometimes they tore themselves apart, as fear made them say unforgiveable things. Stories starting, stories ending; stories coming together, stories breaking apart.
With every word he speaks, a king can change the lives of those around him, but we all have that power. With our words and deeds, we can change the stories of those whose paths cross ours. In our own small way, we are all kings.
In the dawn mist, the whole world was grey. Nothing moved in it. There was no wind, and there were no trees, only stunted shrubs. Somewhere, not too far away, a few scant birds were singing, but Mablung could not see them. His clothes were damp with dew, and his feet were cold. Although they were healed, his old wounds ached.
He was waiting. As night melted slowly into dawn, he waited for the one who would come. He had slept little, just jagged snatches of sleep, shot through with vivid dreams of failure and death. Now that he was awake, reality felt less real than the dreams.
When the figure appeared in the mist, he was slow to see it, even though he was waiting for it. At first it was just a faint hint of movement, a darker shadow against the grey. As Mablung watched, the shadow took form, becoming not one but two distinct figures, one tall and one short.
The king! Mablung thought. He still could not entirely believe it. The king, and by the look of it, Lord Gimli alongside him. Mablung stood up, wincing at the stiffness of muscles that had gone too long unused. He took a step forward, then went down on his knees and bowed his head, waiting.
"Mablung," the king said, and Mablung looked up to see him wrapped in a grey cloak and wreathed in a mist that was scarcely less grey. "Don't kneel," he said, sounding more like a companion than a king. "You can't do that where we're going."
"No, my lord," Mablung agreed, forcing himself to stand.
He had served under Faramir, son of the ruling Steward of Gondor. Before the eyes of the steward, he had bowed and spoken humbly to his captain and called him lord. Side by side in a ditch in Ithilien, assailed by orcs, there had been no time for such considerations. Once Mablung had hurled himself at Faramir bodily, striking him down, pinning him there as a flight of arrows hissed overhead. There had been no ceremony then, and in many situations like it.
But this was the king…! It was no different, he tried to tell himself. Mablung was a Ranger of Ithilien and a soldier of Gondor, and he would do his duty. If his duty was to huddle side by side with his king in the dirt, and give no outward hint of the gulf in rank between them, then so be it. He could do it. He had to.
"So you're Mablung," Lord Gimli said. "I remember you now. You brought us news of the ambush that awaited us on the way to the Black Gate. They say you're a good scout, one of the best. They say you know this land better than most."
"Better than anyone," the king said with a smile.
Better than anyone who still lives, Mablung thought, remembering his most recent captain, who lay dead not so many leagues from here. Better than the enemy? He had always liked to think so. Now more than ever he needed it to be true. The king's life could depend on his knowledge and his skill.
"Then I have a gift for you," Gimli said, "from your king's old travelling companion to his new one." As he spoke, he began to unfasten the grey cloak around his shoulders, opening its leaf-shaped brooch. "It was given to me by the fairest lady who ever dwelled within these lands. She has left us now," he said, a look of sorrow passing across his face.
Then do not give it to me, Mablung wanted to say, but he kept his peace.
"Nay, it is but a loan," Gimli said, perhaps reading more from Mablung's expression than Mablung would have liked. "You're taller than me, of course, but I'm bulky across the shoulders. It won't reach the ground on you, but it was made in Lothlórien, and will hide you better than any rag made by Men. Take it," he urged. "You can give it back to me when you return." The words were for Mablung, but he glanced at the king as he said them.
When you return.
Mablung took the cloak, and mustered the appropriate thanks: courtly words dimly remembered from those days when he had lived in a hall of stone. He could not refuse it, not now. This was a task demanding absolute stealth. Mablung could not let his king down. He could not.
He had been offered the chance to refuse, of course. The night before, the king had summoned him and told him what was being asked of him. It was a request only, softly given. His recent wounds were gently offered as a reason for refusal. But how could he refuse? He was a loyal man of Gondor, and a request from his king had the force of a command from any other man. I will not fail him, he vowed.
He fastened the cloak at his throat, and ran his fingers down the smooth fabric. "Take care of it," Gimli said gruffly. Then Gimli turned to the king, and if words were spoken between them, Mablung did not hear them. Wrapped in his borrowed cloak, he walked away, and let the two friends make their farewells, quiet amidst the morning mist.
The sword was wrapped in cloth, its glory hidden by soft fabric. Éomer teased its wrappings open, parting them just enough to glimpse the tracery of leaves on its scabbard. He touched it, brushing his fingertips across those leaves, his touch as soft as a whisper. Then he wrapped it again, and took a step back.
Andúril. The sword of Elendil, reforged for a new age of the world. His own sword, Gúthwinë, was a noble sword with a good lineage. It had been his father's before him, and it would, he hoped, be borne by many kings after him, whether they wore it in peace or in war. In war, he would have hoped as a child, for what boy of the Mark did not dream of great deeds on the field of battle? In peace, he hoped now, for he was old enough to hope for such things in the years to come. A good sword, then, and he hoped that he was worthy of it.
But Andúril was another thing entirely. As Narsil, it had been forged in the First Age of the world, and it had harmed Sauron himself. Reforged, the very hint of its coming had brought hope to the beleaguered forces of Gondor. The Riddermark had its heirlooms and its treasures, but Andúril came straight out of the legends of the Elder Days.
And Aragorn had entrusted it to Éomer. "I cannot take it with me," he had said, as dusk had deepened around him the night before. "I cannot risk it being taken."
"But it will only be taken if you are taken," Éomer had protested. And you must not be taken, he had thought.
"Yes," Aragorn had agreed, "but if I am discovered, there are ways open to me: ways that would not be open to me if I carried such a sword."
So Éomer had the sword. Éomer would sleep in Aragorn's tent. He could not pretend to be Aragorn himself, of course, but the men-at-arms would see their king's tent erected every night, and would see that a light burned within it. It was better thus, said Aragorn.
Éomer would command the army in his absence. He would receive the reports of the scouts, and make decisions, and issue orders to captains who owed no allegiance to any lord of the Riddermark, even if that lord was a king.
He would not believe himself unworthy. The Mark was an independent kingdom because long ago, a steward of Gondor had allowed it to be so. Aragorn had renewed that promise, and Éomer had renewed the oath of Eorl. The king of the Mark was a lesser king than the king of Gondor, but he was still a king. He had ridden through Ithilien with Aragorn as an ally, not as a vassal. He had led his men to war, and led them well.
But he would not touch the sword of Elendil. Just a light touch of the scabbard, and then he wrapped it again, and swore to keep it wrapped until Aragorn came back from it.
Then, without looking back at it, he strode out of the tent, ready to face the day ahead.
He was free, they told him, free to go, but where could he go?
Home? But what was home? Home was a bleak room dominated by his father's old loom, dusty with disuse. It was a bed he hadn't slept in for weeks. It was a loft where a man had lived for days without his knowledge, with murder in his heart. It was a place that had been tramped through by guards and soldiers, who had studied every inch of it, looking for clues. All the detritus of his broken life had been rifled through and judged.
What had they said about him? Had they laughed at the half-finished weaving, at the empty bottles, at the letters he had written to Rosseth, but never sent? Had they spat on the floor, cursing his name? Did they deride him? Did they blame him? Did they hate him?
Of course they hated him. "It wasn't me," he said, but there was nobody here to hear him. He had been cast out of the Houses of Healing. The soft-handed healers said that he was healed. The hard-faced guards didn't want to let him go, but the command had come from above. "Why?" he asked, but he was alone. Even the streets seemed to have emptied for him, just blank windows in solid walls of stone. "Why?" It was a cracked whisper, little more than a breath.
And then someone was there, after all; soft footsteps on the street behind him. It was that man: Mínir, he called himself. He had come several times. Lainor wished he wouldn't, but yesterday, by sunset, he hadn't come at all, and Lainor had kept his candles burning late into the night, refusing to have them snuffed out until it was fully dark outside and all the lights in other houses had gone out.
"Why?" Lainor asked, not meaning to, but unable to stop himself. "Why did they let me go?"
"Because you're healed," Mínir said, not quite looking at him.
Healed, Lainor thought. Too late to claim that he couldn't remember. If people told him things today, if people hurled abuse at him tomorrow, he would remember it. No hiding now, not from the blame. "But that wasn't the only reason they were keeping me there," he said. "If they've freed me, it must be because they know I wasn't involved. They've got proof of it? They've found someone else?"
"I don't know," said Mínir, after too long a pause. He had come on the king's business; wasn't that what he'd said when he'd coming knocking on Lainor's door a distant lifetime ago? "I never thought you were involved. I argued as much to people who matter. And they were inclined to believe me, I think, because…" He broke off; touched Lainor's arm. "What are you going to do now? Where are you going to go?"
He couldn't go home. It was no real home at all, and hadn't been for months. And everybody would know: the neighbours, the people in the streets, the traders in the market, everybody. They would know. They would point. They would talk. They would hate.
"Away," he murmured, still in that broken whisper. A new start. Osgiliath was too close, but there were other towns. He would find a place where they nobody knew the name of the man who had almost killed the king through his negligence. He would start to weave again. He would be useful, and lose himself in making, not in wine. He would tell them lies: lies about where he had come from, and lies about what he had done. He would forget. He would forget.
"Don't try to run away," Mínir said gently.
Lainor clenched his fist, and for a brief, fleeting moment, might have hit him. "What do you know about it?" he shouted, but then he took a great rasping breath, and another, and another. "Why shouldn't I? It's what I do. It's what all cowards do."
"You-" Mínir began, but Lainor spoke over him, their words weaving through each other's like the jagged, malformed cloth that sat gathering dust on his loom. "If I stay… If I go home, back to that place…" Another breath, shuddering now, almost a sob. ("…a coward," Mínir was saying.)"I'd start drinking again. I'd drown myself in drink and forgetfulness, and I'd never leave. And that's running away, too. Isn't it?"
Mínir looked away for a moment, closing his eyes. "Yes," he said, at last. "But if you stay…" He shook his head. "Anything I can say will sound like platitudes. I'm not good at this. I wish…" He sighed, clearly angry with himself. "If you want to talk…," he said. "If you want to find me… There's a small tavern in an alley behind Cordwainers' Street. Talk to the landlord there. He knows how to find me."
"And how will you find me after that?" Lainor asked, because he couldn't go home again, he couldn't.
"I will find you," Mínir merely said.
It was not like it used to be, in the days when he was Strider the Ranger. It would never be like that again.
There were few birds here, and the plants were not the plants of the north. He was not alone. Then, he had slept outside for months, sometimes for years. He had never forgotten who he was or the goal he was aiming for, but there were times when that was far in the back of his mind. There were times in the north when he almost became Strider, just a common Ranger who crept around slaying monsters in the dark. There were times in the east and the south when only the journey mattered. He was a traveller and a hunter, and everything else was far away: not forgotten, never that, but far from the forefront of his mind.
It could never be forgotten now. If he put on his old clothes and went wandering through hidden lanes and meadows, he could never forget the kingdom that waited on his word. He hoped that his crown would not change him so much that he could not enjoy a quiet pipe with some irreverent hobbits, but he could never be Strider again. He was king of Gondor and Arnor, and that could not be forgotten. People fooled themselves if they said that great changes in their circumstances did not change them inside. He was different now. He could put on his old clothes for a while, but he could never go back. He did not want to go back, but…
Why was he here? Because it was the only way to end this mess. He believed that sincerely. He still believed it. It was a gamble, true, but the alternatives were worse.
But yet… He sighed, looking up at the stars, so little different from the stars of the north; the stars he still thought of as the stars of home. Here, in the dark watches of the night, he could not escape the fear that he had been so quick to choose this path because part of him wanted to be Strider again, anonymous in the dark.
Something cried out in the darkness. His head snapped up. Some night-hunting bird of prey, he thought, its cry sparking memories from his time spent travelling in the lands east of Mirkwood. But such a cry could be a signal, of course, issuing from a human mouth. He gripped his sword, then saw the shape of a bird flying overhead. The cry was repeated, louder this time, as the bird passed into the west.
Mablung stirred beside him. "Wh-?" he asked, mumbling, not really awake.
"All is well," Aragorn told him quietly. "Go to sleep."
Mablung had not wanted to sleep when they had finally settled down for the night after their long day on foot. Aragorn did not know what troubled Mablung more: the thought of being on watch while his king slept beside him, or the thought of settling down to sleep while his king stayed awake, watching. But his disquiet had been shown itself only in the look in his eyes, in the tightening of his jaw, in a slight clenching and unclenching of his hands, something he had probably been unaware of. He had made no protest. And, like the Ranger that he was, he had fallen asleep quickly when his time to sleep had come.
But not deeply, and not without dreams.
Was I right to bring him? Aragorn wondered, not for the first time. He had framed it as a request, of course, but who would choose to refuse a request from their king? That was why hobbits were so refreshing, of course, because they, at least, sometimes spoke the word 'no' to him. But Mablung had begged him to be allowed to come with the army. As one of the few survivors of the slaughter of the outposts, he had a stake in the affair. Aragorn could not allow that to sway his decision, of course. This was too important for sentiment. Aragorn had needed someone who knew the terrain, and Mablung was the best choice.
Aragorn stood up, stretching his legs. Mablung was twitching again, sinking into a dream that gave him no peace.
Was I right? he thought, but no, it was necessary. And Mablung was doing well. He was a Ranger of Ithilien, almost as skilled as any Ranger of the north. He did his duty. He had been ordered not to kneel and bow, and after that first time, he had not done so. At the start, he had called Aragorn 'lord,' until Aragorn had gently pointed out that that, too, was something that could not be done in the wilds.
"What can I call you?" Mablung had asked, only just biting back the 'lord' that he wanted to append to the question. "I can't…" Can't call you nothing, his eyes said. Can't speak to you as if you're just any other man.
Some things could not be forgotten. Even in the wilds, it was not like it used to be. Some things could never be forgotten.
It would not be fair to Mablung to ask him to call Aragorn by name. A nickname, like Strider, or an assumed name, like Thorongil, would be just as hard for him. However much Aragorn might wish it so, this was not Halbarad or any of his companions of the past. "Faramir was your captain," he had said, "and always will be, I think, but you have used the word 'captain' for other men since. Use it for me, if you wish, or 'sir' if you prefer."
"Yes," Mablung had said, "ca- captain. Sir. Yes."
"And don't obey without question," Aragorn had told him, deliberately changing his voice and accent, making it suit his travel strained clothes. "You're here as my guide. Contradict me. Make suggestions. We will plan our course together."
"Yes, sir," Mablung had managed. "Yes." And he had done so, for the most part; awkwardly at first, but settling into it as the day had proceeded.
Was I right to bring him? Aragorn asked himself again, and decided that the answer was yes.
Was he right to come himself?
That was a question that still had no answer.
There were times when Mínir felt like a spider at the heart of a web.
"Nothing to report," muttered the boy who jostled into him in a crowded street. "No sightings," said the trader who stood at the street corner, selling cold pasties covered with toasted cheese. Mínir took all the reports and wove them together. Some he passed on through his usual channels. Some he kept to himself, for there was nothing useful in them, only failure.
It was best when he was the one out searching, although that only made the failure worse, when he reached the end of a long night and had nothing to show for all the hours of searching and listening. When he had started this game, back before the king had found him, he had always worked alone. Now he had a team below him, and a far larger roster of informants and contacts who could be called upon to seek information in return for coin.
He had always trusted them. Despite his line of work, he had come to believe that most people were essentially good at heart. His job was to root out those few who weren't. Sauron was gone, and the evils that remained in the world were not dark spirits or foul orcs, but the crimes of petty men. It fell to petty men like Mínir to combat them, so the king could create the golden age that must surely lie ahead. After their sufferings in the War and the sight of true evil, most people longed for that golden age, too, or so he had come to believe.
Now he had no idea if he could trust any of them. Some had refused all payment when they heard that he was trying to track down the conspirators behind the attempted assassination of the king. Those he was inclined to trust. But maybe that's why they'd done it: to fool him into thinking that they were loyal. Those who still insisted on payment he was inclined not to trust at all. But maybe…
He shook his head, rubbing his aching eyes. It was mid-morning. He had been up all night. Easier when he had worked alone. Easier when he'd just tracked down missing people and the lost little treasures of the small folk of Minas Tirith. Easier when it hadn't mattered.
But it had mattered, of course. Every errant husband, every lost son, mattered to those left behind. Every tiny treasure, even if it would sell for barely a copper piece at the market, mattered to those who had lost them.
I'm tired, he thought. Oh, but I'm so tired of this.
He was no longer free to move through the city entirely unknown. The more important his job became, the less free he was to do it. In ten years time, in twenty years, where would he be? Sitting behind a desk in an office, receiving reports from those who were still free to go wherever they wished?
Or perhaps he would be forgotten, shamed and forgotten, because almost two weeks had passed, and he still had no real answers. Gondor was at war, and there were enemies in the city, and he couldn't find them.
His pasty was finished: the pasty he hadn't really wanted in the first place. He brushed the crumbs from his clothes, and licked the last of the grease from his fingers. He started to walk, and for once, he had no clear idea where he was going. He wasn't even following the trail of a rumour, or walking somewhere in particular because he had a hunch that something might be found there.
Through the fringes of a new garden. Along an avenue of new trees, between two tall walls of stone. He yawned as he walked, covering his mouth with his hand. His fingers still smelled of cheese and mild spices. He walked on, as time passed. At first he listened intently to snatches of conversation as he passed them, but after a while they blurred into just noise.
At last he found himself in a public square on the third level. He had met informants here before, and once he had spotted a fugitive, a man who had murdered his wife, hiding away in a festival crowd. He made his way to the stone bench beside the fountain. A woman was sitting on the far end of it, but she got up and walked away when he sat down.
Do I look that bad? he thought. To track down people who lived in the shadows, he had to live in the shadows himself. Was he becoming like the men he was hunting: a man whom honest folk shunned?
He was slow to notice that he was not alone. "Nothing yet," said the man who had sat down beside him. "He spent the night in an inn, and now he's in a garden, just sitting there. He hasn't spoken to anyone or sent any letters."
Lainor, the weaver. Another man Mínir had lied to. Because Lainor had been freed for a reason. Although they were fairly sure he that he had known nothing of the plot to kill the king, enough doubt remained. He would be freed, but he would be followed: another job that Mínir couldn't do himself; another job that he had no desire to do himself. Everyone Lainor made contact with, everyone he spoke to, would be marked and noted.
Another hour passed. Mínir moved on: another square, another level. The man who found him here was fizzing with excitement, and he grabbed Mínir's arm hard enough to hurt. "I saw him!" he hissed. He sat down, barely perching there, eager to be gone. "A man with a wound on his cheek, like you told me to look for."
And with that it was gone: the lethargy, the weariness, the doubt; all gone. "Where?" he asked, and, "Did he see you?"
It was a simple enough tale: a chance sighting of a scarred man who was walking with his head down in a shadowed alley between two rows of houses. A gap between the buildings had meant that for a brief moment, sunlight had fallen upon his face, and that happened to coincide with Mínir's man glancing out from a window, searching for something else entirely.
"I saw where he went," his informant said. "I've got my brother watching it, to make sure he doesn't come out. I know, I know," he said, raising his hands. "He knows not to do anything stupid like challenging him. I came to get you, like you said."
"You did well," Mínir said, rising to his feet. It was all gone, all of it gone. It was good, this work that he did. It was good.
His hand went to the pouch at his side, where he kept the token that the king had given him. If he had important news, the king had told him, he wasn't to entrust it to anyone but Lord Faramir himself. He had to go to the sixth gate and ask for Captain Celagon, the captain of the city watch, and Captain Celagon would summon Lord Faramir himself to hear what Mínir had found.
It was time, Mínir thought. At last, after all those weary, frustrating days, the time had come.
Hasad was very bad now, barely conscious in his chariot. He had protested weakly when Kabil had found a charioteer for him, but had lacked the strength to resist very much.
"They must come," Hasad kept on mumbling, his lips moving ceaselessly as he sat propped up against his chariot's side. "They must. Then we can…"
Kabil thought that he should be in command now, because Hasad was his brother. Everyone else had different ideas, of course. "Are we degenerate westerners," they asked, "who pass lordship from father to son, from brother to brother, as if it's nothing more than a pretty trinket?" The king of Gondor, or so they said, was only king because thousands of years ago, one of his forefathers had been king. It was a ridiculous system. Lordship should be bestowed upon the one who was worthy of it, and was kept by him only for as long as he could defend his right to it.
"No," he said, "of course we aren't." Westerners, it was said, were sometimes landed with a king who was just a child, or stuck with an fading old man, too weak to sit on a horse or hold a sword. "But Hasad is still lord," he said, "by merit and by acclamation. He speaks to me. My commands are his."
It was not a lie. Hasad did speak to him. He talked about childhood memories; memories that were once more real to him. He saw strange things in the sky above him, and tried to wave them away. Several times, he thought that Kabil was his father. Once, he had wept.
"North," he told them. "We should go north. That's what Hasad commands."
"So blue," Hasad whispered, blinking up at the sky. "Why don't they come?"
"There will be better hunting there," he told them, "further away from Mordor. And there are hills there. We will leave scouts on the hills."
"I say we should go south!" protested a hawk-faced warrior, a stranger from another clan. "You're brother to a lord, you say? Well, so I am!"
Another one, dark and scarred, had golden beads in his hair, twice as many even as Hasad. He wanted to ride west, to sweep down into the fertile lands that the men of Gondor called Ithilien, and kill anyone they found.
Kabil walked over to Hasad's chariot. "What is your command, my lord?" he asked loudly. Someone coughed. He heard the sound of horses' hooves and the swish of tails, and the buzzing of insects. The charioteer stood impassive, the reins slack in his hands, staring straight ahead.
"So blue," said Hasad, sweat trickling down his face like tears. He pushed himself upright, and for a moment stood as tall as he used to stand, and the sweat on his brow looked like the sweat of exertion, not sickness. "They're coming," he whispered. "I see them," but he was looking upwards as he said it, up at the small patches of cloud that rode like horsemen through the blue.
"Hasad…" Kabil began, then corrected himself. "My lord." There was a time, not many days before, when such a slip would have earned him a beating. "They…"
But a scout was running towards them, scrambling down the rocky slope. "I saw them!" he gasped. "They're coming! Horsemen, fewer than us, but I can't see what their weapons are. They've got banners. One of them's green, with something white on it. A horse? They're not ours."
"They've come." Hasad gripped the edge of his chariot, his knuckles white. He was smiling with joy. "They've come. They don't know we're here. Kill them. Kill them all."
Kabil nodded, and he was smiling, too. The enemy was outnumbered, and every warrior of the clans was worth two or even three westerners. Hasad's men would fall on the enemy without warning, as they had fallen upon the outposts of Gondor. They could not possibly fail.
At last! he thought. At last!
Mínir ran, all weariness forgotten. Through gate after gate, finding back streets wherever he could, running quietly with his soft shoes, trying not to draw attention. When he was forced to pass through crowded places, he slowed to an impatient walk. It was only minutes, perhaps, before he reached the sixth gate, but it felt like far more.
Was the scarred man still there? Would they catch him in time? He had done what he could: hurried messages sent to trusted men. The scarred man's hiding place would be discreetly watched by people who knew how to watch without being seen. But none of them were soldiers, although some of them were good with knives or fists. They needed to be joined by guards, but who could he trust?
He stopped at the sixth gate, his chest heaving as he tried to catch his breath. "No need to stop," the guard said pleasantly, "the gates are open to all," although there was steel behind the velvet of his tone. Everyone was watched now. At every gate, everyone was watched closely, although most were unaware of it.
"I know," Mínir gasped. "I need…" He fumbled in his pouch, trying to grasp the token. "Captain Celagon. I need to talk to Captain Celagon, who commands the city guard."
"He isn't here," the guard said, and there was no gentleness in his voice now, and his eyes were cold. "What makes you think he'd speak to someone like you?"
But then he had it: the king's token gripped in his sweat-drenched hand. "I've got a token," he said, but at the last moment, he curled his fingers around it, suddenly reluctant to show it to just anyone. "Where's your gate captain? Can I speak to him?"
"I am the gate captain," a tall man said, appearing from the shadow of the wall. He was flanked by two guards, and the three of them together made Mínir want to take a step back, remembering when he was young and a nobody, when the appearance of three tall men like this usually ended with him thrown out onto the street, and sometimes kicked for good measure.
"I've got a token," he said, standing his ground. "I was told to ask for Captain Celagon, who will send for…" No, no, don't say it. He stopped himself, shaking his head, struggling for calm. "Please," he said, searching for the sort of words that people like this might listen to. "It's a matter of the utmost urgency."
"Is it?" said the gate captain. When he emerged fully into the light, he didn't look stern at all, but old and calm and kind. "Then I'll take you to him. Seregon, you have the gate."
One of the men flanking the captain opened his mouth as if to protest, then nodded heavily, and went to stand in the gap. Still breathless, Mínir went with the gate captain, but when he looked back, he saw that Seregon was watching them, intently watching them as they walked through the sixth level and away.
And after that it was just a case of explaining. The gate captain wanted to see his token, and then Captain Celagon was found. A wait, then - an anxious, impatient, toe-tapping wait - as Celagon sent his report to the Steward, but even as he did so, guards were being mustered and commands were being sent.
Mínir was no soldier. He had started this fire burning, but there was nothing he could do now but wait.