The officer at our side glanced at the men waiting to go up to close the gates, exhaled with slow boredom and muttered, “It’s time someone built another staircase up there. Go on,” he said, turning to us suddenly. “Go through. Quickly.”
Without further encouragement we began to move. My heart rose to my throat and I stared ahead of me, past the guards and the officer who hastily, mechanically recited the usual Empire regulations.
“If you have heavier weapons and armor you may bring them out once you are a hundred yards from the gate. Remain on the road at all times and be watchful for highwaymen. Have a successful trip, sirs,” he called as we trundled through the twenty-foot-thick arch and the heavy doors. The portcullis was lowering with a heavy metallic squealing as we emerged into the light and soft drizzle. Behind us the great gates themselves began scraping and creaking until, with a deep boom, they shut tight.
For a hundred yards or so we did not speak and then, bringing the wagon to a halt in a stone-flagged space and turning to one of the boxes between us, Orgos said, “Idiot. What were you trying to do back there? Selling clothes to Empire guards! You were asking to be arrested.”
He was smiling. I grinned and said, “I was just fleshing out the role a little. Giving it color.”
“Idiot,” he said again, but this time he laughed outright. I wanted to punch him lightly on the arm or something as a show of fellowship, but something held me back, the thought of his name dragging mine up the wanted list, perhaps. Instead I just said, “Geof -frey? You called me Geoffrey! What the pox kind of name is that?”
He gave a single bellow of laughter and opened the box. Whatever relief I was beginning to feel died as I stared at the contents: armor and weapons of the serious sort. I wasn’t being allowed to forget my comrade’s profession.
Orgos stood up and looked back to the massive yellowish walls of the city.
“I hate that place,” he remarked, fishing a coat of ring mail out of the box and pulling it over his head.
I couldn’t say much to that. I didn’t really know anywhere else, though even I could see it was a bit of a sewer.
“How come they’re saying I’m a rebel?” I asked. I was tiny bit pleased by the idea, even though I knew both that it was dangerous to be impressed by such things and that they were about as wrong as they could be.
“The Empire doesn’t like to be humiliated,” he said. “Better to be outmaneuvered by a seasoned rebel than a child actor.”
The phrase irritated me, but that feeling was squashed by something rather more weighty.
“So if they catch me now . . .” I said.
“They’ll charge you with more than being in a few plays they didn’t like.”
He gave me a shrug and a grin as he saw the effect his words had on me. “Cheer up,” he said. “You’re with us now.”
Great.
Orgos replaced the rapier in the back of the wagon and emerged wearing a pair of the long swords he had used before, scabbarded in a harness on his back so that the hilts stood vertically up from his shoulders. I would have needed both hands to wield one of those four-foot blades, but a look at his biceps and forearms told me that he would manage just fine. He reached up to their handles, crossing his arms over his chest to see that they were in the right position, and then bade me get down and come to the back of the wagon. One of the swords, the one he had had back at the inn, had a large and irregular stone set in the pommel, amber and lustrous.
“Choose a weapon,” he said. “What can you use?”
Throwing aside a few top layers of fabric, he opened a chest of armor and another two of weapons. I recalled my encouraging the Empire guards to stay and poke around the wagon a little longer. We would really have had to do some talking to explain that lot away.
I got in the back and touched some of the steel in amazed fascination. As I said earlier, I know little of weapons and I am no fighter, but just seeing this pile of purposeful and elegant arms held me spellbound. I chose.
Orgos looked at me with his mouth open and then roared with