The soldier with the arrow in him began to scream: “The Varden are here! The Varden are here! Sound the alarm, the—”
Drawing his dagger, Roran ran over to the man and cut his throat. He wiped the blade clean on the man’s tunic, then stood and said, “Move out, now!”
As one, the Varden charged up the streets toward the inner wall of Aroughs.
When they were only a hundred feet away, Roran stopped in an alley behind a house and raised a hand, signaling his men to wait. Then he crept along the side of the house and peered around the corner at the portcullis set within the tall granite wall.
The gate was closed.
To the left of the gate, however, a small sally port stood wide open. Even as he watched, a soldier ran out through it and headed off toward the western edge of the city.
Roran cursed to himself as he stared at the sally port. He was not about to give up, not when they had made it this far, but their position was growing ever more precarious, and he had no doubt that they had only a few more minutes before curfew lifted and their presence became widely known.
He withdrew behind the side of the house and bowed his head as he thought furiously.
“Mandel,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Delwin, Carn, and you three.” He pointed at a trio of fierce-looking warriors—older men who, by their very age, he knew must have a knack for winning battles. “Come with me. Baldor, you’re in charge of the rest. If we don’t make it back, get yourselves to safety. That’s an order.”
Baldor nodded, his expression grim.
With the six warriors he had selected, Roran circled the main thoroughfare that led to the gate until they reached the rubbish-strewn base of the outward-slanting wall, perhaps fifty feet from the portcullis and the open sally port.
A soldier was stationed on each of the two gate towers, but at the moment, neither was visible, and unless they stuck their heads over the edges of the battlements, they would not be able to see Roran and his companions approaching.
In a whisper, Roran said, “Once we’re through the door, you, you, and you”—he motioned at Carn, Delwin, and one of the other warriors—“make for the guardhouse on the other side fast as you can. We’ll take the near one. Do what you have to, but get that gate open. There may be only one wheel to turn, or we may have to work together to raise it, so don’t think you can go and die on me. Ready? … Now!”
Running as quietly as he could, Roran dashed along the wall and, with a quick turn, darted into the sally port.
Before him was a twenty-foot-long chamber that opened to a large square with a tiered fountain in the center. Men in fine clothes were hurrying back and forth across the square, many of them clutching scrolls.
Ignoring them, Roran turned to a closed door, which he unlatched by hand, restraining the urge to kick it open. Through the door was a dingy guardroom with a spiral staircase built into one wall.
He raced up the stairs and, after a single revolution, found himself in a low-ceilinged room, where five soldiers were smoking and playing dice at a table set next to a huge windlass wrapped with chains as thick as his arm.
“Greetings!” said Roran in a deep, commanding voice. “I have a most important message for you.”
The soldiers hesitated, then sprang to their feet, pushing back the benches they were sitting on. The wooden legs screeched as they dragged over the floor.
They were too late. Brief though it was, their indecision was all Roran needed to cross the distance between them before the soldiers could draw their weapons.
Roran bellowed as he waded into their midst, lashing out left and right with his hammer and driving the five men back into a corner. Then Mandel and the two other warriors were at his side, swords flashing. Together they made short work of the guards.
When he stood over the twitching body of the last soldier, Roran spat on the ground and said, “Don’t trust strangers.”
The fighting had polluted the room with a collection of horrific odors, which seemed to press against Roran like a thick, heavy blanket made of the most unpleasant substance he could imagine. He was barely able to breathe without being sick, so he covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his tunic, trying to filter out some of the smells.
The four of them went to the windlass, being careful not to slip on the pools of blood, and studied it for a moment as they figured out its workings.
Roran spun around, raising his hammer as he heard a clink of metal and then the loud creak of a wooden trapdoor being pulled open, followed by a clatter of footsteps as a soldier descended the winding staircase from the gate tower above.
“Taurin, what in the blazes is going—” The soldier’s voice died in his throat and he stopped partway down the stairs as he caught sight of Roran and his companions, as well as the mangled bodies in the corner.
A warrior to Roran’s right threw a spear at the soldier, but the soldier ducked and the spear struck the wall above him. The soldier cursed and scrambled back up the stairs on all fours, vanishing behind a curve of the wall.
A moment later, the trapdoor slammed shut with an echoing boom, and then they heard the soldier wind a horn and shout frantic warnings to the people in the square.
Roran scowled and returned to the windlass. “Leave him,” he said, shoving his hammer under his belt. He leaned against the spoked wheel used to raise and lower the portcullis and pushed as hard as he could, straining every muscle. The other men added their strength to his, and slowly, ever so slowly, the wheel began to turn, the ratchet on the side of the windlass clicking loudly as the huge wooden catch slid over the teeth below.
The effort needed to turn the wheel became substantially easier a few seconds later, a fact that Roran attributed to the team he had sent to infiltrate the other guardhouse.