planning all along? My men will have orders to kill you at the first hint of betrayal,’ he said, his expression as cold and sharp as winter sunshine. ‘Nothing else you want to tell me?’
I shook my head. All of my careful plotting and planning, all my luck and daring to keep me alive this far – would it end here? If Dieter’s men didn’t kill me on sight, Sidonius’s might stab me in the back anytime one of them got twitchy.
All you need do is get inside the Turholm, child. Men die in battle all the time. I turned my face away, hoping the thought didn’t show.
Sidonius’s hundred men looked pitifully small for an invasion force, even more so when the bulk of them gathered behind me, each of them watching me with heavy, foreboding looks.
One of them summoned Sepp forward. Eyes downcast, cheeks and brow pale, Sepp obeyed without comment. I looked at Sidonius.
‘He’s coming with us,’ he said. ‘More specifically, with me. A little incentive, to make sure you don’t view my safety too lightly. Roshi is confined to the tent, and she’ll share Sepp’s fate. Whatever it may be.’
Sepp wouldn’t meet my gaze and I was almost glad of it. There was no way to explain, with or without words, that I needed Sidonius dead.
THIRTY-NINE
IT TOOK US an hour to travel to the northeastern wall, where hills and forest backed up close to the Turholm. It took Sepp a further twenty minutes of casting around to find the tunnel’s entrance, twenty minutes full of dark glances from the soldiers, their knuckles turning white as grips shifted and tightened on sword hilts.
At last Sepp found the remnants of the pony’s tracks, deep-cut crescents indicating how much she’d laboured under the weight of me, unconscious on her back. Following the tracks brought us to the entrance, a chink of darkness hidden slantwise behind a fallen boulder.
‘There,’ he said, pointing.
Sidonius eyed it doubtfully, but a soldier slipped through with a scrape of metal on rock, and pronounced it true.
moments later I was ducking my head forward into the darkness, the air damp with the smell of limestone and earth. Every fifth man carried a torch, the guttering red light deepening the walls to black and setting off a hissing when water dripped into them. The rest of the world was cut off as we walked.
There was no telling how the battle overhead progressed, whether Dieter had unleashed any disastrous new tricks, whether the Iltheans were scaling the walls or ramming the gates. There was only the steady tramp of feet through echoing stone passages, the squeak of studded sandals, the drip and hiss of water, the flutter and gutter of flames from the torches.
At last the tunnel climbed steeply, grooves cut into the rock floor aiding traction. The stable was nigh. Every nerve felt on edge.
Sidonius must have guessed we were close, for he motioned me back from the lead before he and a handful of men approached the rear of the false wooden wall. They paused, listening, then Sidonius motioned to me: be ready.
I had no weapons other than my strange power, and no Roshi to help me guide it forth. If the door was guarded by one of Dieter’s golems or some other arcana, it would be up to me to overcome it. I shivered, terrified.
The door swung open, and a half-dozen Turasi faces turned towards the movement, hands reaching for their weapons.
The Iltheans were faster, Sidonius spitting two of them before they’d even drawn their swords. His men swept by on either side, their short, brutal blades driving through the lungs or stomachs of the remaining four.
The bodies slumped to the floor, their blood soaking into the straw, giving a coppery note to the warm, rich air. Down an aisle a horse whickered, then fell quiet.
I held my breath, but no one came.
Sidonius gestured the rest of his force into the stables behind me.
‘I don’t suppose there’s any other way out of here?’ Sidonius asked in low tones.
I shook my head, uncomfortably aware of the short, claw-like swords unsheathed at my back.
‘Figured not. Right, then, lad. Your turn,’ he said, hooking a hand under Sepp’s elbow and jostling him towards the courtyard, where every Turasi worth his salt would be waiting for them.
Fear twisting my guts at the thought of Sepp caught in the midst of Turasi fire, I hurried to keep up. With aching care we crept the stable’s length towards the square of daylight