His sword held unwavering in front of him, Rotter approached the two rebels. Suddenly, the spearman yelled and charged him, his spear lowered at the soldier’s gut.
With practiced ease, Rotter sidestepped the skewer and hammered the man’s head with the flat of his sword. The rebel collapsed, sprawled unconscious on the cobblestones, his spear clattering until it settled against Arcturus’s feet.
“Drop it,” Rotter barked to the other man.
The cleaver and pot lid fell to the ground with a clang, and the rebel’s knees followed soon after, his hands clasped in supplication.
“Please … I didn’t mean it.…”
Rotter leaned down and inspected the cleaver.
“No blood,” he said. “You’re lucky.”
He lifted the hilt of his sword and slammed it down, knocking the rebel out with a sickening crack.
“Amateurs,” Rotter spat. “Where to now?”
But Edmund made no move to leave. Instead, he turned to face a statue that stood opposite the town hall entrance.
“We’re here,” Edmund said.
It was an unassuming structure, perhaps small for a statue, depicting a man whose appearance matched Edmund’s closely, if not for the mustache and lamb-chop sideburns that adorned the figure’s features. The man’s body was clad in chain mail, and he carried a sword.
“My father had this put up to cover the tunnel,” Edmund said, crouching at its base and fiddling with the stone plaque there. “It’s of himself. Bit self-indulgent if you ask me, but it did the trick; half the town hate the damned thing, don’t go anywhere near it.”
There was the sound of grinding stone, then Edmund stepped away and revealed a hole where the plaque had been before.
“Come on, in you go.”
He didn’t need to say it twice—the barking of the dogs seemed to be getting louder. Zacharias barged past the others in his haste to get through, wriggling his broad shoulders through the gap. Elaine, the twins and Prince Harold followed in quick succession.
But then Edmund hesitated, looking over his shoulder at the two unconscious men in the doorway behind him.
“What are you waiting for?” Alice hissed, poking her head up into the gap.
“They might wake up, tell their friends we were here,” Edmund replied, pointing to the two rebels. “We should take them with us.”
“And the dead bodies around the corner, what about them?” Alice asked, exasperated. “They’ll find them eventually.”
“They wouldn’t know who killed them,” Edmund replied. “These guys actually saw us. Come on, Arcturus, help me.”
Arcturus hurried forward, and together with Rotter, they managed to manhandle the bodies into the hole beneath the statue. Arcturus pushed through the spear and cleaver for good measure, and resisted the urge to grin as Zacharias swore, the spear haft hitting the noble on its way down.
“What were they guarding anyway?” Arcturus asked breathlessly. “Why weren’t they with the rest of them?”
“Do you want to stay and find out?” Edmund asked.
But something stopped the young noble even as he spoke, and he turned to stare at the town hall’s doorway.
“Sergeant Caulder,” he uttered. “Maybe they were guarding him.”
“Leave it, you fool,” Zacharias called from within the passage. “We’re almost away!”
Arcturus looked desperately down the street, where the glow of lights seemed to be becoming brighter, as if blazing torches were being carried toward them. He could hear raised voices now, breaking through the incessant howling of the dogs.
But Rotter didn’t wait to hear Edmund’s decision. Throwing caution to the wind, the soldier kicked open the door, rushing in with his sword held aloft. Arcturus charged after him, brandishing his unloaded crossbow like a club.
Within the dim room, a man lay tied up, a flour sack pulled over his head. Rotter knelt and began to slash apart his bindings, revealing a bloodstained Sergeant Caulder.
“What took you so bloody long?” Sergeant Caulder growled, forcing a weak smile.
“Hurry!” Alice’s voice came from behind.
There was a mad, stumbling rush into the night air, Arcturus moving with Sergeant Caulder’s arm thrown around his shoulders. For a moment he glimpsed hooded figures, rounding a corner on the road to his right. Then he was in darkness, tumbling through empty space.
CHAPTER
24
ARCTURUS GROANED AND RUBBED his head. For a moment, his breath caught short, the darkness overwhelming. Was he blind?
A light flared into existence, bathing the world in a pale blue glow.
“Quiet,” Edmund whispered, holding a finger to his lips. Beside him, the wyrdlight he had cast floated aimlessly, shifting the shadows around them.
Voices called out above them, barely audible over the barking of the hounds. Then … snorting, above them. The snuffling of a dog, and the scratching of its claws against stone.
“Gerroutofit, stupid mutt,” a gruff voice shouted, filtering through the garbled noise on the other side. Still the dog scratched, until they heard a yelp as it was kicked.
They sat and listened, holding their breaths in the darkness.
“Find ’em, lads,” the same voice called. “They’re out there somewhere.”
Slowly—ever so slowly, the noise began to fade.
Finally, they were in stillness, broken only by the dripping of water somewhere deep in the cavern.
Now that Arcturus could breathe again, he was able to see that they were in a rough-hewn tunnel, approximately as wide and tall as one of Vocans’s corridors. Here and there, patches of wet seemed to shine on the walls, as if they were sweating. Beneath, pools of dark water had formed, and Arcturus could see they would have to wade in parts if they were to advance farther.
He hoped it would not get deeper. Being unable to swim, he’d sink to the bottom before anyone could save him. Arcturus supposed he could hold on to Sacharissa, though the thought of drifting half-submerged in the darkness filled him with fear.
“How long do you think it will take for help to arrive?” Arcturus asked, first to break the silence, if only to escape his own thoughts.
“Athena is on her way to the palace now,” Edmund replied, lifting his scrying crystal and peering at it. “She has a scroll attached to her foot, explaining our predicament. A Gryphowl flies pretty swiftly, and the Celestial Corps will be even swifter. Perhaps at midday tomorrow, if all goes well.”
“What do you mean, if all goes well?” Zacharias groaned.
Edmund bit his lip. Prince Harold answered for him.
“If my father is not there, she’ll have to search Corcillum until we find him … or one of our parents … or a general,” he said.
Arcturus looked at his feet, wondering what it would be like to have a parent, someone who would do anything to protect him. He felt the sudden urge to summon Sacharissa. She was the closest thing he had to family.
“It could take forever to find someone,” Alice whispered.
“Can the rebels get in if the dogs lead them back to it?” Sergeant Caulder asked, wincing slightly as he stood. “Through the secret entrance, I mean?”
Edmund floated the wyrdlight toward the stone tablet that covered the hole they had come through. There was a strange mechanism built into the rectangular tablet that covered the entrance, all cogs and hinges.
Arcturus peered closer, and saw a word engraved in the side. THORSAGER. A dwarven name …
“My father hired a dwarven smith to build it,” Edmund said. “It will only open if someone presses the right places in the right order—but a few blows with a sledgehammer and they’ll be through. It was designed to be hidden, not to hold back an army.”
“Dwarves?” Zacharias spat, incredulous. “You’ve doomed us all. A dwarf would sell its own mother for a bent penny!”
“Oh, Zacharias, you’re so bad,” Josephine giggled.
Alice shook her head in disgust at her twin sister.
“We should get moving,” she said, summoning her own wyrdlight and sending it down the passageway. “The dogs could bring them back here eventually; let’s not make it easy for them.”