Friends (2013) - Adams, Robert

Capitan Sebastian della Verruca stood with the reserves outside the bam watching in disbelief as his men were pushed out. It must be a tactical blunder , he thought disgustedly, as if Sergeant Lopez could conceive of tactics. He decided on the garrote for the cowards who had complicated such a simple assault.

He was not prepared for the sight of his men turning and running from the barefoot peasants, more than one of whom had captured weapons in their hands. In the dancing yellow light from the burning thatch, the brown men and women seemed positively gleeful. Capitan Sebastian heard the moist crunch as a huge man lunged forward, the short broad blade of his partisan piercing a soldier’s skull.

Praying that his own neck might escape the embrace of the garrote, the capitan shouted orders and commands, his razor-sharp saber aloft in his white fist. The uniformed men fell back to a ragged formation, and instantly it was trained troops against a rabble, and the briefest pause in which the momentum of the horde drained away. The huge man in front frantically looked around and saw death in uniformed ranks before him. The peasants wavered.

With a storm of sparks and a thump, the roof collapsed inside the adobe walls, and everything became darker. Terror welled up again; the peasants turned to race into the safety of obscurity. It enraged the capitan that such mice had routed the men he had trained. The mice weren’t even dropping their hastily captured weapons. Those had to be collected. They must! The capitan ordered his men to charge after them.

Running, slipping and falling and scrabbling to foot again, down the lanes of the little village, through alleys the invaders couldn’t know, breathing so hard the ribs grated one against the next, sharp pains in the chest, hollows in the gut, rivers of sweat, a glimpse of some others far away, the tramping of booted feet, the death screams of the caught, yells of triumph, and more running and running, searching in the dark for the little cranny where the deadly eyes of the soldiers couldn’t reach, reaching in with humiliated, furious hands, and then red steel in the gut, or the stakes planted around the makeshift castle, dreading tortures, running harder and faster, running, running . . .

Juan Carlos had built the grandest dwelling in the village, with three steps up to a wood floor; naturally he had been the first killed so that the Prince might have a decent place to sleep. A small orchard provided shade during the summer months and gave a small amount of fresh fruit for the crude fortress which the soldiers had erected beside it. There, between the foundation posts of the old home, as far from Lon Farrier’s bam as he could safely flee, went Krai Raus-son, darting from tree to tree until, out of sight of the sentries, he could creep to the crawl space unseen. He pushed himself in, pulling his long legs after. Then he could be still at last, and as his panting slowed, he began to shudder with weeping. A calloused hand slapped over his mouth.

“Quiet, or we’re dead,” whispered a familiar voice. “Garva!”

“We wait, and get out of here when we can.”

“Where’s Glaze?”

“I don’t know.” The big man moved, trying to settle himself more comfortably into the muck. “There’s nothing to do now except wait, and try to rest.”

Krai listened as Garva’s breath became slower and deeper. How could he rest? Or sleep? Krai made a pillow of his hands and tried to listen for the soldiers. Eventually he heard a single tread, running toward the building and up the steps. A fist pounded on the door, and several voices muttered and shouted together. Locks clicked and the man was admitted. “Your highness! Your highness!”

“Sergeant, get this man some water—”

“There isn’t time! Your highness, the peasant conspiracy, the revolt-—”

“What? What are you talking about?”

The soldier gasped out the story, tripling the number of the peasants and halving the number of troops. It was still a tale of failure, and the Prince was apoplectic. With a storm of curses he struck the soldier to the floor, called for his war clothes and his weapons and began shouting to his staff.

“Sound formation! Open the armory! I want every man armed and mounted at once! We’re going to cauterize this arrogance before the infection spreads! At once! And get me that villain Sebastian now!”

The white-faced troopers ran to awaken the garrison, and in minutes hundreds of voices began hollering, complaining and commanding. In the cramped space beneath the floor, the two fugitives listened, wondering how they could survive. The shouting and the footsteps rose and then died away as the men clattered down the steps and into the fortress.

“Now’s our only chance!” whispered Garva. “Follow

He slid on his belly to the edge of the stubby pilings and stared out. The gates of the fortress swung open, and a wedge of lantemlight illuminated the sharpened stakes planted before it. There was already a corpse speared through the anus on one of them: Lui Morgan’s-son, whose crime had been to tell the Prince the truth.

“Don’t look,” Garva said. “We’ll go the other side.”

It was much darker there and the trees gave at least a little cover. Garva muttered a plan: to get out from Juan Carlos’, pass through the orchard, and escape into the village, where there would be more and better hiding places than this.

They felt emboldened just to be standing up, stretching in the night. Krai knew that Garva would fight like a champion if he had to. He still had the bloody partisan. There wasn’t a safer place to be than by Garva’s side. Seeing no one, they ran to the trees.

They had barely gotten to the edge of their cover when the troops came marching out of the town, straight down the dusty road toward the fortress. The two men stood frozen, seeing the severed heads on the short pikes, as they came closer to the light, thin here, streaming from inside the fortress.

Krai clutched at Garva’s arm when Glaze’s vacant stare turned toNvard them. He moaned, and Garva slammed his hand over the boy’s mouth, cursing him. They waited, and saw heads turn in their direction.

“You fool!” Garva hissed. Krai felt the strong hand almost twist the jaw from his face. “I ought to kill you now!”

Several soldiers began to move toward the woods.

The fugitives squirmed a moment, trying to figure their best chances. They had no choice. As one, they spun around and ran.

The soldiers shouted and the rest of the troops charged.

The plains around the fortress offered no concealment at all, so all Krai and Garva could do was head around the stockade, straight toward the adobe walls, and try to outrun the killers.

The shouting and running alerted the sentries, who peered into the night, and seeing little, sent more men out of the compound to quell the disorder, which could only further madden their already enraged sovereign. Mounted men galloped out to help the foot soldiers.

Garva and Krai sped into the labyrinth of scaffolding and piles of freshly dried adobes which had been cast for building the new stables. They were exhausted. There was nowhere else to go.

“We have to fight here,” Garva said. “I can take at least three of the dogs. Here’s where you can pretend to have the courage you lack. There’s nothing else.”

Horses whinnied behind them, and the sounds of men harnessing their mounts, too loud in the middle of the night, too loud for the men inside to hear the butchery to come. Krai found a rake handle on the ground. There were no other weapons.

From a distance, the soldiers and the two peasants saw each other. The soldiers slowed to walk, savoring the kill to come, as Garva and Krai walked backward, until they felt the rough adobe walls against their shoulders.

“Even if you kill us, there are thousands more just like me behind every bush! If not this month, then next! Save yourselves and go home!” He brandished his weapon.

Someone laughed, and a voice called, “You know how to use that thing?”

“Come forward and find out!” Garva waited. “Come forward, you craven, stinking cowards!”

Three spears arched through the night. Garva batted one of them away, but the other two struck home, one in the thigh, the other straight into his paunch. “Krai, the horses!” he cried, and toppled into the dirt.

As the soldiers moved to grab him, Krai dropped his stick and leapt with all his strength for the top of the adobes. His fingertips caught the crumbly edge, and as spears clattered against the dried mud, missing him, he pulled himself up and over, into the forbidden stables of the Prince.

The horses had all been jammed together, with no space for them to move at all. Krai dropped to his knees and ran between the spindly legs of the beasts, close to the back wall. He was too afraid to stand, terrified, alone, the soldiers all about. His knees shook, and the sweat poured from him, and at every human voice he shuddered and farted, waiting for the sharp steel to cut him in half.

*Why are you afraid, young one? came a thought into his mind.

Krai jumped. “Who—who speaks?” he quavered.

1 do, came the strange thought again. *You are Comet’s-son’s friend.

Help me! Krai sobbed.

*1 don’t know what you want. What do you want?

Don't let the soldiers kill me!

I am afraid of the soldiers, too. They put the steel in my mouth to cut me, and prick my flanks with the steel on their boots, until I bleed

But you’re so much bigger than they are!

If 1 throw them off, they tie me and beat me.

Please help me!

Gauntlet-shod hands grabbed the boy and jerked him up. With a wordless wail he struggled as the men twisted his wrists behind his back. The horses all around them began stamping and snorting, and the soldiers shoved through them to seize the doomed thrall.

With kicks and sharp stabs they forced Krai into the paddock, where the officers waited, already mounted. At the center of them sat the Prince.

The haft of a lance smashed into Krai’s shoulder, and he fell to his knees.

“Conspirator!” the Prince called. Krai looked up. “Impale him!” i

“No! Please, dear gods, no!”

The few unmounted men grabbed Krai and dragged him to the gate. Beyond, the sharpened posts stood in silent rows.

What are they going to do?

“Don’t let them put me on the stake! 1 beg you! Help

me!”

The soldiers laughed. “Who are you talking to, you little wimp? The horses?” They laughed some more.

*We will try, Comet’s-son’s friend. We need you to help us, too.