Ben Bova - Orion and the Conqueror

Now that I knew where they were, I had to reach them. That meant breaking out of my cell. But stealthily, without rousing the palace against me. Somehow I had to release the iron bolt that held my cell door locked. But how?

I knew that I could probably release myself from this placetime and travel across the continuum to the realm of the Creators, but then I would undoubtedly return to the same point in time and space that I had left; I would return to my cell. It was bitingly ironic: I could travel through uncounted ages and even span the distances between stars, but that ability was useless to me now. All I wanted to do was to get past my cell door. My barely understood powers of moving through the continuum could not help me. I had to rely on my own strength and wits.

I still had my dagger strapped to my thigh, so much a part of me that I took it for granted. One small dagger was not much of a weapon against all the guards of the palace. But it might make an effective tool.

Using the point of the iron blade I chiselled away at the wooden door at the point where the bolt slid into its iron groove on its other side. The wood was tough and old. I wondered how long my iron blade would hold an effective edge. All through the night I worked, forcing the blade’s point into the iron-hard wood and working it back and forth until another splinter fell loose. From time to time I used the rats’ eyes to check on the guards. They were snoring away in their bunks; even the jailor sat with his head down on the table, his evening’s flagon of wine drained and empty.

After hours of unceasing effort, my blade scraped the hard iron of the door’s bolt. I jerked back, shocked by the noise. It sounded loud enough to wake the sleeping guards, to me. But that was only my own fear and surprise; the guards snored on, undisturbed. Now the trick was to worm the blade into the bolt’s slot and slide it open without snapping the dagger itself. My hands grew sweaty with the effort. Four or five times I felt the blade bending dangerously and withdrew it. The bolt remained stubbornly in place.

I stopped a while and tried to think of another way to get the stubborn door open. I tried using the edge of the blade to catch some surface roughness on the bolt and slide it out of its slot that way. But the blade merely scratched along the bolt without finding any real purchase, nothing but iron sliding across iron.

Finally I hacked at the wood to make a wider opening and then wormed my index finger into the rough opening. I felt the cool round iron of the bolt, pressed my finger against it and then slid my finger back a fraction of an inch.

The bolt moved. I pulled my finger out, moistened it slightly on my tongue, and tried again. Again the bolt slid back a bit. Slowly, slowly, I pulled it out until I felt the door give slightly under my pressing weight. Taking a deep breath, I pushed the door open. The hinges groaned and I froze. But none of the guards stirred, down the corridor. I placed my chamberpot in its usual spot, then opened the door only enough to squeeze through. I shut it and slid the bolt home again. From out here in the corridor it was impossible to tell that the door had been damaged. They would not know I had escaped until the jailor realized that I had not touched the next bowl of gruel he brought.

I was free! Almost.

Holding my dagger before me I tiptoed past the slumbering guards and up the stairway that led to the ground floor of the palace. Keeping to the shadows, I managed to avoid the few guards who stood sleepily on duty. I made my way to one of the courtyards and quickly decided that the safest and swiftest way to travel was across the rooftops.

It was difficult to recognize which part of the palace I was crossing, and where the troop barracks was, especially in the dark of night. But I saw that the sky to the east was turning milky gray; soon it would be too light for me to go scampering across the roof tiles without being seen. So I found a spot where a fig tree’s branches shaded the roof. I gobbled a dozen of the ripe green figs, then settled in the tree’s shade there on the hard tiles of the roof and had my first restful sleep in weeks.

I slept without dreams, although when I awoke, late in the afternoon, I had the disturbing feeling that I had been discovered in my hiding place.

Peering over the roof’s eave I saw slaves and servants bustling in the courtyard below: nothing unusual. A squad of soldiers marched past the gate, heading away from me. The sun was almost touching the mountains in the west. I smelled cooking odors, and wondered if there would be enough scraps from the evening’s meals to keep the rats fed.

If my escape had been noticed I saw no evidence of it in the courtyard below. Probably my jailor had left my daily bowl of gruel at the locked cell door and taken my pot away with him. He would not suspect anything was amiss until he brought the next meal and saw that I had not touched the previous one.

Good. That gave me roughly twelve hours, more or less, to get to Philip. Then I smiled. If the rats in my cell ate the gruel I might have even more time. But I could not depend on that.

I needed help, and for that I had to reach Harkan. I spent the last few hours of daylight studying the layout of the palace from my rooftop hiding place. I located the troop barracks and plotted out a path across the roofs to get there. Then I waited until purple dusk had faded into the full darkness of night. The moon was rising as I scampered across the roof tiles toward the barracks, silent as a wraith. I hoped.

I waited several hours more, with growing impatience, to make certain that all the soldiers were asleep before I dared to enter the barracks. At last, with a nearly full moon lighting the parade ground almost brightly as day, I swung down from the eaves and through the blanket that hung across one of the barracks windows.

They were asleep, all right. Their snores and grunts and mumbles made the darkened barracks sound almost like a barnyard. I waited several moments while my eyes adjusted to the darkness, then began a tiptoe search for Harkan.

He found me.

As I tiptoed down the aisle between the rows of bunks, I sensed a presence behind me. I whirled and reached for the man’s throat, determined to cut off his air and prevent him from awakening the others, only to see that he had a sword pointed at me. It was Harkan, naked except for his unsheathed sword.

“Orion!” he said, surprised.

“Shh!”

One of the men nearest us stirred in his sleep, but did not wake.

“I thought you were a thief,” Harkan whispered.

“I was,” I joked softly, “when I rode with you.”

“Have they released you from prison?”

“I released myself.”

In the shadows of the darkened barracks I could not see the expression on his bearded face, but his silence told me that he did not know what to say. I gripped his shoulder and together we walked quietly to the end of the long room.

“I must get to the king,” I said as we stepped outside onto the landing of the stairs that ran down to the parade ground.

“He left for Aigai this morning.”

“Then I must go to Aigai.”

Now, in the moonlight, I could see Harkan’s face. He looked perplexed. “You’re a fugitive.”

“That was the queen’s doing. The king will pardon me when he hears what I have to tell him.”

“You think so?” another voice asked. A deep voice: Batu’s. He stepped out of the inky shadow cast by the overhanging roof. Like Harkan he was naked, and armed with a sword.

I clasped his outstretched hand as I asked, “What are you doing out here?”

With a broad smile Batu replied, “I heard you scrabbling across the roof tiles. Harkan went to one end of the barracks, I went to this end.”