Richard Tuttle - Web of Deceit

She rethought her plan as she ran. Following the patrol that had captured Rejji had been easy. They moved slow enough and seldom looked around while they rode. Figuring out where they had put Rejji would be a little harder. All she knew at this point was that they had turned right after entering the gate. When the gate closed, so did her opportunity to follow Rejji. The opportunity she did have, however, was to observe the guards that stood on the platform behind the wall. She had already chosen the section of the wall she would attempt to scale. Now she had to hope that her diversion worked like she planned it to.

The idea was a delayed fire. The hot coals would dry out the damp grass, sending off clouds of smoke, but it would be too dark for anyone to see the smoke. When the grass dried out, it would ignite and the dry leaves would create an instant fire, clearly visible from the fort. On a clear night, like it was, there would be no lightning to blame the fire on. The Zaldoni would have to figure out it was manmade and investigate it. Being nighttime, she assumed they would not send a small force to check on it. They would know that no large army could get this close without be spotted by a sentry and would want to overwhelm whoever it was quickly. At least that was the plan, she thought.

She managed to get right up to the wall without the guards seeing her. The spot she had chosen had large trees on the other side of the wall. There was no way for her to reach them from outside, but she was hoping that she could reach them from the platform on the other side of the wall. She took her dagger out its sheath on her belt and another dagger from her boot. She held one in each hand and shoved the left one into the crevice in the wall as high as she could reach. The right other she put between her teeth as she flexed the muscles in her hands. She knew this trick was going to require all of her strength and she would only get one shot at it.

It wasn’t long before she heard the first shouts. She resisted the temptation to turn around and admire her handiwork and instead concentrated on listening to the movements of the two closest guards. Initially, both guards tended to move along the platform towards the gate to get a better view, but the second guard had not moved far enough for her to make her entry unseen. She tensed as she felt the failure of her plan, fearful that the patrols coming back from the fire might see her. She had planned to be inside by then.

She heard the two guards exchange words but she could not make them out. What she did hear though was one of the guards scrambling down the ladder. She backed up slightly and peered upward to see which one left. Mistake felt a shudder of excitement as she saw that the second guard had left his post. She swiftly moved back to the wall and pulled the second knife from her teeth. Grabbing the knife already embedded in the wall with her left hand, she pulled herself upright with one arm. When she had raised herself as far as she could, she reached up and imbedded the second knife in the wall and hung on it as she pulled the first knife out. She repeated her movements by pulling herself upward on the second knife and embedding the first even higher. She continued this until she could grasp the top of the wall. She hung there and shoved one of the knives back into her boot. The other knife returned to her teeth.

She pulled her self upward until she could look over the wall. There was no guard visible to her right and the one to the left was intently watching the drama outside the fort unfold. She pulled herself up until she could lie atop the wall and then gently lowered herself to the platform. She couldn’t reach the tree as she had planned and the ladder was much too noisy to use, so she lowered her self to the floor of the platform and eased towards the edge. She bent her head over the edge and looked below. There was nobody in sight and she started to slide her body to the edge.

She froze when the nearest guard’s feet scuffed and she looked towards him and saw that he had just shifted his feet. Keeping her eyes on the guard, she slid her body off the edge and dangled from the platform. Still seeing nobody below her, she moved hand-over-hand away from the guard. Her arms grew tired and eventually she let herself drop.

Her landing was not as quiet as she would have liked and she heard the guard’s feet shuffle quickly to see what the noise was. Mistake swiftly backed under the platform and pressed her body against the wall. The guard moved towards her and leaned over to look below, but he soon grew disinterested and returned to observe the commotion outside.

Mistake moved quietly under the platform to the next ladder. There was a rack with weapons there and Mistake stole a coil of rope and slung it over her shoulder. She looked out across the compound and realized she was fairly close to the corner of the fortress. The only buildings around that she could see were a large, high-roofed building and some storage sheds behind it. Mistake stole across the open space to the first of the sheds. She tried the door and it opened. The shed was empty but there was evidence of it having been used for storing farm goods, probably plunder from the villages the bandits extorted.

Mistake decided to work her way down the row of sheds and then check to see what buildings lie beyond the large one. All of the sheds were empty except for the last two. She turned her attention to the large building and saw that it had a crawlspace underneath it. She slid under the building and realized that it was huge. The sides of the building had planks coming down over the crawlspace, but the front and back were open. The only obstruction under the building was a large round section towards the rear of he building that protruded through the floor into the ground. It was warm and smelled of smoke.

She crawled up to the front of the building and peered out. She saw men returning through the open gate and splitting up. She recognized one of the men as the leader who captured Rejji and he was walking straight towards her. She was tempted to start crawling backwards to get away from the edge of the crawlspace, but she realized that her movement would be detected more than she would, so she lie still.

The man marched straight towards her and mounted the steps above her head. She held her breath as he climbed the steps and slid backwards as soon as he passed overhead. She turned around and followed the sound of his footsteps towards the rear of the building. When he stopped, she heard muffled voices but could not make out what they were saying. Mistake removed the coiled rope and placed it on the ground. She crawled to the rear of the building and checked for anyone coming by, and then crawled out and decided to check further into the compound.

Mistake spent the next two hours surveying the entire fortress before returning to the only building that looked like it might be a place to hold Rejji. She gazed up at the trees and decided to climb one to get a better view of how things were laid out. As she worked her way higher into the tree, she noticed that they had cut the wall guard in half. Nobody was walking around the compound either, which probably meant they felt fairly safe here and everyone was sleeping except for the few wall guards. She looked down at the large building and noticed the hole in the roof to allow smoke to escape. She scurried back down the tree and under the building to retrieve her rope, figuring nighttime was the best time to go exploring inside.

The young thief picked a sturdy branch that overshot the roof and started crawling out on it. When the branch started to sag appreciably, she tied a loop in the rope and passed the free end around the branch and through the loop. She worked the entire rope through the loop and lowered the free end to the roof. She flattened herself on the branch and wiggled until her body dropped and she hung from the branch by her hands. She grabbed the rope and silently lowered herself to the roof. She walked a short distance to the large opening, dragging the rope behind her. She flattened herself to the roof and inched towards the hole and peered down into the large room to see if anyone would notice her entry.