Raymond Feist - King of Ashes

‘Shall I find wood for a fire?’ asked Hatu.

Shaking his head, Bodai said, ‘Cold camp tonight. Besides, nothing we have needs cooking.’

Hatu had the merchant wrap the bread and cheese in stiff paper that rustled loudly as he unfolded it into a makeshift platter. Without a word, Bodai took the small slice of cheese and broke it in half, tore off a large hunk of bread, and began eating.

The meal passed with little conversation, as Bodai was intent on studying those who passed on the road as the late afternoon wore on to evening. Hatu drank sparingly of the wine. He honestly couldn’t tell if it was good or not, as drinking wine and other spirits was still new to him, and he had a slight dread of becoming intoxicated. He hated the feeling of being out of control.

As they finished their scant meal, Bodai said, ‘How do you feel about some after-dark prowling?’

Hatu smiled. The old man wasn’t asking if he was willing but informing him of what he would be doing. ‘That should depend on where you’re sending me.’

Without a word, Bodai looked above the building across the street and Hatu realised he was about to be sent to investigate the new cathedral next to the palace, and its surroundings, perhaps inside the citadel itself should he find a way in. He took a breath to calm himself and began mentally retracing his steps through the city leading to the road up to the old castle. Now he wished he had paid a little more attention to the route.

EARLIER IN THE DAY, HATU had chanced a quick journey up the road leading to the plateau above the city. For this evening’s foray, he hurried past a row of businesses preparing to shut down for the night and quickly entered a shop near the top of the winding road leading up to the palace, one that was about to close. He wanted to avoid attracting the attention of the guards at the end of the road, denying them a glimpse of anyone unusually close to their post.

Hatu nodded to the vendor of fine cloth and glanced around for a moment as the merchant narrowed his gaze at the scruffy-looking lad; then, with a smile, Hatu darted back through the door, hugging the wall and insinuating himself between this building and the next. He crouched and glanced around, hoping his movement hadn’t been seen in the failing light.

The bored-looking guards showed no sign of having spotted him, as they chatted about something across the distance between them – one stationed on each side of the gate – their subject unintelligible to Hatu. He studied closely what he had only glanced at for a few seconds earlier in the day.

A gate and a cleared area of ground lay before the entrance to the citadel. The ancient stone walls sat a good distance from the edge of the plateau. Hatu had been taught some military history and theory, so he assumed there was a reason for that clearing but had no idea what it was. He imagined that it might be transformed into a road leading to the cathedral, but he knew nothing about engineering, so how that could be achieved was a question he would have to ponder another time, should such curiosity return to visit him.

He had difficulty understanding the differences between temples, churches, and cathedrals, all of which seemed interchangeable in his mind; they were all places people went to worship. Their size, if anything, seemed to have significance. Hatu had seen a few temples in out-of-the-way places, a couple of which had still been in use, and for the most part they were modest buildings, perhaps as large as a decent inn. A few had even been small enough to be called shrines, with just a roof and a single bench. Churches were not much bigger but tended to be far gaudier, from what he could remember. The cathedral on the plateau, however, seemed to be a massive undertaking.

One point of its construction struck Hatu as odd: a tower had been built that seemed to look down into the old marshalling yard on the east side of the palace. He felt an itch of annoyance that some key information was evading him and pushed it aside to concentrate on the task at hand: to get past the guards at the gate. Slipping past them would be impossible. The gate was closed for the night, and had a door in it that only one person at a time could pass through.

Hatu looked back along the narrow passage between the two buildings and saw a crate nestled against the side of the next building. He could easily use it to jump to the roof.

He had run rooftops before, though he had no love for it, especially alone and in the dark. The crate seemed providential, as he had no companions to boost or catch him. He wasn’t completely certain, but he thought he could clear the gaps between the buildings to reach the last roof before the gate.

The tricky part of roof jumping was the landing. To aim for the peak of the roof was ideal, as it would be braced and solid. Stories were told in school about students crashing through thin thatch with no support, old flimsy tiles, or even thin sheets of wood. But the problem with aiming for the peak was that it was a narrow target, often mere inches wide, and missing it, losing your balance, and rolling off the eaves was as bad an outcome as crashing through the roof.

A successful landing on any roof could be noisy, so it had been drilled into him only to try that if he was running for his life. Some stone tiles were tricky, as well. Nailed shingles were best. He had studied the rooftops earlier in the day as a matter of habit and those along this street seemed to be heavy tiles or wooden shingles, so he thought he had a good chance to reach the cathedral this way.

He hurried to the crate, saw it was sturdy wood, and easily gained the top of the first roof. There were four more houses and he crouched low, timed his first jump, and landed as silently as he could, very close to the peak. While it sounded a little too loud to him, Hatu realised anyone not standing directly below where he’d landed was unlikely to have noticed the noise.

Hatu reached the edge of the penultimate roof and judged the distance to the last. He realised it was only slightly further than takeoff to landing in a yard game he had played when he was younger; he reconsidered his run and jump, took two steps back, and executed a simple hop, squat, and jump, and landed with both feet squarely on the peak of the final roof with barely a sound.

Feeling uncharacte‌ristically smug for a moment, Hatu tiptoed quickly along the peak and reached the end of the roof. In times past, a wall might have existed along the edge of the plateau, long since torn down as the city erected more distant outer walls. Nothing remained but some irregular mounds, probably foundation stones covered by centuries of earth, rising and falling at irregular intervals.

The remaining wall lay across the road, complete with a massive gate and guards. The building Hatu stood upon constituted a barrier blocking access to the citadel.

He judged the width of the wall that almost abutted the building, to see where he might land safely, but those points were too far away to make any reasonable attempt at jumping down.

He reversed his position and lowered himself to hang from the eaves, then dropped, remaining as silent as possible. He bent his knees when he landed and continued into a low crouch, turning to look at the guards by the gate.

Hatu had landed where the corner of the building almost met the gate wall. A small child might have been able to slip through the gap, but not a grown man. He assumed that the remaining gate was for local security, not military defence, for an invading army would have had to fight its way through the entire city to reach this position, and levelling the house behind him would most certainly take less time than battering down that old gate with a ram.

He looked at the rear of the building, suddenly concerned about how he was going to get back to Bodai, and realised that a pile of refuse and broken masonry had created a makeshift wall between where he stood near the edge of the building and the edge of the plateau. Hatu tried to inspect it as best he could in the dim light of the gate lamps and soon hoped that he did not have to depart in a hurry. Then he spied a sturdy-looking small crate, or more correctly a large wooden box. He gingerly moved towards it, as he had no idea what he might be stepping on among the debris, and his role as a beggar boy demanded he wear poor footwear. He was relieved to find the box met his requirements; it was sturdy enough that he could stand on it and boost himself back onto the roof when he needed to take his leave.