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.”