The Jongurian Mission (53 page)

“We had to fight our way into the building,” Halam replied between deep breaths. He was breathing heavily and sweating as he and Willem helped prop up Jurin.

“We managed to free Pader and Jurin,” Willem said, “but in the fight to get back outside, Pader was killed.”

“How many men are after you?” Jal asked.

“There were
more men in the building, but we blocked the door before we went after Jurin and Pader. It kept them off of us long enough and Wen shot some, but I’m sure they’re out by now,” Willem said. “I don’t know how many he might have killed so can’t be sure how many are still after us.”

“One came over the wall behind Wen and shot Flint,” Bryn said.

The four men looked at him for a moment and then Trey spoke.

“Is he dead?”

“Aye,” was all Bryn said, looking down at his feet.

Before anything else could be said Wen came running up.

“Let’s move as fast as we can,” he said.
“More are behind us on foot, and it won’t take long for horsemen to come as well.”

They raced down the road as fast as they could.
Jurin even managed a slow jog, his eagerness to get away from their pursuers overriding any pain he was feeling from his multiple bruises. Bryn could see the faint outline of some trees ahead and Wen steered them off of the road before they reached them. They headed south for a while over rocky ground, the mountain walls getting closer and closer with each step. It was incredibly difficult to see in the darkness, even with the moon high above them; Bryn could not imagine how Wen managed to guide them. It was all they could do to stay close together so they could follow the man directly in front of them. Finally they were at a steep mountainside. Wen took the coiled rope from around his shoulder and began to pay it out on the ground. He handed one end to Halam, then tied the other around his waist.

“I’ll have to climb up this wall and anchor this rope at the top.
It’s about one hundred feet up,” he said while he took off his boots and handed them to Willem.

“Have you done this before?” Trey asked.

“Many times, but never in the dark,” he said as he walked to the wall and looked up. He climbed up a few feet and then looked back down to the ground, shaking his head. “Too dark,” he said as he climbed back to the ground, “can’t see enough to find good handholds.” He pulled a thick piece of wood from his pack and wound a damp cloth around it. With his curved sword he struck some sparks against the mountain wall and soon had the torch burning. After sheathing his sword he stuck the torch between his teeth and started to climb up the wall once again.

It was slow going while he searched for purchase on the jagged rock, but the torchlight helped and he steadily moved higher up, the rope dangling down to the ground behind him.
Soon they were staring at a small circle of light high up above them surrounded by darkness. Several of the men looked from Wen to the trees behind them, not sure which sight made them more nervous. At one point Wen misplaced his foot and slipped, and the men collectively gasped, but he was somehow able to hold on and was quickly climbing once again. Bryn couldn’t say how long it took him to reach the top of the wall and pull himself over onto a narrow ledge, but when he did the rope came down followed by a shout for them to start climbing up.

Halam came up to Bryn.
“You’ll go up first, lad. Just put one hand in front of the other and don’t look down.”

Bryn nodded, taking the rope gingerly in his hands.
He began to pull himself up, keeping his feet on the rock wall as he did so. Shouts of “Aye, that a boy” and “You can do it” came from below as he progressed steadily up the side of the mountain. It was dark all around him and he couldn’t imagine how Wen managed to climb up this wall unaided, even with the light of the torch. By the time he was halfway up the rope Bryn’s arms ached something fierce and his legs were getting sore from constantly being stretched out in front of him. When he saw Wen’s face emerge from the darkness ten feet above him, he didn’t think that he could make it further, and Wen, as if reading his thoughts, pulled the rope up the rest of the way.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Wen said as he pulled Bryn up onto the narrow ledge.

The ledge that Bryn found himself on was less than five feet wide.
The area was illuminated from the light of the torch that Wen had laid on a rock. Looking up, he saw that the mountain rose up further than he could see in the dark. Looking down all he could see was blackness. The rope quivered and he knew that someone else was climbing up. A few minutes later Rodden appeared out of the blackness and climbed the rest of the way to the ledge.

“My, that is some climb
!” he said, shaking the ache out of his arms.

The rope still moved so Bryn knew that someone else was coming up behind.
A few minutes later Conn came up, followed by Jal a few moments after that. The men were not waiting any longer for each to make it to the top before another started up. In quick succession Trey, Iago, and Willem appeared. It was a few more minutes after that that Jurin appeared below the ledge with Halam right on his heels. They moved slowly and every time that Jurin put his right arm further up the rope his face contorted in pain. Halam voiced encouraging words behind him, and the rest of the men grabbed hold of the rope and pulled the others up the rest of the way. Wen went about pulling up the rope and coiling it around his arm while the others helped Jurin to the mountain wall. He collapsed in a heap against the cold stone, sweat beading his brow.

“What exactly happened in the city?” Rodden asked Jurin after he
’d managed to catch his breath.

“They caught us almost as soon as we walked through the gates,” Jurin said as he wiped away the sweat from his forehead.
“They beat us quite badly in the process then brought us to that warehouse and stuck us on the roof.”

“
Did you catch any names?” Wen asked as he stuffed the rope into his pack.

Jurin gave him a hard look.
“It was Leisu,” he said, and Wen stopped coiling the rope for a moment and looked up. He nodded, then put his attention back to the rope.

“They didn’t ask you any questions?” Iago asked.

“No, they kept us in a small room when we weren’t on the roof. No attempts were made to interrogate us, which I thought was rather odd,” Jurin said.

“We should get moving,” Wen said.
“This spot isn’t known to many, but someone in the city surly knows about it and that means that Zhou will soon as well. We need to put as much ground behind as possible before it gets light.”

Halam and Willem helped Jurin to his feet and tried to support him but he shooed them off.
He was adamant that he could walk on his own, but after his first few steps that seemed unlikely. They went to his aid again as he stumbled, but he halted them with a word, and was soon stepping well on his own. Still, Halam stayed close behind him to help if need be.

“We’ve a lot of
distance to cover,” Wen said as he grabbed the torch and headed to the front of the column to light the way. “Most of it will be narrow ledges like this that climb higher up into the mountains. At a few spots we’ll need to climb the rope again, but nothing like we just did. I hope you got enough sleep last night, because you won’t be getting any tonight.”

The men lined up behind him and set out into the darkness.

* * * * *

“We’re now down to twelve men,” Ko said, “not counting ourselves.”

Leisu looked up at his deputy. For once he wasn’t happy with how independent he’d become. He was right, however. They were now twelve men against ten. While one of those ten was only a small boy, the fact that Wen and Jurin were with them tilted the odds in their favor.

“Sir,” Ko said again, “they
’re getting away as we stand here doing nothing. By that time another four men had come back from the city gates. They obviously had found out that the Adjurians had gone over the wall; some may have even seen them flee up the road outside of the gates.

“Ko, I want you to gather some local men who know how to fight,” Leisu said.
“Ask the men who know of the city for help if you have to, but get them fast.”

Ko nodded and ran in the direction of the gates.

“You there, what’s your name?” Leisu asked the man who’d run up out of breath a moment before to report the Adjurians had gone over the wall.

“Xu
, sir,” the man said.

“Xu
, you know this city, right?”

“Yes sir, I was stationed here during the war and lived here for some time after before heading south.”

“Good. I want you to gather half of the men we have left and head out of the city toward the narrow canyons that lead around this city. I trust you know the spot where the Adjurians were caught in a bottleneck and slaughtered during the war?”

Xu
looked at Leisu in a questioning manner for a moment. “Yes sir, the Oval we called it.”

“Yes, that’s it.
Anyone who wants to reach the Isthmus without going through Waigo will have to go through this Oval, won’t they?”

“Yes sir, they will,” Xu
said, seeming to suddenly understand what Leisu was proposing.

“That’s right.
And these men’ll have to go through that area tonight or early in the morning. I want you to get there first and cut them off. Kill them if you can, but if not, hold them to that spot for as long as possible. I’ll come through the canyons behind them. They’ll not get out of that Oval alive!”

TWENTY-NINE

All through the night they had crept along narrow mountain ledges, traversed gaping chasms in the rock, and at a few points
used the rope to climb still higher up. Each time that they stopped to allow one man at a time to go up, down, or around a particularly tricky spot Bryn thought that he’d collapse from exhaustion and be asleep before he’d even had a chance to sit down. Somehow, though, he was able to rouse himself when it was again time to walk and they moved further and further into the night. Bryn had no idea where they were at or even where they were going. They pushed higher up for an hour then seemed to spend the next hour climbing down. Wen told them that it wouldn’t be much longer, and in the last hour before dawn his words seemed true; they’d been walking on nearly level ground for some time in an area that was wide enough for three of them to walk abreast.

“How far exactly do we need to go before we get out of the mountains?” Rodden asked.

“Not too much further now,” Wen replied. “We’ve been taking the circuitous route around Waigo, but we’ll meet up with the canyons that lead from the city to the Isthmus sometime this morning.”

“There isn’t some other way that
’s more concealed?” Halam asked.

“No, I’m afraid not.
Waigo was well chosen along the only path through the mountains. We were lucky to get around the city from above, but now we’ll have to follow the path that everyone else must take.”

“Do you think
Zhou’s men will be waiting for us in those canyons?” Jal asked.

“I’m almost certain of it,” Wen replied.

After that the men walked in silence. So they’d all have to fight, Wen made it sound. For what seemed the hundredth time that night Bryn fingered the hilt of his dagger. Would he actually have to
use
it against another man this day?

With their stomachs growling something fierce and the sun rising somewhere over the mountains behind them, the men finally made it to the canyons that Wen had talked about.
The mountain walls had constantly loomed higher on either side of them, but now their height became much more pronounced. As if they’d crossed some invisible line, the walls shot up an extra hundred feet around them and became closer together at the same time. Bryn thought back to some of the narrow hallways in the palace at Baden when he saw what lay ahead of them; but whereas those hallways had been well-lit and framed with tapestries and paintings, these hallways were nothing more than cold, jagged stone which the sun was barely able to penetrate.

“We’ve reached the canyons now,” Wen said,
even though the men didn’t need the announcement. “They’ll wind around through the mountains, steadily falling down to sea level. If we keep up a good pace we can be through them before dark.”

They could walk two abreast through most of the canyon, but many times they had to stop and go through single-file, the walls grew so close.

“How will we fight in here?” Willem asked Wen.

“Very carefully,” Wen replied. “If Leisu’s discovered that we’ve taken the roundabout way to these canyons then he’ll send men in after us. That is
if
he hasn’t already sent men in before us.”

“So we won’t even know of an attack until it
’s upon us, either from the front or the rear,” Iago said.

“That’s right,” Wen
nodded. “The only advantage these canyons have is that they favor the defender. If an attack does come, we can hunker down and fight.”

“If they have us pinned from both sides we
’ll be hunkered down for some time,” Trey pointed out.