Chapter 752: Mind’s games(2)
The knot of worry that had been present in the defenders’ chests began to loosen at the sight of the rider returning, alive ,uninjured, and without the frantic pace of a man fleeing for his life.
His horse trotted with the easy rhythm of a leisurely patrol, hooves clopping against the packed earth as if nothing at all were amiss.
If they were enemies, the thought spread among them like smoke, would they have let him go? Would he be riding back at all?
No, of course not. The only conclusion was the obvious one. There was no danger.
The garrison commander himself, who had been watching with narrowed eyes and a white-knuckled grip on the battlements, finally allowed his shoulders to slacken.
Turning to the men below, he bellowed the order to open the gate.
Vanno, meanwhile, sitting stiff-backed atop the stolen horse in the dead rider’s armor, nearly sagged with relief.
They haven’t seen through me.
Even so, his mind could not stop itself from racing. He imagined every way this could have gone wrong: his voice giving him away, the armor sitting awkwardly on his frame, the horse balking at the wrong moment.
He’d always had that curse: the ability to see disaster in everything, and the bad luck to expect it.
But for now... for now it seemed the worst had passed.
The gate, a miracle to his eyes, began to move. The deep groan of timber and the squeal of thick iron hinges carried up the walls, accompanied by the muffled shouts of the men inside taking hold of ropes or bars to haul it open.
He didn’t know how many would be waiting beyond.
Ten, twelve, fifty?Four? The fewer, the better.
Gods, the more he thought about it, the more it felt like he was riding headlong into a deathtrap.
Vanno’s eyes flicked to the gate’s frame as it inched inward. Gates could be made in two ways: pushing out or pulling in. Each had its advantages, but most, especially in strongholds worth their salt, were built to open inward, allowing defenders to reinforce them from within with heavy beams or iron stakes.
Today, the gods seemed willing to grant him one small mercy: the gate pulled inward. It meant that when it opened far enough, the shadow of the wooden arch would hide his face from the men inside.
Yet luck had never lingered long at Vanno’s side. As the gate creaked open, reaching its midpoint, a figure stepped into the gap. A familiar voice, or at least it would have been for the one Egil had killed, began to speak.
"Hey, Arni—"
The words cut short as the man’s eyes settled on Vanno’s unfamiliar face.
In that heartbeat of hesitation,he acted.
Vanno’s hand shot to the curved sword at his hip. The blade flashed in the dim light, biting into the man’s neck halfway through with a wet crunch.
The soldier’s eyes went wide,first in confusion, then in dawning terror.
He tried to draw breath but found only blood pooling in his trachea.
Vanno wrenched his gaze away, but otherwise left the weapon buried in the man’s throat.
There was no time to wrestle it free; he had no idea how many others stood beyond.
A quick glance told him the truth: apart from the corpse at his feet, only two more men lingered near the entrance,besides the ones he could hear straining against the ropes to haul the gates open.
He dug his heels into the horse’s flanks. The beast surged forward.
The gap widened, revealing the courtyard beyond. The pullers were oblivious, their view blocked by the massive wooden leaves of the gate. On the far side, a man stood holding exactly what Vanno needed,the thick timber bar used to lock the gate from within.
The man’s brow furrowed. He looked from the approaching rider to the armor, to the face that wasn’t the one he’d seen leave earlier.
By the time suspicion set in, it was too late.
Vanno’s horse thundered straight at him. With a startled cry, the man dropped the bar and leapt aside. Vanno leaned dangerously forward in the saddle, gripping the stirrup tight with one booted foot while his free hand shot out. His fingers closed around the bar, wrenching it from the ground in a single, desperate pull.
The momentum nearly tore him from the saddle, but he hauled himself upright again, the heavy timber clutched tight in both hands.
Shouts erupted all around him,defenders finally realizing something was wrong, whether from the dead man now slumped at the gate or from the rider’s unfamiliar face.
Vanno didn’t care. He already had what he’d come for.
Without breaking stride, he charged through the opening that was quickly closing, the stolen bar across his lap, and burst back into the open air beyond the walls.
His mouth hung open, dragging in a great gulp of air as the tension bled from his chest. A broad, disbelieving grin spread across his face.
I did it. I did it. I did it. The words pounded in his skull with every beat of his heart, a half-crazed chant that almost drowned out the world around him.
But the world hadn’t stopped moving.
Shouts rose from the walls above, voices sharp with alarm. In the space of a breath, the creak of bowstrings followed, and then the air was full of hissing death.
The first arrow whispered past his cheek, close enough that he felt the wind of it. Another clattered harmlessly off the horse’s rump. Then one struck home.
A hard, jarring thunk hit his upper back, just behind the shoulder. The force nearly pitched him forward in the saddle. For a heartbeat he felt nothing,then came the fire, blooming under his skin, a searing line that made his teeth clench.
He hissed through them, cursing himself for leaving his breastplate behind to better sell the disguise. One more layer of iron, and that arrow would have splintered instead of burying itself in his flesh.
Gritting his teeth, he shifted his shoulder experimentally. The shaft wobbled with the movement, and the weight of it told him the truth,this wasn’t a graze. It had gone in deep.
The next volley rattled off the ground around him, one shaft splintering against a rock so close he felt the sting of grit on his cheek. By some twist of fortune, none found his flesh again nor that of his steed.
Pain throbbed in time with the pounding of his heart, but somewhere beneath it, madly, impossibly, he felt laughter bubbling up.
A sharp bark escaped him, then another, until he was laughing outright, loud and hoarse over the thunder of the horse’s hooves. Gods, it hurt to laugh, but he couldn’t stop.
Arrow in his back, death still chasing his heels, he’d done it, ridden straight into the lion’s mouth and come out the other side with the key to its cage.
It felt, for a fleeting moment, as if the world itself wanted to join in his triumph.
Beyond the haze of pain in his shoulder, Vanno saw shapes moving on the far road,shapes trailing a plume of dust, thick and golden in the sunlight. His heart leapt.
That had to be them. His brothers-in-arms, thundering to meet him, just as they had after every battle, Rebel, Herculeian, Oizeninan, and now, a fortress.
Grinning like a madman, he lifted the gate-bar high above his head. The pain was a screaming fire in his shoulder, but he ignored it, showing off his prize the way a hunter might hoist a stag over his shoulders for all to see.
"I did it!" he bellowed into the dust, voice breaking with the force of it. "I DID IT!"
The cloud drew closer, fast, but something about it tugged at the edge of his mind. It didn’t... move right. Too low. Too narrow. Not the spread of a hundred riders sweeping the road.
He narrowed his eyes, squinting through the blur, and the truth struck him like a bucket of cold water. This wasn’t his comrades.
The dust hid not a line of charging men, but a single, massive shape—a carriage.
This one braced in iron bands, with a great, jagged ram of steel teeth jutting from its prow , liuke the horns of a great beast. Four massive horses hauled it at a dead gallop, their flanks foaming, its wheels striking the road hard enough to make the earth shudder under Vanno’s mount.
It was a gate-breaker.
He swore softly under his breath, yanking his horse aside to clear the road. The great machine roared past him in a storm of wind and dust.
For a heartbeat he simply watched it go, mesmerized by its grim beauty. He knew exactly what it was built for, and what it meant. The bar he had stolen was the key, but this, this was the hammer that would drive it home.
And as the great, iron-toothed prow lowered like the head of a charging bull, aimed true at the city’s gate, Vanno felt an almost childlike calm wash over him. This was it.
His work was done, and his brothers would reap what he had sown.
He let himself be seduced to calm, as the lullaby of war began to play in earnest.