He Who Was
Part Two - Rescue
This is Part Two to my story taking inspiration from July Prompt.
Edgar was bungled into an unassuming inn off the main street leading south from the square. Hundreds fled screaming, the Lancers had been overwhelmed, and that had given Edward’s allies time to escape. At least Edgar thought they were Edward’s allies. None had revealed their faces to him, nor their names. Dust lay over all the tables, chairs and stools were turned up, and empty unwashed tankards lined the far side of the bar. Mouse droppings were clustered along the edge of the bar. A coat of arms hung above the bar, the name ‘The King’s Arms’ carved into the wood.
‘Are you sure this is a wise place to hide?’ Edgar pointed up at the name.
‘We won’t be here long enough for it to matter, Sire,’ the man with two swords on his belt rummaged behind the bar. He cursed to himself, tossing tankards and empty barrels aside. ‘Ahh,’ he said and slammed a lock box on the bar. ‘For a moment I thought I’d been robbed.’
‘Is this your pub?’ Edgar asked. He turned over a stool and took a seat near the centre of the main room. Doors ran along the sides of the room leading to cubbies, the windows all boarded over.
‘I own the building but keep that to yourself. Most people think the proprietor is ill, old, and wasting away upstairs. That was my father. He’s dead. I was already a squire at the time, no siblings. Mother ran it until her death a few years later, now I use it as… well… a place to hide,’ he flipped open the lid. ‘Sire.’ Keys and coins clattered across the bar.
‘What’s your name?’
‘Laurence, Sire.’
A door creaked somewhere at the back of the building. A man and woman were panting and cursing their fortunes. The woman appeared first, sweat beading across her forehead. She halted in the doorway, transfixed by Edgar. The man knocked into the back of her and swore, he looked up and lost his breath.
‘Sire,’ the man dropped to one knee. ‘I… I… I thought…’
‘An imposter, or so I am led to believe,’ Edgar said. He wondered what had happened to his son, how foolish he’d been to think he could have saved him. Maybe on the road but from the inner most part of Ralthar, not a chance.
The woman curtsied, the hem of her skirts thick with mud. ‘Sire, it warms my heart to see you hale.’ She tiptoed behind the bar and tugged Laurence’s sleeve, ‘A word.’ The trio vanished into the back rooms of the pub, their words echoing out into mere noise.
Laurence reappeared, ‘Your appearance, err, complicates matters, Sire.’ The man smiled and tugged at his short, tight ponytail with its grey streak through the auburn. He leaned against the bar, arms resting on the hilts of his swords.
‘Where’s my son?’ Edgar said.
The woman emerged, the other man behind her. She manfully flipped a chair from a table onto the floor, the dust dancing in its wake. Resting a boot on it she unhooked a sheathed knife from under her skirts. ‘Taken to the Tower of the Maiden. Execution has been delayed, probably not for more than a day. We have to act, now, Sire.’
‘Are Themis and Garis back yet?’
‘No.’
‘Yvonne?’
The woman shook her head, ‘Last I saw she was round the back of the court.’
‘How many of you are there?’ Edgar said.
‘About a hundred dotted all over the city, only ten or so knew about this mission.’
‘That you failed,’ Edgar said.
‘It didn’t fail,’ the other man said. He was bald and had a tattoo of a dragon stretching from his eyebrow, up over his head, round his ear, its tail curling round the base of his neck. ‘The mission went exactly to plan.’
Edgar stood up, ‘You didn’t mean to rescue Edward?’
‘Not today, no. Too many people, too many soldiers. We needed…’
‘John,’ Laurence shook his head. ‘Sorry, Sire. Sensitive information and we need to get to work.’
‘You dragged me in here for a reason, Laurence. I can be of help, I know the Tower you speak of, every level above and below ground. What’s the plan?’ Edgar pinned the man with his stare.
‘I’m sorry, Sire. I can’t.’
‘Not your choice. I came to Ralthar to save my son, with or without your help,’ Edgar stood, hand on the hilt of his sword. ‘If you cannot help me then I will wish you the best of luck and be off.’
The woman moved towards the front door, ‘Laurence…’ The backdoor burst open and in came three people, two men and a woman. ‘Yvonne!’
‘Peni!’ Yvonne ran over, the pair shared the same blonde hair, blue eyes, and button nose. ‘We thought you’d been captured when Laurence didn’t rendezvous with us.’
‘No, he… found someone,’ Peni gestured to Edgar.
‘Oh…’ a moment passed and Peni remembered to curtsy. ‘Sire.’
‘He Who Was?’ Garis gawped. ‘You’re meant to be…’
‘Garis?’ Edgar stepped towards the trader he’d known for nigh on five years. How’d he keep his resistance to the Council a secret, the King wondered. ‘It’s good to see you well, but why are you here?’
‘About a year ago I heard a rumour about the prince and, well, here I am. When I saw you the other day, I wanted to tell you, truly I did, but… secrecy has been paramount and even that wasn’t enough,’ Garis looked crestfallen.
‘You know each other?’ Laurence and Themis asked in unison.
‘Aye,’ Garis said. ‘We drank in the same pub, visited the same markets.’
‘For how long?’
Garis scratched his chin, ‘Oh, five or six summers.’
Laurence gasped, ‘And you never told us! Why?’
‘He Who Was seemed content with his hermit life and we followed Prince Edward. The world thought He Who Was was dead.’
‘But you, and a whole village, seemed to know otherwise. Why do you call, His Grace, that?’ Themis strolled in, blood splattered up his arm and on his cheek, it was not his own. He grabbed an old bar towel and worked it over his hands until the blood was gone and the skin pink.
‘As I understand it, the town didn’t know for quite a while then a bard came along and spilled a lot of stories, which may have been true or untrue, and eventually folk took to calling him, He Who Was, didn’t matter if it where true or not.’
‘But…’
‘The world believes, He Who Was, is dead. No, it wouldn’t have made our fight easier,’ Garis said.
Edgar stood and considered his position. Had he known people fought in the throne’s name, in his name, would he have revealed himself. Part of him wanted to think he would but the defeat, the betrayal by his council had been so total, so devastating, that he knew he wouldn’t have. There were so few he could trust near the end and it didn’t matter what he did, the council wanted him, the throne, gone. Had he known his last son had survived, that might have changed things. ‘No point dwelling on the past, my son needs saving.’
‘Aye,’ Garis said. ‘What’s the plan?’ He crossed his arms.
Themis tossed the soiled towel on the bar, ‘We wait till nightfall and infiltrate the Tower at guard change. Our various pockets will continue disruptions throughout the city for the next day or two, that will keep the Lancers busy and prevent a sudden execution. The Council need everyone to see the Prince die, to show the old regime is well and truly dead. You can fight, can’t you, Sire?’
‘Of course, Themis. A king must know so he can lead from the front.’
‘Right, gather round, everyone, here’s what we have to do,’ Themis reached beneath the bar and set a scroll on the top, it unrolled to reveal a map of the Tower of the Maiden and the surrounding city. ‘Our rescue begins at nightfall…’
The twin moons rose over Ralthar, casting the city in a sublime light. The brightest of the stars shone through the last vestiges of the sun’s glow, signalling the beginning of night and with it the changing of the guard. Edgar stood watch from the mouth of an alleyway that ran alongside a canal, the trickling water covering their footsteps, his dark clock billowed in the breeze helping him blend in with the night. Themis and Garis were behind him, Laurence, John, and the sisters, over in an alley on the other side of the Tower of the Maiden. The obsidian triangular tower rose to three times the height of the buildings around it, mostly two and three storey barracks used to house mercenaries centuries past, now they were poor houses, warehouses, and only a couple remained as barracks. A narrow street circled the tower with many others shooting off like the spokes of a wheel.
Two men stood guard at the main entrance while four others patrolled the narrow street. Others watched from balconies and arrow slits positioned at irregular intervals up the tower, many, Edgar remembered, were only accessible through trap doors, ladders, and fire places. Edward was, in all likelihood, being held on the highest floor in the windowless room. Edgar remembered it well from the early days of the rebellion, many souls screamed in that wretched place though it did him, nor them, any good.
A horn blast sounded from the Tower and the two men on the door saluted and marched off. Eight emerged from the Tower, the last of them locking the door, and marched after the first two. The four man patrol circled round, saluted before the door, and followed fifty steps behind the others. There was a short window before their replacements arrived, the Lancers watching from the Tower itself would remain until after the others arrived. He watched the bowman on the balcony three stories up turn his head away. Edgar tapped the wall twice and stepped out into the street, Themis and Garis flanked him as he sprinted towards the sable wall. From there the trio circled round to the main door and Garis began picking the lock.
Laurence and John appeared moments later, the sisters, Peni and Yvonne, had stayed behind to keep watch on their escape route. After a few clunks of steel there was a satisfying click of the lock and the door swung inward. The five men darted inside, Edgar at the front. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the flicking brazier and torch light, ‘Edward will be held in the windowless room at the top of the tower, let’s go.’ Edgar dashed ahead.
Three turns of the staircase later, a door opened on to them, blocking the stairs completely. A bowman stepped out, whistling a tune, he shut the door and for a moment did not see Edgar and his compatriots. He wrangled his keys and then began to shout. Edgar lunged, piercing the man’s throat with his sword. The scream died in a gurgle, the keys clattered on the stone stairs. Edgar caught the dead man and dragged him inside the room. There was a ladder up to his balcony and only enough space for the body to sit propped up against the wall. ‘That means the replacements are here, we either hide or hurry.’ There was no room to hide in there. Edgar closed and locked the door, he looped the large iron ring through his belt.
‘Hurry,’ Laurence said.
The others nodded in turn.
Edgar scarpered up the steps two at a time, sword out ahead of him. Torches flickered past his right eye in a pulsing sequence, counting their assent, counting down to him finding his son. Vigour filled his veins as he raced up the Tower of the Maiden, in all his time in the cave he’d never felt so alive, so enamoured with life. The cave had never been home, not really, it had merely been a place to lay his head while the world rotated around him. The first years he’d hoped of a chance of returning to the old ways but no lord or peasant rose their standard for the dead king, why would they? Everyone believed he was dead, his sons along with him. But he wasn’t dead, yet the hesitation to reveal himself had cost him everything. Hesitation. A mere quibble over remaining hidden or stepping out into the open, perhaps some would have called him an imposter but many… many would have sallied forth. Edgar knew that now, little good it did him. His son was the true king, revealing himself at sixteen when he could assume the throne without a regent was wise, though his protection was clearly lacking. Edgar could, at least, give Edward a second chance.
‘Halt!’ a booming voice chiselled across the stone. ‘In the name of the Council of Ralthar you are under arrest!’
Edgar had no intention of being arrested, captured, kidnapped, or anything of the sort. To do so would mean being found out and he knew what the rooms of the Tower of the Maiden held, what portents of pain waited within the cold, tempestuous stone.
A bowman barrelled down towards them, sword sharp and ready, while the clatter of chainmail sounded behind.
‘We’re surrounded,’ Garis crowed. He turned to face behind, taking the advantage the spiral staircase afforded him being higher up, so long as he didn’t face some left-handed bastard.
‘We push through, not far now,’ Edgar growled, slashing with backhanded swings up the staircase. The angle was awkward, the stairs without room for error, yet he kept climbing, stepping into his enemies swings and forcing him backwards with parries and jabs of his own. Edgar’s pauldrons had taken a battering, the cloak over them reduced to ribbons, yet he persevered. He had persevered for ten years in a damp and icy cave living the quiet life of a hermit with peasants and traders who relished nothing more than the quiet life. He’d learned that was what most wanted, a quiet life left alone to be enjoyed, but in that Tower with his life under threat every second he felt alive and knew his enemy felt fear. Edgar roared, parried a limp blow, and slit the bowman’s wrist. The sword dropped to the floor, the man followed with screams and tears as he clung to his life spurting out of him. He was done, it was only a matter of time. Edgar raced up, ‘Come on!’ knowing more lay ahead. Had his opponent been a Lancer the rescue might have ended then and there and he hoped for more bowman ahead.
Steel clashed with steel behind, ‘This fellow brought a pike!’ Garis shouted from the rear. ‘No hope of hitting him, is there a door or gate at the top of this Tower?’ his country accent ricocheted off the stone. Garis yelped in pain, ‘I’m fine, he just nicked my leg.’
Edgar remembered there had been one in his day, though he didn’t remember it being so high. He climbed and climbed, passing two trapdoors that led to lookouts. There were no bowmen to be found. Two turns of the spiral later he came to the door he remembered, a brazier shone with in, a great breath of heat billowed out with it. He hurried inside, him and Laurence getting behind the door. Themis appeared, and turned to fight. Garis limped in, blood sluicing from his leg, and Edgar and Laurence shoved the door closed. ‘Hold the door!’ Edgar grabbed Themis by the shoulder and shoved him against the iron banded oak. He Who Was fumbled with the keys until he found the right one and locked the door. The Lancer’s hammered on the other side, with fists and hilts, but to no avail.
‘How long will that hold?’ Laurence asked.
‘Until they find the key.’
‘So, not long,’ Laurence said. He faced the door holding his sword horizontally in both hands, ready to stab any who broke through.
Edgar turned towards the hallway that led to the windowless room. Three bowmen blocked his path, arrows nocked. There was a heavy twang. ‘Get down!’ Edgar yelled, diving to the stone. The arrows hissed overhead.
Laurence screamed. He crumpled to the ground, two arrows in his side, the third thunked against the door. Themis turned and like a wild horse bolted at the three men, shouting and yelling, swinging his sword left and right. One of the three tried to nock an arrow but he dropped it and had his jaw split in two for the mistake. The other two drew their swords, one slower than the other. The faster one parried Themis’s strike but the slow one couldn’t and received a gash across his thigh. He swore but fought on.
Edgar leapt to his feet, his knees aching from impacting the stone, and rushed the faster of the two bowmen while he tried to catch Themis across the arm. Steel clashed with steel and the four were stuck in a duel.
Garis threw himself against the locked door, slipping down till he sat on the floor with his bleeding leg outright. ‘I’ll hold them here. Laurence! Laurence, wake up!’ he slapped him across the buttocks with the flat of his sword.
Laurence stirred, but only to scream. The arrows were in deep, one between ribs, the other around his bowels. His breath ran short and raspy, ‘I’m done for, get to the Prince!’
‘We are, we will,’ Edgar growled and with a flash of strength knocked the faster bowmen’s sword clean out of his hand, he spun his sword and drove it through his throat, splitting his spine in the process. The slower bowman paled and in the split second of shock Themis sent him to his eternal slumber.
The pair rushed down the hall. Moonlight trickled down the chisel marks in the stone walls as it beamed in through a pair of arrow slits. There were no torches, no braziers, down there and no windows to the room.
The door was ajar.
Edgar pushed on it with his sword, the wood splintering, the hinges squealing like piglets. The stench of faeces and sweat wafted over him, but he did not falter. That smell was familiar to him. Steel glistened in the shard of moonlight that bore over Edgar’s shoulder. Speckles danced over a short sword with a weal of blood dribbling down the blade.
‘Halt!’ a grizzled voice called from the dark. ‘I have the Prince and the authority to slay him if I have to. Lay down your arms and no one has to die.’
‘Until our executions. Rather die standing than swinging,’ Edgar hissed and lobbed his sword at the voice. ‘Themis!’
The man grumbled. Flesh struck stone. Steel clanged off steel. Themis forged ahead, swinging madly into the dark. Sparks spat across the walls and floor, the chamber half the size of what Edgar remembered. He Who Was hurried forth to the man lying in a lump on the floor, a sack over his head. ‘Get up, Edward. Get up,’ Edgar looped his arms under his son’s and half-dragged, half-helped, him stand.
‘Who’s there?’ Edward pawed at Edgar with filthy hands. The voice was an uneven croak, frail and thin.
‘Your father,’ Edgar got Edward onto his feet and headed for the door.
‘My father’s dead,’ Edward struggled against Edgar’s grip but was too weak to resist. ‘Get off me!’
Edgar tore the cowl off Edward’s head. His son screamed and clamped his hands over his eyes. Scabs lined his cheeks and his lips were white and flaking. Themis and the Republican Lancer swung at each other in the dark, their swords flashing in the moonlight and dancing with sparks. ‘Edward! It is I.’
Edward ceased to struggle, his hands gradually falling from his eyes like scales. ‘Father? But how?’ The pair stumbled to the door.
‘Stay here,’ Edgar set his son against the wall outside the windowless room and dashed back in to aid Themis. Light glinted off the Lancer’s helm and Edgar tackled him to the ground, he grabbed the man’s sword hand and pummelled him across the face with his other. ‘Themis, my sword!’
Themis gasped at his Sire’s sudden appearance, sword frozen mid-swing. ‘Yes, Sire!’ he managed and knelt down to find his King’s weapon.
Edgar felt the Lancer kick and squirm beneath him, his sword clashing against the stone harmlessly. Edgar ripped the man’s helmet off and used it as a club. He roared and roared, hammering the man. Blood splashed with each strike and soon the man ceased to struggle. Edgar panted over the pulp that had been the soldier’s head, he dropped the helm and rolled onto his back, exhausted.
‘Sire, your sword,’ Themis held it to him hilt first.
‘Thank you, Themis,’ Edgar flashed a bloody grin between heavy breaths. ‘If only I had loyal men like yourself all those years ago…’ Themis held his hand out for his King and aided him to standing. The pair joined Edward, shivering in the hall. The Prince was all wounds and half-healed scabs, he picked at the crystallised blood under his nails, hunched over. ‘Edward.’
The Prince flinched, ‘Father? Your voice… I know it but… it can’t be, mother said you were executed.’
‘A fake, a look-a-like. I thought you and your mother were dead too, until a few days ago.’
‘Mother passed away, a few years now. Miracle she lasted that long,’ Prince Edward was wan, his eyes bloodshot.
‘We should leave, Sire,’ Themis instructed. The locked door at the top of the stairs thudded and banged. ‘Garis, Laurence, we’re going.’ Garis lay against the door, bouncing forward with each hammering. The lock was broken. Laurence lay, unmoving. ‘Laurence?’ There was no response.
‘I can’t go either, Themis. I’m done,’ Garis lifted his leg from the puddle of blood. ‘If I could stand, which I can’t, I’d never make the climb.’ Edward and Edgar reached the others. ‘Good to see you, Prince, and you, He Who Was. I’ll miss all this, much more exciting than being a trader,’ he laughed and fell into a coughing fit. The door bounced against him once more. At least three hands tried to wrestle the door open but Garis launched himself backwards, breaking their fingers. ‘Get out of here.’
‘How?’
‘We go up,’ Themis pulled on a hatch overhead, a rope ladder unfurling on his head. ‘Come on.’
‘The ratways,’ Edgar remembered. ‘How’d I forget?’
‘I assume you never used them, Sire,’ Themis clambered up the ladder, the rope swaying with each rung he passed. ‘Your Grace,’ an expectant hand awaited.
Edgar sent Edward up first, ‘Go. Hurry.’ The Prince climbed, breathless by the second rung. ‘Go!’ Edgar yelled. The door swung against Garis once more, sending him over on his side. Three men rushed in, one jabbed his pike up at Prince Edward.
‘No, you don’t,’ Edgar swung high and wide, catching the shaft and slamming the forked head into the floor, chipping the stone. ‘Go, Edward!’ he yelled. His son only half-way up to Themis’s outstretched hand.
‘Traitor!’ Garis cried and shoved his sword up the backside of the pike wielding Lancer. The soldier stood bolt upright, screaming eyes wide in shock he fell backwards, crashing into his comrades. ‘Go, Sire!’ Garis slumped over, his chin splashing in his own blood. ‘Go,’ his last word was air.
Edgar pushed Edward up the ladder so Themis could drag him the rest of the way. Edgar leapt up the rungs two at a time, the ropes swinging more than hanged man’s noose. A biting pain cut under his ribs. His foot slipped and he swayed one-handed from the ladder. ‘Get to safety!’ Edgar let go of the ladder.
‘Father!’ Edward yelped from the trapdoor above. Themis dragged him away, cutting the ladder and pulling up the door behind him. The ladder fell in a heap on the stone.
Edgar lay on his back, a short sword buried up to the hilt in his ribs. Each breath sent a shiver down his spin. ‘You bastards,’ Edgar swung wide arcs at the seven Lancer’s surrounding him. Steel clattered against steel but each one was weaker than the last. The seven surrounded him, sword tips closing in. He Who Was felt a surge of strength, lifted his sword to his throat and cut deep. The Lancers rushed forth then, but it was too late. Edgar lay on his back, seeing his son escape into the night, rallying banners to his cause, his eyes dimmed. The son would reclaim what the father lost. Justice demanded it. Fate demanded it.
Thank you for reading, without you this wouldn’t be possible.
I have missed the word count requirements for prompt, it is unfortunate but I have, and still am, on holiday which has made finding writing time a little difficult. I hope you have enjoyed this two parter and do check out the prompt if you interested, the deadline is July 15th. Happy writing and reading!
Tally ho, we are off to save the prince.
Have fun storming the castle
Parents, right?