Thick as Thieves (15 page)

“Shout down to the yard! They gave us the slip but they’re still in the castle! Seal every exit!”

Only when the soldiers had moved out, their footsteps retreating, did Vorgell begin to breathe easily again. He relaxed his grip on the woman, but kept his arm tight about her body. He didn’t quite trust the soldiers not to pull a trick and be waiting for them to show themselves. Best was to stay hidden a little longer. Besides, she felt good with her curves all soft and warm and molding to his body. His cock stiffened to announce its interest.

The woman squirmed. “Goddess!” she complained. “Is every man born a rutting pig?”

“I can’t help it.” Vorgell held her curvy body tighter, and that wasn’t exactly helping. “I’m afflicted!”

“In the head. Let me go!”

He pressed her harder against the wall. His size practically obliterated hers, and his hard torso flattened her soft one as he lowered his head again to her ear. “Stop now or I will render you senseless. And if that happens, I can’t promise my cock won’t get the better of me.” She grew quiet again, and he eased his weight.

He might not be able to control himself much longer whatever state she was in. Even concentrating on the danger didn’t help much. Few things aroused him so much as the prospect of a fight.

For a long while, he remained as still as a stone. At last he eased away from the wall, though he continued to keep the woman against his body so the cloak would cover them both. What he longed for most was a weapon.

“Do you know your way around this castle?” Her voice was barely a whisper.

“No.” They had walked several steps along the corridor. So far he had neither seen nor heard signs of soldiers standing surveillance.

“Well, I do. This way.”

It wasn’t easy following her lead. Vorgell kept his head up and senses tuned to his surroundings while taking care to also walk as quietly as he could. Her heat and delicate scent were driving him to thoughts that had nothing to do with escape. It was a wonder she could ignore his erection constantly jabbing her ribs.

They followed the curve of the corridor and halted. Two soldiers stood guard at the way out. One rifled through some cards, while the other simply looked bored. The woman tugged on his jerkin, and Vorgell sidled along with her over to one of the many plinths lining the corridor. He had noted the collection of military helms, though why they would want one now….

“Can you throw this one? Away from us?”

“Of course.”

It was a good plan. The helm was large, made of iron, and was as hollow as a bell. After making sure neither soldier was looking in their direction, Vorgell lifted the helm and threw it as far as he could back the way they had come. He and the girl ducked under the cloak again and pressed to the wall before the helm landed with a crash. The headgear clattered an alarm as it rolled down the hall. The soldiers snapped to alert and dashed into the corridor.

“Who’s there!”

As soon as the men had run past them, Vorgell stumbled forward as his companion grabbed a fistful of his clothing and pulled him along with her. Together they scuttled, still wrapped in the cloak, into the hallway leading from the tower to the main keep. He recognized it by its ribs of oaken beams and cruder, flagstone floor. Not even an hour ago, Madd had silenced a guardian ward in this very spot.

A pang shot through him, followed by panic. He couldn’t leave the tower, not this way… he had to find Madd. Every sinew in his body ordered him to put aside running for his own life and run in search of his friend. Madd had been struck and might be hurt, and he’d been surrounded by soldiers. They had shouted something. Something about the baron. If the baron had him, Madd’s life was in more danger than his own. Only the woman dragging him with her toward the end of the hallway prevented him from turning back.

“Here!” she ordered, pulling him this time around a corner and into a chamber. Releasing his tunic and freeing herself from the folds of the cloak, she darted back and pushed at the sturdy door in such a way it closed silently, shutting them in a dark room with only a few threads of filtered light. The shadows held piles of discarded torches and a cabinet heavy with bolts of cloth.

Vorgell let the cloak fall completely open and pushed back the hood to show his face. He and the gray-cloaked woman scrutinized each other for the first time. Vorgell had clasped less comely females. This one was short and round, though wearing men’s clothing robbed her figure of the usual charms. Even so, she had pretty eyes.

“You’re big, but at least you look honest,” she said. “Here, help me.” He grabbed the edge of a heavy table against one wall and lifted when she did, unlatching some mechanism in the floor to which it was nailed. Table and floor alike rose and pivoted to reveal a passage beneath. She eyed his big body dubiously. “The way is narrow, but it leads to safety.”

“I’ll fit,” he assured her. “But my friend—”

“They took that man away already. I saw. You can’t help him if you get caught too.”

Begrudging her that, he entered the passage first, though he little trusted the pitch black within. At least there was still light from above to see by. Stone walls crowded close on every side. A tiny landing gave way to steps and blackness. As softly as a cat, the woman dropped down to join him. He saw her hand flick toward the stair and heard her murmur a word. A faint greenish light spilled from step to step downward into the belly of the castle.

A witch, then. Gurgh, it seemed, had a fair lot of the breed.

He watched her yank on a wooden lever. The table slid back into place with a soft, mechanical sigh, and light from overhead vanished, reducing them both to shadows.

“What’s your name?” Still mindful of soldiers, Vorgell kept his voice low.

“Reannry,” she said, slipping past him down the dimly lit stairs. He had no choice but to follow after, though she stayed well ahead. The steps themselves were tiny and treacherous, made for smaller feet than his, and the passage itself might as well have been built by a mouse for all the space it gave him. Though he hunched over, his head still barely cleared the corridor’s braces. He minced and bobbed his way after her, afraid to lose his way.

The steps ended in an only slightly wider corridor that was just as low-ceilinged and dank. Vorgell did not doubt they traveled within the castle’s stout foundations and wondered at the foresight of the builders to have provided a secret means of escape. It stood to reason. Many a Scur lodge had holes through which a man might escape his assassins. How much more might a person of rank in this society have occasion to hide or flee?

“Here,” Reannry said. She led him into a broader space that at last provided room enough for Vorgell to stand upright. He did so, groaning relief as his spine unkinked. The place smelled of mold and tombs. The same green light as had filled the passage illumed a low bed and a chair, with just one table holding a few small pots. When Reannry lit the tallow in one of the pots to provide soft yellow light, the chamber looked only a little better.

“Were men to live here, they would soon walk on four legs,” he complained, stretching until he’d relaxed another kink.

“Even then, you would be too tall.” Reannry hung the pouch she carried onto a hook then perched on the edge of the wooden chair and left him the bed. It creaked as Vorgell settled his ass onto a sagging mattress of piled blankets. “Now tell me your name.”

“Vorgell of Scur.” It was a good name, and he saw no need to conceal it from her.

“The icy steppes of Scur are far from Gurgh and its wizards.”

“Not far enough,” he said. Sitting here felt wrong while Madd was elsewhere and in trouble.

Reannry tightened her jaw. “Your friend can’t be helped, but I can get you out of the castle. After dark. There’s something I still need to do.”

“So do I.”

They stared at each other. She knew what he meant.

“What did you steal from the locked room?” he asked. If she had the basilisk egg, his task would be that much easier.

“Nothing. I wasn’t there to steal. I was trying to get
out
.” She shook back her dark hair. “The locked room is a vault and it can be entered from the baron’s quarters by a secret way. I was up there and was about to be discovered. I had to find a way out—”

“You were in the baron’s chamber?” This news could prove useful, if only because he now knew the baron’s rooms were in the tower. Though why this woman should have been in that chamber to begin with….

She lifted her head, pinning him with sad eyes. “I can’t find my sister. Flemgu’s wife. She sent a message about being in trouble and I came to find her… but she wasn’t in her room. I need to keep looking.”

“The baron’s wife is a witch?”

“She’s my sister!” Reannry’s eyes narrowed, warning him which information was more important.

Madd had mentioned the baron’s wife and feeling kindly toward her. Vorgell resolved to do no less. “Are you certain she’s here? This morning, when the baron and his company rode out, there was a woman riding with him. A woman and some wizards.”

The color fled her cheeks. “Was the woman his wife, the Lady Gillja?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “My friend said she was his lady. But we needed to move quickly to enter the castle, and—”

“I must be sure! If she was taken by wizards—”

“I know only what my friend told me. I will help you find her,” he offered. “That is, after I rescue my friend. We were trying to get into the vault when you ran him over leaving it. The soldiers took him.”

“Yes. And I told you we can’t help him. Help me find my sister, and—”

Vorgell rose from the bed. His safety here was not getting anything done. “That can wait. Your sister is alive and with her husband or men who answer to him. Even if she is a witch, why would they want to kill her?” From what he knew, bounties were given only for witches taken alive. “Madd is in more danger. The baron will take his life.”

Reannry’s pale face sharpened, and her dark eyes narrowed. “Madd? You mean Maddog Moondark? You’re in league with the baron’s little whore?”

Vorgell bent over her so quickly she nearly slipped from the chair. “Madd is not little! He’s bigger than you. And he is not a whore!”

“Do you even
know
him?” She spit out the words as if they left a bad taste on her tongue. “You have a cloak of shadows, so I’ll assume someone spilled the news he’s witchkin. But he’s a useless witch. He refused to enter a Circle or obey the old mothers. Then he fled to the city where he could suck other men for magic! And after he got in trouble there, and his mother lost her life looking for him, he ends up in the baron’s bed—”

“Not by choice!” Vorgell curled his fingers into his palm. Witch or not, this woman begged to be shaken, and that went against his rearing. “Baron Flemgu took him by force, magicked a love collar around his neck. Madd’s fought him every step of the way. We came here to find the key to his collar, so he could be rid of the thing—and the baron with it.” He remembered still the hot-eyed, angry young man he’d first encountered in the baron’s tower, hiding his hated collar with a cloak and plotting escape. Madd’s surname, Moondark, strangely suited his brooding, raven-haired friend. Vorgell tucked the name up alongside everything else he knew. He couldn’t even think right now about the last part of what Reannry had said, about Madd’s mother. “Why do you and other witch women dislike Madd so much? Do you believe any scrap of filth?”

“Dislike? He’s not even worth that.” Reannry sounded disgusted. “He was born of an evil act, and his mother never named his father line. She tried to do right but he spat on us all when he went to the city. Wizards used him to catch her. And then later when the baron came to the old witch’s cottage where he was hiding, that coward threw himself at Flemgu and begged to be spared instead of protecting his grandmother. I understand being scared. I don’t understand that.” She tugged at her belt before looking Vorgell in the eye. “I’m not going to help you save him. Do that yourself, if you can. I have to find my sister.”

“You owe it to him.” He surprised himself, speaking the words. “You owe it to both of us. If you hadn’t made the chamber scream—”

“It was a trap. If I hadn’t triggered it, he would have.”

“Maybe not. Madd isn’t as unskilled as you think. He waited until the baron was gone and the wizards with him. He was breaking the wards.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Wizard wards require too much magic for even a Circle of witches to break them—much less one roach-eating male.”

Maybe so, but Reannry didn’t know Madd had access to more magic than most. Vorgell had already concluded it was best not to let her know his secret. He had only to bring Ibeena—or the witch thief Tagard—to mind to have reason to hold his tongue. He didn’t know much at all about witchkin except what Madd and Tagard had told him, and Madd hadn’t exactly revealed a great deal. They’d shared more semen than secrets.

When he failed to answer, Reannry gave him a surly, sideways glance. “You say Flemgu forced a collar on him?”

“Yes. A
love
collar.” Was it possible she was yielding? Vorgell spoke quickly before she lost interest. “Madd said love had nothing to do with it. The baron hates witches. The collar is locked with a jewel like a big eye”—he pointed to the juncture of his collarbones—“here. It must be unlocked with the egg of a basilisk—”

“Cocks and turtles! A
basilisk
?”

“It goes back into the egg, Madd says, and the collar unlocks. But a witch named Ibeena wants us to bring the egg back to her as payment for this cloak.” He moved his hand to display the thing, though the cloak was of course invisible, as were the parts of his body it covered. What he displayed to her looked like an amputation.

With a frown, Reannry considered his information. “Ibeena must need a basilisk badly if she’s resorting to you and Maddog Moondark to get one for her.”

“Help me save Madd. You’re a witch, and you know the castle. In return, I promise to go with you into the city to help find your sister.”

“You mean if we survive.”

Vorgell grinned. “The shaman who read my afterbirth predicted that I would die an old man.”