Saga of the Old City

Chapter 21

A light shone in the distance, growing brighter as it came nearer. Then a loud rasping split the still, dark air, followed by the groaning creak of rusty metal grating on rusty metal. Torchlight flooded into the cell through the partially opened door and seemed, to the prisoner within its radiance, as bright as noonday sun. Gord shuffled forward to the full extent of the chain binding his left leg to the hasp set in the granite wall farthest from the door, shielding his eyes from the brightness, but eager to get the scant rations promised by this event.

Each day was the same for him, consisting of darkness infested by rodents, insects, and arachnids, broken only by this event-the doling out of a pannikin of water and a bit of food dished into his wooden bowl. This time he received a soupy mixture of vegetable peels and some unidentified stuff. Gord didn’t worry about the ingredients at all, accepting the stuff and swallowing it down quickly. A small piece of hard, black bread was included in his ration, but this he intended to save for later.

The heavy door was slammed shut and the bolt once again shot home with the familiar rasping bang. The torchlight receded, and soon Gord was in total blackness again. He picked up the piece of bread for safekeeping, sat back and, as per his routine, allowed his system to begin digesting the food he had eaten. Soon he would begin his silent exercises, and then came the game of bread and rats. Sometimes the rats won, and carried off their feast, but usually an incautious rodent provided Gord with the protein he needed to stay alive and reasonably healthy in this dungeon.

How he had come to be in this place was something Gord could scarcely believe and understand, no matter how many times he turned it over in his mind….

When they had arrived in the outer bailey of Blemu Castle, Evaleigh had been whisked off by the seneschal, with a covey of twittering ladies-in-waiting and maids fluttering after. Gord was taken to a small waiting room of some sort, while grooms led their sweating horses to the stableyard for care and stalling. A servant brought him a flagon of wine and some tidbits for his refreshment during his wait, and Gord settled back and thought about the speech he would give before Count Blemu when the time came for his audience.

After a dozen such mental rehearsals, however, Gord began to wonder was going on. It could have taken an hour for Evaleigh to ready herself to greet her father, and another hour to relate to him the events of her kidnapping, imprisonment, and rescue. But now the purple of twilight was showing through the arrow slit that pierced the wall of the antechamber in which he was cooling his heels, and two hours had dragged into more than twice that length.

Just as Gord was getting up to venture forth to see if he had somehow been forgotten in the excitement of Evaleigh’s return, the door to the room flew open, and armed soldiers filled the opening. An officer of the guard called him forth by name, stating that Gord was to come with him and receive his reward for his part in Lady Evaleigh’s rescue. Gord was somewhat surprised at the stern and official manner of these men-at-arms, but then he knew nothing of nobility and their ways, save what little he had learned through Evaleigh, so he shrugged to himself and complied without question.

The officer and his six soldiers took him to yet another room, somewhere in the interior of the great castle, and there he was ordered to divest himself of weapons. When Gord hesitated, swordpoints pressed against him from behind, and the officer laughed at the consternation Gord evidenced.

“That you are a baseborn thief and masterless villain, our lord knows well. We were warned that you are dangerous with sword and dag, fellow, so this ploy was simply to disarm you without harm to any of His Noble Grace’s loyal guardsmen.”

Gord couldn’t believe his ears. He tried to convince himself that this was not actually happening to him, but was merely another of the fretful dreams that had plagued him of late. “You are going to be in trouble, my good man, when this stupid error is set right,” he said. “I think you should speak with Lady Evaleigh immediately, and save yourself and your fellows further embarrassment.”

“Her Ladyship, knave, was with Count Blemu when he gave the order for your arrest,” the officer sneered.

This statement left Gord dumbfounded, and he allowed himself to be stripped of his weapons, searched, and taken down to the castle’s depths without resistance or further word. There the soldiers turned him over to the warden of the dungeon, and a gaoler thrust him into the small cell he occupied now, manacling him to the back wall as further precaution before locking the iron-bound cell door.

At first, Gord had expected Evaleigh to appear and free him from this imprisonment. Surely, he told himself, this was a terrible mistake. But the days plodded past, one after another, slowly and heavily, without such intercession., Evaleigh did in fact send a message to him after a few days-reassurance that she would soon do something to help him, passed on to Gord in a whisper by one of the servants who brought him his pitiful daily ration of food.

There were a few more such meager reassurances during the following days, and Gord benefited from extra scraps of food sent by the girl to comfort and nourish her confined rescuer and former lover, but nothing else was forthcoming.

After a month or so, even these deliveries stopped, and Gord stopped keeping careful track of days.

In the early stages of his imprisonment, he had allowed himself to languish in depression, not even thinking about trying to escape-though he possessed the means to do so. He simply sat, wasting away mentally and physically in the damp and darkness of the dungeon cell, waiting gloomily for Evaleigh to make good on her promises to help him.

Then, when he realized that the messages from Evaleigh had stopped, Gord’s mood changed abruptly. He resolved to find a way to revenge himself on both Count Blemu and his daughter for this cruel ingratitude.

The guards had searched him thoroughly, but had not thought to make him change his clothes-and it was virtually impossible for a guard to find all of the small tools a thief could conceal about his person. Gord reached inside his boot, pulled forth a length of wire, and quickly had the lock of the leg iron open. Being free of the shackle gave Gord the freedom he needed to commence a regimen of exercise. This he did, always replacing it around his ankle afterward so that no one would suspect what he was up to.

It was impossible for him, however, to open the cell door immediately, for the portal was secured on the outside by a heavy iron bar that dropped down in its locked position and prevented any prisoner from working it back. To move it, the flat bar had to be first lifted from outside and then drawn back-or so the theory went.

When not building his muscles and practicing his acrobatics and similar skills, Gord worked patiently at the wooden door, slowly scratching out an elongated rectangle with the wire he used to pick the manacle’s simple lock. Eventually, he worked a piece of wood out in a long, thick splinter, giving him access to the second layer of wood beneath.

He kept working at flaking away the wood behind the piece he had loosened, using dirt and spit to glue the splinter back in place each day before his food came. It would take a long time, but eventually he would have a hole through the door, a passage large enough to enable manipulation of the bolt. The cell door was three inches thick, but its own substance-the chunk he had worked free-would provide him the tool he needed to lift the bar, and the stiff wire would then push back the metal bolt. Gord would eventually be free of the cell-of this he was sure.

Had Evaleigh pleaded with her father to spare Gord? Recalling how they felt about each other, Gord could not help but think that she had. It was certainly Count Blemu’s knowledge of their intimacy that had caused him to react as he did. Why Evaleigh had told her father about this, or under what circumstances, he could not imagine. That she had told her father too much about Gord was certain, and for this Gord blamed himself. He should not have spoken so freely to Evaleigh about his past, and he should have carefully coached her on what to tell her father about the rescue and journey.

Thoughts such as these, giving Evaleigh the benefit of the doubt, made Gord feel good about himself and provided him some comfort, but did not lessen his desire for evening the score. What became of her promise of undying love? Her pledge of reward for her safe return to her home? And certainly the “gratitude” of Count Blemu was another score to be settled-with interest! Gord came to grips, in a fashion, with the realization that there had never been real hope for him and Evaleigh, although he still thought that some elevation of his station, followed by a test of some sort, should have been allowed him. Success in this test should have been the measure of his actual worth, rather than judging him by artificial standards based on the perceived value of inherited rank that was so prized by these aristocrats. Well, Gord intended to show them the merit of his lowborn station!

More of the long days passed, and Gord finally completed the preparations necessary for his escape. The hole in the door was nearly through to the other side. Between periods of scratching away on the door, Gord had also worked patiently with the wire to pry loose the metal hasp that fastened his leg chain to the stone wall. Now all was in readiness, and he would put his plan into action immediately. Many more days of this confinement would certainly drive him crazy, despite the routine of exercise and work to which he had dedicated himself.

On the eve of his escape attempt, he forced himself to rest for a long time, desiring to be as alert as he could be when the time came. His fitful slumber was interrupted by the arrival of his daily meal, which he knew from experience was the only time anyone would visit him until the following day-and by then, he expected to be long gone. He ate every last bit of the food, drank the water, and went to work.

First, the chain was freed from the wall. The hasp he tucked away in his filthy rags of clothing, for it might be useful for something later. The chain and manacle would be his only weapon, but a deadly one, for the heavy cuff on the end of the long series of iron links would act much as any flail-head. For the last time, he pried up the splinter of wood that concealed the hole he had created, and the final portion of his escape work commenced. Soon this vile cell would hold him captive no longer!

Gord wished fervently that he had been able to make the opening in the door larger, for the iron staple from the wall would have broken through the remaining quarter-inch or so of wood with rapid ease. But he had not dared to make a hole that large, for fear of the place being spotted by his gaolers. Breaking through this last thin barrier would take an hour or more to achieve with the wire, but what had to be, was. Gord bent to the task with diligence and high spirits, rubbing the wire’s point back and forth, up and down, slowly scoring the perimeter of the opening so that eventually he would simply have to push and the plug would pop out against the bolt. Then the splinter, used as a lever, would press the bar down, and the wire would work the bar back from its fast position. Occasionally he had to stop the cutting motions and resharpen the wire tip on the stone next to him, but he didn’t mind.

Perhaps the lord of this place had wished to execute him, Gord speculated as he worked. That was possible, considering his long incarceration: What purpose would the count have had for keeping him here for this much time? Probably, then, Evaleigh did assist him-persuading her father to spare Gord an immediate death in favor of a slow one, rotting for years in this dungeon.

Gord nodded to himself. Father and daughter both were responsible for this wretched situation, although the former far more than the latter. Gord felt a pang still when he thought of Evaleigh’s breathtaking loveliness and their love for each other-or, more accurately, his love and whatever passed for that emotion in her. No… he was being bitter. He had been in love with her, and she had loved him, too. Gord could not force himself to hate her; he reserved that emotion for His Noble Grace Dunstan, Count of Blemu, Lord of Knurl.

The strength of that hate acted upon his muscles, and without realizing it Gord pressed harder as he scored the tough oaken fibers. The force cracked the last bit of wood free on one side, and the sudden giving way surprised the young man. “Damn!” he muttered to himself, almost losing his grip on the wire. He pushed against the loose side with the tip of the wire, and a small piece of wood broke free and dropped away.

The tiny sound of the sliver hitting the flagstone outside his cell brought him joy. He worked feverishly to splinter away the remainder of the plug. Dim light filtered through the opening, showing the iron bolt that held the door shut.

“Now I’ve got you, you bastard!” he exclaimed under his breath. “Come on now, darling, you can do it!” Freedom was just inches away!

The splinter from the door and the wire soon did their duty. It was difficult to manipulate both through the small hole, but Gord was dexterous and nimble of finger, as suited one of his profession. The bolt moved away, little by little, and when it passed from his view off to the side of the hole, Gord brought the wire back inside and carefully bent the end of it at a right angle. Using the splinter for added leverage, he pushed sideways to force the tip of the wire against the end of the bar. Then the bolt moved another inch or so, and Gord knew he had succeeded.

Being careful to remain calm despite his exhilaration, he took time to stand up and spend a couple of minutes stretching and flexing to loosen his strained and tense muscles. Then he pushed gently on the door. It groaned on its hinges and swung outward an inch or so.

“Quiet!” he hissed to the protesting metal. “Do you wish to warn those dirty buggers before I have a chance for revenge?”

But he knew the noise of the hinges could not be helped. Gord shoved the heavy portal open a full foot, quickly, and slid between it and the jamb with equal haste. After looking left and right, peering with squinting eyes into a dimly illuminated passage that seemed to his aching pupils to radiate brightness, Gord ventured forth. No guard had heard the noise, no gaoler was hastening to investigate!

He closed the cell door, shot the bar silently, and scuffed the bits of wood into the shadows; no sense in alerting any passerby to his absence. The right path seemed to lead off to other portions of this subterranean complex, but the route to the left meant freedom. This was the direction he heard his gaolers come from, and in the light given off by a torch in a holder far down the corridor, he could see a door that he hoped would lead to a stairway. Chain held at the ready, Gord crept with utmost stealth toward the light.

As he neared the end of the passage, he heard voices coming from behind the partly opened door of a chamber off to the side. This, he supposed, was the place in which the dungeon warden and possibly a gaoler kept their post. They only did their duty, the escaping thief thought to himself, but that meant nothing to him. Gord thought their jobs lowly and disgusting, and if he could he would slay both without qualm or hint of mercy.

By this time Gord could see very well in the brownish illumination, and before him were the men who stood between him and escape to the world above. He might be able to slip past the chamber and get to the other doorway, only a few paces farther away, without being noticed by them, but with their garments and weapons, he would have a better chance to slip out of the castle-unless he could find the count quickly and settle that matter first! Otherwise, Gord would make for Knurl, gather resources, and work out a sure plan….

Enough thought-it was time for action! Chain ready at his side, he crept up to the doorway leading into the small room where warden and gaoler were sitting and talking idly. By peering slightly around the edge of the portal, he could see the warden in a chair no more than three feet from the door, facing toward the interior of the room. He had them by surprise and would kill them now!

Gord raised the chain over his head. Just as he was about to leap into the place and smash his makeshift weapon upon the unsuspecting head of the warden, the door leading to the castle above was flung open, and four men ran through. “Stop on your life!” one shouted as he saw what was about to transpire. The first soldier through the door was upon Gord an instant later, and used his halberd to intercept the chain.

Gord was caught, and he knew it. He turned to stare defiance at these men who had thwarted his escape-and looked full into both of Gellor’s laughing eyes!