Prowlers in the Night: Part 1

We spent a period of around two weeks imprisoned. The mood was, as the reader might expect, grim. We didn’t worry about the possibility of severe punishment – we knew well we would be released as soon as things calmed down. But the question of what to do next loomed over us. None of us, at this moment, wished to continue working for the Treasure Hunters; we found the idea of going on further adventures with a completely new group of companions much too painful. Annabel contemplated returning to academia. I juggled the options of joining the military and starting a caravan company. But it was still much too early for any concrete and serious plans.

Both Gandor and I were recovering well. I fully recuperated a week after getting imprisoned. Gandor, meanwhile, had to abide by natural processes. It was when he became fully conscious, however, that I started really worrying for him. He was unable to come to terms with outliving his master, and I was afraid he might take some drastic measures. Fortunately, he never did. His behaviour did significantly change in other ways. For one, he started partaking in the wine we had at our disposal while imprisoned; while on the job as Rhombus’s bodyguard, he never drank. As a consequence, he became more talkative, and I finally got to learn more about his circumstances.

His father was a sailor who had been lost at sea when the boy was just three, and his mother was a long-time servant of the Duke of Tetrahentor and, later, Rhombus’s wet nurse. Young Gandor was thus left to fend for himself most of the time, and could look forward to a lifetime of street brawls and petty thievery.

One day, however, Gandor’s mother was killed in a botched assassination attempt on the Duke. Rhombus was in his early teens at the time and attached to his late wet nurse. He insisted on hiring her son, claiming it would only be fair to help the lad out, since his mother was a victim of the squabbling among nobility. The Duke vehemently opposed the idea initially, but he was always soft on his eldest child (and only son) and eventually relented. A group of his men found young Gandor drinking in a pub and dragged him off to the castle, where he was offered the job of Rhombus’s bodyguard. Knowing he was unlikely to get such an opportunity ever again, the young man eagerly accepted and remained a loyal servant ever since. It was thanks to Rhombus, he claimed, that he hadn’t been stabbed to death in an alley by now, and failing to protect his benefactor felt like betrayal to him. Regardless of the outcome of our impending trial, he intended to return to Castle Tetrahendron and put himself at the Duke’s mercy.

That trial, as I mentioned earlier, wasn’t meant to happen.

We were held on the third floor of a tower. There was a common space, from which the stairway could be accessed, and connected to it were three bedrooms. The bedrooms themselves weren’t locked; only the heavy wooden door of the common room was preventing us from leaving. All the windows in our accommodation were on the side of the palace’s inner courtyard, and covered in glass windows. This wasn’t a place where a common criminal would be held, but perhaps a hostage from an enemy state; it would do for a regular guest, too, if kept unlocked. No one expected we would run away, and we didn’t intend to, so security was kept to a bare minimum to keep up appearances.

I had trouble sleeping while in the tower. Mostly, I was plagued by nightmares, which tended to involve the evil entity dwelling below Adahuya. One time, as I woke up in the middle of the night, I noticed the sound of the door opening. To my knowledge, the guards didn’t make rounds at this time, so I got up and exited the room to investigate. Entering the common room, I noticed an unfamiliar figure, as tall as me, and heavily armored. In his hand was a bloody longsword.

“Who are you?” I asked, still not fully awake.

“Chevalier de Foix, they used to call me. They said I was the cream of French chivalry, but I am now nothing but a thrall to the evil wizard Arthacyros. You should be, if I am not mistaken, another one of his creations?”

“And what if I am?”

“You have been most fortunate that he abandoned you. Your luck has now run out, but until now at least, you kept your free will. I, on the other hand, am unable to defy the necromancer’s vile orders. It is one of my tasks today to capture you alive or kill you if that fails. For your own sake, I suggest you fight to the bitter end”.

“One of?” I asked, hoping to get more information out of him. He was, however, already lifting his sword, ready to attack. I was, meanwhile, unarmed and unarmored, facing an opponent who was likely to be as strong and fast as I was, and, given his background, at the very least a match for me in skill. The odds were stacked against me.

We began circling around the table that was in the middle of the room. This was the only way I could keep him at a distance while frantically coming up with a plan. Ideally, guards would notice the disturbance and intervene, or Annabel would wake up (Gandor still wasn’t fully healed and wouldn’t be of much help). But while help would be most appreciated, it was by no means guaranteed, and I couldn’t count on it while making my play.

The best idea I had was to circle around the room until I could dash towards the exit, then find some guards. My opponent was way too smart to allow that; however, he changed the direction of his movement as necessary to keep me away from the door. I needed a distraction to buy me a second or two. To that end, I kicked the table into the air, in the direction of my enemy, then turned and ran.

The knight sliced the small table in half with his sword, then grabbed one of the pieces with his left hand before it touched the ground and threw it at me. He hit me straight in the back, knocking me to the ground.

I was now backed into a corner, and the Chevalier was approaching me.

“I hope you understand I bear you no ill will, and can find it in yourself to forgive me. It is a terrible curse I was placed under, forced to do an evil man's bidding with my mind still clear”.

The racket I made ended up waking up Annabel, who rushed out of the room, preparing a quick wind spell, and launched it at the knight before he could kill or disable me. Given his heavy armor and the spell’s short casting time, it didn’t do more than briefly distract him. That bought me enough time for another desperate plan.

I leaped and tackled him before he could recover, pushing him towards the window. The glass cracked, and we both found ourselves in free fall. I knocked the Chevalier away from me, using that momentum to spin around and grab a windowsill, while he plummeted to the ground.

I found myself hanging on a lower floor. The wall was too smooth for me to climb back up, so I dropped from window to window until I found myself on solid ground. It was time to figure out what to do next.