The huge half-orc lurched for the door so fast that Lucas had trouble getting out of the way. He was forced to land on poor Hardcore, who actually let out a low moan for the first time in hours, confirming he wasn’t dead yet.
“Easy there buddy - we’ll get you out of here soon,” Lucas said, even though they had every intention of leaving the man behind.
Lucas turned to face the orc, and saw that contrary to the plan, the man was trying to rip the door off its hinges instead of bending up the bars where they were rusted through at the bottom for their dwarf friend to creep out of. Despite what he’d said earlier, he was just about to tell the asshole how to bend the damn bars when he actually managed to tear the door right off its hinges.
With a grunt and a sudden metallic pop, the thing came free, and just like that they were free. Well, not really free exactly, he corrected himself. They were free of their cell, but still locked in the tiny little dungeon. That part was something Lucas felt well-equipped to handle, though, at least he did until he saw what Hura'gh was up to.
“Hey! No! That’s not the plan,” Lucas hissed as loudly as he dared when he saw the half-orc testing the door on the far cell. “Hura'gh… let me get the key, and I’ll get his lordship out of there…”
The half-orc stopped, but he seemed disappointed to do so. “I just… feel so strong, he growled. Like it’s burning inside me…”
“Yeah, I hear ya buddy,” Lucas answered as he peeled himself off their unconscious cellmate, “but this is faster, and more importantly quieter. If the guards catch us on the way out, you can show them how strong you are as you rip their fucking heads off, alright?”
Lucas grabbed the key and unlocked the noble's cell before anything else could get fucked up. After that he looked to poor Hardcore passed back out on the ground.
With his helmet on, it looked like he was just asleep, and if you woke him up he’d be ready to throw down. Sadly, with that head wound, he probably wasn’t ever going to wake up again.
Lucas wanted to do something for the poor guy since he’d been so kind as to lend them his helmet, but it would take the whole vial of blue to give the man the painless overdose he deserved.
Sadly, even he still had that in his things upstairs, he wasn’t going to be giving it away. It was Lucas’s last bit of operating capital, and if he was going to be able to rebuild in some other city, he was going to need to give a way a couple free samples to the right sort of people to get the operating capital he needed to set up again.
“Rest in peace, man,” he told the thrashing body as he followed Kar’gandin Hura'gh out the door of their tiny cellblock. It was there he faced a dilemma. The plan said he should just go upstairs and get away as fast as possible.
That was harder to do when he could hear the sound of someone screaming down the hall, though. Right now some asshole was going to town and getting his rocks off looking for a truth he was never going to find.
Even from here Lucas could hear the man in question trying to confess that he’d did it, but because the prisoner couldn’t tell him what was in the formula the confessor ignored him and continued.
“The recipe for a merciful death, is that not fair?” the man asked in a tone that was so ingratiating that Lucas wanted to punch him from here.
He didn’t do that though. Instead, he paused for a moment wondering if this was about evidence, or about the crown trying to steal his shit. Was it possible the powers that be wanted to go into business for themselves with his forbidden recipe? Lucas had to admit that seemed unlikely, but he wasn’t about to dwell on it right now.
He couldn’t exactly ignore it either, though, so he turned to Hura'gh. “Hey man, I need you to do me a solid. Go kill that asshole to shut that screaming up while I get the door open, alright?”
“Why should we bother saving anyone else,” the half-orc asked with a look of contempt. “They didn’t help us out of our cell.”
“I don’t give a shit about saving them,” Lucas lied. “I just think a couple more dudes that are pissed off at getting carved up might be a good thing to have if the guards catch us out of our cell. I’d do it myself, but I don’t want you ripping the next door off it’s hinges too, capeesh?”
For a second the half-orc glowered at him, and Lucas was more than a little worried the man might just crush his skull, instead he turned and started down the hall.
Lucas saved the sigh of relief for later. Instead he made his way upstairs to check out their next move. At the top was the heavy oaken door that led to freedom, or at least the courtyard that was one step closer to freedom, as well as the locker where they’d dumped his shit.
He smiled at that and opened it up quickly, pushing the dwarven account books and the noble’s stuff to one side as he looked for his own belongings. He found his pouch after that but it felt a couple potions light. Attached to it was his belt, but the sheath was empty.
“Mother bitch!” he cursed softly as he went down to join everyone else and deliver the bad news. “Bad news guys. The dagger I’d planned on using to lift the bar that’s keeping us locked in isn’t with the rest of my shit.”
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“Well, of course it ain’t,” Kar’gandin laughed. “Ye think they’re in the habit of locking prisoners in with their weapons? That wee niche is just where they keep the evidence their pet questioner might want to see again. Everything else they steal or sell.”
Lucas cursed as he opened his pouch and realized the dwarf was right. His healing and his invisibility potion were both missing, but they’d left the vial of blue behind, and he wasn’t about to touch that. “So what do we do now,” Lucas asked.
Brew of Mana Intoxication (ultra pure) (5 doses): Euphoria 12, poison 3, intelligence -1, mana regeneration decreased by 200% for 1 hour.
“I could rip off one of these metal slats and—” Lucas volunteered. It was a terrible idea, but the dwarf interrupted him before he could finish it.
“Too loud, too thick, and much too slow,” the dwarf said as he walked up behind Lucas.
Without explanation, the dwarf picked up the thicker one of his ledgers, and just before Lucas was going to berate the little guy about how this wasn’t the time for math problems or recording debts, he ripped the leather spine off and revealed a very sharp, slender steel stiletto hidden in the binding.
“Just because they take everything obvious doesn’t mean there’s nothing left to take,” the dwarf said with a twinkle in his eye. Then, while Lucas kept a watch on the little barred window and made sure the coast was clear, Kar’gandin got to work. The dwarf slid his blade between the door and its worn frame as he sought the leverage to lift the bar on the other side.
He ignored that for a moment as he heard the tenor of the screams change downstairs. There were a few loud noises that were almost certainly their half-orc, and then there was only silence. Lucas figured he had a pretty good idea of what that meant, but chose to ignore and focus on the dwarf’s efforts, which were taking way too long as far as he was concerned.
“You sure that thing is strong enough?” Lucas whispered as he kept a wary eye out for any guard patrols. This time of night, the castle looked dead enough, and he could hear snoring coming from somewhere out there, but it was somewhere on the wall behind them where he couldn’t see it.
“I’m sure that if ye’ question the strength of dwarven-steel again, ye’ won’t live to regret it,” the dwarf said without missing a beat. “All things require patience, and all things done through a door of solid oak require a little more patience than usual…”
As the dwarf spoke, Lucas looked down, and he could see the thick wooden bar jiggling. The man was making progress, so it was hardly worth freaking out over. Still, he could feel his skin crawling with anxiety.
Hura'gh picked that moment to start tromping up the stairs behind them, and Lucas let himself be distracted by that for a moment. The man had picked up a heavy iron bar to use as a club and was spattered in blood, but the fact that he was alone told Lucas everything he needed to know about whether or not there were survivors.
That could have been me, he thought briefly before he pushed it from his mind and turned his gaze back outside. Negativity wasn’t going to do him any favors here. He needed to focus.
Freedom wasn’t on the other side of this doorway, after all. The courtyard was full of danger, just coiled up and waiting for them. It was every bit as deadly as the executioner's axe but a hell of a lot less gentle. They were committed now, though.
Even if they went meekly back to their cell, the guards were still likely to hack them to pieces come morning. No, we needed to get out and— as Lucas thought that the dwarf finally succeeded in prying out the timber, and it came out of the cross braces that held the door closed with a heavy double thunk.
In that moment, no one breathed, not even Hura'gh. It was only after several tense seconds, where the pounding of Lucas’s heart competed with the sound of the nearby guard’s gentle snoring, that he cautiously pushed the door open.
The creaking sound that it made shaved another few years of Lucas’s life, but a moment later, they were one step closer to freedom, and he stepped out into the moonlight. He found the guard closer than expected, only a few feet from the door, where he was sitting on a chair that leaned against the wall and shirking his duty.
Lucas didn’t blame him; the dude had probably had a hard day of beating up on defenseless prisoners and decided he needed a nap. He smirked at that as he gestured to those who were following him and raised a figure to his lips.
Before they could come up with a plan or he could tell them what he wanted to do next, the half-orc reached forward and slammed the guard’s helmetless head against the wall in a wet thud that left a red stain on the wall as the man slid down it to the ground.
“Hura'gh!” Lucas hissed. “My man. We need to be quiet. Let the man with the stiletto take this dude out.”
“That was quiet,” the half-orc grunted.
Lucas was forced to agree with that, at least in part. It was quiet for him. Certainly quieter than he’d feared, but Lucas still winced at the volume.
“Forget it,” the dwarf grunted, “What’s ye’r plan now? The drawbridge is up, the gate is down, and as soon as someone sounds the alarm, it’s over. I have a feelin’ that all ye’ have done is take us from the roasting pan to the oven.”
“Well, what if we took this guy’s armor?” Lucas said. “I could put this on, and then we could get another one for his lordship, and then with a little rope, we could escort you two out for a little late-night questioning. I’ll bet the guards would buy it.”
All of that was off the cuff, of course. He’d been planning for the four of them to make it to the top of the wall and then find a good spot to jump in the moat and pray the alligators were a myth, but this was better. Men jumping over the wall would start the clock on pursuers eager to chase them down, but if they could walk out without anyone even giving a shit, that was pretty much best case scenario.
No one disagreed with the plan, and they quickly stripped the corpse. Hura'gh helped Lucas don the heavy-scale mail jacket and skirt, and then he belted on the man’s sword and picked up the nasal helm that the man had been using as a footrest, and he was pretty much good to go.
“We’ll wait here, laddie,” Kar’gandin said with a smirk that told Lucas that he wasn’t the only one who thought he looked ridiculous in this uniform. “You find some poor bastard standing watch all by his lonesome and run him through. Try not to get blood on the uniform.”
Lucas was about to tell them that there was no way he was doing all that alone when Lord Parin said, “There’s no way he’s carrying back an arm full of armor without getting stares. We all need to go. Our alchemist can tell us when it looks safe.”
Lucas nodded at that. The viscount’s plan sounded better, but when he looked at Hura’gh, he saw the big man was starting to look a little faded. They were going to have to hurry, or their muscle was going to become a three-hundred-pound sack of potatoes.
“Alright,” he said, “Let’s do this.”