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53 - Easiest Thing In The World

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Theo

From the way he sold the whole plan, as if it would be the easiest thing in the world, I half expected Senesio to simply walk across the river channels. Right on top of the water like Lesous had in the old stories.

But he didn’t.

Senesio was full of himself, sure, but he was also full of stinking river water and covered in mud, like the rest of us, as we waded through yet another river channel. There’d been no way to keep my sword out of the water, which went against everything I’d been taught, but Sergeant Kyriakos had always said war was just a series of increasing compromises. Risking the loss of a fine sword to rust wasn’t my preference, but getting into the Bospurian camp in exchange wasn’t a bad trade. Stealing a skyship and getting out with our lives? Now that wasn’t even a compromise. Just a good deal.

Of course, there was still the issue of the prisoners. If they were Cyphite, it was our duty to free them. Take them with us. One thing at a time, though. First, we needed to get to the prisoners. But the Bospurians had picked a good position.

Assaulting the camp with ground troops would have been impossible. And as it was, sneaking in via crawling through river and mud was only working because of the still-standing thickets of brush. Looked like the Bospurians had begun clearing them, and when the work was done, there’d be no concealed approach to the camp. The work wasn’t done yet, though, which was why I was crawling through saw palmetto and a dozen other ancestors-cursed plants with more teeth and thorns than they had any right to. Made a hell of a racket, and hurt in a dozen different ways, but no one had raised an alarm yet, so that was good. Our second stroke of good fortune so far. The first had been the realization that the camp’s palisade didn’t span the river channels. Eventually the Bospurians would install river gates, no doubt, but they hadn’t yet, so we’d slipped right in.

“Here we are,” Senesio said as he crawled to a stop. We’d reached the edge of our present thicket of brush. “Let’s see what there is to be seen, hmm?” He gently pushed a branch aside and revealed a view of the camp that took up this island, the centermost of those the Bospurians were building on.

Aside from the frogs, croaking in the trees around us, the place was quiet. And still. The night sergeant should have had more guards on patrol. I’d have put him on latrine duty for a month if he’d been under my command.

Much of the camp before us was still tents, though they were erected in orderly rows, with dirt streets between them. At the very center of the river island, the first few buildings were just about built. One or two still needed finishing touches, but the rest were complete with, among them, what appeared to be the drink hall. Light from inside and countless shadows passing its windows left no room for doubt about its occupancy. The rest of the buildings were dark, though. Barracks, maybe. Or a command post. Impossible to say.

“Where do you think the prisoners will be kept?” Suni asked, crawling up beside me and peering into the camp. “We need to—”

A burst of light as the drink hall door flew open. I cupped a hand over Suni’s mouth and pulled the both of us down into the weeds.

But it was just a few drunken soldiers, laughing and roughhousing as they stumbled down the street. The door swung closed behind them and the camp fell dark again. I followed the retreating backs of the drunken men as long as I could, vision still adjusting back to the night’s darkness.

“This is insane,” Demetrias said from the back of our group. “I can see the skyships from here—we should just take one and get out of here. We’ll come back for the prisoners, but with the full might of the navy at our back.”

“Bit of a problem with that plan,” I said.

“Yeah, the part where we abandon Kamil and his expedition,” Suni growled. “Remember what Elpida said? No one gets left behind out here.”

“You’ve a point there, but that wasn’t the problem I was referring to.” I’d kept my eyes on the men who’d left the drink hall, and now I saw where they were headed. I directed everyone’s attention toward the nearest skyship, the Dreadbore. “We’ll have to find a way past them.”

The camp might have been mostly quiet and seemingly unguarded, but the skyship landing area was far from it. Tents were sprawled all around the Dreadbore and Needlethroat. Tents that the soldiers from the drink hall had retreated into. It seemed I’d found the barracks.

“Clever,” Maritza growled.

“If we try to sneak through and we’re spotted, the first guard to call out will wake near every soldier here.” That made getting onto a skyship to steal it just a bit more impossible than it’d already been.

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“We’ll need a distraction, then,” Senesio said, and from the tone of his voice I could tell he was already working on a plan.

“A fire, maybe?” I said. But it was hard enough to get anything to burn in this humidity. “We could sound a false alarm, I guess? But there’d be no way to guarantee enough soldiers would respond to it. No, we need something big. Something the entirety of the camp couldn’t ignore.”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. We still don’t know where the prisoners are,” Suni said, and crawled forward for a better view of the camp.

When we’d seen the prisoners earlier, from afar, they’d been working in a channel south of the skyships. I ran through a rough map in my mind, remembering everything I’d seen on the way in, just as Kyriakos had taught me.

“The channel the prisoners were working in earlier would be on the far side of the landed skyships. That way.” I gave a nod.

“So we find them.” And with that, Suni was in motion. She broke from the cover of the brush and sprinted the twenty paces to the edge of the street.

“Wait!” Maritza whispered, then cursed. “She’s getting reckless. Going to get us caught.”

“She’s right, though,” I said. “If we can save our people, it’s our responsibility to do so. Why we came out here in the first place.”

Maritza began to protest but I left her behind, jogged after Suni. Senesio was just behind me and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the others reluctantly follow.

I reached the edge of the road next to Suni and, despite the darkness, felt far too exposed. The only cover now were the rows and rows of tents and the few buildings at the center of them. But some cover was better than none. We moved as quickly and quietly as possible, creeping between the tents and wincing at every slight noise.

Some tents were silent, just supplies stacked within. Men snored from inside others. The ropes that held them up stretched out around each tent, staked into the ground and now, in the darkness, serving as all too effective tripwires.

“Watch your—” I tried to warn him but Demetrias wasn’t made for this sort of work. He stumbled right through one of the ropes, ripping the stake from the ground. The tent beside him half-collapsed, one side of it toppling down with a whoosh.

“Huh?” a voice grunted.

“Blasted tent came down again,” another replied, the canvas rustling as someone stood up inside it.

“Go, go, go!” I hissed, grabbing the stunned Demetrias and ushering him onward. I dragged him past the downed tent, into the next row, then turned and ran to the left. A few more steps, then a cut to the right, down into another row of tents. I finally came to a stop between two—these blissfully silent inside—and caught my breath.

Suni, Senesio, and Maritza had scattered in different directions, but as I took in our surroundings, they were already working their way over to us, keeping low as they crouch-ran between the tents.

The men who we’d awoken were talking loudly a couple rows over. Something about whose job it’d been to check the stakes before turning in. The good news was, they didn’t seem to suspect anything.

“Theo!” Suni’s whisper came from my left.

“What?” I turned to find she’d joined us, but she was facing away, pointing toward something. A group of still figures. Construction debris, I thought at first, but no. Not debris, people. Twenty or so of them, all gathered up together and sleeping in the open.

It was the prisoners. Sleeping in the dirt at the center of a clearing in between the tents. A thin fence had been erected around them, making it look like they were being held in a cattle pen.

“They’re Cyphite?” I asked, squinting into the darkness and trying to find anything identifying. Needed a closer look, though. And then I saw the guards. Coming our way.

Blast!

But wait. No, they weren’t headed toward us, but toward the tent Demetrias had knocked down. The men who’d been sleeping in it were arguing, now. Sounded angry.

For the moment, the pen was unguarded. A chance to get closer, then. Find out who was inside. Even as I thought it, Senesio broke from the tents closest to the pen, then was over the fence. He got right up to the edge of the sleeping figures, poked around a moment. A nudge woke up one of the prisoners. He whispered something in the woman’s ear, she whispered something back. After a few moments, he patted her shoulder and sprinted back out of the pen.

“Are they?” Suni asked, too loudly, as Senesio joined us.

He nodded. “They’re our people. Crew of the Panagia, or what’s left of them. And some survivors from the attack on Clearwater Outpost.”

“Not good.” I mean, it was good news, but it also added a whole new element to our escape. Stealing a skyship had been complicated enough.

“What are we going to do?” Maritza whispered. “How can we possibly get them and a skyship? There’s no way we can break them out and get to the airfield unnoticed. And if we take the ship first, well, that’s clearly not going to work.”

“Discuss later,” I said, using as few words as possible. The guards were coming back now, approaching the pen. The longer we stayed, the greater the risk. We could plot once we were safely hidden away, not crouching between tents praying no one woke up for a late-night piss.

“Is Kamil with them?” Suni’s eyes were wide with concern.

Senesio shook his head. “I regret there wasn’t time to ask.”

“We have to find out.” And then there was that look in Suni’s eye. A dangerous look. I’d seen it once prior, right before she’d charged the wendiguar. “I’m going back in.” She turned toward the pen but I grabbed her arm, held firm.

“The guards. You’ll be seen.”

“I can slip past. I have to.” She tried to pull free.

“Suni!” I hissed it, low, fast, and urgent. “You have to understand—”

Her face went slack, then her brow furrowed.

A shadow passed at the corner of my vision.

Someone had found us! I spun, ready to put my sword through their throat before they could call out, but they hadn’t seen us; had walked right past.

“Was that... ?” Suni stood, then peered around the edge of the tent. “It was!”

“Was what, damnit?” I cursed, pulling her back into the shadows.

“Kamil,” she breathed, then slipped my grip and darted off after him.