Roran had no intention of staying around to find out for sure.
Hazy rays of newborn light streaked horizontally across the city, gilding the tops of the towers, the battlements, the cupolas, and the slanted roofs. The streets and alleyways were cloaked in shadows the color of tarnished silver, and the water in its stone-lined channel was dark and dismal and laced with streaks of blood. High above gleamed a lone wandering star, a furtive spark in the brightening blue mantle, where the sun’s growing radiance had obscured all of the other nighttime jewels.
Forward the Varden trotted, their leather boots scuffing against the cobblestone street.
Off in the distance, a cock crowed.
Roran led them through the warren of buildings toward the inner wall of the city, but not always choosing the most obvious or direct route, so as to reduce their chances of encountering someone in the streets. The lanes they followed were narrow and murky, and sometimes he had difficulty seeing where he was placing his feet.
Filth clotted the gutters of the streets. The stench filled him with loathing and made him wish for the open fields he was used to.
How can anyone bear to live in such conditions? he wondered. Even pigs won’t wallow in their own dirt.
Away from the curtain wall, the buildings changed to houses and shops: tall, crossbeamed, with whitewashed walls and wrought-iron fixtures upon the doors. Behind the shuttered windows, Roran sometimes heard the sound of voices, or the clatter of dishes, or the scrape of a chair being pulled across a wooden floor.
We’re running out of time, he thought. Another few minutes and the streets would be teeming with the denizens of Aroughs.
As if to fulfill his prediction, two men stepped out of an alleyway in front of the column of warriors. Both of the city dwellers carried yokes on their shoulders with buckets of fresh milk hanging off the ends.
The men stopped with surprise as they saw the Varden, the milk sloshing out of the buckets. Their eyes widened, and their mouths fell open in preparation of some exclamation.
Roran halted, as did the troop behind him. “If you scream, we’ll kill you,” he said in a soft, friendly voice.
The men shivered and inched away.
Roran stepped forward. “If you run, we’ll kill you.” Without taking his eyes off the two frightened men, he uttered Carn’s name and, when the magician arrived at his side, he said, “Put them to sleep for me, if you would.”
The magician quickly recited a phrase in the ancient language, ending with a word that sounded to Roran something like slytha. The two men collapsed bonelessly to the ground, their buckets tipping over as they struck the cobblestones. Milk sheeted down the lane, forming a delicate web of white veins as it settled into the grooves between the stones of the street.
“Pull them off to the side,” Roran said, “where they can’t be seen.”
As soon as his warriors had dragged the two unconscious men out of the way, he ordered the Varden forward once more, resuming their hurried march toward the inner wall.
Before they had gone more than a hundred feet, however, they turned a corner and ran headlong into a group of four soldiers.
This time Roran showed no mercy. He sprinted across the space that separated them and, while the soldiers were still trying to gather their wits, he buried the flat blade of his hammer into the base of the lead soldier’s neck. Likewise, Baldor cut down one of the other soldiers, swinging his sword with a strength few men could match, a strength born of years spent working at his father’s forge.
The last two soldiers squawked with alarm, turned, and ran.
An arrow shot past Roran’s shoulder from somewhere behind him and took one soldier in the back, knocking him to the ground. A moment later, Carn barked, “Jierda!” The neck of the final soldier broke with an audible snap, and he tumbled forward to lie motionless in the center of the street.
The soldier with the arrow in him began to scream: “The Varden are here! The Varden are here! Sound the alarm, the—”
Drawing his dagger, Roran ran over to the man and cut his throat. He wiped the blade clean on the man’s tunic, then stood and said, “Move out, now!”
As one, the Varden charged up the streets toward the inner wall of Aroughs.
When they were only a hundred feet away, Roran stopped in an alley behind a house and raised a hand, signaling his men to wait. Then he crept along the side of the house and peered around the corner at the portcullis set within the tall granite wall.
The gate was closed.
To the left of the gate, however, a small sally port stood wide open. Even as he watched, a soldier ran out through it and headed off toward the western edge of the city.
Roran cursed to himself as he stared at the sally port. He was not about to give up, not when they had made it this far, but their position was growing ever more precarious, and he had no doubt that they had only a few more minutes before curfew lifted and their presence became widely known.
He withdrew behind the side of the house and bowed his head as he thought furiously.
“Mandel,” he said, and snapped his fingers. “Delwin, Carn, and you three.” He pointed at a trio of fierce-looking warriors—older men who, by their very age, he knew must have a knack for winning battles. “Come with me. Baldor, you’re in charge of the rest. If we don’t make it back, get yourselves to safety. That’s an order.”
Baldor nodded, his expression grim.
With the six warriors he had selected, Roran circled the main thoroughfare that led to the gate until they reached the rubbish-strewn base of the outward-slanting wall, perhaps fifty feet from the portcullis and the open sally port.
A soldier was stationed on each of the two gate towers, but at the moment, neither was visible, and unless they stuck their heads over the edges of the battlements, they would not be able to see Roran and his companions approaching.
In a whisper, Roran said, “Once we’re through the door, you, you, and you”—he motioned at Carn, Delwin, and one of the other warriors—“make for the guardhouse on the other side fast as you can. We’ll take the near one. Do what you have to, but get that gate open. There may be only one wheel to turn, or we may have to work together to raise it, so don’t think you can go and die on me. Ready? … Now!”
Running as quietly as he could, Roran dashed along the wall and, with a quick turn, darted into the sally port.
Before him was a twenty-foot-long chamber that opened to a large square with a tiered fountain in the center. Men in fine clothes were hurrying back and forth across the square, many of them clutching scrolls.
Ignoring them, Roran turned to a closed door, which he unlatched by hand, restraining the urge to kick it open. Through the door was a dingy guardroom with a spiral staircase built into one wall.
He raced up the stairs and, after a single revolution, found himself in a low-ceilinged room, where five soldiers were smoking and playing dice at a table set next to a huge windlass wrapped with chains as thick as his arm.
“Greetings!” said Roran in a deep, commanding voice. “I have a most important message for you.”
The soldiers hesitated, then sprang to their feet, pushing back the benches they were sitting on. The wooden legs screeched as they dragged over the floor.
They were too late. Brief though it was, their indecision was all Roran needed to cross the distance between them before the soldiers could draw their weapons.