Kushiel's Chosen - Jacqueline Carey [176]
And yet I could not help myself. Hope, faint and tremulous, stirred in my heart. It strengthened my resolve and lent me new courage as I picked a path around the benighted fortress to gain the cliffside. There, at ground level, were the narrow, barred windows of the prison cells, peering out across the stony cliff toward the sea. A faint light emanated from them, but no sound. I knelt beside the first and looked inside.
It was empty. They were all empty, even mine, which I knew by the guano on the ground outside the window where I'd fed the seagulls. The light came from the corridor beyond the open cell doors, where I'd left the lantern. I stood up and moved away from the cell windows, into the deeper shadow of the fortress wall.
Asherat's wind was stronger here, moaning in my ears. The cliffside was deserted for now; there was nowhere to hide between the fortress and the cliff. I could feel the rock tremble under my bare feet from the impact of the waves. So Fabron was free, and they knew I had escaped.
Where were the other prisoners?
I stood still, straining my ears against the roaring wind. There, yes; toward the front, I could hear faint wind-whipped cries and the clash of arms. Slipping quickly past the low windows, I made my way forward.
I'd not gotten far before the battle came to me.
At whatever point the prisoners of La Dolorosa emerged, it is a safe bet that they caught the garrison in disarray. No one who served in that place but was wraith-haunted in the first place; it must have shocked them, this outpouring of eight gaunt, wild-haired apparitions, roused to a furor of madness that knew no fear.
It was a melee that spilled around the corner, full of confusion and panic. At least half the prisoners were armed, with short spears wrested from the first guards they'd encountered. I daresay the full garrison of La Dolorosa was no more than thirty or forty men at best, and only a handful had been left to ward the fortress proper.
Others had been sent to comb the island, and it was they who came at a run, torches streaming, illuminating the incredible scene. Knots of violence surrounded the prisoners, who fought with bared teeth and stolen weapons when they had them; bare hands and demented fury when they did not, giving ground Slowly. For all their superior numbers and armor, 'twas no easy task for the guards, encumbered with torches as they were; and darkness favored the prisoners with their night-accustomed eyes.
Still, it could not last. As more and more guards came, the prisoners retreated further. Tito's massive figure appeared, crashing into the melee. Eschewing his spear, he carried a torch the size of a beam, swinging it in mighty arcs, trailing flames and roaring so loudly I could hear it above the wind. I should run, I knew; retrace my steps around the fortress, dare the other side and see if the bridge was perchance unguarded.
Indeed, one of the prisoners wielded a hand-axe, mayhap wrested from the sentries. It was the Pleader, whom I knew by his shoulder-length hair. He was not pleading now, but grimacing, chopping wildly at the pair of guards who forced him back, step by step, toward the edge of the cliff.
I couldn't run. I had freed them; I had led them to this end. As with Remy and Fortun, I could not look away. I watched through my tears as the Pleader swung his axe, panting, unable to get beyond the reach of the guards' spears.
And saw, by wavering torchlight, a hand reach over the edge of the cliff behind him.
It was hard to make out the figure that followed, heaving itself up and rolling, dark-clad and hooded, coming up into a fighter's crouch. It didn't matter. I knew. Before the twin blades of steel flashed up before him, before he spun, taking out one guard with deadly grace, before the second grasped ineffectually at him, succeeding only in tearing the hood loose to reveal wheat-blond