Warrior Priest of Dmon-Li - Brian Pratt [119]
Jiron brings them to a halt at the end of an alley which looks out upon the gate area. Twenty soldiers stand guard there in the courtyard before the gate with a dozen or more crossbowmen lining the walls above.
James catches his breath when he sees a brown robe there with them. For a world that doesn’t have many mages, the Empire sure seems to have more than their fair share!
Jiron notices the brown robe and glances to James who says, “I see him too.”
“What do you plan?” Lord Pytherian asks.
“Another distraction?” asks Jiron.
“Distraction?” says Lord Pytherian, glancing at James.
“May not have much choice,” replies James. Sighing at the inevitable, he turns to Lord Pytherian and says, “You and Miko stay here while Jiron and I arrange for some of the guards to be drawn away.”
“What are you going to do?” he asks.
James looks him in the eye and says, “You’ll see.” Turning back to Jiron he asks, “Ready?”
Giving him a mischievous grin, he replies, “You bet.”
To Lord Pytherian, he says, “We’ll be back in a few minutes. No matter what you may see and hear, don’t move from this spot. Understand?”
Lord Pytherian nods his head.
“Let’s go,” he says to Jiron as they head out.
Lord Pytherian watches them go back down the alley away from the gate. He asks Miko, “What are they going to do?”
Shrugging, he replies, “I don’t really know. When I first met James, he could hardly do anything without going unconscious or having horrendous headaches. But the last few weeks he’s been able to do the most amazing things.”
James follows Jiron through the back alleys until they’ve put some distance between the east gate and themselves. “You know,” he says to Jiron, “when this all begins to let loose, they’ll know we’re not in the Keep.”
“True,” he replies, quickly making his way along a dark alley. “But hopefully that information will come too late to be of much use.”
James comes to a stop and says, “Let’s pause here a moment.” A couple seconds later, five small bubbles appear and begin to float away.
“Now let’s see if we can find a building that’s not being used right now,” he says as he indicates for Jiron to resume leading the way.
Nodding, Jiron sets out and a couple blocks down they find a warehouse. Looking inside, they see it stocked with bolts of fabric and other valuables, but otherwise unoccupied.
“This’ll work,” announces James. He pauses next to the side of the building and ever so briefly, a spot on the wall lights up and then disappears. They go all the way around the building, stopping at each side for a moment until the light flashes just as it had on the first side before continuing on.
Once they have paused on each of the four sides of the building, they then move back closer to the eastern gate. One street runs almost directly from the eastern gate to the warehouse they just visited. They make their way carefully down the street until coming to within five hundred feet of the eastern gate, far enough away so that the lights from the gate won’t reveal them.
James pauses at one point on the north side of the street for a moment then moves down fifty feet where he again pauses for a second. Then he makes sure no one is looking before darting across to the other side where he does the same thing on the other side of the street, directly across from the two places he’d stopped at on the north side.
Satisfied, he gives Jiron a nod and they begin to move back to where the others are waiting. James grabs his arm as he starts to cross the area between the points where he’d just stopped those four times. When he looks at him, James whispers, “Not a good idea.”
Nodding, he moves back and skirts that area. Ducking down a side alley to avoid a patrol, they finally make it back to where the others are waiting.
Lord Pytherian sees them coming