Coach?
The Executioner. Him capturing Kael. Lorien and I rushed to save our brother. Me getting a fist to the face… Yep, my nose ached abominably, only getting worse each time Kael swayed my way. I waved him off, then held my shirt up to my nose to staunch the blood flow. That’s when I heard Lorien groan. He pushed himself up from the floor of the coach and then flopped back down again.
“Look alive,” I barked. There was no softness in me, not when we’d failed utterly. “Unless you want to be the Executioner’s latest victim, you need to get the hell up.”
“Whaa…?”
I ignored Lorien’s attempts to sit up, focussing on Kael. That was the only way I could ignore that sharp throb of my face.
“What’s the plan?”
“Force the doors,” Kael said, staggering over to the back of the coach. The windows were barred with thick steel. Well maintained too, I noted as I checked them for rust.
“Seems like the same thing everyone else would’ve tried.” My brows drew down, forcing the pain to spike higher, but that was no matter. “What makes you think we’ll succeed where others failed?”
“It's because others have tried that I think we should.” Kael turned around to face the two of us as we crept closer. “Hinges have warped.” He ran a finger along one, and sure enough, you could see where the metal had started to fail. “Others bigger than us weakened the metal trying to kick their way free.”
“And we need to be the ones to succeed.”
Our hands slapped up onto the roof to try to steady us.
“Ready?” Kael said. We both nodded. “Go!”
We each had feet hardened from running from one end of the Blackreach to the other without a shoe between us, so slamming into the ironbound wood was no great feat. For a second, I dared to hope as the door bowed outwards slightly, but the metal lock held.
“Again!” Kael barked and we slammed our feet against the doors, with no sound of shearing metal to reward us. “Again!”
Did the door bow out a fraction more? I couldn’t tell if my eyes were tricking me. We were rocked forward and then thrown back as the coach went over a lump. With that, we all collapsed onto the floor.
“I could use my knife to work the lock,” Lorien suggested, then frowned as he patted his legs.
“You lost that the minute you got within reach of the Executioner,” I growled.
“And you went down like a poleaxed sheep.” Lorien’s eyes crossed as he fell back dramatically. “Funniest thing I ever seen.”
“And he’ll slit our throats like sheep if we don’t get out of here,” Kael said. “Feet are one thing, but whole bodies are another.” He looked the two of us up and down. “We need to put our shoulders into it.”
Do or die, that was a choice we made daily, and the answer was always do, so we scrambled to our feet.
“Maybe that hard head of yours will come in useful for once,” Lorien said with a grin my way.
I couldn’t waste energy jousting with him, when the real enemy was the door. We all squared our shoulders, widening our stances before sucking in a breath and then, slam!
We bounced back onto the floor.
“Again,” I growled.
“There’s no point.” Lorien lay flat, shaking his head from side to side. “Just when we had enough coin to buy one of Mother Jenny’s cream cakes.”
“We would not be wasting gold on bloody cream cakes,” I snapped.
The two of us would bicker right up until the very end, arguing even as the Executioner lay his blade on our shoulders. Going to my grave listening to Lorien’s annoying whine was an injustice I just couldn’t accept.
“Again,” I insisted.
“Just wait.”
Kael rolled up, sitting perched on the balls of his feet, swaying in time with the coach.
