Suddenly I was the one with tears in my eyes, but for an entirely different reason than laughter.
“That’s good,” Caspian interrupted my mental vacation without noting it aloud. “It means we know where the prison is. Here, on the lowest level. We have to go up to get to an entrance, so we’ll be looking for stairs back down to find where your cousin is.”
“It also means it’ll be a little hard to toss Sexton off the parapets like a damsel in distress, unless the old bastard has the constitution for lugging around a good twelve stone,” Davin added.
Which was a fair point. Sexton wasn’t going to go along willingly to be tossed off the roof. But I figured that was what henchmen were for, and we didn’t know exactly how many of those Tadhg had. I wasn’t going to start counting any chickens just yet.
“Come on, then,” Caspian said, turning toward the path upward and motioning for us to follow him. “No reason to wait around here hoping not to be discovered before we decide on a plan of attack.”
It seemed a little counterintuitive to me, avoiding discovery by rushing headlong into danger, but also...well, what did I know? I’ve never laid siege to a castle before, and I was willing to bet Caspian had.
We came around the side of the building, finding no people, or even any windows, on either of the first two levels, which made things easier. It was starting to feel like the place was abandoned, and this whole thing was a wild goose chase, when Caspian stopped dead at the next corner and held up his hand behind him to tell us to stop as well.
Instead of moving forward, he pulled out his knives. Swords? I supposed I should have asked him what they were called. He reached up and banged the hilt end of one against a stone, making a terrible noise, and then stepped back a pace from the edge of the wall.
A moment later a man came around the corner, and before I could process the interaction, Caspian grabbed the guy by the front of his annoying camouflage outfit, pulled him in, and then shoved him against the wall with a blade against his neck. “Very quietly,” he said. “How many guards in the keep?”
The guy sneered at him. “Thousands. If you think you’re going to steal the great dragon’s?—”
Caspian rolled his eyes, then whacked the guy on the head with the hilt of his right-hand blade. Then he turned to us. “What I expected from a dragon’s man. Entirely loyal, and therefore not inclined to be of much help to us.” He glared hard at first Davin, then me. “I need you both to follow my and Plot Twist’s lead in this. These people will show you no mercy. If you hesitate to kill them, they will kill you.”
“You didn’t kill him,” Davin pointed out.
Caspian rolled his eyes. “What, and make an unnecessary mess of myself before the fight even starts? In thirty seconds, he’s going to be locked out of the castle, and no longer relevant. It’s not mercy.” Oddly enough, he focused in on me instead of Davin. “How do you think any of them are going to survive out here after Tadhg is dead? I doubt they can call in help when food stores run low, or that there’s a regular plane out this way. Even if they escape, they likely have nothing outside absolute service to the dragon. No lives, no money, no family, no fucking social skills. These are dead men, Flynn. You can’t save them. Killing them is a mercy.”
“You’ve fought a dragon before,” I realized aloud. “You’ve seen this.”
He took a deep breath, then let it out slow and nodded. “Your people inspire incredible loyalty, Flynn. It’s just that you and your father are the first ones I’ve met who were worth that loyalty.”
With that, he turned and marched around the corner. Davin and I rushed to keep up, stepping over the unconscious man. I paused, wondering if...but no. Caspian was right about at least one thing. I didn’t have time to worry about anything but saving Sexton, not yet.
Maybe later.
Around the corner was a set of double doors that Caspian threw open without an ounce of hesitation. Inside, the first thing visible was a giant foyer area with two staircases that went up, and a set of open doors beneath them, beyond which was a huge room where there were...fuck me, there were dozens of guys in the silly camo clothes, carrying weapons.
Caspian, meanwhile, stepped past the threshold like he owned the place, a blade in each hand. He looked like a fucking action movie hero, but I was terrified for him in a way younever had to be for those guys. They were always going to win, right? But Caspian wasn’t the star of a movie. He didn’t get that certainty.
He turned, doing a scan of the area, then motioned back to us. “Stairs down, three o’clock. I’ll handle this. You all go. Now.”
I opened my mouth to protest, because dozens of fucking armed guys versus one guy with some swords was...but then the banisters of the two staircases both caught fire at the same time and I remembered this wasn’t just one random guy.
It was fucking Caspian.
As we passed him, the smile on his face was eerie in the reflected glow of firelight. “You dragon worshippers always like playing with fire, don’t you? So let’s play.”
“Come on,” Davin muttered, grabbing my jacket and pulling me toward the stairs Caspian had pointed out. I followed, even as I continued to worry, just a little, about him. Yeah, he was a badass vampire fire mage. But how much could he handle?
I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him.
The sound of something going up in flames, then yelling and crashing, followed us down the stairs, and my mind settled just a bit. Maybe he really could handle dozens of guys.
Crazy.
My kind-of grandfather, the action hero.
CHAPTER 29
We headed down the stairs, and as we ran, what I first thought was an echo turned out to be someone following us. A guard, dressed in what seemed to be their uniform, that ugly modern-style pixelated camouflage, but in shades of gray. It made sense for the island, but they were indoors now.
