10

Hal's room—cell—was halfway up one of the towers, and overlooked the river. He had two knights, captains, for company. They were out at the moment, Hofei said, "farming."

"Beg pardon?"

"Did you see those little fields when you were in Poophead Patalia's den? We've been given permission to work them, and harvest what we will."

"Hasn't anyone made a break.

"We're on parole when we're out there."

"Which nobody breaks?"

Hofei shook his head.

"You people are a great deal more moral than I am," Hal said. "But I suppose I'll have to go by custom."

Hofei took him out into the corridor.

"Treffry told you who I am?"

"He did."

"That's another point of morality we have," Hofei said. "All escapes get registered."

"Mmmh," Hal said. "How many successful getaways have there been?"

"We're not sure," Hofei said. "Six prisoners have gone out that've never come back. Whether they were killed or died in the forest, or what, we've never heard.

"We like to think the best."

Hal was about to tell him that, when he was captured, there'd been nothing heard about Castle Mulde. He would've expected to have heard something, considering his rank and the number of fliers imprisoned here.

But he said nothing.

Nor did he ask how many failed escapes there'd been.

The dank stone, the cold rain, and the mere fact of being prisoners was demoralizing enough.

"One caution I've given everyone, so there's no offense meant, sir,"

Hofei said. "Ignore anything that isn't your own business. It might be part of an escape.

"Treffry says that if anyone sees him walking around naked, with his buttocks painted purple and a broomstick stuffed up his arse, no one had better flicker, because he's on his way."

Hal managed a grin.

He went to the window.

"Don't, by the way, put any leverage on any of the bars around here,"

Hofei warned. "They've probably been chiseled loose by someone."

"Ah." Hal peered out, and Hofei limped to the window.

"Can you get ropes?"

"We have made them from thread, other materials," Hofei said, a bit proudly.

"Long enough to get out from here, then down to that rooftop, and from there…" Hal puzzled for a farther route.

"That roof you want to get to is one of the guards' barracks," Hofei said.

"That route hasn't been tried since last winter, when three went down a rope from a floor below, then made a snow tunnel, trying for the wall.

"They were doing fine, until someone slipped, and they avalanched down to the courtyard. Two broken legs, one broken arm, and three months in solitary.

"But there's no reason, come winter, someone who's a little defter might not make it."

Hal nodded. He had no intention of waiting until winter.

Hal's two roommates kept very much to themselves, showed Kailas formal courtesy, but seemed uninterested in making friends.

Hal had his feelings slightly hurt, then realized the two men were most likely up to their armpits in some sort of escape plan, and didn't need or want a third along.

The prisoners ate twice a day, generally a soup called stew, that once a day had some bits of pieces of meat in it. Bread was baked by the prisoners, and shared with the guards.

The rest of the meal came from the gardens beyond the walls.

There were six prized hens, bought from the locals, and there was a drawing for the eggs.

It wasn't much, but just enough to keep from starving.

Just.

The eleven women prisoners in Castle Mulde were assiduously courted by the others. But there were very damned few places to be alone, and it took some arrangement to find an empty cell.

The second problem was avoiding pregnancy, which, so far, hadn't happened.

Baron Patiala had sworn that any woman getting pregnant would never be freed, and she and her "spawn" could keep on rotting where they were.

There would be no mercy, he said, until the Roche standards flew over Sagene's capital of Fovant and Rozen.

* * *

While Hofei was showing Hal around the castle, they encountered a man on a landing, in deep conversation with himself, talking, laughing, seemingly content.

When they were out of hearing, Hofei said, "One of our madmen. He's harmless. There're three others we keep in cells who want to do damage to others… or themselves."

"Can't you get a magician in to try to straighten out their minds?"

Hofei snorted.

Late that night, Hal heard the screaming of one of the madmen, echoing up the stairs from the cellars.

Hal's first lesson as a prisoner was finding some way to pass the time.

His first attempt was to sleep, the customary pastime of any combat soldier. He knew Patiala and his guards were watching him closely, and thought it might be wise to appear docile until they grew bored waiting for him to do something.

But, impossible as it seems to serving soldiers, it is possible to catch up on all the hours missed on detail, night guard, or action.

Eventually, Hal could sleep no more, and sought another way of passing the time.

As yet, no brilliant ideas had come that shouted "this is the way out."

So he set about learning Castle Mulde from top to bottom.

Hofei eagerly showed him plans the prisoners had drawn up, and Kailas memorized them.

But still, nothing came.

Once again, witless, he noted the pastimes of the older prisoners—some taught anything they knew, from the art of fishing with a net to history to music to blacksmithing to embroidery, which was taught by one of the Derainian generals.

Others took every "course" they could, even though this schooling might be no more than one man talking to another man in a corner of the courtyard.

The cell doors were magically locked at nightfall, unlocked at dawn, and the guards didn't bother the prisoners much, other than making irregular sweeps, looking for anything.

The unconfirmed story was that the guards had been chosen for a bit of prescience.

No one knew if that was true, but when a Roche passed, prisoners made an effort to think and talk about things other than escape.

There was a morning and evening assembly, but no more.

The occasional working parties were quickly volunteered for, doing various tasks in and out of the castle. They, too, helped the time pass.

"Interesting thing you might not be aware of," Treffry said one morning. "This castle had another face, once."

Hal brushed raindrops away from his eyes. The two were walking up and down a chill battlement, which was better than the rather smelly confines of the castle, and, best yet, fairly lonely.

"Let me guess, sir. A civilian prison."

"Close," Treffry said. "But not quite. It used to be a madhouse."

"Used to be?" Hal asked.

Treffry chuckled.

Hal noted another solitary man, except that he was clearly not mad. His name was Goang, and he spent most of his daylight hours outside, regardless of the weather, studying the birds of the castle, swifts, swallows, ravens, others.

When he was asked, Goang said he would, one day, when the war was over, write a complete history of this building, seen through its birds.

In the evenings, Goang would drift to the fringes of one or another of the dragon fliers' groups, and listen quietly, once in a while asking a technical question about the nature of flying.

The man seemed harmless, and was sort of accepted as an odd hanger-on, no more.

Summer was almost over and still Hal fretted for a plan, even an idea.

Hofei said there was a plan afoot that could use another man.

"Doing what?" Hal asked, knowing nothing is free.

"Well, digging."

Hal went with the lieutenant to the castle's former meeting hall.

There were prisoner guards at regular intervals on the way, each scanning his own sector for a sign of a Roche.

In the assembly hall, a huge table had been levered up, and stones pried out of the floor.

Hal looked down into the cramped space, felt his stomach clench, forbade it recognition.

A prisoner with a fat lamp on a perch beckoned him down.

He slid through the entrance, down a rope ladder a dozen feet, past the prisoner.

"Now," the prisoner told him, "go on your knees, and duck your head.

You'll see the tunnel mouth. Go on up it to the face of the digging. The only problem you'll have is about ten feet in, where there's this great godsdamned boulder you have to weasel your way under.

"It took us three weeks to dig under that."

Hal crouched, peered into the tunnel, saw, far ahead, a flickering where diggers would be at work.

He started into the tunnel, and clammy sweat came.

Panic tried to take him over, but he fought it down.

He took half a dozen deep breaths, but he felt no calmer, remembering the deadly hours, back at the beginning of the war, when he and others stood watch, during the Roche siege of Paestum, far underground, listening to diggers undermine the wall, waiting for the boulders to groan and bury him alive.

And he remembered the mines of his native village, and how, every now and again, there would be a cracking roar, and there would be screams, and other men with picks and shovels tore at the smoking earth, hoping to save their brothers, buried in a cave-in.

Sometimes they succeeded, and white, trembling men were pulled to freedom.

But more often there was nothing but despair, and a burial ceremony with never a body, and the next day, another shaft would be driven.

Hal straightened, went up the ladder without looking in the prisoner's face, pushed his way through the entrance.

He was sweat-soaked.

Hofei helped him to his feet.

"Don't worry, sir," he said. "I can't stomach tight spaces, either. Maybe that's what made us fliers."

Hal nodded, unwilling to speak, and reluctant to admit what he felt was cowardice.

One thing that was guaranteed to stop a conversation among the dragon fliers was the sight of a dragon.

Sometimes it was a wild monster, banking and swooping in the late summer winds above the castle.

Sometimes there was a man aboard, and the watchers' expressions would grow hard, envious.

Twice black dragons dove low over Castle Mulde, and Hal wondered if they were from Ky Yasin's group, keeping track of their prized prisoner.

The only hobby almost every prisoner had was alcohol. A bit of fruit, water, perhaps some grain, warmth, and the beginning of a tremendous hangover was under way. Some called the result beer, others wine; the more sensible just used the generic label of headsplitter.

Bottles of any size were at a premium, and Hal could never figure out where they were coming from.

But every prisoner had one or two, and when the sun was warm, in this dying summer, the bottles would line the parapets.

Surprisingly, at least after first consideration, the Roche made no attempt to stop the various home brewers.

Then Hal realized that of course they wouldn't. A prisoner obsessing about his jug of hooch or sprawled in blissful unconsciousness or crawling around the floor in the throes of what was considered the worst hangover in the world was not as likely to be making trouble or trying to escape.

Hal had no idea how, but somehow, without ever a word being said,

"everyone" knew there was an escape about to happen. Who, where, how, no one knew, or those who did weren't talking.

Then another rumor went out—three men were gone. Where, how, the details weren't there yet.

But the guards had been, were still, completely fooled.

Then, after a week, someone slipped, and Patiala and his guards called for assembly after assembly after roll call. Ungava stalked the corridors of the castle, flanked by his woebegone little prisoner, but found nothing.

Little by little, word came out.

The escaped prisoners had been on parole working their tiny fields. But parole did not apply when they were recalled, and roll was taken outside the castle's entrance.

Three men, two Sagene, one Derainian, had ducked away, after other prisoners staged a phony mass fight. They'd gone over the balustrade behind the gate, then down the rocks, across the river, and hopefully away.

It took another two days before their method of covering was revealed: plaster dummies had been cast of the three escapers' heads, and mounted on boards. The plaster was painted precisely, using charcoal from the stoves, paint base for faces, scraped from the mortar holding the stones together, pigmented with various spices or substances from the castle kitchen.

When the melee had ended, the casts were draped with overcoats, and the boards put on adjoining prisoners' shoulders.

The head count was just that, and so the guards came up with the appropriate number.

Hal wished he knew of some reliable gods to pray that the escapers would succeed.

There weren't any benevolent gods in this part of Roche, at least not this year.

Two weeks after the escape, grinning hunters came to the castle, with slung, stinking, burlap bags.

The prisoners were assembled, and the bags dumped.

Out rolled the heads of the three escapers, and the hunters collected their bounty.

One of the hunters chortled, "Like huntin' blind pigs. We watched 'em stumble in great circles, lost as bastards, for half a day afore we got tired an' went in an' kilt 'em."

Ungava preened.

His spell of confusion was, truly, the greatest guardian Castle Mulde had.

Hal could feel the souls of the men watching collapse.

But at that instant, very strangely, Kailas felt the plans for his own escape click together.