Beck's Guard pt. 5

         Jane was waiting for him in the darkness of the courtyard beyond Central Command, as instructed. As was Janes child. As was not.
         Teige approached from the darkness to one side, moving silently through the tree’s with a practiced ease that could have only been accomplished through years of waylay in the border wars. Timothy and wicked, snarled weeds grew in quantities beneath his feet, fighting to snuff out the gravel lined capture. The wall behind him was a steep bank of amassed stone, slate and shale mostly, but with a mixture of loose, crumbling clay falling from it’s edges. A fountain, a waterfall like what had once been seen in the Further. The old world. When water had been in such quantities it was said to fall freely from the skies. This was a man made spring, unlike the pools and streams that seeped down from the mountains, of no kind he had ever seen. The flow that led up to it wasn’t gravity fed, running from the spates of the highlands to the south, as were the ones the council had been known to raise in the peoples park. Its maw was a giant black tunnel, round in size and rippled along it’s length. Not stone, and not steel, nothing of the earth that Teige knew of. It was from there he had emerged only moments after hearing the first faint whisper of voices.
         Bringing his Guards uniform into the toombs had been a gambit, it was a chance that if worst came to worst no one would notice him. If it came right down to a last minute escape it might allow him to blend with the throng of soldiers rushing the room.
         It had worked perfectly.
         Preggly, a gunnery sergeant Teige had never met, but heard of frequently in talks of promotion over the past several months, had led the assault. If it could be called such, as he was sure the latter thought it was. Three by three abreast the night Guard rapidly descended the stairs, almost too zealous as they spread out where the steps widened toward the bottom. Two taking guard to each side, two in the middle and two spread out further ahead, until all had arrived to form ranks. It was tight, and from his view of things only several feet away, Teige could see the mingled fear and eagerness sprouting in the young regiments eyes. Fear was good, it kept a soldier on edge, kept him thinking, and more often than not left him paranoid enough to stay alive. Eagerness, particularly overeagerness, could be downright deadly.
         Once formed the ranks broke again. Preggly ordered a pair to each isle, five to search the rooms to each side, and himself to take the lead of three more down the widest central isle. The lights that had activated upon Teige’s entrance were extinguished. Had the gunner thought to look he would have seen the open panel hanging from the wall next to the door. Had he looked only a few feet further he would have seen Tiege’s eyes glowing in the hand torch he shined that way. As it was the man never once glanced back as they progressed through the room. If Teige made it back from the halls, there would be serious issues raised on such a mans competency. As it were, he thought grimly, he owed the man a thanks. He hadn’t thought escape would be quite this easy.
         The stairs, the secret stairs, those Teige thought that he and perhaps a few forgetful others might once have known of, had sealed behind him. Quietly, and the traps had reasserted themselves. One glance was enough for Teiges instinct to warn him against trying the barriers. The most important reason was that he had no knowledge of the rooms past a hurried glance at ancient, rough drawn schematics, ones that had already proved unreliable; the least, the same reason the small panel next to the stair remained open, was that he had no time. He could already hear the clamor of approaching footsteps rising behind, and several levels above him.
         When picking his spot, a shallow indent where the walls dropped into one of their decorative arches, he had looked for the most obvious, and therefore unobvious position. Teige had moved several of the smaller boxes, the ones he could carry and was sure would leave no mark, into the deep alcove. Stacked one above the other, teetering into the wall, one would easily speculate while there were no others as such. There were stacks, some even as close as this to the wall. But none so close to the stairs.
         As expected, whether it be lack of sleep or such still clogging their minds and addled brains, not a single soul had glanced more than casually his way in those few slow seconds before Preggly had ordered his men to ‘spread out, search every isle, and do not hesitate to kill the intruder.’ Teige needed no warning. Such a violation of the laws in these days, when every last scrap of nothing was hoarded and then locked way, when the most useful fragments of the old civilization were used not to benefit society and her peoples, but as leverage in petty squabbles and to secure government seats, warranted a death. Quick and gruesome, slow and pretty. It depended upon your standing, and your crime. An officer, a Man of the Guard, especially one as highly ranked, and as highly disliked among the Council as Teige, would be granted a public death. Slow and painful. Not a hanging, but perhaps something crueler, something cruder.
         ‘Do not hesitate to kill the intruder’ Preggly would not have been so quick to issue such an order had he realized the implications behind it. He might have been more careful, a little more interested in the health of his prisoner, with the thought of what such could do for his standing lingering in the corner of his eager mind. Tiege didn’t know such. He didn’t know what kind of man this was. But he sensed it, as a lamb senses the wolf watching from the tall grass even before it launches itself into the shepards valley. This man was a deceiver, one for gain and little else. He deserved no spot in the Guard, no spot so high as gunnery sergeant. He would have fit perfectly between the shined cheeks of some highly council prince, some wayworth scoundrel. Somewhere he could put his deep quivering voice and pouty lips to good use.
         With the guards passed, and none left behind, he slid from his hiding place as soundless as a mouse from it’s hole. Silent, deadly if need be, but mostly ready to run. To sprint at the first signs of danger.
         He was nearly to the stairs when Preggly had at last thought perhaps was now a good time to check his back.
         “Gehah....” he watched the man trip over his tongue for just a second, long enough for one long grisly shock of realization to slip through is eyes, then ran. Preggly had seen the uniform, that had stopped him, but he had also seen the belts.
         It wasn’t hard from there, even with twelve members of the cadet Guard being called in his wake (‘Get out here! Get out here you morons, you let him get past you! Get your asses up those steps! Now!’). Teige didn’t know the tunnels and chambers beneath Central Guard, but he knew the upper corridors as well as he knew the back of his hand. While Preggly was yet screaming he cleared he top of the stairs. No shouts of pursuit yet, just a few confused calls and the thunder of feet scampering over the maze of boxes. Teige had hoped for some sleepless command to come crawling though the dusty halls, he wouldn’t even have thought to pray for something as this.
         He could have almost stopped there, thinking it sure that Preggly had not informed his men the intruder was in a Guards uniform, The Guard uniform. That of a commander. He could have slowed, waited for the first confused face that saw him, and asked for directions to the nearest exit. He had come of the councils credo, to be sure the man below was caught, and seeing the utter chaos this Guard faction was inciting, he was reporting it at once. They would all be cast from the gates. Sent to the Further, where they would live in shame, or perhaps die at the hands of it’s peoples.
         Teige had seen it done, he had used that threat himself when given such a duty. And on more than one occasion, watched some poor unlucky soul trussed to the back of a wagon and carried to his doom. Once one left safety of Camian’s protected lands, they did not return.
         As such his guarded knowledge led him to the cellars. He had planned on a quiet escape. Thoughts of simply walking through the sentries that would surely be posted at each entrance by now had crossed his mind, but left too many questions to be answered. Besides, sooner that later, he would run into someone who knew his face. Once that happened, no amount of political gamble would save him. The cellars were best.
         Until he found the doors there guarded as well.
         Seven, ten, a dozen men stood crowded around the single door that allowed admittance to the cellars. Teige watched them from a curve in the narrow hall, fingers pressed tight into the rough gray stone. He could hear them talking, muttering about much what he expected. Him. Not the intruder. Him. Teige. Preggly had identified him. For a second there was a gnawing, a weight in the pit of his stomach.
         A second clatter of voices suddenly arose at his back. The clod of thick wooden soled boots, cadet issue boots with their rough echo and off kilter tone. Preggly’s regiment, if ever had he heard a more useless pack of snot.
         He glanced left, right, but it was no use, the map of these levels flashed like a brightly lit picture in his mind, smart as day, door after door succumbing to the path vanishing between these soldiers feet. He backed into the wall, felt the bite of a torch’s bracket as it pressed into his back. Any pain he might have felt rising from his arm at that moment disappeared. The cold ring of steel echoed across the hall. His heart thudded hollowly in his chest, like it rested at the center of a cavity it could not hope to fill. He could taste sweat and bile, and thought perhaps blood. This was the end of the line, he was caught. No ay to go, no way to get there—
         —steel..?.. His foot tapped the wall a second time, this time more mindful of those that might hear. Again there was that dull echo. Like a drowning man who just found land Teige spun and trailed his hands over the wall as he slid to his. Three feet from the where the worn stone met the marble floor there was a grate. A round iron portal a little less than three feet in diameter. When his fingers pressed he found that it was hinged. Tiege pulled upward and felt it give reluctantly. With the echo of he soldiers boots less than ten yards away and the sound of approaching voices reaching him from around the bend, where soldiers had perhaps at last heard those who approached, he slid into the lightless caverns beyond.

         Now, he waited, thinking perhaps that he might hear some sounds of pursuit from behind and knowing just as soon that there would not be. The pipe that he had at last crawled from ran down two levels and twisted sharply into the empty sewers that circulated throughout the ancient city. Not those that contained waste, but those that had once transported water, in great quantities, to the mostly crumbling homes lining the wide central streets many years before. No one knew those sewers, no one cared to. More than once, searching for a way out, any way out, he had come to a dead end, a collapsing pipe he would not dare, a narrowing of lines into which he could not fit.
         Until at last he had reached some kind of central chamber, some kind of depository where the water came to rest before it was distributed. He had followed the maps there, steel metal plaques bolted to the stone walls, to the exit above him.
         “Please, Jonas, you have to understand, this is something I must do. It’s something for all of this.”
         “Dad......” a childs voice sniffled through the cold, clear air, wrought with tears, and a sad sense of adolescent anguish. “.....please don’t go. I know mom says you’ll be alright, and that you love us and you’ll be back....but....dad.....please.”
         Jane, Jonas Sr., kneeled at his youngest sons side beneath the covering boughs of an ancient spruce, cradling the boys head on his shoulder.
         “Son,” he spoke softly, “ I won’t lie to you, mostly because your young. The worlds a lying place these days, especially for one so green as yet to it’s ways, I might not be coming back—
         “Now that’s not to say that I won’t” He spoke hurriedly, lifting a finger to his son’s lips before he might interrupt. “There are things in this world more important than the one man. Sometimes more important than the many. Sometimes men, brave men, have to give their lives for those things. I know that might not seem right, I know it might seem cruel, but it’s the truth.......”
         Teige listened a moment longer and then stepped forward.
         Jane didn’t jump, his son did.
         “Hello sir,” Jane spoke with his deep nasal voice, as though somewhere, someone, gd or the creator, had forgotten a mans voice comes first from his throat, then his lips, not his nose.
         “Hello Jonas,” Teige let out a seep sigh and knelt down beside the two of them. The ground was soft and squished beneath the thick fabric of his pants, but no wetness penetrated to the cold, scarred skin beneath. He lay a hand on the younger’s shoulder, and then spoke to the father.
         “Jonas, you don’t have to. You could stay here with you family, your the only one who—“
         Jane slid his youngest son from his shoulders and stood, “No sir!” he called softly, yet still with respect as the tears glistened on his cheeks. “I know none of the other men you chose have families sir, and I respect your decision for that, but I’ve been with you for a long time, we’ve been through a lot. You’ve saved my life more times than any man can count. I’m not letting you go without me sir, wouldn’t be right.”
         Teige might have thought to argue, he could have thought of one, or a hundred ways to force the man to remain behind in Camain, but he could see the truth of what Jane had spoken in his eyes. Yes, the other men had no families, but that hadn’t been on purpose. . . had it? They were the best, all men he could count on to kill or die for the people they left behind, Jane as well.
         Tiege spoke no words, simply nodded. With a whisper the youngest of Jonas’s clan sped off into the darkness trailing his sad tears. The two men turned. In a moment there were only shadows.