The Calling of Time

Captive's Plight

You heard him,” Horace said tersely. “We got to be fast about this. Ten minutes tops.”

It felt like there was ice flowing threw my veins, freezing my blood. There was noise in the castle around us. Thumping from upstairs, doors slamming. Every time something sounded relatively close I nearly jumped out of my skin. Jai’s grip on my arm tightened again, and he murmured close to my ear, “It’ll be okay. We’ll get in and find it and cross over.”

“He must have guards in the treasury,” Manda was saying to Horace. “There’s no way he’d leave the Kronos clock unguarded, unless he's got too cocky for words. Do you have the hourglass ready for her?”

Horace was reaching for his duffel bag when a door at the end of the hallway opened. The four of us faltered, nearly freezing in our tracks, as the long line of soldiers trooped out into the hallway.

They were heading straight for us.

The man at the front of the soldiers wasn’t dishevelled and tired looking like the rest of them. He had close cropped blonde hair and a square face. Steely black eyes swept over us, and he held up one hand to his men and they snapped to attention behind him.

“What’s your name, soldier?” He barked at Horace.

I was rooted to the spot with terror. The soldiers behind the first man were all looking at Manda and I now that their commander had his back turned to them. Most of them slouched and leered at us. One of them, a bulky man with missing teeth, made a obscene gesture at me, and I shrank back in on myself. I would have given anything to be able to melt into the floor right then.

Horace snapped the commander a solute. He was clearly at ease with the gesture, executing it smartly. It made me wonder if he’d been a soldier at some point. There was clearly a lot I still didn’t know about my third guardian.

“Sir, Horace Greendale, Sir.”

The commander narrowed his eyes at Horace, looked over at Jai and looked him up and down as well. He didn’t spare a single glance for Manda and I. “New here, soldier?”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Horace made the words sharp and crisp. It was nothing like his usual slouching and grunting. The transformation was frightening.

“At ease soldier, have you been debriefed?”

Horace floundered for the first time, and the commander must have taken that as “no” because he nodded and said, “Fall in line, both of you.” He turned and gestured at his men. “Clancy and Rob, you two take the new girls up to their quarters. You know the way.”

To my dismay, Horace darted a quick look at Jai, as if they were silently communicating. I could almost tell what they were thinking. Did they blow our cover, or play along? And if they did blow our cover, would we be able to get out of this without waking up Thanatos?

For a second, Horace’s hand hovered over the duffle bag. His dilemma was clear. The hourglass only worked on the people in the near vicinity. If we froze the soldiers and then went to get the clock, someone from the kitchen could easily walk by and see them. The moment Thanatos heard about a bunch of frozen soldiers, he would know I was here.

My heart skipped a beat as two of the soldiers stepped out of line. The first one was tall and lean, with dirty blonde hair that hadn’t been cut in awhile. He made straight for me, a smirk curling one corner of his thin lips. I gasped as he seized my arm roughly.

Manda was getting similarly manhandled by a tall, angry looking man with short black hair. She looked ready to spit nails, and I pictured her snapping his neck or something. Hopefully she could restrain herself, or our cover really would be blown.