The Bounty Hunter

Chapter Thirty Nine

Chapter Thirty Nine

In the chaos which ensued it was easy for the slim girl in trousers to sneak through the shadows and follow the guards’ echoing voices, always loitering at the other end of the corridors that the guards entered. The slight girl, condemned to instant death, was dragged towards Lassirus by the guards ranged around her, their hands clamped firmly onto her shoulders and wrapped around her forearms.

Sticking to the shadows, her back pressed against the wall and the bow which she had stolen from the barracks once she had escaped the guards’ custody held firmly in her hands. As she walked she felt the comforting weight of the daggers in her boots - Hergun, masquerading as a guard who had arrested Safita, had sworn that he had searched her and confiscated her weapons, handing spare swords over to the other guards. The wood was smooth and supple in her hands and she ran her fingers along it as she snuck along the passage, peering cautiously round the corner, and relishing the feeling of power it gave her.

Suddenly she heard a shuffle behind her and she sped up, fishing an arrow out of her quiver and placing it on the bowstring; the heavier footsteps behind her sped up too and she span around, the arrow on her bow pointing directly at the face of the man behind her.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he murmured, his voice deafening in the silence of the corridor.

She jumped in surprise and her finger slipped, nearly loosing an arrow at Hergun. “Honestly that really wasn’t the best idea,” she hissed once her heart had stopped racing. “I nearly shot you. Why are you creeping around behind me anyway?”

“I’m following the guards and their Safita,” he said with a long-suffering sigh, looking at her as if she should already know. “She’s going to need our help.”

“I said that she was going to get into trouble,” she said, moving onwards stealthily.

“She volunteered for this, Safita,” Hergun said. “Ravina’s plan seems to have worked almost perfectly so far, I’m sure Maeven will be fine.”

“I am surprised though,” she said.

“At what?”

“That the guards who are escorting Maeven to Lassirus believe that she is me… I know that very few of them ever actually saw me but still…” She paused and shook her head. “Well everything that works in our favour is good.”

“Ravina is accompanying the guards, isn’t she?”

“Yes, she’s just behind them,” Safita replied, gesturing up ahead where the flickering torches were moving away from them, leaving them ensconced in inky darkness. She chuckled as she remembered how Ravina had tucked blades into every possible place under her dress; no person in the palace was more well armed than the harmless looking kitchen maid who had handed over the escapee. “Where did you go after I ‘escaped’?”

“I had to pretend that you’d attacked me for a while, while you were sneaking through the castle. That punch that you landed on my jaw really did hurt though,” he chuckled quietly, “and I’m not sure that it was necessary to make it quite that realistic… After that, when I heard the news that you had been captured again, I headed down here to the dungeons, though of course I suspected that it was really Maeven. I would have been punished by Lassirus, of course, had he not had more important things to deal with.”

“His captive,” she murmured.

“What’s the plan then?”

Safita handed Hergun the keys that she had stolen and pointed back down the corridor. “Free the others. We need to get them out in case this goes wrong. I don’t want to have wasted my time and I’d rather not have to do this again.” She couldn’t see him roll his eyes in the darkness but she felt his disapproval. “I know you could be helpful,” she sighed, “but it looks much more official if it’s a guard moving them than if it’s me. You might actually have a hope of getting them out.”