Araman

~ 27 ~

   "Help me please! I do not want to be in here! Please!" Lady Nanerter wailed loudly, holding onto the bars of the cage. One of the guards came over to her, holding his torch close to her face to see her features.

"What ya gon' give me fer it?" He drooled, deciding she was comely enough for the effort.

"Whatever it is possible for a lady to give, just please get me away from this filth."

The guard glanced around him. The other guards were busy either sleeping or playing cards till their turn for the watch came. Eagerly, he got his keys out and undid the door. Lady Nanerter slid out the cage and stood by while he locked it again, then he turned to her and smiled greedily.

"How can I repay you?" Nanerter said sweetly and pushed him gently against the cage once he had sheathed his sword and put his torch on the ground.

"I can think of a few ways." Raliena said in the man's ear from behind the bars and grabbed him by the throat, using her power to damage his voice box before he could cry out to his comrades.

Lady Nanerter then stabbed him in the heart with his own sword. The man fell to the ground soundlessly and she tried to push him away from the door, a disgusted look on her face at having to touch him. Then she unlocked the cage and let Raliena and Kassen out.

"That was a perfect aim." Kassen commented as he took the guard's sword from his chest and pushed him into the corner of the cage.

"Best healer in Verxia." Nanerter said smugly then looked at Raliena. "Well until..."

"Until nothing," Raliena said, placing a kind hand on the healer's shoulder and smiling. "Your gift takes far more skill."

Nanerter smiled gratefully and Kassen handed her the keys from the dead guard to open the other cages and organise who was to stay and fight and who was to leave.

Kassen signalled to Raliena that he was going to take out the other guards, before they noticed anything suspicious; using the sword he had taken from the guard Nanerter had killed. Raliena nodded and went to help them open the cages.

The plan was to get the gates open for when either the Lagania or Attashar arrived to aid them. Raliena had already explained to them all as much as she could, in the little time they had, about how the Lagania knew about Dergen's treachery and how her and Kassen had sent a message to Attashar asking for assistance. They just needed to do all that they could to hold out in the Kingdom till help reached them.

The people from Verxia were too dazed and confused about how this had happened that they were, at that moment, willing to accept any explanation why. Raliena would explain it to them formally afterwards, if they all survived.

"We need weapons." Raliena said to Samde, who was organising those staying.

"They have already raided the weapons shop and taken all ours with them." Samde explained. "The barbarians put all the weapons in the cart over by the bakery. They aren't even using them." The bakery was only on the other side of the town square and once they had taken out the guards they could simply take it.

"Kassen has been too long," Raliena explained. "I will go find him; you take the back roads and meet us by the bakery."

Samde nodded and Raliena left them while they got those unable to fight to the trees, using the alleys between the houses to get them to the hill; no one knew the streets better than its inhabitants.

Raliena used the houses as cover as she made her way to where Lishini's guards were drinking and gambling to find they were already dead. Kassen must have taken them out but he was nowhere to be seen, so Raliena decided to head for the bakery. Kassen was intelligent enough to find them.