The Webbing Blade

THE BARRACKS

HILDIE GLANCED to him, her eyes sparkling with what Lou swore to be flames. “Go on,” she said, nodding to the ledge there, to the strong creeping vines that ran up the trellis, and up the side of the barracks wall.

He looked to the trellis, to those cross-hatched wooden supports, and he wondered if they’d really take his weight. She had told him to simply keep climbing up. To get up as quickly as he could.

And not to look down.

Now, though, looking at it, Lou was almost certain that he couldn’t climb up. He felt those familiar nerves creeping back in, playing on his mind.

He saw a thousand horrifying scenarios play out in his mind: him slipping from the trellis, flying backwards through the air then landing on his back. He could almost hear the snap of the wood giving way beneath his boots.

And then he thought of Syre, and everything else disappeared from his mind.

He stepped up onto the trellis, concentrating on his footholds, keeping himself steady, not allowing himself to look down, just like Hildie said.

When he had got up past four storeys, he felt the wind blowing in, rustling his cloak against him. He felt the rough material brush his skin, the wood biting into his hands, but he kept going.

On and up.

Till he reached the ledge.

His stomach dipped away from him as he reached out for the window. He got his fingers round its frame, and then tested his weight. The opening was made of stone, of course. And deep down he knew that it would hold him. But he refused to admit to himself that he was afraid.

He pushed off from the trellis, taking a little leap into the air, and he gripped hold of the stone window ledge.

For a heart-stopping second, he felt his legs swaying freely below him, waving in the air, and then he caught the side of the building, found a foothold there, and he lugged himself inside, through the window, landing on the hard stone floor.

* * *

Lou looked about him.

He was in a corridor, the corridor on the top floor of the barracks. He glanced up and down it, saw no one was there, and then clambered back up to his feet.

He stared out through the window, back down to the ground, out across the palace gardens. He looked to where Hildie had been, where he’d imagined to see her, standing and watching on, but now she’d gone. Slipped off somewhere into the shadows. Now he was on his own.

He had to kill Herimyre so that she might spring his people from the barracks.

He snuck his way along the stone corridor, along to the door at the end of it, the one behind which Herimyre slept. Again he felt that slight tremor of fear pass through him.

Or was it from the frostiness of the Webbing Blade?

As he approached the door, drew closer and closer, he reached for the handle of the dagger, ready to slip it from its sheath. Although he’d got to the point where he could tolerate holding the dagger for several minutes without it becoming too much to bear, he didn’t want to hold it in his hand until it was the right time.

He stole closer still, so that he was by the doorknob now, and, sucking in a lungful of air, he reached out for the doorknob, took it in his fist.

As he turned it, felt the mechanism click, imagined its whirring in his mind, its snicking into place, he clasped his eyes shut, like a child trying to escape from a living nightmare.