Shadowdance 01 - A Dance of Cloaks

tunnel. She felt like a skittish rabbit.
    “To dig all this,” she said, hoping her nervousness wasn’t too obvious in her voice.
    “Two weeks,” Will said. “All day. All night. Two died in this tunnel alone.”
    Kayla shuddered. She decided not to ask how many had died digging the rest of the tunnels that no doubt snaked out in all directions from the mansion. Occasionally her fingers would brush against wooden supports, and each time her heart was thankful. Any sense of humanity in the darkness, however remote, was a blessing.
    The tunnel veered upward sharply. Kayla wasn’t sure how long she had crawled, though the pain in her back insisted it had been at least half an hour. Her mind guessed a more reasonable ten minutes. Soon dim light lit the tunnel, but to her eyes it was a blazing beacon, and seeing it, she smiled. Her head emerged in the middle of a sparsely decorated home. Senke helped her out of the tunnel, his hands a bit too friendly around her waist as he did. She was so glad to be out of the tunnel, she let it slide.
    Will was not far behind her. A bit of dirt had joined the gray paint on his face and hands, only reinforcing the wight image she had of him.
    “Where are we?” Kayla asked. With only darkness visible outside the lone window, she had nothing to go on but a vague sense of the direction in which she’d crawled.
    “A home Thren’s bought and hollowed out,” Senke explained. “We swing by occasionally to make sure no vagabonds take up residence. There’s also a few friends of mine that have the dreadfully difficult duty of pretending to live here every couple of days so no neighbors get curious.”
    “Night’s moving,” Will said. “Shut up and move, Senke.”
    Senke laughed. “Yes, milord.”
    They slipped out and hurried north. Attached to the castle like an extra foot, the prison was a giant cube made of thick stone bricks. Only the top floor poked half above the ground, the rest stuck deep into the earth. Barred windows lined both sides, marking the cells of the lesser offenders. Kayla highly doubted they would find Robert Haern in one of them. She could only dream of their plan being so easy.
    Anxious, she ran the plan over in her mind. With just the three of them, brute force would not do, not with so many guards stationed throughout the dungeon. Even worse, it could provoke a far greater retaliation if they left a massive trail of bodies. They needed stealth, they needed quiet … and they needed a tiny bit of magic.
    “I thought the castle was warded against magic,” she had said when they explained the plan.
    “The castle is,” Thren had said. “But the prison is not the castle.”
    Kayla wondered how such stupidity could have come to pass. Most certainly it involved money. Whatever the reason, the weakness was their boon. They had procured a simple spellscroll, which Senke kept hidden in his cloak. When they reached the prison they would sneak around to the back, slip past any guards, and then use the scroll to enter the prison. Once inside they would have about ten minutes before their exit vanished into the ether. The three had worked out a few strategies to distract, disable, and render unconscious any guards they might encounter. Picking Robert’s lock would be child’s play to someone like Senke. After that, it was a quick trip out of the prison and back to the safe house.
    “Why are we bringing Will?” Kayla had asked once she could pull Senke aside. “With his size, he cannot be an expert at silence and shadow.”
    “That big lug?” Senke had laughed and then grinned at the giant man. “He’s coming with us in case stealth isn’t enough.”
    As they neared the prison, she hoped that Will would be of no use to them whatsoever. Of course, she was in a doubtful mood. By night’s end, Will would crack a few heads. She had little doubt of
that
fact.
    “I count only six,” Senke whispered as he and Kayla hunched around the corner of a home and watched the guards make their rounds. Will hung back, either not wanting to crowd the others or not caring how many they faced.
    “Three at the gates,” Kayla said, tracking their movements. “Two more traveling around in a circle. Another is stationary at the southeast corner. We should assume another guard is out of sight at the northwest corner.”
    “Seven, then. Still, far less than I was worried about.”
    “The soldiers are inside,” said Will. When he first spoke, Kayla instinctively tensed,