The Thieves Guild
by Jake Kerr.
Episode 126:
The Prisoner and the Crown.
Allard stared at the wall of his cell, still not quite believing Polo
hadn't killed him. Earlier, as he was brought to see the Harvest guild master,
he expected it was the end. The guild master was, of course, taking no
chances. Allard was dragged to the guild master with heavy irons around his
ankles, his hands enclosed within metal cages, and a two-inch thick
ring around his neck connected to a heavy chain.
The meeting was short. Polo didn't even bother asking Allard questions.
He just told him that he was a traitor to Ness and that he would never see light
again.
For such a simple sentence, it was clear that the meeting held more
import than the content.
It wasn't until he was being dragged back out and he heard the word "blade"
muttered on the first floor of Harvest House that Allard understood
Polo's motivation.
It was revenge.
He previously had indeed been locked in the prison with a blade, but it wasn't the
blade of the merchant guild. It was the blade of Harvest House, sent there to
spy on Allard or to gather intelligence from him.
With the word "blade" still echoing in his head, Polo's personal
attention suddenly made sense. Allard had killed his precious blade
of the guild master, a critical position nearly impossible to fill
without enormous time and resources.
All that, Allard understood. What he couldn't understand
was why Polo hadn't killed him. Why not?
Killing him was the obvious response.
Allard once again ran his fingers over the wall of his cell.
It was bare rock, craggy and rough.
He was no fool. He knew where he was. The long ride in the prison wagon
over dirt rocks and past the sound of crashing water made it all too
clear. He was somewhere deep in the mines.
He was being left to rot, but was that worse than death?
So what was Polo's intent with Allard?
It wasn't starvation, as he was given food and water once a day via
a slot at the bottom of the cell door.
Was it the darkness?
He'd been given one torch, which sputtered out after a single day and
wasn't replaced.
Since that time, Allard lived in total darkness.
Still, he was alive. He even had a small chute for his waist.
It was roughly a foot around and led deep into the mountain.
How far, Allard didn't know, but he dropped a piece of carrot down and never
heard it roll to a stop.
Not that it mattered. The thought of him escaping through the tiny hole was ludicrous.
In the end, Allard assumed that Polo hoped that he would be tortured into
madness from loneliness and isolation.
He was deep underground with no living thing near him.
There weren't even insects for him to train or have pretend conversations with.
It was just Allard, cold stone walls, and deep and
total darkness.
Little did Polo know that two things marked Allard's life:
persistence and isolation. He had saved the outlanders when he was a young
man and spent over a year alone in Pietro's basement, waiting for the
hatred for him to lessen to the point he could wander the streets again.
He did the same thing then that he was doing now: punching air,
pounding floors, bloodying his hands as he punched stone walls and a
heavy door. Every day in the mine prison, the iron-bound
door boomed with Allard's punches and the floor whooshed with sweeps of his
legs. He didn't need light to ready his body for freedom.
His mind was another matter, but Allard had prepared for that as well.
He went over everything, from the dynamics of what Ness would look like when he
escaped to the strengths and weaknesses of his fellow guild mates.
He retraced the steps of previous missions to sharpen his mind and retain the
memory of the city
and people.
Allard retained some semblance of connection to humanity by endlessly
examining every facet of the interesting people he knew.
One person Allard spent many waking hours considering was Vespa.
Vespa was a simple man who was easy to manipulate.
He simply wanted to take part in moving the guild master's pieces around the
chessboard, and if that meant removing them from the board, so be it.
The key, of course, was that he wanted to be on whatever side came out on top.
All this was easy to understand, and it made Vespa a powerful ally.
All you had to do was convince him that the power was on his side.
But there was more to him. He seemed oddly distracted near the Thieves
Guild. He even said as much in the dungeon.
He appeared to truly bear his soul, that he felt a connection to the guild.
Allard wasn't sure what that meant, but he pondered it over many hours.
As he bruised and bloodied his knuckles against the iron door, Allard
slowly came to the realization that Vespa wasn't so simple after
all.He was looking for something that was missing in his life, and it was
clear to Allard that Vespa found that thing in the black tower near the
mountain.
In an odd way, Vespa reminded Allard of Pietro.
Allard never learned much about Pietro or his past.
The old man was secretive and simply talked about rebuilding Ness,
connecting the city back to the world around it and building the guild up to a
potent force. No one was closer to Pietro than Allard, but
Allard didn't know a thing about the guild master from before he met him.
The memory of Pietro made Allard smile.
The old man was legendarily forgetful, not remembering things from even
earlier in the day, let alone a week before.
Allard once teased him about it. "You don't need me for my sword.
You need me for my memory," Pietro replied with a smile, and rubbed his hand
through Allard's hair as if he were a little boy.
How did that remind Allard of Vespa? He couldn't quite pin it down, but
it did.
Pietro was an odd mixture of kindness and determination, while Vespa
was the completely opposite combination of cruelty and ambition.
Maybe they were two sides of the same coin.
Such thoughts made the loneliness fade.
The thick door boomed with another kick.
The door was so solid that it didn't even disturb the dust.
He punched the center with a quick right-left-right flurry.
Standing up straight, Allard shook his fists, blood droplets flying to
the floor. No one was behind that door, Allard knew.
They locked him up and put their trust in iron and darkness.
Allard smiled. His will was stronger than iron, and the light of his
heart filled the darkness.
"The guild master thief did not lie, sir.
The planes are empty."
Wilhelm could see the Wall of Ness in the distance.
He liked Raillen, and felt the boy was being sadly earnest in his description
of what was happening in Ness, but he still wanted to be careful.
So, he had his force come up from the southeast, far from the Dragon's Tear and
Dragon Road. This significantly slowed their approach, but it turned
out not to matter. Wilhelm's forces had a clear path directly to Ness'
gate. "Send a small force to look for a way to ford the Tear."
Wilhelm pointed at the great river in the distance, snaking its way toward
Ness. "We will need to cross and assault the gate as quickly as possible."
"Yes, sir."
"Make sure they are armed well. A balance of stealth and might."
The captain looked confused.
"So, not just reconnaissance?"
"While there appear to be few defenses, we still want to maximize our surprise.
If they are discovered, they are to immediately take control of the gate and signal for our forces
to attack." Surprise was critical to Wilhelm's plans.
He had to make sure the knights didn't have time to close the gate.
He knew from many previous forays toward Ness that the city nearly
always kept its massive gate open. The knights wandered in and out as they
exercised their horses or trained in the larger grounds outside the city.
And why bother with having the gates closed?
The Outlanders had nothing more than small raiding parties.
It would be foolish for them to assault the gate,
and that arrogance was what Wilhelm was counting on.
Looking out at his gathered forces, Wilhelm was pleased.
The pride and selfishness of the city would soon be punished, and its downfall
would be that selfsame arrogance. "What is that?"
Wilhelm looked to where one of his captains was pointing toward the Dragon's Teeth.
The southern end of the wall was in an almost sinister shadow.
Wilhelm squinted. He couldn't see anything but the mountain in the background.
"I don't see anything." Wilhelm was annoyed by the question.
He didn't need any distractions. "It is a massive tower,
shrouded in black." Wilhelm squinted again.
"I don't see anything."
There had been many rumors of ghosts in black manning the walls or in the
fields outside the southern walls.
The Outlanders never approached the city near there.
Of course, there was no reason to, as the fields of food were to the north, but there
was also a sense of foreboding about it.
Pietro had never mentioned ghosts, so Wilhelm ignored such things,
but his men were a different matter. "It's gone, but I swear I saw it."
"Enough.
Pietro was clear that the southern part of the city is a wastelands.
The
shadows are playing tricks with your eyes."
Wilhelm looked around and saw nervousness in his men.
Could Pietro have been wrong or lied about the southern part of the city?
No, it was inconceivable.
But he was old, and his description of Ness may no longer be accurate.
Pietro could barely remember Wilhelm's name.
Could he have forgotten ghosts or a garrison?
It was possible. "Send another force to the foothills to the south and approach the wall from
its southern end. There may be an opening to Ness at that end which is easier or less defended
than the gate.
If you find nothing there, come up along the wall and return here to report what else you
see." The captain paused and his men shifted nervously.
"They are worried about the ghosts." He looked back up at the
mountains towering beyond the wall and thought he saw a massive tower, only
for it to disappear in shadow. He shuddered.
"Captain?" The man who hadn't moved stood at attention.
"Never mind. We need to focus on the gate and can't spare the men."
What Wilhelm didn't say was that he suddenly didn't have a good feeling about that
part of the city. Pietro may not have lied, but he had hid something.
It was marked by some kind of dark magic or evil.
Was it cursed? Was it deadly for living things to even walk upon?
Wilhelm was not about to find out.
Wait, Pietro did call it something else.
He called it a wasteland, but what else did he call it?
It was so many years earlier, and Wilhelm had dismissed it as unimportant.
Something to do with a gate. The gateway!
That was it.
Pietro called the southern part of the city the lost gateway, but what did
that mean?
With the oppressive darkness and shadow from the mountain, Wilhelm was inclined
to think of it as a gateway to hell, which seemed reasonable within a
wasteland.
Wilhelm turned back toward the north.
Thankfully, he didn't need to live in such a cursed city.
All he had to do was unlock its riches.
(dramatic music)
A Podcast Alchemy production.