The smell in the narrow passageway was nauseating, for they were wading through the sewage of the city. Ebenezer fought hard to stop himself from retching.
“It’s not far now” Sir Tiffy said. “He can only be going to one place from here on. There are several cellars hidden down here, so old that I’d nearly forgotten them. We had a plan years ago to use them as hidden armouries but, in fact, we decided we didn’t need any inside the city itself.
“Come on!” he urged.
The four men trudged onward, the pungent smell growing as they approached a stagnant pool. A faint draft blew down the tunnel toward them. Within a few seconds they entered a large chamber, walking knee deep in dark water.
“The entrance to the cellars is behind that door at the top of those steps” Sir Tiffy whispered. They crossed the chamber quickly and climbed the steps, moving in absolute silence. Marius and Sir Finistere drew their blades and Ebenezer stood nervously by.
“There is a light inside” Sir Tiffy whispered after peering around the open door. “It comes from the next room. I shall put out our lantern and we will go in.”
The light was extinguished. Silently Sir Tiffy drew his blade and handed the lantern to Sir Finistere at the rear.
“We must take him alive if we can,” the spymaster said. Ebenezer knew it was a decision not influenced by mercy, but rather by the idea of lengthy punishment.
Marius went first, followed closely by Sir Tiffy and then Ebenezer. Sir Finistere, the oldest of the group, came last, the excitement he felt reflected feverishly in his usually calm eyes. With eager steps they approached the room from where the light was shining, taking care not to brush against the unlocked iron gate that hung open against the wall.
Sir Tiffy clutched suddenly at Marius’s shoulder, pulling the squire back.
“We shall rush him,” he mouthed, raising his hand as a signal. Each of his friends nodded, and he lowered his hand. At once they rushed into the room.
There, in the glow of a lantern and hunched over a crooked desk, sat the man they had sought for so long-the man who had lived treacherously amongst the knights for so many years, who had betrayed Sir Amik’s battle plan, and who had come so close to destroying their entire order. There sat the traitor, alone and strangely silent.
Sir Vyvin knew that the roar of the Kinshra guns signalled an adversary against which the knights had no defence. Horses and men were obliterated as the round shot drove deep chasms into the packed formation. But still Sir Amik rode ever eastward toward the centre breach, forcing their enemies to come streaming from the city for one last battle.
At the front of their charge, Sir Vyvin crashed to the earth when his horse was shot from under him. As his steed fell, he rolled instinctively, despite his armour, and his reactions saved him from breaking any bones.
Whilst ahead, Sir Amik was mercifully spared as a single shot passed only a hairsbreadth above his head.
The toll of the guns was terrible. Dozens lay crippled or dead.
Sulla watched the knights with contempt.
Standing by him, Jerrod seemed uneasy, and Sulla knew that his ally’s snarl masked his fear.
He is a solitary hunter, not used to open warfare-though he would kill without hesitation, such carnage unnerves him.
The Kinshra lord motioned to one of his messengers.
“Form the infantry into two bodies. Have the cavalry prevent the knights from making any escape.”
Behind his visor Sulla smiled suddenly, realising that this was the successful conclusion of his dreams. It had never been about Falador-rather his hatred had been for the knights themselves. Now, outside the walls of the city with his five hundred cavalry and two thousand infantry stretched before him, he vowed to erase them from history.
“Say something!” Sir Tiffy shouted, his passion overwhelming him as tears streaked down his face. He ran to the unmoving man, shaking him violently.
Marius rushed to his side.
“Wait, sir!” he shouted, pulling Sir Tiffy away. “Look!” the squire said, pointing to Sir Erical’s stomach and away from his strangely ashen face.
Sir Tiffy pulled aside the man’s cloak, which had fallen across his front. And as he did so he realised what a fool he had been.
For Sir Erical was dead. He had been dead for at least a day, murdered and abandoned to the rats by his killer.
“It is not him” Sir Tiffy gasped as he suddenly realised what that meant. “Sir Erical is not the traitor!” He looked vacantly to Ebenezer in shock.
Then, as one, they turned. Suddenly alert to the danger.
But it was too late.
The iron gate slammed shut, and from outside dreadful laughter sounded through the strong bars that had now become their prison.
The man rode as swiftly as his horse was able, guiding it toward Sulla. In his hand he clutched a Kinshra missive from the camp, marked with Sulla’s own personal seal.
“Read it!” Sulla told the man. That it bore his personal mark enraged the Kinshra leader, for he had authorized no such thing.
But the messenger was terrified, and seemed unable to find his voice.
“What does it say, man?” Sulla demanded without attempting to conceal his anger.
Wide-eyed the messenger looked up, swallowing hard before commencing.
“It is addressed to you, Lord Sulla. It is a demand for your surrender. It says that if you turn yourself over to them as a prisoner, then the rest of us shall be spared. If not, then none of us shall end this day alive.”
“Who dares?” Sulla laughed mirthlessly. “Where is the knight of Saradomin who is foolish enough to demand our surrender in his city’s final hour? Has he nothing better to do than send impotent words against us, now that he has lost his sword?”
Sulla’s men smirked at his confidence, but a whimper from the panicked messenger drew their attention once more.
“It was no knight… my lord!” the messenger said. He gestured back to the north and the men of the Kinshra looked toward their camp.
Sulla’s single eye strained to focus. Then the faint flicker of orange flame caught his attention.
His camp was burning.
Swiftly he placed his foot in the stirrup to lift himself up into the saddle, lowering his visor in preparation for battle.
“It was a woman who surprised the camp, my lord… a girl!” The messenger cringed, as if he feared he would be struck down for uttering the words. “I was spared by her to deliver this to you, but few others were as fortunate.”
The messenger’s quivering explanation made Sulla stop.
“Is the letter signed?” he demanded, his heart quickening in anticipation.
The man’s mouth moved, but no words came out.
“Is it signed?” Sulla repeated.
“It is, my lord” the man said. “Kara-Meir.”
The Kinshra guns roared again, tearing their way through the knights, felling dozens.
“Why has Saradomin abandoned us?”a young peon cried despairingly.
Riding a horse he had taken from a fallen knight, Sir Vyvin could offer no answer. He had hoped to charge the guns in a last-ditch effort to wreck the Kinshra advantage. Yet Sir Amik had led them into the enemy infantry instead. Now they were paying for his hasty judgement.
“Can nothing silence those guns?” he shouted in impotent rage.
Then another sound echoed across the plain-a loud explosion, far louder than even the guns of the Kinshra had been, loud enough for the men near the walls to feel the vibrations on the air itself.
To the north, above the burning Kinshra camp, sat a huge cloud of smoke-vast enough to hide the mountain peak behind it-like a squat demon, intent on devouring the city and all those who fought on the plain.
“Is it the end of time?” a peon asked fearfully. “Is it the end of the world?”
Sir Vyvin shook his head, hope welling in his chest.
“Not for us!” he said. Then he let out a cry of savage hope, pointing to the northeast with his sword. For there an army marched under a white banner-and at its centre shone a golden ring with a white flower through its middle.
“It is her!” Sir Vyvin roared. “Kara-Meir has come!”
At the mention of Kara’s name a new energy ran through the tired knights and their forces, and men who had been so near to admitting defeat rallied under the battered walls of their city, gaining fresh strength from the knowledge that their struggle and sacrifice had not been for nothing.
For the fortunes of war had shifted at last.
Kara-Meir had come.
Marius threw his whole weight against the iron gate. His efforts were rewarded by another cruel laugh as the strong barrier barely shook.
“Why?” Sir Tiffy said, his voice worn.
Sir Finistere stepped into the faint light of the lamp, making sure he was beyond arm’s length of the gate.
“And how?” Sir Tiffy continued. “How did you know about our ruse with the gold, for only Sir Erical had been informed?” He sat resignedly on one of the crooked chairs, suddenly despairing, hiding his face in his hands.
“You ask me why, old friend?” Finistere replied. “I shall tell you. When I was as young as Marius and still a squire I accompanied a knight on his travels. It was winter, fifty years ago.” His eyes were lost in reminiscence.
Suddenly he looked at Sir Tiffy.
“You would have been a peon then, a few years younger than I, yet you probably remember the uncertainty of those times. We had suffered the worst winter for a decade. Only a few years had passed since Misthalin had been invaded by the undead army from The Wilderness, and the city of Varrock was near destroyed. It was a time of fear-when old values were threatened and old securities failed. The wizards had no answer and there were rumours that they had reduced the size of their order, leaving the three human kingdoms unprepared to defend themselves. Some said they had spent their magic in the defence of Varrock. Whatever the reason, people knew they could no longer be counted upon to protect them.”
“This is common history, Finistere” the alchemist said. “The turmoil of those times forced men of enlightenment to turn to more methodical and scientific ways to guarantee humanity’s progress. That cannot be used to excuse your treachery!”
Finistere laughed bitterly. “Yes, alchemist. It signalled the growth of a new movement in science, but it did not change my views. I had become disillusioned with the knights but I was still faithful to Saradomin. It was when my knight and I fell into enemy hands that the fallacy of my belief was made clear to me. We were captured, lured into a trap by starving peasants we had helped only days before. They sold us to the Kinshra for mere alcohol they would use to further degrade themselves.
“Eventually they killed the knight but they spared me any agony,” Finistere continued. “Rather, they showed me an alternative. They knew that in my youth I had been misled, inveigled into the service of Saradomin-a god who did nothing to protect my knight from the outrages committed against him. For a full year they kept me as a prisoner but treated me like an honoured guest, lifting the veil of falsehood from my eyes.
“They showed me how a man was meant to live-by the sword, with strength and passion!” His eyes glowed fiercely.
“You cannot imagine the liberation,” he continued. “I had power to decide whether people lived or died. Real power under Zamorak!
“Eventually they released me, and very few of them were aware of my existence and loyalties. I found my way back to Falador and worked my way up the order over the years that followed. Never did I imagine, however, that I would be so successful in my role that I would bring about the destruction of the city and the order, living to see them in their final despairing hour.”
Ebenezer coughed gently, afraid to interrupting the rant.
I cannot allow him to leave, he thought silently. Not yet. In his hands he held several of the magical runes and his mind raced as he attempted to summon the power that he had turned his back upon so long ago.
But he felt only the faintest connection.
Not enough, he knew. Not nearly enough.
“Falador will not end today, Finistere” Ebenezer said. “The city might burn and its citizens might flee, but it will continue nonetheless. It will endure a simple battle and an assault from a host of misguided men. History has proved that our race is not so easily brought low-not even the gods in the time of their wars could do it, and you shall not do it either. Even if you did triumph today and sack the city, in a few generations it will be only a footnote in the history of Falador. It will be but a dark hour measured against long years of light, and your name will not be remembered in any book or by any man.”
Finistere ignored the alchemist.
“And how did I know about the lure of the gold? I have many spies in the city. They told me Sir Erical had received an important order from a messenger, and I proceeded to find out the details. It was not hard when I was living on the same corridor at the almshouse.”
As the traitor turned to leave, he added a last mocking comment.
“To think I had to risk everything because of a mere woodcutter’s daughter,” he said. “It is an amusing thought now the game has ended!”
The words stirred Sir Tiffy.
“Why do you call Kara a woodcutter’s daughter? All our stories were based around the probability that she was Justrain’s daughter, and he never mentioned being a woodcutter in any of his reports.”
The words seemed to catch the traitor by surprise, and he thought for a moment, then a new light appeared in his eyes.
“I see it all now.” He spoke with the voice of a man savouring the ultimate victory. “You deliberately endangered her life in an effort to make me act.”
He laughed, delighted by the knowledge of how desperate his enemies had been to find him.
“But Justrain is Kara’s father, for he did pose as a woodcutter. I know this because the Kinshra informed me that their agents had intercepted a letter from a village woodcutter who matched Justrain’s description.” He waited for a moment to allow them to comprehend what he had said. “And when I signed my reply, I signed his death warrant and orphaned Kara, as well.”
“So it was you who killed Bryant?” Sir Tiffy asked. “And Sir Balladish?”
“It was. I added several requests to Sir Balladish’s list before it was sent to the apothecary-he did not know the exact details, but it is a routine we had established over many years in the almshouse. I made certain I was available in the courtyard to await Bryant’s return, intending to destroy the list and remove my items before anyone knew exactly what I had ordered.
“But the apothecary had told Bryant of the possibility of using the herbs for poison, and the peon told me so. I knew that if Kara died from my potion, then Bryant would be suspicious. Therefore he had to die. Sir Balladish trailed me to Dagger Alley, however, confronting me after I slew Bryant. I do not know why he suspected me, but he died before he could make his suspicions known.”
Again Finistere turned to leave.
“I have heard everything I n-needed to hear,” a voice stuttered in grief from the entrance of the cellar. “And still I feel no triumph.”
It was a voice every one of them knew. It was Sir Pallas.
With a grim look on his face, the old knight of the almshouse stood before the traitor, his unsteady hand holding a sword.
Sulla wiped the sods of earth from his face. He had been thrown from his saddle by the force of the explosion that had destroyed his camp.
“Someone must have lit the black powder!” Jerrod roared angrily as men and horses attempted to recover. “I can smell it!”
Nearby, the messenger groaned.
“The black powder is lost to us now. Soon our guns will exhaust their current supplies and they will be entirely useless,” Sulla said grimly. “This is a failure that cannot go unpunished, and as you are the only survivor of those who failed me.”
He nodded to Jerrod, who stood over the messenger. The werewolf reached toward his throat before the man could defend himself. The messenger gave a brief cry before he died.
Sulla did not even bother to look, for he knew he had to rally his men.
“We must abandon the cannons,” he said. “We cannot get to them in time now. We must concentrate on the knights first, for they are exhausted. Then we will turn our attention to her!”
He clenched his fists at the thought of the girl who had dared to interfere with his plans so many times, and he promised himself that-one way or another-it would not happen again.