The stone was cold. It had always been cold — cold when they dragged them in, cold through the branding, cold through the weeks of waiting. The runic F on each wrist had long since scabbed over. Forsaken. That was what they were called here, in Branderscar Prison, which squatted on its rocky island in the middle of a river that ran fast and mean. The walls were thick. The locks were good. The guards changed every four hours like clockwork.
But an hour ago, a woman had come.
She was elegant and cold-eyed and smelled faintly of something no one could name. She spoke to the sergeant at the gate — Blackerly, the one who ran things here — and he smiled and let her through without searching her. She stood at the bars of the cell and looked at each of them in turn, as if measuring them for coffins or contracts. Then she pressed a folded handkerchief through the bars.
"Three days."
Not aloud. Directly into their minds, the words arriving like a finger pressed against the back of the skull.
"Don't disappoint me, dearest."
She left. Blackerly didn't search her on the way out either.
The handkerchief lay in their hands now. Brondar pulled it taut and held it in the weak light that fell through the bars. Up close the stitching resolved into shapes — small cloth patches sewn into the hem. A dagger. A coil of rope. A lantern. Clothing. A small leather case with the unmistakable silhouette of a set of thieves' tools. He counted the patches. Enough to organize an escape.
He pressed close to the bars and listened. Down the corridor, two voices — low, bored, cards on a table. The clinking of a cup. The corridor in front of the cell was empty.
Uthal took the thieves' tools first, his big fingers working the fine picks into the manacle mechanism with less delicacy than the job required. The lock resisted. He tried again. On the second attempt something gave — a soft click — and the cuff on his right wrist fell open. He went completely still. Down the corridor, the card game continued without pause.
He moved to Brondar next. That lock opened cleanly on the first try. Brondar pulled his wrist free and rolled his shoulders — weeks of being chained to the wall, finally done. The remaining three manacles followed. Each ankle chain went to the stone floor in turn, until both of them stood free for the first time since their arrest.
The cell door was harder — it wanted a steadier hand than either of them had at that moment. Uthal worked it, missed, passed it to Brondar, who worked it twice without luck, then passed it back. When it finally clicked — Uthal's third attempt — the door swung inward on silent hinges and the corridor opened up before them. Empty. Nobody had heard.
They moved along the corridor with Brondar ahead. He was too big to be quiet by any honest reckoning — but something happened when Brondar wanted not to be seen. He dissolved into the shadow between torchsconces and arrived at the guardroom door without making a sound. Uthal's boot scraped stone once. Just once. Nobody in the guardroom looked up.
Through the gap: two guards at a table, cards between them, a half-empty bottle of something harsh nearby. The key ring hung on a peg just inside the door.
They went through the door together.
The surprise lasted less than a breath. The first guard spun before Brondar's horns connected — the attack skidded off a raised arm. Uthal's dagger missed clean. And then the guards were up, and the room became a small and very violent place.
The first guard found a gap and drove his elbow into Brondar's jaw — a lucky strike that split the skin and put white sparks in Brondar's vision. Brondar blinked it clear and kept moving. Uthal took a sword across the ribs that staggered him. When the same guard came again, Uthal took the blow on the meat of his forearm rather than step back. He held his ground.
Brondar lowered his head and drove his horns into the first guard's side, felt the hit land solid, and followed through — not stopping, not giving the man time to recover, pushing until the guard stumbled backward into the wall and went down hard. The guard scrambled up. Brondar hit him again. That time the guard did not get up.
Uthal and the second guard traded blows in the doorway — neither getting clean purchase, both working for an angle. Brondar crossed the room. His horns caught the second guard low and drove him into the floor. The man tried to rise. Uthal's dagger found the gap.
Both guards were dead. The key ring was in Brondar's hand. The card game was over.
They stripped the guards of their armor and weapons — chain shirts, shields, swords, bows. Dressed themselves in the dead men's gear and felt immediately more like something than nothing.
The armory was down the corridor. Their own gear was in there, confiscated at intake. Brondar checked the key ring — the armory key was not on it. Blackerly carried that ring. They had two options: find Blackerly, or force the door.
They chose the door.
Two attempts with their combined weight produced nothing but bruised shoulders and sweat. Uthal tried the thieves' tools on the lock — a narrower job than the manacles, and the result was the same. Then they hit it together, shoulder-first, and this time something in the frame gave way with a crack that echoed down the corridor.
Brondar pulled the door open. His greataxe was there — right where they had left it. Uthal's as well. Spare kit, arrows, and at the back, behind a wooden beam, a chain shirt and greatclub that were too large to belong to any human guard.
They were still equipping when a footstep sounded in the corridor behind them.
Brondar stepped into the shadows along the wall and went still. Uthal turned to face the door, casual as a man who belonged there. A guard stepped in, saw Uthal, registered the broken doorframe, and began to process the implications.
He did not finish processing them. Brondar came out of the shadows swinging, and the greataxe ended that conversation before it began.
Room 19 was at the end of the block. Through the bars: a shape too large for the bunk it occupied, skin the color of old bruises, wrists chained to the wall with chains that would have bound a horse. The smell was bad. The food they had given him was worse — there was a bucket in the corner that explained why the ogre's color was wrong.
Brondar stood at the bars and looked at him.
"How strong are you?"
The ogre raised his head. His eyes were muddy but tracking.
"Rich? Grumblejack got nothing. They take everything. They give Grumblejack bad food. Make him sick. But Grumblejack strong. Very strong. Not as strong now — food bad. But strong enough to kill many men. You getting out?"
"We let you out. You help us."
The ogre's expression didn't change, but something in his posture did. A kind of attending.
"You let Grumblejack out? And Grumblejack get to kill guards? Yes. Grumblejack help. Let him out."
They passed his chain shirt and greatclub through the bars before opening the cell. When Grumblejack stood, the ceiling was closer than it should have been. He dressed without ceremony, tested the greatclub in his hand, and fell in behind them without being asked.
They found an empty cell nearby and rested — an hour in the dark, eating nothing, tending to what needed tending. When they moved again, Grumblejack's step was steadier. Not well, but steadier.
Four guards on the bridge. The party did not negotiate. They did not wait to be challenged. They came around the corner and Grumblejack led with the greatclub.
The first guard went down under Grumblejack's swing — a crit that folded the man and threw him sideways. Brondar moved right, found the second patrol guard, and put his greataxe through the man's defenses before he could set his feet. Uthal hit the near bridge guard with his longsword and the man dropped hard. The fourth guard turned to run for the signal horn at the far end of the bridge.
Uthal caught him from behind. The horn never sounded.
One of the guards was still alive — not as dead as he had appeared. They dragged him to the edge of the bridge and Brondar crouched over him with his hand on the man's chest, feeling the faint movement there. He pressed two fingers to the wound and held them there. The bleeding slowed.
The guard's eyes opened. He looked at Brondar, then at Uthal, then at Grumblejack, and made a reasonable assessment of his situation.
"Password. Checkpoint ahead. What is it?"
The guard — his name was Tomas Edra, as he would later confirm — answered without hesitation.
"Hesterfield. The password is Hesterfield. Changes weekly — that's this week's. Bridge checkpoint ahead, two guards on the far side. Warden's tower at the south end — Richter's territory. Sergeant Blackerly — he'll be in his quarters by now. Room 15."
They unbound his hands and walked him to the checkpoint at sword's length, Grumblejack at the rear. The two checkpoint guards looked at the group, looked at Tomas Edra, and looked back at the group.
Tomas Edra gave the password.
"Hesterfield."
The guards stood aside.
They asked the guard his name as they retied him to a post at the checkpoint. He told them. Then they walked away, and behind them Branderscar Prison sat on its rocky island, its thick walls exactly as thick as they had always been, its good locks exactly as good, its guards exactly four hours from changing.
None of that was their problem anymore.
The Old Moor Road was a grey track through grey land in grey dark. Somewhere ahead, across country that swallowed horses and compass bearings, was the meeting the woman had arranged. Three days, she had said. They had done it in less than one.
Brondar took the lead. He had grown up in country that wanted to kill him — different country, colder and steeper, but the skill was the same. He read the ground the way he had always read it: where the water ran, where the firm land was, where the soft margin of the road gave way to something that would take a boot and not give it back. He chose a line through the dark and held it.
Somewhere out in the moors something large and patient moved through the reeds to the north. They gave it a wide berth. It did not pursue.
Grumblejack walked behind them and was quiet, which was not a thing Uthal had expected from an ogre. At one point he said:
"Grumblejack not hungry. Yet. Maybe a little."
Nobody responded to this.
Lights appeared ahead. A house — old stone, dark windows, lantern at the gate. A woman stood in the doorway. The same woman. Cold-eyed, elegant, smelling of what they still could not name.
"Hm. You brought a pet."
She looked at Grumblejack with the expression of someone deciding whether to complain about the weather.
"The Cardinal will see you in the morning. Tonight you eat, you sleep. Your rooms are prepared. You did well. Faster than he expected. Don't touch anything in the east wing."
She stepped aside and let them in.