Escape

David Policar 1991

The guards who dragged me across a mile and a half of forest were the tightlipped types, but their commander was another story. The fact that I didn't speak his language upset him -- he spent half the trip shouting what generally sounded like insults at me when he figured I least expected them, maybe hoping I'd turn out to be faking. The other half of the trip he spent yelling at one or another of his troops, a long harrangue the basic jist of which, I gathered, had to do with the one who got away. What he'd expected them to do about it was beyond me.

The city, or village, or whatever, they finally stopped at looked like an architect's version of the Elephants' Graveyard -- lots of absurdly thin, stretched-out stone pillars arranged aesthetically but impractically around thick treetrunks, or fused together somehow into open-air structures. Along the lower branches of enormous trees was more of the same stonework, along with wooden constructs that appeared to grow out of the trees themselves.

Of course, I wasn't being taken on the scenic tour. Most of the stonework I could see was still further "downtown", obscured by thickening forest, when my escort service delivered me to my new home -- or, to be more precise, dragged me through a tunnel inside one of the freestanding sculptures and into a holding cell.

The rest of the day was almost funny. A handful of dried-up bureaucrats spent the afternoon quizzing me in at least half a dozen varieties of gibberish apiece while I swore pleasantly back at them in bad Spanish and half-forgotten Vietnamese. Finally they seemed to decide the obvious: what we were experiencing here was a failure to communicate. Important lesson: bureaucrats are bureaucrats, even when they are seven feet tall with pointy ears and come from another planet.

Then they turned over the reins to a black-haired kid who spent another half-hour alternately spouting gibberish at me and browbeating my guards with variations on the commander's "You let him get away!" speech. The guards treated the kid like someone important, and he clearly wanted me to tell him something -- name, rank and serial number, maybe -- but I had no idea what.

He was the only darkhaired elf I'd seen, and dressed entirely in black and grey... made me notice that everyone else I'd met since my arrival dressed in colors. In fact, after the rainbow fabrics, jewelery, brightly polished armor, and the occassional tatoo, Black-Hair's monochrome was surprisingly restful. And he seemed more curious than upset or agitated... after a while I got the impression he was just talking out loud.

Anyway, I liked the kid. But I cheered silently when he finally gave up and left me there to stew in my cell for a while, which was all I'd really wanted any of them to do in the first place.

A quick inspection of the cell turned up nothing interesting; so did a slower, detailed one. The cell seemed carved straight from the rock, the stone door showed no hinges and practically no seams. The only noteworthy feature of the room was the barred window set into the door, so the guards could look inside -- which they did, periodically.

Eventually the hall got dark -- sunset, though my body was whining for breakfast. Which meant jetlag, on top of everything else. Ridiculous as it sounded, I needed to accept that I was no longer home... no longer on Earth.

Nobody else on this planet owns a gun!, I reminded myself, which made me feel a little better.

I would've felt much better if they hadn't taken mine away. None of the elves seemed to know what it was, but they weren't willing to let me have it. (I'd half-hoped it would go off in their hands, but no such luck.) Still, their curiosity told me something... the gun was novel, but the short stocky earless human didn't faze them for a moment. Which meant I wasn't the only human they'd seen. Which meant, maybe, that my trip wasn't a fluke... maybe that sort of thing happened a lot. Maybe it happened both ways.

Maybe I could get back home.

No, scratch that -- I was going to get back home.

Unfortunately, the only guy I knew could make the trip had no reason to help me, and besides, I'd accepted a contract to kill him. Still, he was my best shot. Which meant I had to get out of the cell, find the kid, and get him to send me home. Simple plan. Sooner or later they were going to open that door, and I would move fast when they did. Which meant I had to get some sleep.

I'm not sure what woke me up, but I was behind the door and waiting before the key finished turning. Nobody came in, though. Door didn't open. Didn't lock, either.

Finally I opened the door. Down the hall, dim light showed a woman and a red half-cloak, slumped against the wall with a sword in her lap. Sleeping? Dead? Faking? Who knew. And on the floor between us: my gun, a hunting knife, and a pouch.

Maybe I had an unexpected friend in town. More likely, I was about to be "unfortunately shot during an attempted escape," or whatever the local equivalent was.

Well, think it through. If the guard was bothering to set me up, then her boss wasn't going to kill me out of hand, so I'd be relatively safe staying put. On the other hand, if I did have a guardian angel out there, I'd never have a better opportunity. Besides, if it was a setup, how would she explain my gear? Unless it was bait and she planned to return once I'd obligingly stepped outside. Which put me back where I started.

The bottom line was that either I took the opportunity or waiting until they let me go. An obvious choice, once I put it that way. Picked up my gear, snuck past the guard, and there I was: armed and dangerous, at the mouth of a tunnel on a warm night in a forest so dense I couldn't see a star in the sky. Wasn't too dark, though -- turned out the stonework glowed in the dark. In fact, there was a lot more of it glowing in the treetops than I'd seen on my way in. Treehouses? Sculptures? Birdfeeders? Again: who knew?

Judging from what I'd seen on the way in, my cell was near the outskirts of the city. Most of the lights were in the other direction, which jived. But they had guards on patrol, so getting out might be tricky. Then again, open-air treehouses wouldn't provide much cover if I headed "downtown", and I wasn't exactly going to blend in on the streets. Then again, maybe their buildings were more solid than they seemed... they had to sleep somewhere. Or did they? Maybe elves don't sleep, or sleep on treebranches.

I ended up hiding in the nearest large tree, which isn't as stupid as it sounds -- if my captors were anything like human guards, when they found me missing they'd look everywhere except the cell itself. With a little luck I could drop down behind them and wait 'till they spread themselves thin enough to escape past. Worked for me once against much tougher security than I'd seen so far.

Less than an hour had passed when I heard sounds from below, the quiet musical tones of whispering elves. Scuffling sounds followed, then all sounds were muffled and finally silenced. I smiled, anticipating the alert that would soon be called, but the smile froze on my face when instead, I heard the same voices whispering more franticly. It occured to me then that I hadn't heard the clink of chain at any point -- whoever these folks were, they weren't guards. I listened more carefully.

There were two voices, deeper and more gravelly than any other elven voice I'd heard but with the same melody and rhythm, and a sharp, urgent edge to them that convinced me these elves were not supposed to be here. Planning to rescue me, or to kill me in my sleep? What was going on?

Two silver-haired elves were crouching near the base of my tree and furtively glancing towards the city lights. One was leaning on a thick oakenwood staff, dressed in an electric blue kimono; the other wore a brown and green bodysuit (with a pattern reminiscent of military camoflauge), a black backpack, and a swordbelt. One thing was certain; these weren't guards.

Finally, the pair seemed to come to some kind of conclusion, and the blue-robed elf walked away, leaning heavily on his staff. Out of the corner of my eyes I saw him fade into the distance, but my attention was fully on his military friend, who shrugged off the backpack and stripped off his bodysuit, stuffing the latter in the former along with his swordbelt, and taking a suit of clothes out of the pack.

A more perfect opportunity I could not have imagined; someone, it seemed, was looking out for me again. My half-naked elven friend reached down to pick up a pair of red leather pants, and I dropped fifteen feet onto his back. He collapsed quite satisfyingly, and I heard a faint snap that I hoped was only a rib or two -- I wanted to question this character -- and the loud exhalation that generally comes with having one's torso forcibly compressed. Just to be sure, I applied swift pressure to the base of his neck, then bit the tip of his ear, hard. He didn't even flinch.

I was unfortunately about two sizes heavier and quite a bit shorter than my unconscious friend, so wearing his clothes was out. On the other hand, I could use the sword, and there would probably be some food in his pack. I rummaged through it, finding a small jeweled dagger, which I pocketed; his bodysuit, which was too small for me to wear; and another set of clothes in what appeared to be my size, which I stared at in shock. Green leather trousers, a black silk shirt, a red leather vest with brown lining, and a pair of boots, all of which seemed designed exclusively with oversized aliens in mind.

I definitely wanted to question this character. His own turquoise-and-green shirt I tore into strips, and tied his arms and legs together behind his back. Everything else I stuffed back into the pack except the swordbelt, which I buckled on.

When my newfound friend finally woke up, he was tightly bound to the underside of a thick branch by strips of his own clothing, with his own sword propped into the ground six feet below him. He was wearing the same breechclout he had on when I tackled him, and for all practical purposes he was completely alone.

Dressed in the ill-fitting but servicable set of clothes he had carried with him, I sat above him, out of his sight, and waited. I was facing the same problem Black-Hair had faced; how to interrogate a captive who doesn't speak the same language. The answer, of course, is non-verbally.

I had been prepared to let him sweat, and I had been prepared to listen to him babble. I had even been prepared for him to escape. I wasn't prepared for him to croak out, in accented but intelligable English, "I am a friend."

"I am a friend," he repeated slowly. "I am here to rescue you."

I almost laughed out loud. He was here to rescueme?

"I am a friend of the man who brought you to Leadrian. He frees you, and asks your help."

There was something odd about the way he spoke, like a tape recording or a foreign student. Suddenly it hit me -- he didn't really speak English! Someone had sent him as a messenger and coached him on what to say. It had to be the kid.

"If you agree to help, you will be rewarded with a sum equal to your current contract, in real gold. I will take you safely to him. If not, I will release you anyway, and you can go on your way."

That complicated matters. If this guy was sent to free me with this message, than the kid hadn't been the one to break me out, and didn't know that anyone else had. Which meant there was a third player out on the board, with motives I couldn't even begin to guess at.

I left my singing telegram dangling from the tree, and started moving through the branches, heading out of the city. Dawn was approaching, and I wanted time to pick a spot before daylight arrived.

If I was going to be playing the game, then it was time to change the rules.