I wanted, more than anything, to get out of my uniform.
Not because I was sweating -- although I was, and any ordinary fabric would have been plastered to my chest and my back by now. But the soft fabric of my uniform had magically remained dry and and comfortable, its loose folds lightly brushing the muscles moving within it, just as if I'd spent the last hour on routine guard duty of the royal chambers back home instead of climbing what seemed like about ninety flights of spiral staircase in constant terror we'd be caught.
I was also fighting back a wild urge to reach up and rip the shirt off Bryson's broad and no doubt muscular back. More than usual, I mean. And I could tell he wasn't sweating at all; his hair, soft as it was, wasn't even sticking to his forehead the way mine was. The guy seemed impervious to both physical exertion and to fear.
Of course, the crazy fantasy of stripping down to my boxers then and there, and the even less likely fantasy of somehow stripping my brawny comrade to his boxers, would have left us approximately as conspicuous as we already were in our foreign uniforms, and about a million times more vulnerable to being killed or enslaved on sight. As long as I was fantasizing, it would be more realistic to wish our uniforms had the magical power to change themselves from slate blue to forest green. That was, if not physically impossible, something our mages had not yet discovered how to make them do.
I wished I felt half as calm as Bryson looked and acted. He'd always had a self-assured air about him, something about the way he squared his shoulders and thrust out his chest as he waded into the fray. Something in his stride. It wouldn't be fair to call it a swagger, since he didn't come across as arrogant, exactly, just quietly confident he had things under control. His recent brush with death, just weeks ago on the grounds outside the base of this very tower, seemed to have done nothing to shake his confidence, as if he felt he'd taken the worst the world could throw at him and come through it in one piece. Well, technically he hadn't come through it in one piece, but he was in one piece again.
"This is incredibly satisfying," he said as he climbed yet another flight of stairs with me tagging close behind, "penetrating the castle, after I screwed up the last mission,".
"Oh, come on, it wasn't your fault that fireball went off right under you." It felt strange, almost presumptuous, to be the one reassuring Bryson. He was the best of us: my personal hero. I sometimes told my friends that I wanted to be like Bryson when I grew up -- which was a joke, of course, since we were both about the same age; in fact, I was going to hit thirty in just weeks, if I lived that long, and Bryson had over a year to go.
It wasn't like him to be overly modest or to need to fish for complements. Maybe he'd been more shaken by his experience than he'd let on. I added, "I heard that they're triggered by enchanted grains of sand, impossible to tell apart from the ordinary sand around them."
"True. And the spell is set off only by a man's foot, nothing else. I can't think of anything I could have done differently. At least we know now how to avoid them."
"You never did tell me how we got that information."
"Obviously, I found out about the damn things the hard way."
"No, I mean once we knew they existed, how did we learn how to get around them?"
"How do you think? We were able to capture an enemy mage and get the secret out of him."
"Oh." I'd done my share of guard duty in the dungeons, but I'd assumed all the prisoners were soldiers, or maybe guardsmen like us. I supposed it was hard to recognize a mage without his robes. I did remember at least one skinny guy who'd looked out of place among the generally brawny captives.
Bryson continued, "Knowing that secret will really shift the balance of power. It was worth spending a few weeks in the tank of healing."
"Yeah, you seem to be as good as new. You must be, if you can walk up all these stairs."
"You felt my leg muscles the night I came out of the tank, right? Well, they're even stronger now, now that I've had a few weeks to work out."
"Well, actually, no, I--"
"Oh, that's right. You stayed in your bunk. You were one of the ones who weren't interested in feeling my new legs."
Actually, my problem had been that I'd been a little too interested in running my hands up and down his bare legs -- and my interest might have showed, even under my loose nightshirt. Just watching my other bunkmates gather round Bryson as he held his own nightshirt hiked way up, and squeeze his meaty calves and hairy thighs, was enough to keep me under the concealing sheet and blanket. But I could certainly vouch for his regrown legs looking exactly like the original ones, minus a few small scars he'd never bothered to have magically removed. I'd known his body from the knees down almost as well as I knew any part of my own. After all, I'd had countless opportunities to lie there admiring his original legs. He was friendly with the guy who slept directly above me and would often stand right beside my bunk chatting with him before lights-out, oblivious to how I was lying there staring at his bare lower legs, sturdy as tree trunks and dusted with silken black hairs. Sometimes I'd get a glimpse of his equally powerful and hairy forearms. I'd have stared at his feet, too, if I could have done with without openly peering over the edge of my bunk. Often I'd lie awake on summer nights wishing that the spell keeping the bunkhouse comfortably cool would fail for just one night -- a week of cloudy days would do that, according to rumor, the day having some mystical connection to night -- so that we'd be forced to sleep in our boxer shorts, not those heavy, loose-fitting nightshirts. I was sure Bryson's chest and shoulders were as impressive as his legs. Unfortunately, he was one of the guys I never even got glimpses of in the shower, since he opted for ice cold showers in the morning with a few other hearty comrades, while I took mine in the evening when there was hot water available.
"And it really didn't hurt?" I asked. "Getting your legs bl-- well, you know. Even that, it didn't hurt? The potion they gave us really works that well?"
"It really does," he said with a patient sigh, and I kicked myself for pestering him with that cowardly question again. "All we have to worry about today is keeping ourselves alive. Unless we get captured, but the potion should last a few days."
"I don't feel numb or anything. Are you sure it's --"
"It doesn't work that way. I'll show at the next landing." When he reached it he turned to face me, and as soon as I stood by his side, he grabbed my shirtfront and slammed my back into the stone wall. It took me utterly by surprise; it was the sort of roughhousing he normally reserved for his close buddies. But in this case it wasn't affectionate rough-and-tumble; he was just making a point: he'd slammed me hard enough that it should have hurt a little. I felt the impact, but there was no pain. He said, "Is that enough of a demonstration? I could bash your head into the wall, but I don't want to knock you out or give you a concussion. Wait, I know. Let's see..." And to my surprise, he unbuttoned the middle button of my slate-blue uniform shirt. We were both clad in our full uniforms, minus the helmets. The shirt was loose-fitting enough that he only needed to undo one button to slide his big hand in. I sucked in a breath as I felt his fingers brushing my chest hairs, feeling their way to my nipple. Once they found their target, I felt the calloused pads of fingers close in on it. Then he pinched and twisted.
I moaned softly, and he let go immediately. "What, did that hurt? Is something wrong with the--"
"No, no." It had been anything but painful. "More like... well, it didn't hurt. Not exactly. I--I'm convinced."
"See? Nothing will be painful. Not even my massive injury, and that was so bad it would have killed me in minutes if my buddy hadn't doused me with blood-binding potion as quickly as he did. The only thing that hurt, all the way back, was my pride, being carried back on his shoulders and knowing I depended on my buddy completely. I like being in control."
"I noticed that," I said, rebuttoning my shirt. I'd seen him manhandle certain of our comrades often enough, proving his dominance. Not that he was a bully in the usual sense. He only did it to guys he liked, always playfully, and usually only when the other guy deliberately provoked him. For example, the night he was letting everyone feel his new legs, and tolerating them pushing his nightshirt further up, almost to crotch level, one of his friends had reached way up into it and made a playful grab at his ass, or maybe his balls. Bryson, laughing, had quickly overpowered him and tugged the guy's own nightshirt all the way up past his shoulders, covering his face and putting his entire naked body on display for the rest of us. It happened to be a guy I'd stolen glances of in the shower some evenings, so in theory I wasn't seeing anything I hadn't seen before, but unlike in the shower, we all had an implicit invitation to stare as much as we wanted. Even if it was at Bryson's invitation, not his own. It had made me doubly glad to be in my bunk, under the concealing covers, and I'd begun counting the minutes until the sergeant would order us to our bunks and clap his hands to douse all the torches, finally allowing me to very quietly get some release under cover of darkness.
His victim had been a good sport about it; he'd known what he was getting into when he'd instigated it, having seen plenty of examples of what happens when you mess with Bryson.
"I hope not to repeat that," Bryson said -- meaning getting his legs blown off, of course, not the horseplay I was remembering, which I knew he looked forward to repeating as soon as one of his buddies gave him an excuse. "Of course, if I do get injured, I know I can count on you to carry me out. Just like I'd do for you."
"I hope I'm strong enough for that. You're bigger than me, and I'll bet it's solid muscle."
"It's easier than it looks, if you sling me across your back." He looked at me appraisingly. "You're a pretty big guy; I'll bet you're stronger than you think. It's hard to tell under these loose uniforms, but your chest muscles felt pretty damn solid when I had my hand under your shirt." He gripped my shoulder, then my deltoids, then my biceps. "Yeah, if you're back's strong too, you would do fine, if it comes to it. And you know I can carry you."
Before I could react, he swept my legs out from under me and caught me in his arms, against his rock-solid chest. "Hey!" I protested.
"Yeah, you'd be easy enough to carry. Although after a few flights I'd probably have to shift you to my back." He set me on my feet so we could continue upward, though I didn't doubt he could have carried me up the stairs if he wanted to. I noticed he didn't offer to let me practice slinging him across my shoulders.
Unlike our own princedom's dungeon, which was located deep in the cellars under our castle, the enemy kept their prisoners near the top of a tower. We made it to the upper floors of the tower without incident. There were spy eyes throughout the stairwell, but we'd learned about those by interrogating prisoners, and were wearing amulets that rendered us invisible to anyone watching through them.
***
The first door I peeked out of had constant traffic, people bustling by in forest-green robes every few seconds, scrolls under their arms. I silently motioned Bryson up to the next landing, in between floors.
"That one looked like an administrative floor, or maybe research." I hadn't gotten a good enough look at their robes to tell a clerk from a mage.
"Too busy for us to slip in undetected, then?"
"Definitely."
"And not our target anyway. The prison floors should be the next one or the one after, if our information is right."
Cracking open the door at the next landing, I heard one man's booted footsteps echoing down an otherwise silent corridor. He happened to be approaching from the hinged side of the door, making it hard for him to notice that the door was ajar, so I left it open and peered out through the crack. Bryson crowded in, resting his hand on my shoulder, so we could both peek out.
I had to make an effort to control my breathing; the casually familiar way he touched me, like a trusted comrade, made my heart pound and sent shivers down my spine. I was aware of his square jaw hovering just a finger's width above my head. We had left our helmets at home; unlike the enchanted fabric of our uniforms, they were ordinary metal and prone to clanking. We were more worried about revealing ourselves with careless clattering than we were about being hit over the head. Bryson's hair was almost long enough to touch his broad shoulders, and now I could feel it, tickling the back of my neck, soft as a camelhair brush. It was said that Bryson's parents paid for three wishes when they conceived him, or some said it was a gift from one of his godparents. Obviously the first wish had been for great strength, and most folks agreed the second had been great courage. No two stories agreed on what the third wish had been. Probably not his rugged good looks, which were striking but could have happened naturally. Plenty of guys -- his buddy Kleb came to mind (all too often) -- were at least as handsome. My own private theory was that the wish might have been for fine silken hair. And not just on his head. His legs, his forearms: the few times we'd greeted each other by gripping wrists, I'd had to resist the urge to rub my thumb against those fine black hairs.
The guy in the corridor, clad in his forest-green uniform, was a little short for a guardsman, and not very broad in the shoulder. I could have taken him, probably with little enough struggle that no one would hear. There was of course no doubt Bryson could have. But Bryson tightened his grip on my shoulder when he felt me tense to go into action. He eased the door shut.
"We should take him out," I said. "We're lucky. It doesn't get much easier than this."
"No, we'll pick on someone our own size. Well, yours, anyway."
"That's very honorable and all, but--"
"Honor has nothing to do with it. Wait a minute and then check again to see if the corridor is clear."
When I cracked open the door again, we heard a low humming sound.
"What's that?" Bryson asked.
"Just an enchanted mop. We should probably wait for it to go by so it doesn't see us."
"No, don't worry. They're incredibly dumb. Even if it could tell we were enemy guardsmen, it would have no way to report us." He peeked out, carefully opened the door a little further to peer around it in the other direction, and stepped out into the open.
The mop, which had been humming confidently around the corridor as if it had long since learned its way, paused uncertainly when it reached Bryson's hulking unfamiliar shape. Then it backed up and navigated around him, giving him a wide berth, and continued on its way as if nothing had happened. "See? It probably can't tell a man from a table, or a case of scrolls, let alone friend from foe."
I joined him. "What now? Do we look for cover, or..."
"Follow that mop."
***
"I have to admit," Bryson said, "we may be way more advanced than the enemy when it comes to healing magic, but they sure do broom closets right."
I had to agree. This one was surprisingly spacious and uncluttered, for a broom closet, once we had picked up the two enchanted mops and three enchanted brooms and stored them on the shelves on their sides. Not only that, it was also well lit: the door was transparent, letting in light from the brightly lit hallway. From outside, the door was opaque and had looked like part of the whitewashed wall; we'd have missed it if we hadn't been following the mop when the door slid open to admit it. Although it was designed to open and shut itself magically, it had been easy to slide it open with our hands, once we knew it was there; it even had some slight ridges designed to give us something to grip.
We watched in silence as a guardsman came by. I didn't hear his footsteps through the door, so I risked whispering, "The same little guy again."
"I'm still hoping he's not the only one patrolling this level. Or that his relief will be bigger."
As we waited, I asked, "Do we know if this is the floor Humfry is being held on?"
"This can't be their main dungeon floor. Not busy enough."
"And I'd expect to hear moaning, and the occasional scream."
"Yeah, there's that. But they probably have a separate area for high-status prisoners. And the Prince's cousin certainly qualifies. We know they have a lot of prisoners, taking up at least one floor, possibly as many as three floors. This could be the floor for Very Important Prisoners, for all we know. That;s one of the reasons I decided to stop here."
"I still don't understand how we're going to search three floors without being caught."
"By a very old tactic. Do you have the bottle of sleeping lotion ready?"
I took it out, flipped the cap open one-handed, and flipped it closed again. "I wish we could just use darts."
"If what we've been told is true, their palace guard uniforms are enchanted, like ours. If the enchantment is half as strong as it is on their foot soldiers' uniforms, it'll stop a bullet, let alone a dart. We've captured enough of those uniforms to be sure of that."
"So that's what we do with the uniforms from all those guys in our dungeons? I always figured they just got thrown out."
"Nope. They've given us more information than some of the men who used to be wearing them."
Finally, a new guardsman approached, this one a big broad-shouldered guy, built much more like you'd expect of a guardsman.
"Ah, now that's more like it," Bryson whispered. "A reasonably big sturdy guy. He'll do nicely! Wait here. I'll grab him right after he passes the door."
The guard passed. The door slid silently aside as Bryson pushed it with one hand.
Bryson grabbed the helmeted guard from behind, clamping his hand over his mouth and wrapping one arm around his chest to pin his arms to his sides. Taken by surprise and helpless against his much bigger opponent, he was dragged into the broom closet, heels scrabbling on the polished marble floor. He managed to draw his dagger and awkwardly stab at his attacker's outer thigh, even though he could move only his wrist, but of course the point couldn't penetrate the fabric even if he'd been able to put any put any real force behind it. I doubted it would even give my comrade's fresh new leg its first bruise, and it couldn't scratch him through the fabric.
I slid the door shut behind them as Bryson squeezed past. He muscled the guy around to face me. "Stuff something in his mouth so I can hold him with both hands." He still had his hand clamped over his mouth.
"Like what?"
"I don't know. Your shirt."
He almost sounded like he wasn't joking. I found a relatively clean dust rag, probably used by human servants for the occasional nonmagical cleanup, and stuffed it in his mouth. I figured the guy would prefer the slightly dusty rag over my sweaty shirt, even if I'd been willing to sacrifice my shirt.
Bryson pinned our captive's arms behind his back.
"What are we going to do with him?"
"The chest usually works well," he suggested. I realized he meant it was time for the sleeping lotion.
The enemies' shirts used zippers where ours used buttons. I grabbed the tag and pulled it halfway down, exposing a muscular chest, heaving in fear and rage, with average-size pink nipples half hidden under abundant curly brown chest hair. Flipping open the bottle, I poured a generous amount of lotion into my hand and began rubbing the stuff into the man's chest, until his hairs were slicked down against his skin in whorls tracing the curve of his muscles. I unzipped his shirt the rest of the way and rubbed my still-sticky fingers around his hard, hairless abs, spiraling in toward the concavity of his navel.
"Take off his helmet and get the back of his neck."
Unstrapping his helmet and setting it on a shelf, I forced the man's sandy-blond head down until his chin was on his chest. I massaged the back of his neck with my lotion-covered fingers, then slid my fingers down under his high collar and followed his spine as far down as I could reach. It would be absorbed quickly through his skin, I knew from my training. My own skin was absorbing it too, of course, but that's why Bryson and I had taken the antidote before we left, along with the potion that made us impervious to pain.
Our captive was already sagging in Bryson's arms as the stuff I'd smeared onto his chest found its way to his heart and was sent coursing through his bloodstream. He raised his head as soon as I released it, and made an effort to glare at me defiantly, but he was having trouble keeping his eyes focused. Or even open.
"It's taking effect," Bryson reported. "He's still struggling, but he's getting weaker."
"Not that he had a chance against you in the first place."
"True enough," he allowed with a confident grin.
After a few moments, the enemy guardsman's chin sank to his chest on its own. "Sleepy-time," Bryson said tauntingly, tousling his blond hair. He had me support him while he stripped the dark green shirt off entirely, baring the man's back so I could rub lotion all the way down his spine as he struggled weakly. Just as I reached the very base of his spine, he shuddered and went completely limp in our arms. Bryson laughed, patting the sleeping man's washboard abs possessively. He was enjoying this; he seemed to relish having an unwilling enemy at his mercy just as much as he sometimes delighted in dominating a willing friend. The incident with the nightshirt was not the first time I'd seen him take pleasure in humiliating his friends when they gave him an excuse by getting aggressive with him.
"One down," I said. "How many hundreds to go?" I'd used only a small fraction of the bottle, but not that small a fraction.
"Our interrogators are still trying to extract that information from our prisoners, but yeah, probably hundreds. But this guy was hopefully the only one we have to take out. I've got a plan, remember?"
"Are you going to let me in on it?" I was a little surprised at myself for speaking so boldly; I reminded myself that he was leading this mission and I was under his command for its duration. Still, his easygoing manner invited it.
"Take your boots off."
"My boots? Can I ask why?"
"Just do it," he said, tugging the unconscious man's boots off.
I sat on the floor and did ask he ordered. He grabbed my bare ankle and put my feet together with the unconscious man's, sole to sole. My toes rested against the ball of his foot; they didn't even overlap with his toes. "No, his are much too big for you. Look at the size of these feet!" He stroked them almost affectionately. "Almost as big as mine. Well, it doesn't matter. Their boots don't look all that different from ours, and most guys don't notice shoes anyway. We'll take our chances and proceed."
"What does that mean?"
"It means, strip." He stood up, effortlessly drawing the unconscious shirtless man with him, into an upright position with one arm around his bare chest.
"What?!"
"Look," he said, unfastening the unconscious guard's green trousers and tugging them down, "it's not like his clothes are going to fit me. But he looks to be about your size."
I was flattered, since my first impression of the guard had been that he was a big beefy fellow, and seeing him with his shirt off -- and now his pants around his ankles -- did nothing to change that.
"What are you waiting for? Start stripping."
It was the first order he'd given me that wasn't something I'd have done voluntarily. Reluctantly, I unbuttoned my shirt, feeling my brawny comrade's eyes on me. My arm and chest muscles compared reasonably well to our captive's, I guess, but even after all those crunches every day, I could barely see my abs. And I was sure Bryson's muscles, if I ever got a look at them, would put both me and our prisoner to shame.
By the time I had my shirt off, Bryson had already finished stripping the guard, who was now clad only in skimpy gray briefs. The broom closet suddenly felt too small to hold three men; I rubbed shoulders with my comrade and our shirtless captive repeatedly as I awkwardly stripped down to my boxer shorts.
***
"I was right," Bryson said, adjusting my collar for me. "He's just your size."
"Sleeves are a little short, but hopefully no one will notice." I put on the helmet. "This fits about right. But why do their stupid helmets have to cover so much of the face?"
"Be glad they do. It must make it hard for them to learn to recognize their hundreds of comrades, and to notice that they've never seen you before."
"What about you? Don't we have to find a giant-sized uniform for you? Please don't tell me you're going to hide out here and make me finish the mission."
"I'd never do that to you, man! No, we're going to make it look like you took me prisoner. See, that'll give you an excuse to take me to where the prisoners are kept, so we can search for Humfry."
"Well, this guy's pockets have several short lengths of rope. That's probably the way they restrain their prisoners."
"Is there enough to tie him up in his own bindings and still do me?"
"Plenty." The sleeping guard was propped up against the wall now that Bryson was done stripping him. I crouched down beside -- having to do an intimate little dance with Bryson first to slide past him, but at least I was no longer half-naked -- and grabbed his two huge bare feet and brought them close together. I wrapped one of the lengths of thin rope -- twine, really -- around his bare ankles. I pulled it taut and started to knot it, but then I noticed that it had stuck together, as though coated with hot wax, as soon as I'd pulled the first half of the knot taut. I tried to undo the knot, but it had already formed one solid lump.
"Take a look at this. The bindings must be enchanted."
"Make sure you can cut them off, then -- before you use them on me!"
I touched the edge of my stolen dagger to it. The blade cut through it like overcooked pasta without my even putting much pressure on it, and the bindings slithered to the ground.
After replacing the bindings on his ankles with fresh ones and then binding his wrists, I stood up. "Your turn, if you're ready."
He hesitated, then turned his back on me and held out his wrists behind him. I was about to bind his wrists -- what a weird feeling that was! -- when he said, "Wait," and turned back. "Punch me in the face. It'll be more believable if it looks like I put up a fight."
"And I overpowered you?" I asked dubiously.
He grinned at me. "Well, you and five other guys."
"You really want me to hit you in the face? I'm not sure I can."
"It won't hurt, remember? Just try not to break my teeth. Just enough to bruise, or puff up, and maybe split my lip. Here, maybe if I bite my lip while you're doing it..."
"Here goes..." I slugged him.
"A little harder than that!"
"Sorry. It's just hard to hit someone I... to hit a comrade-in-arms."
"Just remember that the more convincing you make it, the less likely we are to be captured or killed. Now try again."
I hit him a little harder, and he dabbed at his lip and saw blood on his fingers. "Good job. How about one more, to give me a black eye?"
"Don't you think a bloody lip is enough?"
He considered it. "I guess it'll do. Now, tie my wrists." He rolled up his sleeves, baring thick forearms covered in fine black hair, and turned his back on me, offering his wrists. Something about his body language gave me the idea that he hated being bound much more than he hated being bloodied.
Once I was done, he tried breaking out. To my surprise, he failed. The thin twine was stronger than it looked.
"OK. Now, saw halfway through it so I can break out anytime I want to. That should surprise them, if I time it right."
"I'll try." But as soon as the blade touched the twine, it sank into it, and though I snatched it away immediately, it continued melting, and the bindings fell away.
"Enchanted," I said. "It's all or nothing with these. No cutting halfway through."
Bryson shifted uncomfortably on his feet, but just said, "Well, it can't be helped. Go ahead and tie me up again. Wait, let me scratch my nose first. Ever notice how it itches the minute you can't do anything about it?"
"Tell me about it. With the stupid nose guard on this stupid helmet, I'm almost as bad off."
"Funny that they can't make a potion to prevent itching and they can make one to prevent pain."
"They probably could," I said, tying his wrists again, "but we wouldn't want it. If an insect crawls across your skin, you'd want to feel it so you can slap it." I demonstrated by walking my index and middle fingers across his bared forearm, so lightly that they never touched his skin, just lightly brushed that fine hair that covered his arms.
"Stop that," he said, laughing.
"Sorry."
"You do realize how much trust I'm putting in you, don't you, buddy?" He turned and grinned at me.
I was touched and honored. And surprised. Bryson had never in his life called me "buddy" before. He was very selective about using that term. There were about a dozen guys he did use it freely with, but not with most of us. And he'd never looked at me with that expression before: amused and trusting at the same time.
"Of course you can trust me," I said. "You know I'm loyal. If I were a traitor, I could have stabbed you in the back long before we reached this floor."
"Oh, I know you're no traitor. I meant it more personally than that. And less seriously." He grinned. "You know, some of my closest friends would love to get me in this position."
"What, like the time the summer before last when Aric and Kleb held your arms while Declan tickled you?" I poked him playfully in the ribs, and to my astonishment, he doubled up laughing. I'd known from witnessing that incident that tickling was his one weakness -- I thought of it something like the heroes in old myths, like Achilles or Superman; they always had one weakness -- but I was surprised that a single poke in the ribs could set him off, even through his shirt. Let alone an enchanted shirt that could stop bullets. In his desperation to get away from me, he banged his head on the bottom of a shelf and knocked an enchanted broom to the floor. It woke up and seemed to look around in confusion.
"Sorry," I told him, replacing the broom on the shelf so that it went back to sleep. Actually I was only sorry he'd bumped his head, painlessly or not, not that I'd tickled him. The way he was glaring at me, I felt lucky that I'd hadn't tried it a few minutes before, when he wasn't tied up and I didn't have a shirt on. When he didn't say anything, I added sheepishly, "There are probably harsh penalties for tickling a superior officer."
"I don't know about that, but there sure as hell are harsh penalties for tickling me. You remember how I paid Aric, Kleb, and Declan back."
"I didn't know you-- Wait a minute! You were the one who hung them by their ankles from the ramparts in their boxer shorts overnight?"
"They deserved it. No one does that to me and gets away with it. Anyway, it wasn't like it was all that cold that night."
"I wondered why you didn't get mad that morning, when you saw what someone had done to three of your closest friends."
"Right. No one gets away with humiliating my friends! Except me."
"No wonder they haven't tried anything like that in all the time since. Man! I've seen you roughhouse, but I never pictured you going that far. You always seemed like such a nice guy."
"I only do things like that to my close friends."
"I guess I'm safe, then."
"Don't count on it, buddy," he said with a grin. He looked for all the wold like he would have clapped me on the shoulder. But he couldn't, of course. He couldn't do much of anything with his wrists tied behind his back. He added, "But don't let that stop you from slugging me one more time. I won't hold that against you. We need to make this look good."
"No, let's just get this done." I took him by one meaty shoulder and aimed him at the door.
He turned around to face me again. "Hey, I told you to hit me again. Remember who's in command of this mission."
"Remember who's the guard here," I said, starting to warm to the role, "and who's the prisoner." I grabbed the collar of his blue shirt and used it to try to yank him around. He resisted, and I pulled harder. He was incredibly strong and hard to budge, but I was no weakling myself. In the contest of strength, the loser was his shirt. Not the magically tough but lightweight fabric, of course, but several of the buttons, which must have been sewn on by ordinary threads.
"Nice," he said approvingly, looking down.
With the shirt torn open and askew like that, I could see that his chest was covered with hair as fine and black as the hair on his forearms. His upper chest, at least: the part I'd laid bare. I also got a glimpse of bulging muscles -- no surprise there, given his obvious strength. Soft hair over hard muscles. Would some godparent have wasted a wish over so small a thing? Baby wishes were incredibly expensive. Then again, they were traditionally sold in three-packs, so having used the two wishes they'd really been after, who knows?
He turned voluntarily toward the door, saying, "You're right, this should be enough to make me look convincingly roughed up."
I leaned against him and reached around him to get a grip on the ridge in the door so I could open it. Then I shoved him into the corridor.
***
A quick search of the floor found only unused cells, maybe intended for a big prisoner influx after the next battle, or the next crackdown on their own citizenry. We climbed one more flight of stairs, my hands on Bryson's broad shoulders to steady him. Completely unnecessary, since he seemed to be balancing fine with his hands bound behind his back, but it felt right.
I cracked open the door and peered out. This floor was crawling with green-clad guardsmen, unlike the last. As I watched, I happened to see three of them escorting a brawny prisoner wearing what I recognized as the lower half of the uniform our soldiers wore. Just the blue trousers; his shirt, helmet, and boots were gone. The hair on his bare head and bare chest were matted down with sweat, as if he'd recently put up a good fight, but it didn't look like he had much fight left in him now. It didn't matter if he did; two of the guards were flanking him, and the grip each had on his meaty upper arms looked so painfully firm that the knife the third guard trailing behind them was pointing at his unprotected back seemed redundant.
Clearly this was the floor we wanted to search, and Bryson's ruse was actually starting to seem plausible. I wondered if my own fake prisoner would be more convincing if he were barefoot and bare-chested too. More convincing, and slightly less threatening. Nothing could make my hulking comrade look harmless, but it might help. I paused a long moment to consider what he'd think about the idea, and what would happen if I just stripped him against his objections.
I watched the bare back receding as our countryman was led away to whatever fate awaited him. In the distance I could hear the mingled voices of many men moaning and begging for mercy.
(To be continued)
