A Thorn among the Lilies

Realizing he did not have time to untangle the wire which had sealed the shutters, Ryker turned and balled his fist.

Just because his knife was gone did not mean he was unarmed. His fists were more powerful than other men's blades.

In the confined space, the large inspector actually had the advantage over the trained soldiers. The walls prevented them from easily drawing and using their swords, which were their primary weapon in battle. That was not to say they were useless.

The colonel drew the knife from his belt and aimed it directly toward Ryker's chest. "Give up now. There is nowhere for you to go."

Ryker lifted his fist slightly, seeming like he would surrender to Jay's threat. He was so convincing that the colonel barely had time to react when the crushing blow suddenly surged toward his jaw.

Unable to move completely out of the path of the punch, Jay saw stars as the fist slammed into the side of his head with the weight of a mountain.

The officer crashed into the writing table and demolished it, making the piece of furniture match its bed counterpart. Before his catastrophic fall, the colonel managed a glancing blow with his knife, ripping a hole in Ryker's tunic and opening a shallow gash across his chest.

"Guards!" Jay screamed as he held his head.

In the ensuing mayhem, Ryker kicked the foot soldier between the legs before stomping on the sergeant's face as he ran out of the guest quarters.

Without pausing he burst out in the open and ran through the shadowy streets of the camp with Jay stumbling after him. As quickly as they could recover, the other two scrambled out of the cabin to join the forming troops as they searched.

From above, Silver sighed. When the room was finally clear, he dropped down from the rafters and went to work quickly. He cut loose and removed the trip wire from the bedpost and around the shudders.

It hadn't been an easy feat in such a short time, but the hardest part had been sawing through the bed without anyone hearing him. He still wasn't sure exactly how he had done it. Perhaps Hanna had intervened and muffled his sound.

Cutting away the last bit of wire, Silver then tucked it and Ryker's knife into his cloak with a smug grin. Then he closed his eyes to listen.

'Ryker is still on the loose,' the Guardian furrowed his brow. He had hoped that his intervention was complete. But the longer the Viper took to be apprehended, the more desperate and violent he would get. Soldiers could be wounded or killed.

And Ryker could escape...

Slipping out of the unguarded window, Silver passed into the open as the night sky was reaching out it's dark tendrils to absorb the last bit of light. Stars began to peek out overhead.

Twilight was Silver's favorite time normally. The uncertain shadows were his home as no one paid attention to their constant shifting. Now, however, the same unreliable nature of the light at this hour that he usually welcomed had become his enemy. The Viper was hiding in its depths.

'Focus.' the Guardian shut his eyes for a moment. Most people being chased would run away from the danger and hide whenever the search party closed in. It was human nature to want to put as much distance between the enemy and yourself as possible.

But Ryker was a Viper. He had likely been trained for making hasty escapes. The key was not to outrun them, but to break through their line of search and head in the opposite direction. That meant hiding close by and waiting for them to pass on. Ryker likely already had a spot selected.

Opening his eyes, Silver glanced up at the high wooden wall. It was more than a normal human could quickly scale, and unless Ryker had some special equipment hidden on his person, there were no hand holds.

'Didn't go over the wall. He's here somewhere.' The Guardian's eyes flashed. There was a part of him that relished the hunt.

Voices drifted from inside the buildings and between them.

"Over here!" Someone called. A group of four soldiers ran past Silver as he pressed himself up against the wall.

"False alarm…" the answer came. The men went by a second time, still unaware of the wraith in the shadows. People were everywhere, both the organized searchers and the weary civilians who lived and worked at the fort. It was orderly chaos.

The Guardian looked around at the pandemonium. 'This will be harder than I thought.'

Silver would have to be careful both in finding Ryker and not being spotted by the search parties himself. If caught lurking, it could be misconstrued that he was helping the spy escape the camp.

Leaping from shadow to shadow, Silver began to check the areas which the soldiers had already combed. First he swept the length of the wall just to make sure that Ryker hadn't decided to make a break for it in the growing darkness. As he suspected, the investigator was too smart to make such a risky move in a fort full of soldiers.

Even if Ryker made it halfway up before being spotted, there was likely to be an archer around to take him out. And the men at the top of the wall were already pacing with their eyes warily scanning for any movement. They would be on the inspector at a moment's notice if he made even a slight error in his timing.

If he was smart, Ryker would wait at least until the twilight of morning to slip out when everyone was tired and had lost their edge. Since he hadn't been found, the large man was better off staying where he was hidden.

'Ryker hasn't been found--yet...' Silver amended his thinking. The Guardian would see to it that this changed as soon as possible.

Back and forth along the rows of barracks and houses, Silver searched behind the soldiers trying to find something they had missed. The men were thorough, upturning and digging through anything large enough to hold a man of Ryker's size--and even some things that weren't.

But they were looking from the mind of a soldier. Silver's eyes were...different.

He knew that the Viper would have already formed an escape plan before ever entering the camp. Although his plans had been thrown off by Silver shutting the window, Ryker was likely to correct his course and follow through with his original scheme.

'It has to be somewhere accessible from that window.'

Circling back, the Guardian crouched under the sill and squinted at the ground. A smile bloomed on his face. Next to his knee in the dirt was a fresh drop of blood.

It would not be enough for anyone to notice as a general rule--indeed Silver had not noticed it on his first pass--but even in the wavering torchlight coming from the walls, it would have been impossible for the soldiers to see.

Ryker had come by here, and a drop from the wound on his chest had dripped into the dirt.

'Got you...' Silver's eyes flashed, revealing another wet drop in the dirt a short way off. It hadn't even been fully absorbed into the ground. Ryker was close.

Silver moved to the second spot and tried to find a third. It was like following a crimson trail of breadcrumbs that he had read about some children following once. He hoped his version of the tail would have a less traumatic ending.

Four more drops led him to the last guest house. The only thing left between himself and the wall was a clear open courtyard for the enjoyment of the fort's guests.

There were no guards in the garden. Beyond the large ferns and stone benches...there wasn't much to see.

Which made it the perfect place to hide.

And after Silver watched for a moment, he realized something strange about one of the ferns.

It was moving.