three blocks away from them. The soldiers turn and begin making their way toward them.
Coming to a quick stop, Jiron grabs James and pushes him down an adjacent alley before the oncoming soldiers have a chance to spot them. Moving quickly they race for the other end of the alley.
As they draw near the end of the alley, it’s suddenly lit from the light of torches held in the hands of more approaching soldiers. Pressing themselves against the side of the alley, they wait until the squad passes and then enter the street behind the marching soldiers, running the way the soldiers had just come from.
More lights appear ahead of them. “In here!” Jiron looks back to see James at an open doorway, motioning for him to follow. Running back, he moves through the doorway right after James and shuts the door.
They move quickly through to the back of the house, the light from the torches moving out on the street giving them ample light with which to see by. Before Jiron opens the backdoor, James grabs his arm and stops him.
“What?” he asks, turning around to face him.
“We need to figure out just where we’re going to go,” he insists.
“There’s only going to be so many ways out of Saragon,” Jiron says. “And you can bet they’ll have them all covered with as many men as they can spare.”
“So how are we to get out?” he asks.
“Hopefully we can find a gate that’s not too well manned and force our way through,” he explains. “With all the commotion going on, we’ll not be able to sneak our way out.”
“No, you’re probably right,” he agrees. “We should head for the part of the city where they’ve set up camp. I doubt if they’ll think we would head in that direction.”
“As good as any way, I suppose,” replies Jiron. “Have you felt anything that might indicate a mage in the city?”
Shaking his head, James says, “No, not yet.”
“That’s good,” he affirms.
Moving to the back door, he opens it a crack and finds the alley outside to be dark. Slipping out with James right behind, they head toward the Empire’s camp within the city.
Light from the search parties and soldiers hollering out to one another can be seen and heard on neighboring streets. The bulk of the searchers seem to be heading back toward where they were first spotted. Horns continue to sound throughout the city.
Jiron takes them down another side alley which ends at a major thoroughfare. Peering around the corner, he sees search parties down both sides of the street. “Not this way,” he says to James. Turning to go back the way they had come, they see light approaching the end of the alley.
Stopping and pressing themselves to the side of a neighboring building, they watch as the light continues to approach the alley. Suddenly, the soldiers appear at the end of the alley and turn into it, coming straight for them. “Run!” exclaims Jiron as he bolts back down toward the thoroughfare with James right behind him.
At the sight of them running, the men behind give chase as one of them sounds a horn, alerting the city that they’ve been found.
Bursting out onto the thoroughfare, Jiron sees men running toward them from both directions. Not even pausing, he crosses over to the alley on the other side and continues to flee.
Crumph!
The end of the alley bordering the thoroughfare suddenly explodes as the buildings facing it begin collapsing, effectively blocking the alley and preventing their pursuers from following. As they exit the far side of the alley, a billow of dust belches forth from the collapsing of the buildings behind them.
The street the alley opens on is wide and currently unoccupied. “Head to the wall!” James cries to Jiron.
Taking but a moment to check which way lies the shortest distance to the wall, he turns to the right. There ahead of them, the wall looms high over the tops of the buildings. They can hear the screaming and shouting of soldiers from behind them, as they pour into the street from a junction further back. Glancing behind them, Jiron guesses there must be a hundred or more soldiers back there.
Ahead of them in the street is a large square with a fountain that had seen better days. At one time it used to have four tiers where water would rain down from one to the other. Now, it lies all but broken, only a small section of what used to be the top two tiers remains.
As they come toward the square, four soldiers enter from a side street and charge. A slug takes one out before they even have a chance to close the distance. Jiron moves to intercept as a second slug takes out another.
The first to engage Jiron strikes out with his sword. Jiron deflects it to the side as he follows through with a thrust using his other knife, taking the soldier in the chest. Kicking the dying man off his knife, the soldier flails into his partner, throwing him off balance.
Jiron moves in quickly and takes the remaining soldier out. As the last dead body hits the ground…
Crumph!
…the street behind them explodes upward. Looking back, he sees a dust cloud in the torch light as bodies rain back down to the street. Pursuit momentarily halted from that avenue, they turn and continue toward the wall.
“How are you doing?” he asks James, worried that the magic may be making him weak.
“So far I’m doing alright,” he tells him.
“Good, I’d hate to have to carry you out of here!” he says with a grin.
“I wouldn’t care for that either,” he replies.
They race further on, horns still sounding behind them, but are eerily quiet before them. James figures most of the pursuit has been directed back behind them before he started doing magic and letting them know their whereabouts.
The wall now looms large before them. The street they are on comes to the base of the wall and they are forced to either turn left or right. Both ways look the same, so they turn to the left and race along the wall, hoping to find a way out.
Out of the dark ahead of them, they begin to see light as they approach the gates. Coming to a stop, they see arrayed before them, over a hundred men as well as a dozen or more crossbowmen. Five other crossbowmen man the walls above the gate.
“Man, what are we going to do?” Jiron asks him.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “The magic I would need to use to clear that away would leave me unconscious if not outright kill me.”
They make to turn around when from behind them, the force that had been stopped by the exploding street now boils into view behind them. When the soldiers see them standing there, a cry goes up and horns begin to sound as they charge.
The force at the gate, now aware of their presence, forms into ranks as they make a wall of iron across the street. The crossbowmen ready their crossbows.
Crumph!
The ground behind them erupts, throwing the leading edge of the charging men in the air in the hopes of slowing them down. It does, but only momentarily.
James readies a spell for the group by the gates when their lines begin to buckle and he sees the crossbowmen on the walls turn and appear to be firing at their own forces. Whatever the reason, he changes his tactics and begins peppering the crossbowmen on the walls with slugs and they begin to fall.
“Look!” cries Jiron as he points to the force in front of the gates.
James turns his attention to them and sees them fighting with men in slave rags. The slaves!
“Come on!” Jiron says as he races to the gates and the fighting going on there.
James runs behind him as he sees a group of twenty slaves bearing nothing but makeshift clubs and scavenged weapons, race toward the gatehouse. The crossbowmen on the ground see them and a flight of bolts cuts down half before they make it.
The ten or so left reach the gatehouse where they overpower the two guards there and are soon inside. Two of the slaves lay dead at the gatehouse door.
James glances down the street behind him and sees the force there that had been stopped by the erupting of the street now making their way around the blasted area and continuing the pursuit.
