He was teasing of course. Despite the rumours perpetuated by idiots and bards—same thing, really—Loth would bet the entire contents of his purse (two silver pieces and a loose button) that Prince Tarquin wasn’t lost, and instead was exactly where his uncle had left him—in several pieces in an unmarked grave. That was politics for you.
The boy narrowed his eyes and jutted his chin out. “And what if I were?” he demanded mulishly.
Loth hummed thoughtfully. “No, you’re definitely a horse fucker.”
The boy roared in rage and leapt at Loth, despite the futility of such a gesture. His chains brought him up short, about halfway across the cell.
Really though, he should have been glad, because if he’d still been sitting where he was a moment later, he would have been crushed by the collapsing wall as an orc barrelled through it.
Loth coughed and squinted through the clouds of dust. Where there had once been a wall, there was now a mountain of rubble, with an orc standing on top of it. He was big and ugly by human standards—possibly he was very attractive to other orcs—with two teeth in his bottom jaw protruding from between his lips like tusks. He was mostly bald as well, apart from a few tufts on top of his head, and the same sort of green as a rather anaemic tree frog.
“Whoops,” he said, in a voice that rumbled like thunder.
A second figure climbed up beside him. This one was human. He was a young man with broad shoulders, a heroically wide stance that really must have been straining the seams of his pants, and some underwhelming facial hair that was trying a little too hard to be a rakish beard. He peered down into the cell. “Did you squash him? Is that why you said ‘whoops’?”
“There’s two of them,” the orc said, which made him one of the smartest orcs Loth had ever encountered.
The human stared between Loth and his cellmate, his jaw dropping. “There’s two of them.”
“S’what I said! Two!” The orc seemed inordinately pleased to have his moment of mathematical genius confirmed.
“But they said he’d be alone! Rescue the redhead, they said! Nobody mentioned a second one!”
Loth had no idea what was going on, but he saw an opportunity. “And so I was,” he announced. “All alone up until yesterday, when they put this unfortunate grubby fellow in here with me. You’re here for me, I take it?”
His cellmate tried to say something but choked on a mouthful of dust.
A moment later, a third figure scrambled up onto the pile of rubble. “What’s taking so long?”
A dwarf. It was uncommon for dwarves to travel this far south. Most of them preferred to stick to the mountains in the north, away from all that “human bullshit” as they described it. Loth couldn’t really blame them. On the other hand, as one of the most bullshitty humans who’d ever bullshitted, it was also difficult not to take it personally.
The dwarf sported a thick brown beard that hung down to their knees, a shade darker than the hair on their head. The braids woven throughout the beard made Loth think the dwarf was possibly a woman, though it wasn’t always easy to tell with dwarves, and it was considered rude to ask—a lesson he’d learned the hard way. The dwarf’s eyes were narrowed in suspicion so it was difficult to get a decent look, but if Loth had to hazard a guess at their shade, he’d put it somewhere between ‘mistrustful’ and ‘murderous’.
“There’s two of them,” the orc said proudly and gestured at Loth and his cellmate.
“Then grab the redhead and let’s go!” the dwarf exclaimed.
“They’re both redheads, though,” the human explained. “We don’t know which he is.”
The dwarf sighed. “Have you asked them?”
“Ah!” said the human. He cleared his throat. “We are here to rescue the lost prince, Tarquin. Pray tell, which one of you is that?”
“Me, of course,” Loth said because he liked the sound of the word ‘rescue.’
His cellmate squawked indignantly. “It’s me! I’m him!”
“There’s two of them!” the orc whispered, eyes as wide as dinner plates.
“Ignore my grubby cellmate,” Loth ordered, making what he hoped was a vaguely noble gesture. “He’s a simpleton. He is also an inveterate liar, and a molester of farmyard animals.”
“I am not!”
“Ah, so you admit you’re not the prince? Excellent. We’ll leave you behind. Now, someone said something about a rescue?”
The orc shambled down the rubble and tugged the chains securing Loth’s manacles out of the wall as simply as snapping a thread.
“Marvellous,” Loth said, climbing to his feet. He brushed the dust from his doublet and sketched a bow, complete with a hand flourish, in the direction of his cellmate. “Grub, it’s been an experience.”
“But—it’s me! I’m Tarquin! He’s the liar!” Grub protested, clutching at his hair. “See? Red, like my father’s.”
The human’s brow creased in confusion.
The dwarf sighed impatiently, then said, “Bring them both.”.
“Yes!” the human exclaimed. “Excellent counsel, Ada, excellent. It is my decision that we should bring them both!”
The dwarf rolled her eyes and stomped away. Loth picked his way through the rubble and followed.
The orc grunted and shrugged, picked up Grub and slung him over his shoulder, and followed.
Their escape from the cells at Delacourt castle went far more smoothly than it should have. They encountered no resistance at all, which Loth thought was an appalling indictment on the professionalism of the guards. They hadn’t been this lax last night when they’d been arresting him. Of course, he had pickpocketed the head guard’s wife, so maybe they’d taken it personally.
Still, that was all in the past now, and Loth was more concerned about his oddball little rescue party. Clearly, they thought he was the prince, which should make them amenable to at least feeding him, but at some point—hopefully some point after he’d been fed—he was going to have to part ways with them before they discovered their mistake. That was a problem for future Loth, he decided. Present Loth was well aware that although he was out of his cell, he wasn’t exactly in the clear yet. He wanted to put a few hundred miles between him and the guards before he stopped looking over his shoulder.
In the meantime, he plastered a vaguely regal expression on his face and followed his rescuers toward freedom.
The dwarf led the way outside to a courtyard where an elf was waiting with some horses. He was tall and willowy with dark, lustrous locks. He was startlingly beautiful, as all elves were, and he was also wearing a scowl. Again, par for the course with elven folk.
“Was he there? You took forever,” the elf grizzled, “I’ve been standing here so long that I smell like a horse.” There was a petulance to his tone that had Loth looking closer. At a guess, he’d say the elf was a couple of hundred years old at most—a teenager in elf years, then.
Loth resisted the urge to roll his eyes—never look a gift rescuer in the mouth. Instead he said, “Apologies for the delay. There was a case of mistaken identity. My cellmate thought it would be amusing to claim he was the prince. Of course, one only has to look at him to see that he’s lying.”