19: Escape
A
faint
grey light came into the prison-room below the ground. The ten who sprawled about the hard-beaten earthen floor lay in the attitude of men who listen to every sound that comes to them. They were all that were left of the prisoners of Craig Dun, and for them dawn was the signal to escape. They could stand no more of what was being done to them. They felt they had paid their debts now.
One of them, a tall young warrior, whose chest-wounds had scarcely healed and whose face had been laid wide open by a vicious axe-blow, stood up and went to the big stone that covered the door. He sniffed the air and listened like a hound. Then he turned back and limped towards a man who lay, listless against the stone wall; a man whose body was racked by his efforts to retch every few m
