Chapter 36 : CINTRA BURNS
Fire bloomed against the southern gate.
Aldric watched from the concealed position as Nilfgaardian siege engines launched their first volleys—not testing shots, but the full-commitment barrage that meant the assault was beginning in earnest. The breach would come within hours. The city would fall within days.
But the timing was wrong.
The dread sense had counted down to approximately Day 1,095—thirty-five days after the Tower's activation. That was the canonical date, the moment when Cintra fell and Ciri's flight began. The staging camp's proximity should have compressed the timeline by perhaps a week, maybe ten days.
The breach was happening a full day earlier than even his revised estimates had predicted.
Meta-knowledge failure, he cataloged automatically. The invasion timeline was never exact. The games provided approximate dates, not precise schedules. I built the plan around assumptions that were always slightly wrong.
"The eastern servants road," Toma said, appearing at his shoulder. "It's clear. The breach confusion is drawing all attention to the south gate."
"Then we move now."
The force entered through the eastern approach—a maintenance road used by palace servants and delivery crews, unremarkable enough to escape Nilfgaardian notice in the chaos of the assault. Aldric navigated from memory, calling turns and directions with the certainty of someone who had walked these streets a hundred times.
He had never walked these streets. He had studied them through wikis, watched them through screen adaptations, memorized their layout from game maps that might or might not match the reality.
So far, they matched.
---
[City Interior — Three Blocks In]
The primary route was blocked.
Aldric stopped at the intersection where the planned corridor should have been clear, staring at the Nilfgaardian cavalry unit that had occupied the road ahead. A dozen mounted soldiers, their black armor catching firelight from the burning buildings nearby. They weren't patrolling—they were holding position, using the intersection as a staging point for deeper city penetration.
The faster breach meant faster interior advance, he realized. The routes I planned were based on a timeline that no longer applies.
"Secondary route," he ordered, pulling back from the intersection. "Through the market district. Adds forty minutes."
"The market's burning," Harren reported, returning from the scout position. "Nilfgaardian infantry holding the eastern approach. Maybe thirty soldiers."
Forty minutes through burning streets held by enemy forces. Forty minutes added to a timeline that was already compressed. Forty minutes that might mean the difference between reaching the servant passage and finding it occupied.
"We push through," Aldric decided. "Formation tight. No stops until we reach the passage."
The force moved into the burning district.
---
[Market District — Fifteen Minutes Later]
The engagement lasted three minutes.
Three minutes of brutal, close-quarters combat through a collapsed marketplace where fire had already consumed half the stalls and was working on the rest. The Campus Invictus graduates fought with the enhanced reflexes and endurance that separated them from ordinary soldiers—holding lines that normal troops would have abandoned, pushing through resistance that should have broken their formation.
But three minutes was enough time for everything to go wrong.
Maren took the spear through his shoulder at the engagement's second minute. The impact spun him sideways, exposing his neck to the follow-up strike. Aldric saw it happen from fifteen feet away—too far to intervene, close enough to see the exact moment when competent soldier became falling corpse.
Jorik was at the burning building when it started to collapse. He pulled three men back from the debris path, got the third one clear, and then the structure came down on top of him with the particular finality of a thousand pounds of burning timber finding its target.
Two men dead in three minutes. Two names added to the list that had started with Renk in the highlands, continued with Pol in the marsh, and now included soldiers who had followed Aldric into a foreign city to accomplish an objective he hadn't fully explained.
Maren. Jorik. The names preserved in perfect recall alongside every other detail he'd accumulated over three years. The cost of this operation, still accumulating.
"Keep moving," he ordered. "We're not stopping."
The force pushed through the collapsing market, leaving two bodies behind.
---
[Servant Passage Approach — Twenty Minutes Later]
The passage was intact.
Aldric crouched at the corridor entrance, studying the courtyard beyond. The servant passage connected the palace's lower levels to an exit point in the eastern district—a route used by palace staff for deliveries and discrete movement. In the chaos of the fall, it would be Ciri's escape route.
If the games were accurate. If the details I memorized match the reality. If she's actually here, in this passage, at this moment.
The courtyard showed Nilfgaardian occupation—an officer's unit using the space as a staging area, perhaps twenty soldiers organizing for deeper penetration into the palace grounds. They hadn't entered the servant corridor yet. The window might still be open.
"Toma," Aldric said quietly. "Count them."
The corridor lead studied the courtyard with the same attention he'd brought to every tactical assessment since his promotion. "Twenty-two. Officer with them—probably a captain. They're staging, not advancing. Haven't noticed the corridor entrance."
"They will. Soon."
"How long do we have?"
Aldric calculated—the smoke was thickening, the fire spreading closer, the general chaos of the city's fall providing cover that would diminish as the Nilfgaardian advance consolidated. Minutes, probably. Maybe less.
"We wait," he said. "The objective is in the corridor. She'll come through. When she does, we move."
"She?"
Aldric didn't answer. The information Toma needed would arrive when it was relevant.
---
[Corridor Entrance — Waiting]
The fire got closer.
The force held position at the corridor entrance, concealed behind collapsed masonry and the general debris of a city in its death throes. Aldric watched the Nilfgaardian staging area with the particular focus of someone whose entire plan had collapsed to a single thirty-meter corridor.
Everything I built. Every structure. Every soldier. Every decision for three years. All of it for this moment, this corridor, this person I've never met.
Toma crouched beside him, not asking the questions he was entitled to ask. The corridor lead had been told enough—an extraction, a person, a timeline. He hadn't asked for the person's name or the reason for their importance. He'd trusted the preparation, the training, the lord who had spent three years building toward something worth the cost.
The smoke was making it hard to breathe. Aldric's eyes watered from the acrid air. Somewhere behind them, the market district was fully engulfed now, the flames spreading toward the eastern wall.
Come on, he thought, staring at the dark corridor entrance. Come on. The window is closing.
Thirty meters away, in a corridor he couldn't see into, either the most important person in the Northern Kingdoms was running toward the exit, or the entire operation had failed and two men had died for nothing.
Aldric waited. The fire got closer. The Nilfgaardian soldiers continued their staging.
And somewhere in the darkness of the servant passage, footsteps were—or were not—approaching the moment when everything changed.
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