by J. G. Cuff
Rape and murder...killed a Queen's Guardsman and a rancher's daughter...cut away her face...broke both of her arms...stabbed the Guardsman 16 times in the neck and shoulders...left the bodies in the Eastern Wood, mid-way to Solarium...arrested by Captain Bruce Devanshire of the Queen's Guard Amicitia...prisoner to be detained at the Gehenna Towers for his remaining life, until death shall part him.
Atticus watched him from over his shoulder. Horace added the papers to the leaning stack on the right and then he picked-up a quill and made notes in the ledger. He had two young daughters of his own at home. Horace turned and looked up at Atticus Sloane with a cold stare.
“I'm surprised they didn't execute you on sight. You must have a friend somewhere.”
Atticus could not believe what he heard.
A friend? If only he knew the awful truth. I should tell him but he wouldn't believe a word. And even if he did, I can't trust anyone in here. Horace glanced over the orders again before closing the ledger. He led his prisoner through the small guard house and into the hallway at the end of the room.
One window, two rooms, a fireplace.... Atticus observed every detail, carefully mapping-out his surroundings. He would need them later to plan his escape. His father had always drilled into him the value of paying attention. As a farmer, Darius Sloane understood the signs that could lead their family to a healthy crop, or a long winter of hunting small game to make up for whatever they lacked in preserves on the cellar shelves. He showed his sons how to mix the soil with ash and fish entrails, and to observe the insects on the plants and the birds that fed upon them. He taught them on long autumn nights, how the position of the moon and the calling of frogs could tell of frosts to come. Atticus missed him now more than ever. He would have given anything to be sitting beside his father at the Sloane house near the Buckskin, with little Marcus in his lap and the mixed aromas of Aunna's cinnamon sweetbread and the fragrant smoke of tobacco, smoldering in his father's pipe.
Horace turned him into the left archway in the hall, and they entered a small, bright room. A large window with the sill at shoulder-height filled the space with daylight where it reflected off of a water-filled wooden tub sitting against the left wall. The tub was heated by rusted metal pipes coming out from behind the fireplace in the other room.
I doubt I'll see any hot baths in here.
The guard house was more comfortable than he would have imagined. He was sure that his cell in the adjoining tower would be much less accommodating.
Built into the wall along the foot of the tub, were several wooden cabinets.
“Stand there,” said the guard and pointed to the far corner where an iron stove had once been. Its outline along the plaster could still be seen, after many years of heating and baking the dust that settled behind it, leaving a permanent shadow on the wall.
Horace turned to him and looked into his swollen eyes. “I know killers,” he said, “You look more to me like a frightened animal.”
And that was exactly how Atticus felt. It relieved him greatly to think that a man, who was a complete stranger to him, may be of such intuitive intelligence that he perhaps saw a glimpse of what Atticus really was—an innocent man.
Horace looked him over carefully and gauged his obvious injuries. His prisoner bore a dark black right eye. Blood trickled down from his nose and out from between his swollen lips. His left hand was red and badly burned on the top. Atticus read his expressions and believed that the guard may not have entirely agreed with some of the policies regarding receiving and processing prisoners. He guessed that it wasn't the first time that a new-comer had their face damaged at the gates on entry.
Perhaps the numeral branding was reserved for special inmates. The captain did warn him that he would be a number; that he would disappear into the walls.
“Looks like you picked a fight with a Cyclops. I suggest you keep your hands to yourself in here,” Horace remarked, with the obvious denial that the guards at the gatehouse had done anything wrong.
Atticus said nothing; closing his eyes and nodding carefully.
“Well then, I shall expect little conversation from you today.”
Horace stepped closer to him and looked down at the numbers 4 and 7, burned into the flesh on the back of Atticus' left hand. He turned around and opened one of the cabinet doors by the tub. After a quick muttering, he produced a small brush and a stout glass jar which he set on the table. The jar was half-filled with a thick, brown liquid. He opened the lid and then dipped the brush in and turned his head away so as not to smell its contents, as he rubbed the excess sap-like fluid off on the brim.
Turning back to his prisoner, he nodded toward the injured hand. Atticus did not offer it up to the guard. He looked up with the eyes of a beaten dog; instinctively ready for the next wave of suffering.
Horace assured Atticus that it would help to ease the wound.
“The only harm this is going to bring you is the smell.”
Atticus stood motionless. The big tower guard lifted his eyebrows.
“Prisoner, you are here to stay and I am here to make sure that you do. It's as simple as that. Now turn your hand over and give it here. That's an order,” he said, as he held his left arm up over his mouth and nose to escape the putrid scent. The shackles rattled, as Atticus lifted his shaking hands. Horace reached out with the brush in his right hand, and Atticus closed his eyes. Soft bristles swept across the stinging blisters. It hurt, but the worst part was the odor. It smelled horrible, like the black mud of a bog. He sucked deep breaths in through his mouth to avoid drawing air through his nostrils.
The rotten brown muck left a waxy, protective coating over Atticus' wound. To his amazement, the pain had already numbed completely. Horace quickly put the lid back onto the stout jar and tossed the brush into a bucket of water on the floor.
“I never could get used to that stench.”
He led Atticus by the arm into the other room directly across the hall from them which was furnished only by another long table with cabinet doors below it. The room seemed identical to the last one, with the exception of the tub.
“Place your palms flat,” Horace said, nodding to the table, “I'm going to remove your wrist-irons now. If you try anything, I will kill you. Do you understand?””
Atticus nodded, as the guard solidified his sincerity by looking directly into his eyes and warning,
“Even if by some miracle you got past me, those boys out there'll smash your legs with their clubs and then drag you up to the archer's loft, where you will have a an unfortunate fall from the top of this tower. It happens more often than you'd believe.”
Atticus nodded again that he understood, trying not to move his head any more than he had to. His temples were pulsing with a growing headache and his face flared from the split down the bridge of his nose. He had no intention of fighting the guard who easily out-weighed him by more than 50 pounds. Even if he had the strength, the guard had done him no harm yet.
After freeing his hands and leaving his ankles shackled, Horace instructed him to remove his shirt and pants. Atticus did as he was ordered to, and the guard handed him a gray cotton robe from a pile on the floor behind the door.
“Put this on. Once you're settled-in upstairs, I'll bring you a bucket. The food here is awful, but the water's clean. You'll use that bucket to drink from and to wash in. I would strongly suggest that you do it in that order.”
When he had dressed himself into the robe, Horace re-shackled Atticus' wrists and then walked him back to where the two other tower guards were still playing cards. They did not look up at him this time. After reaching the foot of the wide stone stairway near the front door, they began their ascent, spiraling up the massive tower.
Atticus counted the stairs, one by one in his head, as their footsteps echoed around them. The tower was wider than three of his houses put together, and he couldn't imagine how many hands had worked to heave the massive stone blocks atop one another.
When he had cou
nted to 20, they passed a landing with a large door, from which the sounds of suffering seeped from. A man's voice wailed-out and slowly muffled, as they turned up the next flight. Atticus worked hard to try and push Marcus back out of his thoughts, until he could think of a way out. He needed sleep more than anything now.
There were doors at every 20 steps, leading to rooms and cells that surrounded the center stairwell.
When he had counted to 93, they were finally at the landing of his cell. An odd number—the only landing set at 19 steps. We must be near the top.
Seated in a large wooden chair beside the door, was another guard. He was bald with a long, red beard and a crude leather patch over his left eye. He looked up and nodded, and then he stood to greet them with a large ring of black keys in his right hand. The door to the cell was made of thick oak beams with no bars or window; only a narrow slot at the bottom for sliding food in through. The number 28 was roughly and deeply carved into the center.
When the guard unlocked the door and let them into the prison chamber, Atticus was horrified. The room was no larger than the wagon he had arrived in. On the floor, tightly placed together, was a wooden chair, one small table and a large, straw-stuffed leather mat with no pillow, draped by a filthy black quilt, lying against the right-side wall. They were to be his only furnishings. Across from the door, a single black stone rested in the wall, flush with the others at shoulder-height. There was no window; only a tiny slit in the thick stone wall, roughly the width of his fist and the height of his arm.
An arrow slit. Even in the late afternoon, as it was, the light from outside barely penetrated the shadowy chamber.
The room was built originally for archers to stand watch. It was never intended to be lived in. Tower nine was much farther back from the edge of the sea a thousand years earlier, before the bluffs had eroded and broken away, bringing the sea ever nearer.
Horace instructed him to kneel while they unshackled him.
Atticus looked down at the mat on the floor and saw a small clump of hardened, yellow soap sitting on the torn quilt. He knelt down on the cold stone and closed his eyes in relief, as the heavy irons fell to the floor behind him. The red-bearded guard collected the shackles and hung them up on the wall outside the doorway where he took to his post in the wooden chair once again.
Horace turned to leave the cell and began to close the door behind him when he stopped and said,
“Don't let hope enter into this room. Just one man has ever escaped from these towers. When they caught him, the guards tossed him over the bluff, two-hundred feet down onto the rocks. The wyverns tore him apart—fighting over his arms and legs. The bastards hunt along the water's edge. They know better than to come up here, but they own that shoreline.”
The room darkened quickly, as the heavy wooden door closed and locked tight, taking nearly all of the light with it. It didn't matter to him now. The sun had already set on Atticus Sloane. He lay down on the mat with his back to the door, facing the wall and he closed his eyes. Atticus knew that he would escape soon and find his son. He just had to think his way through it. Tomorrow had to be better. Tomorrow he would make his plan.
A HOPE IN HELL
20
T dawn, two days after his incarceration, Atticus received a welcome surprise. Upon opening his eyes, he saw a thin beam of morning sunlight and a small yellow bird sitting on the narrow slit in his wall across from his bed. For a brief second, he thought he was at home. Yellow finches often visited the apple tree beside his kitchen window in the Sparrow Vale. How his heart ached to be there now. The beautiful bird chirped and then flew away free.
Atticus' mind had writhed in the darkness for the past two nights; painfully fighting its way in utter helplessness through an endless tide of terrible nightmares.
How many times could Marcus die, if only in his dreams?
For two days, Atticus had gone around and around in his mind, visualizing getting beyond his door and then where to go from there. His only obstacle was the stone around him. If he could only get a message out to someone in the council or to his parents in the vale, surely they could help him explain the colossal misunderstanding. But prisoners were prohibited from writing letters or receiving visitors who were not pre-approved. Atticus had no means to write anything. Even if he did, the crazed, raping, murdering captain obviously had friends inside the prison. Of course he did. A man like that would have friends in every forlorn corner of the realm.
How did the last man escape? How did he get to the bottom of the stairs and outside? It was seemingly impossible. Even if he somehow did make it down and then outside.... Then what? Even at night the torches and pitch pyres were always lit. He would be shot by arrows on sight and then tossed off of the bluffs to feed the ravenous beasts below. How would he get past all of the guards? There was no guard posted outside of his door at night, only during the hours between the sunlight. But there was no way past the heavy oak door.
For two days he had been trying to figure out something reasonable. And he hadn't succeeded. They never allowed him out, and they only ever opened the door to change his water. No exercise. Nothing but his cell and the slit in the wall. He was worried sick about Marcus. Only his imagination kept him from falling apart at the seams. Atticus had convinced himself that his son was safe at home, waiting for him to return. The frightened boy would make it through the four days by himself and then Darius and Aunna would arrive for their weekly visit. They would be shocked and terrified, who knows what Marcus would be able to tell them. He was in the woods when most of the events happened. By the time the riders had caught the child hiding in the trees; Atticus was already shackled and strapped over the back of a horse. Marcus would have no way of knowing and telling Darius who the men were. Perhaps he saw the crest on their plates when he peeked out at the horses approaching from the road. Most likely not. Even if I'm never freed or found, at least Marcus will be safe with his grandparents.
Please Father...
He slowly got out of bed and made his way to the arrow slit. The vast blue Crucio Sea flowed out to meet the horizon, as far as his eyes could see.
The narrow window prevented him from looking much to his left, right or straight down. But when the tide was out, he could see the shoreline below. His tower rested nearly right to the edge of the stone bluff, and he imagined it one day toppling over, crashing down with him inside, into the sea. Atticus knew from the sun's early light on the water that his window faced south, and that the shoreline below him ran east-west.
“I must get out here,” he sighed, looking toward the edge of the sea, where the migrating tide line had pulled back to reveal spotted, green-covered boulders, and various rock weeds and tangle, awaiting the return of the water's lap. His eyes quickly caught something large and black, hopping along the shore. It was well camouflaged among the tall, dark rocks. In a flash, it turned toward the sea and ran out on two thick legs, flapping long, leathery wings, and then instantly, it was in flight out over the water.
A wyvern.
Atticus watched intently from the tower. He could see the beasts' black and gold reflective scales, shimmering in the sunlight, as it flew faster and farther away from the shore, pushing down on the salty air below it. Its long, sleek neck and large head guided it forward while it searched along waves.
The creature swiftly drew its wings in close to its muscled body, and then dove straight down into the deep water with a large splash, disappearing below the surface.
Atticus was transfixed. He had only ever seen such creatures in books. They never flew over the Sparrow Vale, at least not in the daylight. As monstrous as they appeared, they adapted to be wise enough to stay clear of crops and livestock. Too many of man's arrows had sang into their hearts and lungs over their long and tenuous relationship. The wyverns preferred high mountain forests and sea-side caves; only preying on man if they found him wounded or isolated and unarmed. Seals and deer tasted better anyway; never covered in teeth-cracking armor or sweat-s
oaked and soiled clothing.
Now and again, a rumor would drift through the vale that a wyvern had taken a horse, or that an entire herd of sheep had been razed. But as usual, the culprits turned out to be wolves, or wild dogs on a ravaging hunt, leaving dead and wounded animals sprawled out over the fields.
Atticus watched a column of water suddenly burst from the sea, and the wyvern re-appear, spreading its wings and shooting upward like a black arrow. A large, brown animal was trapped in its jaws. The tanned sea lion wailed-out and rapidly flipped itself back and forth, trying to escape, unknowingly sawing its own flesh against long, serrated teeth. Dark blood ran down in streams to the water below, as the wyvern turned in midair and flew its meal back to the shore. Atticus watched it land in the rocks and then proceed to drop the half-dead creature to its clawed feet and then rip it into strips with its teeth, like an eagle atop a freshly caught salmon. Within a minute, there nothing left but blood on the ground. The wyvern turned and flew off eastward.
The sound of footsteps turned his attention away from the arrow slit. Atticus looked behind him, just as the wide iron slot at the bottom of the door opened. To his relief, it was more cold stew.
“Grub!” barked the guard from the hallway.
As tasteless as it was, it only arrived once every day. Even bad food filled a hungry belly. Atticus moved to the door, kneeling down to accept the wooden bowl through the slot. There were no utensils. The slot closed again and locked on the other side. Atticus heard the man's boots stepping away and back down the stairs. The stew was nothing more than boiled potatoes and mixed grasses—just enough starch and roughage to keep the prisoners alive.
It didn't take long for him to get it into his stomach. He wiped the emptied bowl with his fingers and licked them clean of every last drop. He would need his strength if he was to break-out in the coming days. He forced himself to believe that the men who had caught Marcus had dropped him in the lane that night and let him go. There were no neighbors close by, and after what had happened, Marcus would have been too afraid to leave the house.