“I can make it worth your while, if its money you’re after?”
“Like the twenty million you promised on Cukier?” Galen taunted. “Or the eighty million you promised Vedastus on Nammu?”
“Ah, so he did talk before you killed him.”
“He sang,” Galen confirmed. “Like a Mutanian sparrow right before I blew his head off.”
“That seems overly violent,” Harmool remarked. “Even for you.”
“What did you think he was going to do with that Jakamal you gave him after you placed those helpless kidnapped women under his control?” Galen shot back. “If I’d had more time, I might have made him pay a proper price for that.”
“I’m sure you would have.”
“I’ll have plenty of time to do the job right with you,” Galen threatened, “and that lunatic you work for.”
“Take care, Dwyn,” Harmool’s eyes narrowed. “You are talking about the King these men and I serve. There’s a limit to how much of your impertinence I will tolerate.”
“What kind of a man hands his own daughter over to that?” Galen prodded, he needed Harmool mad and not thinking clearly. “And orders her to be killed just so he can become Chancellor? What kind of scum willingly serves a maniac like that?”
“You have a small mind, Mr. Dwyn,” Harmool replied. “Iodocus has higher aims. If you are smarter than you appear to be, you’d cut a deal now and curry favor with the man who will be Emperor in less than a lune.”
“Emperor?” Galen hadn’t seen that coming. “The rest of the Alliance wouldn’t stand for that…”
“There you are wrong, my dim-witted mercenary. The majority of the Alliance is nothing but sheep, willing to be led, even to the slaughter. I tire of this, Dwyn. Tell me where the Princess is right now.”
“I wouldn’t have the first clue.” Galen answered honestly enough. He hoped she was on her way to Sanctuary but he had no way to be sure.
“I think you’re lying.”
“Too bad,” Galen shrug, taking up a fighting stance.
“Then you have chosen the path to great pain and suffering,” Harmool looked to his right. “Take him!”
Ten of Harmool’s men advanced into the alley. Galen met them a smile. None of them had drawn a weapon, thinking they would subdue him by sheer numbers, relying on body armor to deflect any blows from the sabre. He showed them what a man trained by the Bata’van could do with a sabre alone against such defenses.
He became a whirling dervish of motion. The tip of his blade stabbing through gaps in the armor that allowed arms and legs to bend and move. The blade itself slashing through other gaps, lacerating deeply into exposed flesh. When he stopped moving he was back at his original starting point, and ten men clad in black were on the ground. Some moved in pain, others moved not at all.
“Impressive,” Harmool admitted as Galen crouched in his battle stance, sweating, but not breathing hard.
“I told you that you didn’t bring enough men,” Galen said and leaped toward Harmool.
“Commander,” Harmool said, not flinching.
The man to his right produced a weapon and fired it at Galen. An electric blue web shot out and wrapped itself around his entire body, stopping him several feet short of his target. Galen felt as if every single cell in his body had been simultaneously struck by its own individual lightning bolt.
As he crashed to the ground and sank into oblivion, he realized he should have expected this. Anyone capable of turning a sadist loose with a Jakamal would have no qualms using a weapon outlawed by every world in the Alliance.
His last conscious thought on Arkon was one of satisfaction. When he woke up, he’d be exactly where he’d wanted to end up when he left the Tempest earlier that morning.
Salacia.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Gallons of icy cold water stuck Galen in the face, instantly bringing him around. He tried to wipe the water from his face only to discover he could not move his arms. He shook his head to clear the water that way and instantly regretted it. Waves of pain washed back and forth inside his skull. Even after it faded, his head felt heavy, filled with cotton. He kept his eyes closed until the worst of it passed, then opened them to take stock of his situation.
He was strapped to a table, standing upright, and hanging a few feet above the floor. Thick metal shackles bound his wrists and ankles to wooden surface. He raised his chin from his chest and saw he was not alone in the room.
The man who’d tossed the water in his face was setting the bucket down and taking a seat behind a console. Harmool stood behind the man, watching silently. A third man approached from his left and looked him over. Galen recognized him instantly.
King Iodocus.
“Welcome back, Captain Dwyn,” he said.
“Call me, Galen,” he croaked out hoarsely. A pity some of the water hadn’t made it down his parched throat. “I’ll just call you a piece of…”
Iodocus held up a hand, and the man behind the console stabbed a button. Galen gasped as searing pain shot down his arms from the shackled wrists into his torso. This was joined by similar pain that raced up from his shackled ankles. He couldn’t draw in breath as the pain lanced across his chest. Iodocus lowered his hand, and the pain ceased. At least, he knew what he was in for, Galen thought as he gulped in air, and he also knew that he was finally on Salacia.
He knew what was coming, but he didn’t know if he’d survive it to be able do what he’d come for. That he would discover soon enough.
“You’re tourism industry is going to suffer if this is how your people treat offworld visitors,” he cracked.
The hand lifted, and the fire returned. Galen grunted against it until the hand lowered again.
“Your insolence will only make things worse for you,” Iodocus said. “This is only a mild introduction to what we will do to you if you do not tell me where to find my daughter.”
“Now why would I do that?” Galen asked sarcastically. “You asking me so nicely and all. Especially since all you want her back for is to kill her before she can talk about your plans to become Chancellor. Bad enough you’re framing Napat for a crime he didn’t commit, but you have to kill your own daughter, too?”
“I would sacrifice her a million times,” Iodocus admitted, “along with everyone else on this planet to get what I want, mercenary. And the Chancellorship is just the first step to get there. She will not deny me my destiny and neither will you.”
“What will your people think when they hear that, Iodocus?” Galen prodded. “What will the rest of the Alliance think when they hear that you kidnapped your own child and three other innocent daughters, plotted to have them murdered and to hang your crimes on an innocent man just to take his job?”
“It doesn’t matter what they think, because neither you nor Rhiannon will ever tell them.”
“You’re insane, Iodocus,” Galen hurled the insult with a sneering tone. “A sniveling maniac who has to steal what he is unworthy off earning on his own merits.”
He braced for another shock, but Iodocus backhanded him instead. Galen laughed as loudly as he could, drawing another crashing backhanded blow from the enraged King.
“Your daughter hits harder than that,” Galen cracked around bleeding lips.
Iodocus raised his hand and left it up. Wave after wave of fire tore through Galen, who clamped his jaw shut and bore it in silence.
“Sire,” Harmool stepped forward. “Dead, he is of no use to us.”
“I want to hear him scream,” Iodocus snarled. “I want to hear him beg for mercy, Harmool.”
“Sire, he will not,” Harmool reminded his king. “He was trained against this by the Bata’van. He will die before he breaks, and the Princess will be lost to us forever.”
Iodocus finally lowered his hand and the fire ceased. Galen sagged against his restraints, head hanging as he weakly gasped in air. His entire body shook in the after effects of the extended torture.
“I bet..,” he gas
ped out between painful inhales, “the Queen… hits harder than… you, too. That why you… have just… one child, Highness?”
Galen poured as much sarcasm as he could muster into that last word. He waited for the hand to raise and the fire to return.
“You seem overly impressed with the Bata’van, Harmool,” Iodocus said with frightening calm. “I wonder though, just how extensive their training was? Perhaps they merely focused on more, modern, techniques.”
Iodocus turned and snapped his fingers. An older man entered the room with cart. The top tray was filled with several ominous-looking instruments. He wheeled the cart up next to Galen and began laying them out on a small side table.
“We’ll see how sharp your tongue is after my physician attends to you, mercenary,” Iodocus spun away and headed for the door. “I want results, Harmool. I want the location of my daughter, or he will have company on the rack!”
Iodocus slammed the door behind him. Harmool walked up and looked at Galen with some sympathy.
“You can save yourself a great deal of suffering, Mr. Dwyn, by telling me where she is being hidden.”
Galen lifted his head and formed as much of a smile as his swollen mouth would allow.
“Do your worst and the whole lot of you can go to hell.”
Harmool shook his head sadly and stepped back.
“You may proceed, Doctor.”
The old man selected a large cast iron ball with a long handle from the cart. He stepped directly in front of Galen, raised the instrument up and behind his shoulder and then swung it at Galen with all of his might.
* * * * *
Iodocus returned to the torture room three hours later. The doctor was cleaning his tools and returning them to the cart. Harmool was standing off to the side looking down grimly at the floor. The console operator looked pale. The mercenary was crumpled up in an unmoving pile on the floor. The man’s ruined left hand stretched out to one side, the fingers and thumb dislocated, or possibly broken even, pointing in several different directions. Through the bloody rags of his clothes angry bruises and cuts peeked through.
“Well?” Iodocus demanded as the doctor rolled his cart toward the door.
“He said nothing, sire,” the doctor reported. “I have done all I can. He will not speak. In his present condition, I doubt he’ll be doing much of anything for some time.”
“Impossible,” Iodocus exclaimed in disbelief.
“I tried to tell you, sire,” Harmool said. “He was trained to withstand this and more.”
They heard a scraping sound and looked down. Dwyn was sliding across the floor, using his right hand to claw for purchase. He reached up and used the table to lever himself up. His right leg wasn’t working, and he struggled to a seated position on the table. One by one, he popped the damaged fingers of his left hand back into place, then slowly flexed them to see if they would still work.
Tucking his left arm close to his bruised ribs, he fought his way to his feet and approached Iodocus, dragging his right foot behind him. He stopped right in front of the King and fixed him with a glare that conveyed every ounce of contempt and hatred Galen could muster.
Then he spit in the King’s face.
Iodocus was stunned, then reached down for an iron bar in the Doctor’s cart, and swung it with all the fury and strength he possessed.
“Sire, no!” Harmool tried to stop the blow, but he was too late.
The bar struck Galen on the side of his face, just below his left eye. He fell heavily to the floor and did not move.
“Is he dead?” Harmool asked the doctor, who knelt beside the fallen man.
“No,” the doctor finally reported after his examination. “But he’ll likely wish he were when he wakes up.”
“Sire, if he dies, he takes the secret of her location with him,” Harmool repeated. “We cannot break him with torture either.”
“Throw him into the pit,” Iodocus ordered, tossing the bar back into the cart. “Let his injuries argue with him for a while. Perhaps they will beat some sense into him.”
“Yes, sire,” Harmool bowed as Iodocus exited the room then turned to his man at the console. “Go fetch some help and drag what’s left of him down to the pit.”
Harmool studied the bloody heap on the floor as his man fled the room. He would not have believed any man capable of withstanding such punishment without breaking. He wondered what it would take to break through that resolve. What was it that Dwyn thought he was buying by keeping his secret? Find that answer, he mused, and you’ve found the key to unlock his tongue.
* * * * *
Galen swam through a dark tunnel of freezing cold and agony toward a warm bright light overhead. As it grew larger, he began to make out shapes in the light. He drove harder toward the light, trying to leave the bitter cold behind.
Suddenly, the shapes resolved themselves into lit torches on the other side of a cage of iron bars. He was lying on a frigid stone floor, the tattered remains of his clothes providing no protection from the cold floor or the chilled air. He spotted a small pile of straw nearby, not enough to cover and warm him, but perhaps enough to lay upon and block the heat-sapping stone from freezing his bones. He reached for the straw, but every movement was agony, and he fell short of his goal.
He paused to gather his strength for a second attempt when two blankets fell upon him, seeming out of thin air. He rolled over, only then realizing that he’d been lying on his side, slightly curled up in a vain attempt to preserve his body’s warmth. He also realized his left eye was swollen shut, and he kept rolling over until he could locate the source from where the blankets had come.
Harmool was seated comfortably in a chair against the far wall of the cell, next to the locked door. Galen painfully maneuvered himself into a seated position against the wall, drawing the blankets around him as he fought down the shivers wracking his body.
“You are a very hard man to kill, Mr. Dwyn.”
Galen’s lips parted slightly, but he couldn’t get the words out.
“I forgot,” Harmool said as he rose from his chair and retrieved a bucket. “I’m supposed to call you Galen.”
Harmool set the bucket down nearby and withdrew a large dipper. Water dripped from the bottom back into the bucket. Harmool brought the dipper to Galen’s mouth and waited. Galen merely looked at him suspiciously.
“If I intended to poison you, Galen,” he said after taking a drink from the dipper, unintentionally echoing Galen’s own comment to Rhea. “I would have already done so.”
Galen reached up with his good hand and took the dipper. Shakily, he held it to his swollen lips and got most of the water down his throat instead of on his chest.
“Is this supposed to make us friends now?” Galen said, his voice weak and raspy.
“No, I doubt you’d ever trust me enough for that, my stubborn young mercenary,” Harmool retrieved the dipper and replaced it in the bucket. “This place you are in is called ‘The Pit,’ and it is reserved for those that have offended the King greatly. And you certainly have done that.”
“I’m honored.”
“No one will come down here with food or water,” Harmool continued. “You can call for help or for release all you like, and your calls will go unanswered. Once each day, I alone will come down to the pit and ask you for the location of Princess Rhiannon. If you give it to me, you will be released.”
“You mean executed.”
“And if you refuse,” Harmool ignored the remark, “I will leave the pit, taking the torches with me, and you can pass the time alone in pitch darkness. I will tell you now that the last man to inhabit the pit lasted less than three days. You’ve already lasted two but, unlike him, you’ve been unconscious the entire time so they don’t count.
“I suspect you will last longer,” he continued. “But eventually, you will tell me what I want to know, or you’ll go mad.”
“At least, Rhea will be free.” Galen replied.
* * * * *
&
nbsp; Rhea, Harmool thought, just as I suspected. I have the key!
“Galen,” he said, “I am going to tell you a story. It is called ‘The Truth’.”
“The truth,” Galen snorted. “As much as you have lied the entire time I’ve known you, I’m expected to believe anything you say ever again?”
“Yes, I’ve lied,” Harmool admitted. “I’ve had to lie. To save myself and my family. Let me tell you my story, my truth, and you will come to see why I’ve done what I’ve done and that, like you, I want to save the Princess from the King.”
* * * * *
Galen didn’t believe a word of it, but he was finally getting warm again, and he really didn’t have anywhere else to go. Not yet at least. So he leaned back against the wall and drew the blankets closer.
“Alright, Harmool,” he said. “Tell me this ‘truth’ of yours.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“I began my service to King Iodocus many cycles ago,” Harmool settled back in his chair. “And in the early cycles he was a kind, benevolent ruler. By the time Princess Rhiannon was born I had risen up to the rank of aide to his Chief Adviser. Ten cycles ago that man passed away, and I was promoted to take his place.”
“A lucky break for you,” Galen replied, wondering if the man’s death had been natural or had been assisted along. But he held his peace and let Harmool continue.
“Everything was perfect,” Harmool continued. “My career, my family, everything. Then, four cycles ago, the King…changed. He became harsh, short-tempered. He ordered the build-up of our military forces here on Salacia and with our then-modest fleet. He put me in charge of developing a spy network that extended throughout the Alliance.”
“And that didn’t raise any suspicions?” Galen asked.
“Not at first,” Harmool replied. “He explained it as a fear he’d had since returning from a Senate session. He’d heard rumors and whispers. He wanted them checked out. What King wouldn’t be concerned with treachery.”
“And you found…?” Galen prompted.
“Some treachery, yes, but nothing to warrant his level of concern,” Harmool replied. “Then just two cycles ago I discovered a horrible secret through a handmaiden of Queen Darieann’s. Iodocus was not Iodocus at all but rather a clever imposter, and the switch had occurred sometime after I had become Chief Advisor.”
Galen's Way: A Starquest 4th Age Adventure Page 14