Clearly drunk, he was also nursing a bleeding lump on his forehead. "What happened master? You're bleeding!"
"What of it?" he complained. "Well?"
I shook my head, squeezed the pages of the book and hoped he would go away. In his right hand, Bludgeon held a golden goblet of wine, which soaked his beard through. "Who are you to read my work?" he hissed. "Did I say you could touch that book with your greasy fingers? That book?"
"It was on the schedule, master. Did you write this? It's…amazing!"
I wasn't kidding, but Bludgeon couldn't give a shit. He opened his mouth and a lingering burp left it. The master was cruising for a fight, so I became extremely cautious. My every word and expression would be considered; I would not rise to any bait or stoke his fire. Discipline Danny! Discipline!
"You asked me to read," I said, sheepishly; "that the library was open to me… With cooking, cleaning and laps, this is the only chance I get to do so in the day."
An unusual thing suddenly caught my eye — the master no longer held his spear. His stalwart support was gone. "Master…where is your weapon?"
This simple question provoked a violent reaction. Bludgeon threw his golden goblet at me, and I watched it turn in flight before thumping off my head. Disorientated, I dabbed fingers at the new gash pumping hot above my left eyebrow.
"You spilled my wine!" Bludgeon exclaimed. "Do think it amusing to spill someone's drink! Does this bring pleasure to you boy? Well, answer me!"
I wiped my face with the tarpaulin coat, and weeks and months of patience, discipline, and restraint were found wanting. Hurtling at pace, I returned the goblet, and it smacked my master full in the jaw.
Briefly, Bludgeon leant dizzily to one side but remained on all fours. Seemingly ready to burp again, he spat out three of his teeth to the table… He examined these crooked objects with great confusion, and when his brain eventually told him what they were, he roared like the animal he was, sending a snow of crystal down onto our heads. Then, like a great ape, he bashed his fists against his chest and charged for me. Ignoring the stones piercing my bare feet and arms shredding off the walls, I moved fast, fast, fast — purest survival driving me from that pursuing monster.
"Get back here!" he howled, too livid to think of a swear word.
I reached my cell and slammed the door shut. The gust blew out the never-ending torch light, so working in darkness I sealed the door with a block of wood stolen from the master's kitchen. Then, I waited for the wolf to knock at my door.
BANG!BANG!BANG!
His fists or hoofs were like sledgehammers.
"Open this door! Open it! Open it! Open it!"
BANG!BANG!BANG!
I crouched to a shaking ball as Bludgeon beat harder and harder, sending a cloud of rock over my bleeding face.
***
Hardened muscle replaced the fat on my bones, but the journey to that muscle had taken its toll, ageing my face perhaps a decade and carving up my soul a piece at a time. I felt like a walking corpse, and the sight of my reflection in puddles would cause me to wince.
I trailed Bludgeon's hoofs, a new route this morning, but I didn't care for the possible wonder that awaited; there was only routine now, exerted routines practised and perfected.
The centaur took a twisted enjoyment from waking me with his buckets of freezing water. At times, I wished the light would not come to my eyes. "On your feet speck! No slouching! No yawning! Upright! Ready to scrap at a moments notice!"
Like the good pupil I rose every time, but it was difficult to imagine defending a life I no longer cared for.
There was clamminess about this new corridor that made me light-headed. I took a start by a burst of steam ahead, and then ducked for cover as explosion after explosion filled this confined space, like fifty grenades going off at once.
"Get up!" ordered Bludgeon, wrapping my head with his knuckles. A wall of malevolent cloud blocked our route.
"What's through there?" I asked, sensing a smiling devil inside the flashing gas. "Is this a test?"
The centaur watched me without comment; was I supposed to do be doing something?
"Follow me!" he yelled over the sound of sparks, before abruptly galloping unperturbed into the cloud. Electric vapour hugged the king's body, and he was gone.
"Hello?" I cried, squinting. "Master?!"
No reply, and through this sauna I saw several strikes of lightning. "Bludgeon?!"
The cloud seemed to growl back. "Come along!" came the master's irritated voice behind it. "And don't you dare address me as Bludgeon again! The damn effrontery! Don't think I can't hear you boy!"
What was this new form of training? This was certainly more than smoke before me, that I knew. Bludgeon's voice, safe and sound on the other side did nothing to relieve my mind, only turning back would do that.
The king's impatience was harsher than the steam, so I stepped into the mysterious vale, which was quick to smother me. I decided to keep both arms outstretched — to feel my way out of this ghost. Unfortunately I didn't count for the pain, pain the like I have never experienced. Cold at first, it grew to freezing teeth eating away at my feet, before feasting slowly up my legs. Heat followed, white heat, and I was all of a sudden drowning in a pool of agony, an acid bath with no way out. I kept my limbs moving — shuffling — never stop — do not let it in!
Frantic, I battered my face into solid rock, and on the ground, the whole left side of my body caught fire. Wearing flames like a coat, I writhed as the flesh frizzled from my frame, boiling my blood and removing all but muscle and bone. Like a rabid dog, I stammered, catching my skin off the jagged walls like an old sweater on new barb. Screaming and screaming, I fought through this volcano, feeling my rotten left arm snap off at the elbow. My right leg was next, breaking off, barbecued from the kneecap. I discarded them both and crawled on my belly until I was free at last. I lay stupefied and smoking as the master bent over me. "What took you so bloody long?"
I covered my face with my remaining right hand. I didn't want to see what was left of me.
"Poor show speck!" he added. "Poor, poor show!"
Feeling nothing now, no fire or smoke, I opened my eyes and gasped. Not one cut, bruise or burn marked me; I was intact.
"This will be your new route to breakfast!" he said. "Mind and body are separate entities. You will learn that pain is nothing but a warning to your simple machine… warnings can be ignored by the mind, switched off when need be. Control speck, control is what is required! It is time to educate you in ignorance — you should excel in your lesson!"
He then left me there to sob, scream and punch at the dissolving steam, "I'm not a machine you hear me! I am not a machine!"
***
Over the course of a year, my schedule never once let up. I cooked two meals per day, was never thanked for the trouble and never praised when I showed improvement in a particular skill. I ran through Bludgeon's smoke trap, over his wire and around his track — I became competent with the sword and efficient in self-defence using a style of underhanded kick-boxing, which Bludgeon preferred. I can't imagine another soul promoting the kick to the groin as much as Bludgeon did. "Kick 'em in the bollocks!" he would cry. "Then in for the kill as the nuts shrink in their shorts!"
I detested the centaur with a passion, a loathing I wrestled daily to contain. Frequently now, my thoughts turned to murder. I would observe the master passed out at the dinner table, dead to the world with the millipedes having a party in his hair. My imagination would then indulge in the many scenarios, how I would stab a butter knife in his throat or beat his skull in with a boulder; how I would pound and crush his face until there was nothing but a glue of blood and bone between my fingers.
In the struggle to control discipline, patience and sanity, I was no longer alone. I had a companion in the fight.
One night in my frozen cave cell and with a head hiding under my arms, I heard a tiny voice. It couldn't be Bludgeon, for he stopped banging on the door thirty
minutes ago. My own insanity perhaps, but instinct told me otherwise. No, this was something else, a voice I had to concentrate to hear, and the more my mind focused on it, the clearer she became.
"You've been strong Daniel," said Missy. "You've always been strong."
With patience and practise, I could keep this channel open as long as I wanted. My life support, my brilliant angel and soul mate was with me, and here in his deplorable cell is where I would get to know and love her. My Godsend, I discovered all about Missy's past, of her childhood toiling in the cotton fields of Virginia, where she died of influenza at the age of nine. I heard of her first moment's confusion upon waking in the Plain, then of her disbelief at meeting her own life support — an older woman who did not love Missy nearly as much as she loved me. I heard of her early years in Heaven, about the rules and structure of the place, a realm of creativity and thinking, where wisdom is the highest of all virtues, and wings but badges of honor on a long course of learning, ‘til one is no longer human or alien, but the very fabric of the everlasting universe.
Our longest conversation came after I took my hardest beating. I lay in a bloodied ball with my sobbing life support over me. "I told Newton not to do this! He does not even see me Daniel! Seems he's too busy recruiting these days."
"Why?" I asked, shivering, sick.
"I wasn't going to say anything, but not all is well here Daniel, and it has something to do with your mission to the 9th Fortress. These are changing times-troubling times. You have attention on you, important people are awaiting the outcome of your quest and I don't know why!"
Missy was as lost, as frustrated, and as helpless as I was. "I'm glad you're with me," I said. "Don't know what I'd do without you."
"I can't stand this much longer Daniel, and neither can you by the look of things! What a state you're in! What a mess!"
"What can I do? How do I get out of here? Tell me how and I'll do it?!"
"You do what Bludgeon wants!" she stressed. "You bite your bitter tongue and please that brute! If a test then you pass it, my love. Pass with every ounce of character you have! In the meantime, I will try, try, and try to see Sir Isaac Newton. I will beg for an end to this!"
"Do you think… he'll see you?"
"I hope so," she said. "Please stay strong. You must…"
I was strong and remained strong. Missy would always be there when I needed her — my rock — and although she would still talk my ear off about any old nonsense, she would never let me forget about the mission: the 9thFortress, prisoner 2020, and of course, the ultimate goal of being reunited with Kathy, whose face was so far away in my memory now.
***
It was twenty-two months, five days and three hours into my stay when Bludgeon did something remarkably out of the ordinary. Instead of scoffing his food at the dinner table, spitting out his grog and pushing for a fight — he chewed his food carefully, using a fork and napkin. He drank his wine with delicate sips, and to my astonishment, even offered to share. There were no ravenous swallows and burps, no crawling bugs or hanging insects. He was the thoroughly well mannered and courteous dinner guest throughout. I wasn't fooled though, not for a second. Another trick, another trap, another something. No, I was not fooled.
All through dinner I waited for the punch line to this sick joke. Anything out of the ordinary always meant something terrible followed, and I could not eat expecting it. It would come and I would be ready: another spear thrown, another punch to dodge, another lesson to learn… but still, still there was only the polite chewing of two men at dinner.
Bludgeon picked up his napkin and dabbed the corner of his lips. He then broke the silence, which rattled me even more; for the centaur spoke; he did not shout, he did not scream, but conversed in a normal and calm tone of voice, "Why am I training you, Fox?"
I took my time with the answer, and time was given. "Don't you know, Sir?" I asked, lowering my head. So unsure I was of the situation that my legs shook uncontrollably under the table. Bludgeon took a heavy breath, finally wearing that impatient expression I knew so well. His attack was coming…
"I want…" he replied, exhaling that breath, "you to tell me."
"I will tell you what I know, Master. If that will please you?"
"It would…" he nodded. "Very much so."
Bludgeon engaging me in conversation? Was this today's challenge? To politely converse with a man I despise? Whatever surreptitious test this was — I was going to pass it.
My belly ordered me to eat so I did, taking advantage of Bludgeon's earlier offer of wine. If this conversation was coming to an abrupt end, then at least I got a drink out of it. I sipped back the wine and it was delicious; home-made, tangy and sweet at the same time.
"Well?" said Bludgeon, interested. "Tell me what you know lad. Tell me all of it."
I took another drink. I would be frank, he might be playing games but I'd give it to him straight.
"I have to go to Hell. There is a prison called the 9thFortress…"
"And what," he inquired, without pause; "is your purpose at such a horrific place?"
The words "horrific place" weren't lost on me. "I'm to rescue one of its inmates: prisoner 2020. I have no idea who this person is, but the mission is to bring him back to the Waiting Plain. That's all I know… Master."
"A rescue mission?" he replied, combing the fingers through his fuzzy beard. "Hmm. To meet the scientist Newton, then all the way to me… to me! All for an elemental rescue mission?"
"That's what I was told."
"How curious." he whispered. "How very curious indeed."
"Could you tell me something master? Why do you share a drink with me?"
"I like you," he answered, straight faced and sincere. "I tell you that."
I waited for his plate to fly across the table, or the cutlery, or the table itself. I waited…
"You are strong now," he added, "in body and mind you are strong. Are you ready for the 9th Fortress? That I cannot say, but you are ready for my final exercise."
Stunned, my shaking legs went to jelly and I was grateful now to be sitting. Bludgeon meanwhile continued down this vein still with no sign of that infamous temper. "Of all I have trained you are unique in two ways. One, you have not once tried to murder me."
I hid my eyes behind a hand. The many nights I wanted to, only fear held me back.
"And the second?" I asked, changing the subject.
"The second is that you are magnanimous. All warriors are selfish beings; the goal of glory is a drug in their blood — to be the best of the best whoever lived, at any cost! It's what makes these individuals great, and damned. It is what made that samurai Kat a legend! Can one be both a great warrior whilst making the safety of others a priority? I didn't think so — until I met you boy."
"What are you saying, Master?"
Bludgeon guzzled the last of his wine with an unmistakably proud gleam in his eye. "I am saying that you are no longer a child… and I believe this belongs to you."
My dagger and belt slid along the table and into my hand. I removed the dull knife from its pouch, I could use it now; the weapon was comfortable in my palm. I now felt capable of commanding such power, of doing it justice even.
Thoroughly overwhelmed, I couldn't believe the end was here. I'd taken all the centaur had to thrown at me and made it to the other side; the worse for wear maybe, but alive.
We finished our meal in peace. A meal reminding me of one I had with my Dad a long time ago; a bitter-sweet night of passage, a real drink and respectful puff on the old man's pipe — the boy now a man in his father's eyes.
"Did you say…" I asked later; "my final exercise?"
Bludgeon smiled, it was the first genuinely warm smile I'd seen on that face. It still did not sit well on his features, but it was honest enough.
"Leave the dagger belt on the table lad, you won't need it. Come along…"
12. The Red Door
The walk was long and conversation, as always, short. We
arrived at a door with obligatory torches burning at each side. I would pass this particular door dozens of times a day, and was always curious why it was the only one in the cave with a lick of paint — red paint. By now, I had seen most of the rooms this mountain had to offer, all but this one. Unusually, Bludgeon was not so aloof about this door, wearing an anxious expression bordering on worry. I knew without any doubt now that there was something special behind this red wood, and I could not wait to see it.
With a screeching hinge, Bludgeon opened the door to reveal no wire crossing, steaming vapour cloud or splendid training room, but a wonky looking spiral staircase and a freezing cold draft.
This staircase was a narrow, iron construction, twirling downward. Bludgeon led the way, and as I descended, I gazed at another window cut out of the rock; a circular cavity. No pains of glass held the weather at bay, and sure enough, it blew in as a mix of snow and sleet.
Nearing the foot of the staircase, I stopped to allow the sleet to drop and melt over my tongue.
"You could fly a jet out of here!" I yelled, over blustery winds. "I bet you could!"
"Jet?" bawled Bludgeon, over the elements.
"Never-mind."
The view out of this window was picturesque; stunning Alp like mountains with white peaks swelling over the horizon and sheets of snow smearing the valleys between.
"Winter approaches!" the master announced, taking the last few steps off the corkscrew staircase.
Following, my attention was drawn to a waft of hot air from over my shoulder. Turning, I gasped in horror and awe. Bludgeon was stroking the head of a dragon. Curled up like a pet, the creature was the size of four London buses stacked together, and just as red. Its lizard like skin was covered in a pattern of scales with sharp edges; its tail went several times around it's body, ending in a deadly serrated tip; it's hot breath gave off an uncomfortable heat, and I was thankful that the thing was asleep.
"Holy-shit!" I cried. "It's a dragon!"
"It is. Come closer. Come!"
The 9th Fortress Page 12