“That paper,” Debir said as Marks pulled something from his pack. “It has the seal of the Ryr Governor. It was given to me after my father gave his life in the army.”
Captain Ratts released one hand off Liden and took the paper from Private Marks. He inspected the paper, then slowly held it up in the air. “The ink is smeared, barely legible.”
“It was damaged on our way here.” Sarta grimaced at Debir’s declaration.
“It looks like a very good forgery,” the man let go of Liden and grabbed the paper with his other hand and tore it in two and threw it on the ground.
“No,” Liden reached up to stop him, but was kneed in the stomach. He doubled over and fell to the ground on top of the shredded document.
Debir pulled against his captor, trying to break free, his face darkening several shades. He had just watched the commendation for his father’s bravery shredded before his eyes. “If I could forge the seal of the governor, do you not think I would have forged a charter? That is the most asinine thing I’ve ever heard. Is the space between your ears filled with rat dung?”
The Captain crossed over to stand in front of Debir. He punched the young man in the stomach, doubling him over. Then he swung down again, striking him in the face. “A loyal citizen of Kresthin would never address a soldier of his own army in this way. Perhaps you’re spies, maybe you’re refugees crossing the border illegally, but either way I think we have all the evidence we need. Lock them up!”
The rough metal shackles had cut into his wrists after being pulled along for two hours through the prairie. While most of them were silent, from time to time Sarta would have a choice word or two for the men who had taken them prisoner. Fortunately for her, they seemed above beating a young girl, so they just tugged on her restraints, or called back threats that silenced her for a while. “Hey Ratts dung,” Sarta called out to the leader of the group. “Is that your camp up there? When we get there, you’re in so much trouble!”
She was swatted in the back of the head by the soldier behind her, just enough to make her quiet. “Watch your mouth,” he warned.
Sarta waved her hand at the solder who swatted her. “Why? Will you beat up on a girl, Ratts dung? You’re about as brave as a stampede of cows trampling an ant hill.”
“Put her in the pen,” Captain Ratts ordered. Sarta was split off from the group.
“Where are you taking her?” Knell demanded. He ignored her and kept marching. “Ratts dung! I’m asking you a question!” She pulled against her captor and spit at the captain, obviously trying to irritate him. Captain Ratts stopped walking and turned around to leer at Knell. Liden could feel the blood rising in him as he watched the captain’s eyes go up and down Knell. If that captain touched her, Liden would kill him!
“The hanging pen for her,” Ratts finally said. Knell was then taken away in the opposite direction of Sarta, the entire time screaming that she demanded to be in the pen with her sister. “Any other requests?” Ratts asked, looking at each of the boys.
Liden’s mind was reeling at everything that was happening. They were being escorted into an army camp as prisoners, the girls were being separated, Debir was completely silent, still drooping his shoulders and hanging his head, and Hunlok had dried blood down his face, but otherwise looked in good shape. He wanted to punch Captain Ratts in the face, but knew he wouldn’t ever get close enough to try, and he needed to keep their group together as much as possible so he could start formulating a way for them to escape. His plans were already unnecessarily complicated by having Knell and Sarta separated from the group, though he did get a smile on his face thinking of the way the girls had really gotten to the otherwise stoic leader. He just hoped it didn’t attract any unwanted attention. He shook his head and remained silent.
Ratts turned around and led the patrol into the army camp.
As they went further into camp, he tried to take everything in. There was a temporary fence around the border of the camp, made of upright poles with sharpened ends. It was shabby protection, but also obviously made for quick deconstruction and transport. White tents were in organized rows in the center, an open field for training lined the outer edges of the camp. He saw the ‘pen’ where they had taken Sarta. It was a small cage made of lashed together staves that were about as thick around as his arms. It was out on the edge of the training ground with no shelter from the sun. The cage was only about three feet tall, so she was forced to sit or crawl around on her hands and knees.
A scream drew his attention from the other side of the training ground where he saw Knell being hoisted up into the air in a small, person-sized cage that hung about eight feet off the ground. Some soldiers were having some fun jostling the cage up and down, apparently encouraged by the fact that they made her scream.
“Here we are.” Ratts stopped the group about twenty feet from the edge of the fence on the east side of the camp. The air was thick with a foul stench. He grabbed a shovel and bucket and shoved them into Liden’s hands. “Clean it out!”
The soldier behind Liden pushed him forward and he gagged. He was standing at the edge of the latrine hole for this group of soldiers. He was shortly joined by Debir and Hunlok. His first instinct was to throw a shovel full of the waste at Ratts, hoping for a sentence in the pen, but then he would probably not be treated as nicely as the girls. Ratts might just throw him right into the hole. He needed to keep his anger in check, and do the work he was assigned until he could have a break to start planning their escape. This was not going to be easy.
Through the heat of the day, Liden, Hunlok and Debir filled buckets and hauled waste to dump it out in the field a safe distance from the soldier’s drinking water and off the trail so no soldiers would step in it.
“Debir,” Liden whispered as they made their way out into the field to empty their buckets. The shorter boy looked over to him, still very quiet with slumped shoulders. “Don’t look happy about it,” he began, “but I grabbed the torn pieces of paper after Ratts dropped them.” Debir looked up to him, a spark in his eyes again. “I said don’t look happy,” Liden repeated, taking a quick look over his shoulder. Private Marks was standing off to the side, barely acknowledging them, but he needed to be subtle. “Now look, I need your help if we’re going to figure a way out of this place. Keep your eyes sharp.” Debir nodded.
Liden stumbled as he stepped in an unseen prairie dog hole. He winced and stood up, turning his ankle over. “Dumb animals!” He poured his bucket down the hole.
“Liden!” Hunlok protested. “They don’t deserve that!”
He shrugged and turned around. “If they weren’t so hard to catch, maybe we wouldn’t have stopped to hunt groundhog and been ambushed by these soldiers.”
“If they weren’t so hard to catch, they’d all be dead,” Debir argued.
“Well I guess it’s a lucky little prairie dog down there then, isn’t it? Lucky to be alive and free.” He knew his argument was weak, but his ankle throbbed and he felt a little better knowing that the little rodent that made the hole would have a bit of a rude surprise awaiting him.
Debir sloshed his bucket over the ground a little farther off the path where the soldiers walked. “I wouldn’t consider it lucky to have that dumped on me.”
“If given a choice, they would probably rather be evasive and have human waste dumped on them than be in a cook pot, so in a way, they’re actually winning. Besides, now the soldiers won’t want to eat them.”
Hunlok shook his head as he walked past. “You have strange reasoning Liden. But I can’t say that you’re completely wrong.” He poured his bucket down the hole.
Debir looked back and forth between the two other boys. “What… I can’t… That’s just nasty!”
Liden and Hunlok started to laugh as they headed back to their work, and Private Marks even cracked a smile as he now watched them. Through the evening they made several trips until the latrine hole was nearly empty. Before it got dark, Private Marks led them to a spot downstream
from their camp where they were able to clean up. As he watched the Serpent Tongue River flowing past, a plan began to form. “Debir,” Liden whispered to his friend.
“What?” He splashed some water over his arms, rinsing them clean to the elbows.
“Think we could swim across this river?”
“No,” Hunlok cut in. “The girls are still in cages.”
“Not right now,” he retorted sharply. “Just could we do it?”
“It would be completely stupid to try,” Debir replied. “Remember, we’re kinda at war with the country that owns the other side of this river.”
Liden looked at the far side of the Serpent Tongue River, then back at Private Marks. “So you’re telling me, there’s no way soldiers from the Kresthinian army would dare follow us.”
Debir stopped cleaning himself off and stood up to look at Liden. He scrutinized him for a minute, even grabbed his head and knocked on it, as if checking to make sure it wasn’t hollow. “You’re not joking are you?”
“Yes he is,” Hunlok stated emphatically. “We are not breaking out of this place to go into hostile territory.”
“You finished?” Marks called out after them.
Liden stepped away from the bank and nodded. It might not make sense to them, but he practically had the plan worked out. He just needed a little bit of Debir science and they would be free again. Unfortunately the plan required that he be outside of the army camp, and that meant some decisive action. He went over to retrieve his now cleaned shovel and pulled the scraps of paper out of his pocket. Although they had stayed relatively safe during their day of work, he knew they would be damaged if he kept them now. He placed them into Debir’s cleaned out bucket, then walked over to the trail next to Marks. He stood slightly off to the side, making sure he was between Marks and the river. Debir looked confused when he joined them, and Hunlok was oblivious. When the Private began marching back toward the camp, Liden spun around and made a break for it. He had a lead of several paces before the private knew what was happening and tried to catch him. Despite his exhaustion, he forced his legs to move faster until he came to water’s edge where he dove in. He was safe! There was no way the soldier in armor would… splash!
Arms gripped around him, pulling him down in the water. Marks swung his limbs around wildly, trying to keep Liden a captive while struggling to keep himself above the surface. It was a losing battle. Liden kicked, and flailed, trying to get away from the soldier. He even successfully got one hand free and landed an elbow in the soldier’s gut. Before he could celebrate that Marks had relinquished his death grip, pain flared in his side as the soldier retaliated with a series of punches that knocked the wind out of him and would certainly leave him badly bruised.
With one hand slung over Liden’s neck and across his chest, Marks swam back to shore, dragging the young man up, soaking wet, onto his feet. Liden was dropped down onto the ground gasping for air with Marks standing over him.
Back in the camp, Marks led them to a slanted door that led down into the ground. Debir stopped at the entrance and started shaking his head. “Get in!” Marks pushed him forward into the underground prison.
“No,” Liden argued, stepping between Marks and Debir. Debir had never even been in an open mineshaft. There was no way he’d be able to handle this. “You don’t understand!”
Marks punched Liden in the face, dropping him to the ground. He reached out for Debir, grabbing him by his collar. “Don’t move!”
“He can’t be in here,” Liden protested. Marks spun around to stare down at Liden. The boy held his hands up, but didn’t move from where Marks had deposited him. The soldier dragged Debir into the underground prison and shoved him down the long hallway flanked by cells. He then walked forward, picked Debir up, and walked him to the end of the twenty-foot long tunnel and shoved him into a cell. “You going to give me any trouble?” he asked Hunlok. The larger boy shook his head and went in to sit next to Debir.
He shut the door and went back for Liden, roughly dragging the boy to the last cell and throwing him in.
“I have something special for the difficult ones,” Marks growled. He moved Liden to the center of the cell and reached up to grab a pair of manacles hanging from a beam running across the ceiling. The shackles clicked shut over Liden’s wrists as they secured his arms to the support beam in the cell.
“How’s he doing?” Liden asked when they were left alone. Debir was sitting in the corner of his cell, hugging his knees to his chest while taking short, gasping breaths. Hunlok shrugged and moved closer to his friend.
“No,” Debir said, his voice filled with desperation. He held his hands out in front of himself. “Please just give me some space.”
They waited in silence for several minutes, not sure what to do. Hoping to distract Debir, Liden started talking. “Why didn’t you run?” he demanded when they were alone. “We need to have someone outside the camp for my plan to work.”
“We don’t know your plan!” Hunlok pointed out. “Even if we did, we’re better off here in a camp in our own country than fleeing for our lives, suspected to be spies by armies on both sides of this river.”
“How else are we going to make sure we’re not followed?” he demanded, frustrated that they just dismissed his plan outright without any discussion. “How can we outrun an army? How will we get to Zulholm?”
Debir’s breathing had slowed down and he was looking more like himself, despite sitting in the corner as far away from the others as he could get. “You’re right,” he spoke to Liden. Liden nodded his head dramatically at Hunlok, happy that Debir was siding with him, but then Debir continued, “And you’re right,” he said, turning to Hunlok. Liden’s smug look quickly left his face. How could they both be right? “We do need to get out of here, and we all need to know the plan,” he explained. “We need some time. We need to work here, stay out of trouble, learn how this place functions. What are their routines, where are they headed? How many patrols are out? How long are the girls going to be in those confined cages? We’re definitely making a plan to get out of here,” he reassured with a nod to both boys. “But we need to work together or we’ll all end up in irons.”
“It’s a lost cause,” came a voice from the adjacent cell. Liden looked over and noticed a man there for the first time. He was wearing rags that matched the brown of the dirt walls and he blended in perfectly.
“We’re getting out of here, I don’t care what you say.” Hunlok stepped up to the side of the cell to face the man. “If you try to stop us, or rat us out, you’ll regret it.” Liden shivered. Hunlok was an imposing sight with his bloody face and the death glare he gave the man.
The other man looked away from Hunlok casually, like he wasn’t at all troubled by him. “I’m not going to do anything to you,” he responded. “It’s Ratts you need to worry about. Strong young men like you. He’ll have you sold into slavery first chance he gets. Even if you did have a plan to get out of here, I’ll bet he’ll have you sold before the week ends.”
Chapter 10
Wren approached the camp from the west, studying the wooden pikes and the couple of guard towers he could see from the distance as he closed in. The raven was safely perched somewhere in the forest on the opposite side of the river as there wasn’t much the bird would be able to do in the camp.
A pair of scouts stood from the tall reeds near the banks of the Serpent Tongue River and waved to him. The spy altered his course and started walking toward them as they drew nearer to him. Of course they relaxed when they saw his uniform close up.
“What news from Oristol?” the first scout asked.
Wren shrugged and glanced back to the west as if toward Astyr many miles away. “Have you heard about the governor’s daughter in Astyr?” he asked.
One of the scouts spat on the ground. “It was bound to happen. The governor was a fool to keep his city open. He had to know that sooner or later it would cause him trouble.”
“Aye, no good can co
me of letting trade caravans through from the north. It was only a matter of time before the caravans were used to smuggle in agents from the north as well. It was right foolish.”
Wren nodded. “Well, the orders ask for bulking up the patrols and watching for more enemy agents,” he said. “Still, I should deliver this to Captain Ratts as quickly as possible.”
“Any news about rotations?” one of the scouts asked. “I have been in this blasted camp for thirteen months. I’d like to put my back to it pretty soon.”
Wren frowned and shook his head. “’Fraid I don’t have any transfers in the satchel this time.”
“Pity,” the scout replied. “Ah well, I suppose I could do worse. Thanks for letting me know.”
Wren smiled and then continued along the path toward the camp, leaving the two scouts to return to their hiding spot in the reeds. As he approached the opening in the front of the camp, he was greeted by a rather tall guard holding a spear.
“Open your satchel for inspection,” the guard ordered.
Wren undid the latch and pulled the top flap back to reveal the single missive inside. The guard reached in and took the envelope in hand, inspecting the wax seal and then frowning as if he had expected something more.
“Captain Ratts is in the command tent just now, straight back. You can’t miss it,” he said as he handed the envelope back.
“My thanks, and where is the mess tent? My stomach is a bit grumbly.”
The guard turned and pointed to a brown tent some thirty yards inside the perimeter. “You can probably find some bread and coffee inside. Supper won’t be served for another couple of hours still, so that will have to hold you over.”
Wren nodded. “That’ll do.” He walked up toward the command tent, his eyes scanning around the camp. He did his best not to stare at the hanging cage in the middle of the camp, but it was more than a little difficult to keep his composure. A pair of soldiers were pushing the bottom of the cage and swinging it back and forth between them, all the while laughing and jeering at the young woman inside. Wren recognized her almost instantly. Her blonde hair was quite a bit dirtier than it had been when he had last seen her, and her face was reddened from exposure to the sun, but he knew it was one of the two young women he had seen outside the bakery in Astyr. He could only guess as to what had brought her here, but he did a quick calculation, and nodded to himself. This would work perfectly with his plan.
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