“Dance, dog!” someone yelled, as Rathe stumbled into yet another deep pothole. He had almost regained his balance when Treon heeled his mount into a canter, jerking Rathe off his feet. He landed hard on the roadway, the breath crushed from his chest. Rathe tried to rise, but Treon rode on, leading the chant, “Run, dog, run!”
The rope about his waist bit deep, scoring already chaffed skin. He bounced and rolled over the road, like a fish on a line. Gritting his teeth, Rathe caught hold of the rope and heaved himself up its length toward the captain. When he had ample slack, he let the rope slip through his hands and jumped to his feet. Rathe had only an instant to revel in his success before the captain kicked his mount into a gallop. The last foot of rough cord burned through Rathe’s grasp, snapped tight, and wrenched him off balance. He cried out when he struck the road again. Treon kept on for a hundred paces, dragging Rathe, then drew rein.
“Get up, dog,” Treon called. “I will not have you weary my horse by dragging you all the way to Hilan.”
“Get up, dog!” came a chorus of laughing shouts from the handful of men ringing him about. “Dance, dog!”
Hooves drew nearer, kicking up dust and flinging a hail of stinging pebbles. Groaning, Rathe curled in on himself, fearing one of the horses would crush him. Every limb shook from the bruising abuse, and fury was an inferno in his breast, but Rathe fought against his instincts to retaliate.
“Water my dog!” Treon invited in a merry tone.
At once, men bounded from their mounts and, forming a circle around Rathe, pissed on him as Treon had done many times before. Outraged murmurs went up from those holding back, but no one made the attempt to intercede on Rathe’s behalf.
As urine splashed over him, burning his many cuts and scrapes, Rathe thought of Nesaea’s warning about Khenasith, the Black Breath, and the curse upon him. “Yours is a fate buried in shadow, a life of woe, a harrowing storm to trouble your every step. Turn this way or that, but you will never escape distress until the grave draws you to its loveless bosom.” He had made light of her telling that night, but now it seemed all too accurate.
A blunt object rudely prodded Rathe’s ribs. Through a tear in his hood, he saw the leering serpent’s skull of the Reaver’s banner flutter past. The standard bearer jabbed the tip of the pole into his ribs again, followed by a clacking blow to his head. Someone else pelted him with a ball of steaming horse dung. A heckling chant went up above him.
“Up, dog! Up, dog! Up, dog!”
As Rathe struggled to his feet, he thought again of Nesaea. While her end had been terrible, it had been short-lived. There was a mercy in that, which he could not help but envy.
“Does my dog have any more tricks?” Treon asked.
Rathe stood with his head bowed, unspeaking.
“My dog looks overheated,” Treon announced. “Strip him.”
Rathe stood impassively while Treon’s men tore off his jerkin, tunic, and trousers. A final indignity was to deprive him of his breechclout. They left him only his hood and boots. When they retied the rope around his waist, its weight alone burned his tender skin.
“That’s better, yes?” Treon drawled.
“Dance for a treat, dog!” someone jeered, but the sport had gone out of the moment, and no one else took up the new chant.
Treon ordered the company on, and Rathe ran after, doing all he could to stay on his feet. Without garb, to fall and get dragged would tear his flesh all the easier. Moreover, he feared that if he fell again, he would never get up.
As had all the days prior, the present day progressed slowly. Now, more often than not, the roadway tilted upward, making the going all the harder. Rathe stubbornly kept on, refusing to bow to exhaustion. Despite his resolve, he fell more often than before. Treon always kept on, dragging him over the rock-studded roadway. By will alone, Rathe would scramble up and stumble after, gasping for breath, feet and body blistered and bloody. I will not break, he told himself, a mindless conviction with little potency.
By the time dusk fell, Rathe noticed the air had grown cooler and damper, chilling his bare skin. Despite the stench of his hood, he scented a high mountain forest of fir and pine. Without question, the company was finally climbing the flanks of the Gyntor Mountains, and thus nearing Fortress Hilan. He vowed to hold on a little longer, to endure as would a true Ghost of Ahnok.
After night fell, Treon called a halt, and led a staggering Rathe away from camp. “A poorly mannered dog cannot be trusted to eat at the feet of his master,” Treon explained, the same as he did every night.
Although Rathe did not resist, the captain jerked hard on the leash, grinding the rope into the raw wound around Rathe’s middle. Thoughts muddled after two full days without food or water, covered head to foot in new bruises and scrapes, Rathe noticed the fresh pain distantly.
“Here we are,” Treon said, using a rock to pound a stake into the ground. He whipped the hood from Rathe’s head, glared at him a moment, then sauntered back toward camp.
“Water,” Rathe croaked, forgetting himself in his desperation.
Treon spun on his heel with a sneering grin. “What’s this, my dog has learned to speak?”
Rathe’s jaw clenched tight in anger at his weakness, and he studied his worn boots. The toe of one had been worn away, and a wide split showed in the other. Turbid thoughts and images revolved in his mind, leaving him uncertain what he intended, doubting his resolve to hold fast to his dignity.
Captain Treon produced his waterskin and let it swing before Rathe’s eyes. “Beg for a drink of cool, soothing water, dog,” he suggested. “Bow down on your knees … and I might even throw in a morsel of food.”
I will not break! In his confused state, those words did not mean what they had before. Did asking for water and food truly mean his spirit had been broken? Yes, a voice answered simply, but he did not think he could trust that voice.
“I … I,” Rathe struggled, “I request water.”
“You request?” Treon sniggered. “A dog does not request—he begs … on his belly.”
Bending is not breaking….
Oh, but it is….
Bend now, grow stronger later….
Rathe groaned in answer to the warring voices in his head. He knew the last voice spoke true, but hearing truth and accepting it were not the same. His knees bent and he sank down. Slower still, he pressed his face to the ground at Treon’s feet. Already he could feel the water’s cool, sweet wetness cleansing his palate of the dust he had eaten all day. The thought of refreshing liquid blinded him to his humiliation.
“Water … just a little … a taste.”
Treon laughed, a sound deeper and richer than the voice with which he spoke, and jammed his boot onto Rathe’s neck. “Come, men,” he urged. “My dog has learned a new trick!”
Fury swept through Rathe’s mind, clearing his thoughts, and he tried to push Treon’s boot aside. The captain pressed down all the harder. The soldiers gathered with haste, eager to see what their captain was going on about.
“See how he begs?” Treon said proudly. “Show them how you can plead, dog. Quickly, now, before your master grows angry at your silence and beats you.”
Rathe could only see the array of shifting, dirty boots gathered around him in the gloom, but he felt the weight of many expectant eyes. Some might sympathize, even share his outrage, but others wanted him to concede defeat, to surrender as each of them must have done at one time. In seeing the famed Scorpion of the Ghosts of Ahnok beg a man he would have raised his nose at not a month gone, he knew their sense of worth would be elevated, allowing them to regain some measure of lost pride. If he resisted, he rebuffed not just Treon, but all of them.
“Beg!” Treon eased his weight onto Rathe’s neck, crushing his face against the damp loam.
“Ask for the water,” Loro said in a pained voice. “We will not think less of you.”
Others took up the advice, all but pleading with him to beg a drink of water.
; “I cannot,” Rathe groaned.
“What was that, dog?” Treon snarled. “Speak up!”
Surrender now, and fight the battle of your choosing later.
I will not break, Rathe thought in answer, knowing it was too late for such resistance, but unable to accept his downfall, even now, with the boot of his oppressor pressing him down.
“Seems your training is not as adequate as you thought,” Loro snapped, provoking a few derisive sniggers.
“Beg for the water, you slinking cur,” Treon said, mockery giving way to seething wrath, “and you shall have it.”
Rathe fought for breath, filling his lungs. “Bugger your arse with a flaming torch!”
Treon jumped back, his boot swinging. Rathe reared back, mere inches, caught the captain’s passing heel, and shoved it past his head. Thrown off balance, Treon tumbled to his backside, spewing curses with all the thrashing zeal of the enraged snake he resembled.
Rathe scrabbled forward, balled his fist, and smashed the man’s lips against his teeth, once and again, before a pair of sergeants slung him aside.
Rathe struggled up, swaying, weak, so unutterably weak. “Any who stand with this serpent,” he grated, “are not men, but bleating sheep awaiting the slaughter.”
“Unlike you, dog, we sheep eat and drink our fill,” a man said, one shadowed figure among many.
Contemptuous laughter bubbled past Rathe’s lips. “I misspoke. You are not sheep, but worms crawling through the dung of your betters.”
Pensive silence held for a moment, allowing Rathe to believe he had convinced at least a few to look inside themselves and find the men they had been.
Spitting blood, Treon growled, “Take him.”
A handful of his men attacked. Weakened though he was, Rathe gave back until the flood of fists and boots drove him down into a thudding, bloody darkness….
Shivering and naked, Rathe gradually came awake sometime later, eyes swollen, face puffy, and covered all over in bruises and crusted blood. All was dark and quiet, save the faint rustlings of night creatures. In letting one hand wander over his torso in search of broken ribs, he found a waterskin nestled against his hip, and with it a loaf of rock-hard bread.
Rathe remembered the derisive sniggers at Treon’s expense when Loro had questioned his training tactics. Where one man openly criticized, a handful of others felt the same, even if they held the silence. Loro had probably left him the food and water, but there was a chance a Hilan man might have, and Rathe found in that possibility something upon which to rest a little hope.
Chapter 14
Twice over, for concentration of any sort taxed his wits, Rathe counted back the days. Each time he came to the same number. A fortnight had passed since his leashing, where Rathe had feared only a ten day journey. Despite all his talk of haste, Captain Treon seemed more interested in prolonging Rathe’s torments than returning to Hilan. The torments had not eased in the slightest after the night he pummeled the captain, but thanks to Loro, or some other commiserate soul, food and water had become less scarce.
Night was falling when Rathe’s feet thumped onto a wooden surface. All around him, hooves clattered to a halt. He smelled the smoke of hearth fires on the air, and under this the distinct scent of penned livestock.
“Open the gates!” Treon bawled, his voice hoarser than usual after berating and taunting Rathe throughout the day.
“Captain Treon?” came a man’s shocked voice, who doubtless was looking on Rathe’s state of abuse.
“Open the damned gate,” Treon roared, “or I will cleave off your manhood!”
Rathe waited in hooded obscurity, listening to the clack and rattle of a rising portcullis, then the groaning squeal of unoiled hinges swinging open. Where Rathe would have expected calls of greeting, even insulting hoots at his bloodied nakedness, silence prevailed. He supposed the men of Hilan—all outcasts at one time or another—were sizing up the newcomers.
A moment later, hooves rumbled over what Rathe guessed was a wooden drawbridge. His rope snapped tight, forcing him into an agonized trot. After the bridge, the pitch of iron-shod hooves changed, ringing against stone flags. Captain Treon halted a final time, and dismissed his men with a sharp word of caution about showing up to dawn formation with a head of wine. Raucous chuckles met this, dwindling as the men moved off. From far away, a crow croaked greeting to the coming night, and a drizzle of rain began.
“You are home, dog,” Treon said. “Soon, we will begin your training in earnest.”
Rathe said nothing.
Treon grunted to himself, then shouted, “Alfan, Remon! Lock my cur in the Weeping Tower.”
“Should we feed him?” one man asked, provoking an unwanted rumble in Rathe’s belly.
“Water. No more. He can eat when he learns proper respect.” Knowing laughter met this, bouncing off stone walls.
Rathe stifled a relieved sigh when the rope was slashed from his waist. Hands shoved him forward with a warning, “Struggle, and Alfan’s like to toss you over a barrel and have his way with you.”
Rathe had no intention of resisting, threat or not. For the time being, he wanted only to sleep and to regain his strength. After, he would decide what he intended to do with his new life.
Alfan and Remon hustled him up a winding stair, hurling an endless parade of insults at his back. After the long climb, one of his guards dragged him to a stop, and the other rattled open a door. They shoved him through a doorway, and the door began creaking shut.
“Did you idiots forget Captain Treon said I was to receive water?” Rathe said.
“Nah,” one growled.
“Leave it by the door,” Rathe instructed. “I can help myself.”
A sloshing bucket crashed into his head, the blow dropping him to his knees. The door slammed on brutal laughter, and a key turned in the lock. Rathe knelt there, head thumping and drenched, listening to the retreat of heavy footsteps. When the door at the base of the tower boomed shut, he dragged off the reeking hood and cast it aside. He wanted for sleep, but he took the time to study his quarters.
Four windows circled the Weeping Tower’s highest chamber. Plain wooden shutters, gray and cracked with age, blocked off three of those windows. Disrepair or a storm had taken the fourth shutter, allowing a damp breeze to slither in and steal the heat from his naked skin. The last prisoner had used a bit of stone to decorate the walls with obscene, childish scrawls.
He stood and shuffled to a scatter of straw in one corner. Judging by the threadbare blanket nearly lost in that rat’s nest, Rathe supposed he had found his bed. Wincing at the prickly straw, he draped the blanket over his shoulders, crossed frayed carpets thick with mold, and came to the fireplace on the other side of the chamber. Miraculously, a store of cordwood and tinder waited to provide warmth. Flint and steel hung by leather cords from an iron peg driven into a crack in the wall.
He built a fire and warmed his hands, grimacing as he looked over the map of red misery covering every inch of his skin. With scant hope in his heart, he returned to the bucket lying on its side. A couple of mouthfuls still splashed about inside. He drank it down, wishing for more as he set the bucket aside.
A bawdy shout from the courtyard below drew him to the open window. Resting his hands on the sill, he looked on Fortress Hilan’s rain-soaked defenses with an eye trained for war.
It was a stronghold meant to secure nothing but itself and its occupants, and looked the part, stark and foreboding. The keep had been built into the side of a mountain, exposing only one graystone wall. Other than the glow of torches brightening scores of arrow slits, it resembled the face of a cliff sheared smooth by the axe of a god. A high, crenelated curtain wall ran around the bailey, shaped like tongue that jutted toward a grassy, rock-studded slope. A half mile down a broken cart path, a terraced village slouched behind a wooden palisade. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys, chickens scratched outside the wall, and bedraggled villagers went about their evening chores. Beyond that, the fores
t pressed in on all sides, stirring with night shadows.
Nearly asleep on his feet, Rathe turned his attention to the lightly armored men striding the wall walks. All thoughts of sleep vanished, and his teeth began to grind together. Within nooks, flaming braziers and flickering torches sheltered from wind and rain, casting a fitful light on men he knew: Joeth, Othan, Elgar, Wyin, and Kevel. They were outcasts from Onareth, the same five that Treon had claimed escaped. He scanned the other guards and found a handful of Hilan men who had ridden with Treon—all had been presumed dead at the hands of the plainsmen.
Rathe recalled the night Treon had come from the darkness beyond Nesaea’s wagon to accuse him of colluding with the escapees. Rathe had no doubt that Treon had not only known they were alive, but guessed the man had sent them ahead…. But why the deceit? Treon surely knew that Rathe would eventually discover the men’s whereabouts, and in doing so would know he had been wrongly punished.
The answer came slowly, and with it Rathe’s mind became a cesspit of vengeful thoughts. Treon must have intended the discovery to be a final blow to his willfulness, a stark reminder that he was the Scorpion no longer, was nothing at all, save a slave to the whims of his master.
Rather than wild fury, peace fell over Rathe. Having Treon single him out marked him as the man Treon considered the greatest potential threat to the continued obedience to Hilan’s garrison. And a threat I will be, he thought, an idea of revenge taking shape in his mind that was not so much murderous as malevolent….
Rathe slept soundly that night in the litter of straw, and started awake at the rattle of a key. Loro flung open the door and bustled in carrying an armload of firewood, a large sack, and a plump waterskin. Seeing the fire had burned down to ashes, he built it back up. Only then did he turn, the sack dangling from his fist.
“Seems your master has decided to feed you after all. I think he sent me, in case you had it in your mind to bite him.”
Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) Page 9