Ren blinks, confused. “My arm? It’s all right....”
“I said, show me,” and Ren obeys, having learned his lesson and what that tone of voice means.
Dek sits next to him and draws off the glove, tests the fingers. The splint’s loose, like he thought. When he carefully undoes the wood scraps and material strips, Ren hisses. “It’s all right, really, I’m a doctor....” Dek just gives him a look, and Ren subsides, though he bites his lip as he watches.
The arm’s badly bruised and painful, but the colour in the fingers is good. “Did it three weeks ago,” Ren volunteers. “Honestly, it’s fine. Just aches.” Dek looks at him again. “I know, shut up,” he says with a sigh. “I wish I knew how to make you stop hating me.”
“Try shutting up,” Dek says, then carefully resplints the arm, using leather strips from his own supply, and lighter bits of wood of the right length that should make it more comfortable and less inclined to catch and jar.
Despite Ren’s protests, it’s clear the pain’s less for him now as he tests it cautiously. “Thank you. That was really skilful. You’re trained?” Dek doesn’t even bother glaring at him for that. “If I tell you something truthful, will you give me your name?” Dek looks up, surprised in spite of himself. “My name really is Ren. I really am a doctor. I broke my arm in a flyer crash three weeks ago. And I would never hurt anyone.”
Dek stares, not sure if all those statements can be true, not with all he’s guessed, with all that Ren’s not telling him. “Dek,” he says finally.
“Hi, Dek, nice to meet you.”
“Shut up,” he says, and goes to take a piss.
Walk A Lonesome Road: 3
By the time they’re coming up on the ridge where Dek’s house is located, he can feel every one of his thirty-eight years, and every crack and screw in his leg. Getting soft, he tells himself, using the urtibes instead of walking, but truth to tell, he couldn’t really live out here without their help, and promises to give the little hairy buggers some extra vegetables with their feed when he gets back. Ren’s pretty much done too—it’s not been a good day, and he’s had to walk some of it because of the terrain, something of a struggle with his ankle and the snow. Dek wonders what other injuries he’s nursing, and whether this puking thing is going to get any better. The bark tea seems to help, but he’s kept barely anything down today, and apart from toasted bread at breakfast, he’s refused all other food, sipping the tea whenever Dek makes a fire, and being grimly determined not to give Dek the slightest excuse to shout at him. Dek would be proud of the fact he’s still got what it takes to intimidate soldiers, except that intimidating a sick, injured man who’s completely dependent on him for survival isn’t actually a particularly admirable thing to do.
Ren’s nodding in the saddle as they climb the last demidec through the forest, snow clouds hanging low in the sunset, Dek hanging onto Jesti’s pommel and shamelessly letting her animal strength supplement his own failing human one. They’ve lost the light completely by the time they get to the house and the last few thousand midecs they cover with the help of the windup lantern. The steps up to the house look as high as Mount Meninwen and it takes the last of Dek’s strength to haul Ren up them. He gracelessly shoves the guy inside the front door, dumps the packs on the porch, and then he rides Jesti up to the barn. Even cold, hungry and exhausted, he can’t neglect her—she’s served him well, as the others have, and feeding and watering her, running a quick brush over her hide to get the worst of the mud and snow off it, is the least he can do. He’s shaking by the time he climbs the steps to the porch again and walks into his home. Taking his boots off seems like the hardest thing he’s ever attempted—he can’t remember when he was last this tired.
Ren has done exactly nothing in the hour since he’d got back except shed his outer gear and leave it on the floor in a muddy wet heap. He’s curled up fast asleep in Dek’s armchair, his head tipped back a little, lips parted. He looks exactly how Dek feels, but unlike Ren, Dek still has work to do. He stores what’s left of the meat and food, puts the pelt out in the drying room to deal with tomorrow, hangs up the dirty outer gear there too, and hauls out some stew from the freezer to make a quick, hot meal for himself in the cooker. As it heats up, he looks over at the sleeping man in the living room, and realises he’s got a problem. Out on the trail, Ren wasn’t going to try anything because he was in no shape to, and didn’t know where they were headed. But here, in Dek’s fully supplied and equipped house, he no longer needs the owner, and while Ren doesn’t give him any psycho vibes, Dek still doesn’t trust him, and doesn’t know the full story behind that broken arm or the shaven head.
He goes out to the work shed and selects what he needs, then comes back into the house and kicks Ren’s foot, at the same time drawing his pistol and pointing it at him. “Get up.”
“Dek? Wha...did I do something?” He’s slow, genuinely confused, blinking against the flare of the light and up at Dek’s face.
“Not yet. Get up.”
Ren obeys clumsily, stumbling a little on weary feet. “Move in there,” Dek orders, gesturing towards the second bedroom, the one that’s not seen any use since he came up here six years ago, but which Dek, unable to tolerate a mess, always keeps tidy and free of junk. “Take your boots off.”
“But it’s cold....”
“It’ll warm up,” Dek says truthfully. The heating in this place is one of the best things about it, next to the isolation.
Ren’s confused again but obeys. Dek’s already locked one end of the chain to the heating pipes, and now tosses the other end and the second padlock over to Ren. “Around your ankle.”
“Dek, you don’t....” Dek cocks his gun and Ren swallows. “All right. But you don’t have to do this,” he says as he sits on the unmade bed to obey Dek’s order. Dek makes sure the chain’s too tight to be eased off, then steps back. “Why?” Ren asks quietly, apparently really puzzled.
Dek ignores him. “Chain’s long enough to reach the bathroom. The key’s in the other room, so if you knock me out, you’re still stuck....”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Shut up.”
“Look, I know you’ve got to take precautions but I swear....” Dek raises the gun again and takes careful aim. “Maybe you should,” Ren says, not backing off at all. “If this is how it’s going to end, I’d rather die out here than...and maybe...one chain is better than the rest of it,” he finishes softly, as if speaking to himself. “Before you turn me in, will you let me explain?”
Dek lowers the gun. “I don’t know. You hungry?”
Ren shrugs. “If you’ve got anything I can eat. Otherwise, I’d prefer to sleep. Are you going to let me have bedding?”
Dek didn’t bring any with him when he moved up here, but the place came with all the furnishings, so he thinks there are spare sheets, and there’s one extra pillow. He collects all of it and an old duvet he found along with the blankets, and brings it back into the bedroom. Ren is sitting on the bed, staring into space, looking resigned and ill. Dek shoves the bedding at him. “I can’t undress like this,” Ren points out, and Dek silently curses his own stupidity.
He gets the key and keeps the gun on Ren while he unchains himself. “Strip,” Dek orders when the man hesitates. The room is warm enough now, and there’s clean underwear in Ren’s pack. Keeping him nearly naked might be an extra deterrent.
Ren’s mouth tightens. “No privacy?”
“No. I’m not interested in what you got, just in putting your clothes in the washer.”
“You’ve got a washer? Up here? How did you get it over that mountain?”
“I got neighbours who help out,” he says, making sure Ren knows that he can call for backup if he needs to, even if he never would. “Strip. Down to skin.”
He affects boredom, but underneath it, he’s puzzled. There’s precious little privacy in the military, or in a prison, and if Ren isn’t lying about being a doctor, the modesty thing makes even less sense. T
hat is, it doesn’t until Ren removes his shirt and underlayers, and Dek sees the scars, obscenely livid marks on Ren’s snow-pale skin, on his arms, down his abdomen. He has no doubt if Ren turned around, his back would be similarly disfigured.
Despite himself he moves forward, and realises he’s about to reach out and touch Ren’s body. He jerks his hand back. “What year is it?” Ren asks in a harsh voice, working his jaw.
“Huh?” Dek’s still mesmerised by the ghastly, horribly regular lines and dents. No accident, he thinks, feeling queasy.
“The year. What fucking year is it?” Dek names it and Ren’s expression crumples. “Damn,” he says softly. “Four years.”
Dek raises the gun out of instinct, because Ren looks as if he’s about to fall apart. “What?”
Ren tosses the shirts and things onto the bed, and turns to Dek bare-chested. “The people who did this to me had me for four years. I...didn’t realise it was so long. I’m telling you now, gun or no gun, I’ll do everything up to and including killing myself to stop you taking me back to them. But,” he adds as Dek moves back a little bit. “I’d never hurt you or kill you. They haven’t brought me that low that I’d harm someone trying to help me. I wish you could believe me.”
“Finish up,” Dek says coldly, to cover up his shock at what he’s just learned. When Ren takes off his trousers and long johns, Dek notes that he’s been starving for longer than three weeks. Once he’d been a big man, probably, with decent musculature, but now he’s almost frail, the knobs of elbows and shoulders and knees overlarge like those of a famine victim. He’s devoid of almost all body fat except, oddly, slightly protuberant nipples and a little pot belly under a particularly nasty and recent scar high on his abdomen.
“Enjoying the show?” Ren snaps, and Dek realises he’s staring. “Can I get a shower?”
“Water’s timed for a minute. Go in and I’ll fetch the gear. Toilet’s down the hall—don’t throw anything in it that doesn’t break down.”
“Yes, because I’ve got so many possessions,” Ren says bitterly, almost like he no longer gives a fuck that Dek’s holding a gun on him. He stalks into the bathroom, and Dek lets out a breath. Marra’s balls. This isn’t what he was expecting, not at all.
He leaves the underwear, towel and new toothbrush (glad, now, of his habit of keeping multiple spares of everything) in the bathroom, and makes up the bed while Ren’s getting clean. He goes back to the kitchen and extracts his stew, then tosses a couple of frozen dough balls into the cooker while he boils water for khevai and to thin out some frozen meat stock concentrate. He hears Ren coming and picks up his gun, but Ren ignores it. “Thanks for the shirt and pants,” he says, before sitting at the table. “Smells good—anything for me, or do you need to chain me up first?”
The shirt and fleece shouldn’t be big enough for a man’s Ren’s size but he’s so underweight they’re almost too big. The pants are too short but fit loosely around his hips—he’s wearing them under his pot belly like it would hurt to have anything across it. Dek figures he’s got more than enough unpleasant information tonight and decides to save the interrogation until the morning. He doesn’t rise to Ren’s bait, and simply sets the stock, bread roll and khevai down in front of him, then grabs the stew, rest of the bread and his own mug of khevai and sits at the other end of the table.
Ren just looks at the food, but doesn’t pick up his spoon. “I can’t go back,” he says tonelessly. “Dek—please. Promise you’ll shoot me rather than do that. I can’t,” he says, lifting his gaze to Dek, and Dek sees tears in his eyes that don’t seem the least bit faked. “You don’t know what it’s like. I’m begging you.”
“Eat your meal,” Dek says, ignoring the plea. He’s in no shape and no mind to deal with this. When Ren still doesn’t touch the food, he knows threats won’t work. “Talk tomorrow,” he says grudgingly. “Eat, sleep, talk then.”
“All right. Sorry...I....” He drops his gaze and picks up his spoon, begins to eat slowly. “This is good. Thank you.”
Dek grunts and continues eating, but he’s wondering what crime could possibly justify doing this to a man, and what kind of man would hold the scalpel and do it? He thought he’d seen the worst of mankind in Denebwei, thought he’d plumbed the depths of the human capacity for viciousness and cruelty, and yet, here in his home, is someone who’s walking proof of how wrong he is.
He has to get Ren out of here. He doesn’t need, doesn’t want anything to do with a world like that. It doesn’t want anything to do with him either, and that’s how he likes it. Ren and whoever did this to him, doesn’t fit in the haven he’s created for himself up here, and that means Ren has to go. Somehow.
Walk A Lonesome Road: 4
It’s the first night in a week that he hasn’t been woken up by Ren’s moaning. Pale light is already filtering through the high windows, which means he’s slept a lot later than usual. He grabs his trousers and checks on his unwanted visitor—Ren’s still out, huddled under the blankets like he’s freezing, even though the house is perfectly warm. The bucket Dek left in his room for puking purposes is unused, and Dek hopes that’s all passed now because it’s getting pretty old, Ren getting up, puking, pissing, puking again. No fun for Ren either, of course.
He has things he should do, but he’s still exhausted, right down to the bone—probably getting too old for this, he realises, and maybe trapping in midwinter is just a little crazier than even he’s prepared to admit to being. So he makes his porridge and khevai like he does most mornings, takes his time over his meal, and tries not to think about the man in the other room because it’s stirring up dark and painful things inside that he couldn’t deal with then and can’t deal with now. Running away is a perfectly good strategy if the enemy is invincible. Dek discovered that six years ago and hasn’t had cause to revise his opinion since.
He hears harsh retching and sighs, waits for Ren to come out, and then rolls his eyes at himself because the whole chain thing has completely slipped his mind. Some soldier he is, forgetting his own prisoner. He’s already walking towards the bedroom when he hears the quiet ‘Dek?’
Ren is sitting on the bed, wrapped in blankets. His face is pinched, his eyes lifeless and Dek’s arrival gets no reaction but a dully polite, “May I get dressed?”
Dek tosses him the key and decides he really doesn’t want to see Ren’s mutilated body again so he retreats to the kitchen, his pistol at the ready but really only for the look of it. Ren might be taller but now Dek’s seen him naked, he knows that a child of three would have little trouble controlling Ren if they really wanted. Which raises the question of how the hell he got away from his torturers, not to mention who the hell the torturers were.
He’s got toast and sweetened khevai ready when Ren comes through. He sits, thanks him in the same flat tones as before, and starts to eat. Even though it’s food that’s sat easy on his stomach on the trail, this morning it’s clear from his expression that Ren’s having to force it down, not looking at Dek once while he does so. Dek almost starts to offer something else, but Ren’s subdued, submissive manner holds him back so he doesn’t, just waiting for the struggle to be over and the meal done. When he’s finished, Ren gets to his feet. “Ready for the chain again,” he says, staring at the floor.
“I’m not. Sit down.” Dek’s still eating his breakfast after all. He looks at Ren coolly over the edge of his mug, knowing that the mouth won’t be able to take the silence, and sure enough after a couple of minutes, Ren starts to talk, slowly, quietly.
“Dek...I wasn’t lying out there when I said I was trying to protect you. If I tell you the truth, then you’ll have to take me to the defs, which will mean I’ll have to try and stop you, and if you don’t and they find out you were protecting me when you know the story, they’ll lock you up too.” He shudders, his fingers clenching convulsively where they rest on the table. “I don’t want that on my conscience.”
“Then I’ll take you to the defs anyway and let them sor
t it out.”
“No!” Ren’s pale cheeks have a slight colour to them now and his good hand clamps into a tight fist. “You’ll have to kill me, I swear it. I’ll kill myself!”
“Suit yourself,” Dek says, knowing he’s being a bastard, and sips his khevai. Never did have any patience with amateur dramatics. Ren wants his help, he’s going to have to stop shouting. Dek doesn’t want to help him, but he’s not highly delighted at the idea of sending anyone back to be cut up, whatever they’ve done.
“You don’t care, do you?” Ren says, crestfallen. “Figures. I never did have much luck. Look—will you at least let me leave? Maybe...give me some directions? If I could just....” He clenches his hand again. “‘Walk out of Pindone’ is probably too much to ask for, huh.”
He’s looking green again. Dek pushes the khevai and the sucrose over to him. “Don’t puke on my floor or I’ll shoot you.”
“If I thought you would, I’d vomit on purpose.”
“You want to kill yourself, there’s the front door. I’m not stopping you.”
Hope lights Ren’s features. “Really? You’d let me...but I guess asking for supplies is a waste of time.” Dek nods briefly and Ren sags back in his chair. “Dek—look, I’m injured, I’m lost, I know a little survival stuff from being in the army, but the far north isn’t for beginners....”
“Not my problem,” Dek says, tugging the khevai pot back to himself, bored with the whining.
“And I’m pregnant.”
Dek freezes, the instinctive words ‘you must be fucking joking’ ready on his tongue, but something about Ren’s hunted expression keeps them behind his teeth, as the clues click together. The nausea, the strangely rounded belly, the breast tissue—even the scar. He stares, but can’t come up with anything sensible to say.
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