by Martin Ash
Issul grew wary. From what she could see they were all men. They were roughly clothed and unarmed. Prisoners, she gathered, like herself. But a common plight did not make them less dangerous.
The hut had filled with the odours of the mens' sweat. The lamp cast minimal light, but it was enough to reveal her and her two companions to the newcomers. By and large they seemed indifferent at first. Issul wondered whether indeed she and the others had been noticed. But presently a loud coarse voice spoke out from one side. "What's this, then? More recruits to our merry gang?"
A bulky figure stirred and leaned towards the three, then rose and approached. He peered down at them, a huge man with a mass of shaggy black hair, then looked more closely at Issul.
"By the devils and demons, we've got a woman 'ere! And a perfect pretty one, too! Maybe the Gem-eyes are not so heartless after all."
He stooped, resting hands upon knees, and pushed his face towards her. His features gleamed with sweat. Issul felt herself pressing back involuntarily against the timber wall. Behind the big man others were rousing and making moves to investigate. Their eyes glittered as they crowded around, peering curiously as though she were a freak or some kind of strange and desirable exhibit put on display. Her fear mounted, but anger came through on top of it.
The big man reached towards her with one hand, as though to touch her face. Issul brushed his wrist aside with a swift sweep of her arm. "Don't touch me!"
"Oh, a little polecat!" He straightened, putting his hands on his hips, and turned to the others. "She has spirit, this beauty! As though she cannot resist Ombo's charms!"
One or two laughed. The big man, Ombo, turned back. "Now, sweet one, be a bit more friendly, won't you? There's no harm in showing a little friendship now, is there?"
"None whatsoever, but I havn’t invited you to touch me."
"Aww, now that's not the way," said Ombo. "Come now. . . ."
He reached forward again.
"Stop!"
It was Herbin, Miseon's son, who spoke. He came from the side, a slight figure beside Ombo. "Leave her. Do not treat her so. She has suffered greatly, as have we all."
Ombo still bent over towards Issul, turned his head to stare at him mockingly. "Oh, and is that so now? And who are you?"
"My name is Herbin. I am a captive of the Karai, as are you all, are you not? I have been brought here today with my father, Miseon, and Jace. When I saw you men enter, my heart was gladdened. Here, I thought, here are others with whom we share common misfortune. Here are men who will share with us our hatred of these jewel-eyed barbarians who have taken us from our homes and families. Here are men who will join with us to resist them. Yet now, what do I see? That no sooner are you through the door than you turn like beasts upon the most vulnerable among us."
Ombo, for a moment, seemed lost for words. Issul began to scramble to her feet, but he extended a beefy arm and pushed her roughly back. He rose erect to face the young man.
"Well, Herbin, I hear your words, and it’s a fine speech you’ve given. But I disagree. You see, the way I view it is that the Gem-eyes have decided to reward us for our labours. They've given us this lovely. . . Jace is her name? . . they've given her to us as a little smidgen of consolation, as a way of saying thank you for all the hard work we've been doing for them these past weeks. Now, if you disagree, then as I see it, the way to settle the disagreement is for you and I to meet like men and fight it out. Winner takes all. What do you say to that?"
"I don’t feel that fighting will get us anywhere, unless it is against our abductors," replied Herbin falteringly, his nerves betraying him.
"Oh, but I do," said Ombo, and launched himself forward, striking hard with his forearm. The blow caught Herbin by surprise, on the chin. It lifted him off his feet and pitched him backwards into the wall behind. Ombo went after him, took him beneath the arms and lifted him, swinging him around.
"No!" Issul yelled. She was on her feet, facing Ombo, her teeth bared in anger. "It is you and I who will fight, Ombo. If that is your way."
Ombo's big head jerked back on his shoulders. "Ombo? Fight a woman?"
He thrust the dazed Herbin aside.
"That is what I said." Issul adjusted her balance, felt the ground with her feet, securing her stance, sensed the space around her. "Or are you afraid?"
Ombo gave a laugh. "I do not know how to be afraid."
"I can believe that."
Somebody chuckled, which gave her heart. They were not all against her; not entirely.
She sized the big man up, not at all sure of herself. She had learned tricks of combat over the years - Lord Fectur in particular had been a master of the art of fighting beneath rules, and had passed some of his wisdom on to her - but her experience was limited purely to training. Never had she had to fight for real.
Ombo dwarfed her. He was plainly immensely strong, strong enough to snap her neck with one hand. Her only hope was her agility, but she was stiff and in pain.
"D'you hear this, lads? Little Jace wants to fight me," Ombo roared. Was there unease behind his bluster? He had probably rarely, if ever, been challenged before. Certainly never by a woman.
"There is one condition," said Issul. "If I win, I and my two friends here are to be left alone. Is that agreed?"
"If you win?" Ombo was incredulous, scoffing. “If you win? There is no chance of that, little Jace. We are about to have us some sport!"
He threw himself forward, arms extended. Issul dropped and rolled. A sharp pain hammered at the back of her skull, reminding her that she had been injured by a blow there. She came up against the wall and sprang to her feet, wincing as a strained muscle in her back rebelled at the sudden movement.
Ombo's momentum had taken him beyond her. He spun lumberingly around. Issul took two steps, leapt high and kicked out. The tensed edge of her foot slammed into his face.
Ombo shook his head as she landed lightly upon her feet. A little blood trickled from his nose. Now Issul knew she had trouble. The blow, impacting with as much force as she could muster, had barely shaken him.
"Well, little Jace, that's fancy, that is. Very fancy. Now this time I'd like your to wrap those slender little thews around my head. Can you do that for Ombo? I'll reward you, you'll see."
He made a gesture with his tongue. Some of the men sniggered. Until now they had been almost silent, which Issul took to be a positive sign. She had confused them, and the fact that they were not vociferously egging Ombo on suggested they might not be unanimously behind him.
Ombo advanced again, more warily this time. He guarded his head with his arms, and weaved and bobbed. He might have been fighting another man. This respect gratified Issul, though it made her task more difficult, for he was no longer taking her quite for granted.
She backed a step. Ombo came forward. His stance was wide, the knees bent. He reached for her, a cuffing blow that would have sent her reeling had it connected. But she slid back, waiting, cautious with her movements lest the pain of her head and limbs distract her. But she had seen his weakness. He came in once more. Issul dropped to the floor, slid into him and quickly snapped one foot, then the other, hard into his groin.
There was an empathic gasp from the others. Ombo doubled over and sank to the floor in agony, clutching himself and groaning. Issul was on her feet, ready to move in and slam his head against the floor. But at that moment the door of the hut opened. All the men melted back to their litters. Issul instinctively did likewise.
Two men shuffled in. Between them swung a large, heavy black metal pot, which they bore on a stout pole supported on their shoulders. Each also carried a sack bound across his back. A Karai guard entered behind them.
They set the pot down inside and unslung their sacks. Steam rose from the pot and Issul caught the appetizing aroma of some kind of soup or stew. The guard's eyes settled upon Ombo, who had tried to roll to his litter but who was still doubled up in pain.
"Touch of wind!" came a voice from one of the litters
. "'e'll be all right."
The guard showed no expression. "Line up."
Obediently the prisoners formed a line before the pot. Issul, Herbin and Miseon took their places behind them. Ombo got to his feet and hobbled over to join them, glowering murderously at Issul as he passed. The two who had brought in the pot opened their sacks: one was filled with battered tin bowls and crude wooden spoons, the other bulged with thick slices of hard grey bread. Each prisoner took a spoon and bowl as he passed. One of the men ladled soup into each bowl, the other handed out a single piece of bread to each.
The prisoners grumbled as they passed, accusing the ladler of not dipping deeply enough to catch the pieces of food that resided at the bottom of the pot, or complaining that their chunk of bread was smaller than their neighbour's. When it came to Issul's turn she took her bowl and spoon and held them forward. The man with the ladle, a sinewy fellow with wispy pale hair, stopped and gaped at her.
"What's the matter? Have you never seen a woman before?" She pushed her tin towards him and assumed a tone of authority. "Dig deep, please. I’m hungry."
He obeyed, she took her bread and made off to the end of the hut. She tested the soup tentatively. It was fatty and salty, but otherwise of not bad quality. Several vegetables and small pieces of meat floated in it and she judged it reasonably nourishing.
The men slurped noisily under the watchful eye of the guard. Though some soup remained in the pot, second helpings were not permitted. Bowls and spoons were collected and the pot taken away by the same two prisoners who had brought it. They returned a short time later, one of them carrying a large bucket with a heavy lid, which he placed in a corner. Issul noted that the litters closest to that corner were unclaimed.
As the guard was about to leave, Issul stood. "Do you intend leaving me here with these men?"
"I have been given no other orders."
"Then give me a knife so I may kill myself now."
The Karai walked slowly down the centre of the hut towards her. "They will not touch you."
"You know little about men."
Like the Karai captain the previous day, the guard was unaffected. He looked at her with detached certainty, shook his head, and said, in a strong, clear voice, "Not one of these men will lay a finger on you tonight. Not one. Now, there will be silence until morning."
He swivelled upon his heel and strode from the hut, taking the lamp with him and bolting the door.
Issul stood alone in the darkness, aware that her limbs were trembling. She could hear the loud breathing of the men in the hut, feel their body heat, smell their sweat. She waited, sure that they would come.
She realized suddenly that more than one was snoring. Someone else moved, groped about in the dark. Issul tensed, but his sounds told her he was moving away from her, towards the corner where the bucket was set. More sounds made plain the bucket's purpose. Issul's anger and revulsion rose. Was she expected to share such a basic facility, to make use of it in the presence of these men?
She sat down, furious and disgusted. A voice a little way off whispered, "Sleep, woman. You will not be harmed, and tomorrow you will need your strength."
She did not know who had spoken. "What happens here?" she whispered back. "What do the Karai have you do?"
"Just sleep. You will know soon enough."
II
Issul did sleep, eventually, though it was fitful and broken frequently by the sounds of men stirring and using the bucket. And no one troubled her, though occasional groans made her wonder about the content of their dreams. She wondered too at the implicit threat in the Karai guard’s short speech, that it could so subordinate the appetites of men like these.
And when she slept, she dreamed. One dream, which itself was a memory she had never wholly buried. It repeated itself again and again. A dream of her younger sister, Ressa, on that day of darkness when the dreadful and unthinkable had happened, of which no one had been fully aware.
It had been springtime. The day was warm and bright, a carefree, cloudless day that gave no hint of the shadows that hovered at its edge. The three sisters were walking in the meadows close to their home, the country villa of Saroon where they lived with their parents. Issul had sat down to dangle her toes in the cool water of a pool which lay close upon the fringe of the woodlands behind Saroon. The twins, waiting a short while, had then gone on, arm in arm, taking a well-worn path into the woods which led to Sentinel's Peak, a high promontory which commanded a view of the countryside for some leagues, and the distant, mysterious Enchantment peaks beyond.
Issul had dozed in the sunlight. And now, as she dreamed, the idyll was obliterated, and she could only relive the horror that followed.
She dreamed that she dreamed, and that in that dream an animal was crying in distress. She wanted to help it, but could not determine the source of the sounds. And then she woke and was beside the tranquil pool in the warm sunlight, and the cries had not ceased. But they were a young woman’s cries, not those of any animal. Issul leapt to her feet and ran, along the pathway, into the woods from where her sister called out her pain.
The first thing she saw, a little way along the path, was Mawnie. Staggering towards her, her clothing torn and her long hair in disarray. Mawnie was not crying out, but the screams had not ceased.
"Mawnie! Mawnie! What has happened to you? Where's Ressa? Where's Ressa?"
Mawnie's eyes were wide, her lips stretched in a rictus. She pushed past her sister, indicating distractedly back the way she had come, gasping but unable to speak. To Issul's eyes she was not seriously hurt, and after a moment's indecision she let her go and ran on deeper into the wood in search of Ressa.
The screams had stopped, which terrified Issul more deeply than when they had sounded. She scrambled up the rocky way that led to the promontory, and there saw something that froze her in her tracks. Ressa lay upon the grass thirty paces away, in a small grassy hollow well-known to the sisters, for they had come there often to sit and talk and play and while away the hours. Ressa was apparently unconscious, perhaps even dead. She was spreadeagled upon the ground, her face turned towards Issul, bloody and naked but for a few remaining tatters of her frock.
But it was not the sight of Ressa that held Issul rooted to the spot, so much as that of the creature that had mounted her. With harsh grunts it completed its frenzied motions, its back arched, shoulders high and head thrown back. Then it climbed to its feet, a man-ish thing, but more powerful in its physique than any man Issul had seen. A double row of knobbly spines extending down the length of its back and along the lashing tale. A bony crest stood erect from its crown. It was naked, its skin pale blue-grey from head to toe. It turned and glared for a moment at Issul. She saw the fiery redness of its eyes and believed herself doomed. It took a step towards her, then sprang, away, onto a rock, then leapt out over the lip of the promontory and was lost from sight.
Issul ran shaking to the edge and peered over. There was no sign of the thing. She rushed down to her sister.
She woke.
Her horror at the recurrent dream was turned to despair as she recognized her surroundings, which somehow, in an earlier state of half-sleep, she had half-persuaded herself were themselves the product of a ghastly dream. But the interior of the hut was dimly illumined by splinters of feeble grey light piercing the gaps in the timber. She saw the hunched shapeless masses of her fellow prisoners huddled beneath their blankets, smelt the rimy stench and heard the noise of their breathing. Outside birds were singing.
Birdsong. In the past it had never failed to lift her spirit; now it taunted her. It was the sound of freedom, and made her more brutally aware of her anguish.
She had little time to contemplate her wretchedness. There was a heavy footstep outside, the bolt on the door was released and the door flew open, a dazzling rectangle of light. The Karai guard framed there stepped back, one hand to his nose. The two men who had last night brought the soup leapt from their litters and ran outside.
"You! Woman!" called the guard.
Issul rose. He pointed to the night-bucket. "Take it."
Issul recoiled. "I will not!"
"Take it!"
Somebody spoke up behind her. "I'll help her. She doesn't know where."
A hand grasped one of Issul's and a man's voice whispered in her ear, "If you want to live another minute, don't resist."
The hand pulled her towards the bucket. She glanced at the prisoner who held her. He was dark haired, bearded. His eyes met hers for a moment and she saw the warning there. He took the night-bucket, its lid already on, and lifted the handle, dragging Issul so that her own hand was also clasped around the handle.
"I will show her," he said to the guard, who nodded once in acquiescence.
Together they took the bucket out and, accompanied by another Karai, made their way across the camp compound. Issul breathed deeply, welcoming the cool fresh air.
"Jace, listen to me," said her companion. "The Karai insist on a disciplined, efficient camp here. If they order you to do something, do it, no matter how distasteful. They don't tolerate anything but absolute obedience. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but--"
"No buts. That is the first law of survival here. Not that it’s worth much, for we grow fewer every day."
"Why? What do you do here?"
"It isn't what we do, though that's hard enough."
"Then, what?"
He clenched his jaw, and looked away. "You'll know soon enough. Now, my name's Kol, and remember, you almost lost your life back there."
"Thank you, Kol."
"Don't thank me. I'm not seeking favours. Just be mindful of what it takes to survive, even if it’s only for one more day."
They reached the far side of the camp. A wooden screen had been erected, behind which a system of planks set above holes in the ground formed a latrine. Kol emptied the bucket into one of the holes and made to return.
"Wait," said Issul. She spoke to the guard and gained permission to use the latrine, for she had spent the night in some discomfort rather than suffer the humiliation of using the bucket.