by DAVID B. COE
A weak smile lifted the corners of Redman’s mouth. “No, of course you don’t.” He stepped back. “Remove his clothing.”
Fear seized Landry’s heart. Not at the prospect of the torment that would surely follow, but at the possibility that they might find the sliver of iron he had claimed and hidden.
The pirates unfastened the manacles at his wrists, but not those at his ankles. This put his mind at ease a little.
They stripped off his mantle, tabard, mail, and jerkin, leaving him naked to the waist. Then they bound his wrists again.
By this time, Landry’s vision and thinking had cleared somewhat. He watched Redman cross to the hearth and pull on a leather glove. The pirate considered the implements there, at last choosing an iron pike. The metal smoked as he removed it from the flames.
“Are you certain, Templar?” Redman asked, turning and approaching him. “You know nothing at all about your Temple’s riches.”
Landry stared up at the vaulted stone ceiling. “I am certain.”
“As I suspected.”
At the first touch of the searing iron to his chest, Landry let out a bellow that was torn from the pit of his gut. He gritted his teeth, breathing hard through his nose. He smelled his own flesh burning.
Redman removed the pike but only for an instant. Before Landry could inhale a second time, he pressed the iron to his chest again. Landry roared.
“You mark all of them so,” Gaspar said. “Why?”
Landry tucked his chin to look at what the Monk had done to him. The second burn cut across the first, forming a cross on his chest that mimicked – mocked – the Templar cross.
Redman approached the hearth, shoved the pike back into the flames, and claimed a crude, iron blade.
“They are Templars,” he said, walking back to the table. “I mark them as such. It’s as simple as that. They must never forget, even in the depths of their misery, why they suffer. I want them to rue the day they took their vows.”
“Never,” Landry said, huffing the word. “By the grace of God, I am—”
His scream swallowed the rest of what he meant to say. Redman had carved into his gut with the hot blade. Not so deep that he spilled Landry’s innards. Just enough to bring this newest agony.
“You were saying?”
“By the grace of God,” he wheezed, “I am a Kni—” Another scream. He hoped his friends couldn’t hear him. They would be praying for him, he knew. Perhaps the prayer he and the others had spoken earlier.
God, by your grace, grant me the strength to endure.
God, by your grace, grant me the will to resist.
God, by your grace, grant me the courage to keep faith.
He heard the invocation in his mind, and not merely in his own voice. Godfrey was there as well. Tancrede and Draper, too, weakened both, but strong in their faith. He heard Gawain and Brice and Nathaniel. Somehow, they had come to him, to carry him through this ordeal.
The iron blade bit into him a third time, ripping another wail from his throat. Still, the prayer sang in his mind.
“You can spare yourself more of this,” Redman said. Somehow, he was at the hearth again. Gaspar was with him. “Where is the Templar gold, and how do I get it?”
“I don’t know,” he said, his denial a rasp.
“A pity.”
It was much worse after that. Redman allowed Gaspar to use the pike and blade on him, as well as a brand and a second, more refined searing blade.
Then they turned to the cudgels, using them on his shoulders, his elbows, his knees, and midsection. They might have asked him again about the gold. Landry couldn’t be certain. He descended into a haze of anguish. Pain was everything. Sound, sight, smell. It assaulted every inch of skin, every expanse of bone and muscle.
He tried to hold to the thread of prayer repeating in his mind. Even that, though, receded as the torture went on. He thought he could hear the words still, but their meaning was lost to him. All that mattered was the next burn, or blow, or cut.
The last thing he remembered was one of them – did it matter anymore who did this to him? – attacking his hands, first with a hammer, then with hot needles under the nails, and finally with pincers that ripped out his fingernails. At some point in this final assault, darkness took him.
* * *
“Landry.”
His name reached him from a great distance.
“Landry, drink this.”
He tried to turn away. Even with consciousness a distant shore, he sensed what awaited him there. Pain, dull and sharp, everywhere. He wanted no part of it.
“Wake up, Landry. You must drink.”
Another voice, but he couldn’t make out the words.
“Very bad,” this nearer one said. “They nearly killed him. They might have yet. It is hard to say.”
Murmurs again, and then, “I am trying. He has gone very far.” A pause. “Landry, please.”
The voice was moving away now. He had turned from it after all.
* * *
He opened his eyes to shadow, to a faint flicker ahead of him, and a speckled square above. His eyes fluttered closed, but he forced them open a second time. Stars shone outside the high window. The flicker came from the door. Torchlight through the gap framed the shape of Draper’s head.
“I’ll have that water now.”
That, at least, was what he tried to say. It came out as a garble. Draper turned and strode to his side.
“Lord be praised,” the Turcopole whispered. “He’s awake.”
Draper reached for something, and then, with a hand that was swollen and purple, dripped water between Landry’s lips. Landry swallowed, parted his lips for more.
“We thought you were lost.”
“How long?” Landry asked, hoping Draper would understand.
“They brought you back near to midday. It is night now, though not for long. It will be dawn soon. They just took Gawain.”
Draper gave him more water. At a call from beyond the cell, he raised his gaze and left Landry’s side. He was back in moments.
“They want to know… Did you find anything? Learn anything?”
The memory came to him in a rush. He tried to move a hand to his waist, but neither hand seemed capable of movement.
“I did. Found something. Learned a bit. Have an idea.”
Even in the gloom, he could see Draper smile. “That is well done, Landry. Well done indeed. It is far more than I managed.”
As his eyes grew used to the darkness, he noticed what he had missed before. Draper’s face was a mess. Of course. He had survived his ordeal in the torture chamber as well. Before long, all of them would, unless he recovered in time to spare Brice and Nathaniel. Assuming they hadn’t been brutalized already.
He drank more water. With some effort, he succeeded in raising his hands in front of his eyes. Both were swollen. It pained him to move the fingers of his off hand. His sword hand didn’t work at all.
“They will recover in time. As mine will. But we won’t be fighting anytime soon.”
“Redman and his men will kill us before we’ve healed. We can’t afford to wait.”
“We can’t prevail if we don’t.”
“We have to, Draper. The alternative is giving up, and I know you won’t do that.”
Draper gave a breathless laugh and a shake of his head. “No, I will not.”
Landry lowered his off hand to the spot on his waist where he had secured the sliver of iron. “I have something here,” he whispered. “Something I found in that chamber where he takes us.”
“What is it?”
“A nail, perhaps. Or a broken spike from the cage they have there. It’s long, and thin, and it might just allow us to open the locks on our doors.”
Draper gaped with such amazement one might have thought Landry had sprouted wings and flown up to the barred window. “How did you do this?”
He made himself smile, though even that hurt his cracked lips. “By the grace of Go
d.”
“Did you find anything else?” the Turcopole asked, his voice dropping as well.
“Nothing I could take with me. There is a second corridor that turns off from the first. I don’t know where it leads, but I believe there is a reason Redman keeps that corridor dark. He has torches burning everywhere else. Why not there, unless he wishes to conceal something? That second corridor could be what he is hiding.”
The mere act of speaking exhausted him. He closed his eyes and immediately felt himself drifting toward slumber.
“Rest now,” Draper said. “That is what your body needs most. Mine as well. Maybe when the sun rises they will bring us more water and food. They don’t yet have from us what they want. That may keep us alive for a time.”
He wanted to agree, and to thank him for his ministrations, limited though they were in these circumstances. The words wouldn’t come, though. Sleep claimed him again.
When next Landry woke, daylight streamed into the cell. Draper slept on his pallet of straw. He heard nothing from the other cells.
Every part of him ached. The swelling around his eyes limited his vision. But he was thirsty and hungry. He took both as good signs. Grinding his teeth against the pain, he forced himself to sit up. He tried to stand, but his right knee hurt too much. In the end, he dragged himself to the door, and with the hand that had been wounded least pulled himself to his feet.
Landry left the sliver of iron where it was, hidden, but he peered out into the round chamber. Seeing no one, he slipped his arm between the bars of the gap in the door. Without the bulk of armor and cloth, he had no trouble fitting his arm in that space. He was less certain he could reach the lock.
He stretched his arm down, sucking in his breath at the pain in his shoulder and back. At first, he couldn’t reach the lock. He pressed himself to the door, adjusted the angle of his arm. Because the window in the door was so small, he had to do all this blind, and even then, reaching as far as he could, he felt only the rough iron surface of the door.
Frustration. Rage. Deepest disappointment.
“To the right.”
Whispered words from the next cell.
Landry withdrew his arm and gazed through the gap. Tancrede stood at his door, daylight making his wounds even more horrific than they had appeared at night.
“You look terrible,” Tancrede said.
“That makes two of us.”
“Five. Draper, Godfrey, and now Gawain.”
“He’s back?”
The lean knight nodded and glanced back into his cell. “He’s asleep. He looks as badly off as the rest of us.” He regarded Landry again. “You were reaching for the lock?”
“Yes.”
“You were even with it, but too near the middle of the door. Try again, to your right.”
Landry did as Tancrede instructed, straining against the door again.
“Farther right.”
He reached, and his fingertips brushed the edge of the lock.
“That’s it,” Tancrede said.
Shifting his stance and adjusting his arm again, Landry reached a second time. This time, he managed to cover the face of the lock with his hand. If he had been holding the sliver of iron, he could have worked it into the keyhole. Perhaps this would work after all.
Landry withdrew his arm from between the bars.
Tancrede watched him still. Godfrey had appeared at his door as well.
“So, you can reach it,” Tancrede said. “Why would you want to?”
“That’s my question as well.”
Redman stood on the stairs, a few steps from the bottom. He descended the rest of the way into the dungeon, trailed by Gaspar and several pirates.
“What were you doing?”
“I thought perhaps one of your men had neglected to secure the lock. I hoped that if I could reach it…”
Landry trailed off. The Monk was shaking his head.
“My men are not so careless. Now tell me what you were doing.”
At Landry’s hesitation, Redman snapped his fingers and pointed at Godfrey’s cell. Two of the pirates strode to the door, opened it, and pulled the commander into the center of the chamber.
Redman forced Godfrey to his knees, produced a knife, and held it to the commander’s throat.
“Tell me now, or he dies.”
Landry couldn’t bring himself to answer. He had managed to secure that slender piece of iron, on which he had pinned all the hope he had left. He would not speak of it. He would die before he surrendered it.
Redman moved the blade. Blood from Godfrey’s neck trickled over the steel.
“All right,” Landry said. “I was… I was going to provoke you into taking me back to the torture chamber.”
Redman slanted a wary look at him. “Why?”
“The spikes in the cages there. I thought one might fit in the lock. If I could make you take me back, I might contrive to break off a spike.”
The Monk eyed him for another moment, then studied the locks on their doors.
“Go back there,” he said to another of his men. “Check all the spikes you see in every cage. If any are weak, or loose, break them off and dispose of them. If I find even one that these men could possibly take, I’ll have your head.”
The pirate muttered, “Yes, sir,” and hurried down the corridor toward the dungeon.
Redman shoved his knife into the sheath on his belt, pulled Godfrey to his feet, and shoved him back into his cell. A pirate locked the door. As he did, Redman crossed to Landry’s door, halting a pace from it. Had Landry reached through the bars, he might have taken hold of the man’s throat. He knew better than to try.
The Monk stared at him for several seconds, the time stretching uncomfortably. At last, without breaking eye contact, he said to his man, “Open this door.”
Landry tried to mask his response, and resisted the urge to check the position of the hidden piece of iron. He prayed that it didn’t show in any way.
By now Draper was awake. He sat on his pile of straw, his gaze fixed on Landry.
The pirate opened the door and Redman strolled in. He walked around the small space, pushed at the straw of Landry’s crude pallet with the toe of his boot.
Rounding on Landry, he said, “Remove the rest of your clothes.”
To his credit, Draper didn’t react at all. Landry pulled off his boots and rolled down his breeches, taking care to gather the piece of iron in folds of the cloth. He stepped out of them, leaving the breeches on the stone floor and standing naked before Redman.
The Monk kicked at the breeches as he had at the straw. Landry held his breath.
The sliver of metal remained hidden.
Redman picked up Landry’s boots, turned them upside down, and shook them. When nothing came out, he dropped them beside the breeches.
He circled the cell a second time. Pausing in front of Draper, he ordered the Turcopole to his feet and kicked at the straw of his pallet as well. At last, he returned to where Landry stood. He gave a small shrug, looked about again and then, without warning, dug a fist into Landry’s gut, the blow landing on one of the dark bruises from Landry’s time on the torture table.
Landry doubled over and collapsed to his hands and knees. Pain from his hand shot through his arm, and he fell over onto his side.
“That was a dangerous thought you had, Templar,” Redman said, looming over him, orbiting him. “Any attempted escape from this place is bound to fail. And that failure will bring with it the worst sort of punishment for you and your fellow knights. The treatment you’ve received thus far will seem gentle by comparison. You believe the lock on your door is the only thing holding you here? You’re a fool. I have two hundred men, weapons, walls of stone, doors of iron and oak. And you think you can defeat a lock and be free.” He kicked Landry in the small of the back.
Landry groaned and weathered a wave of nausea.
The Monk laughed and left the chamber. The door closed and the lock clicked shut.
&
nbsp; “The rest of you, be warned. Your friend is a misguided idiot who very nearly got all of you killed. There will be no escaping this fortress. Any attempt at such on your part will result in summary execution. You will leave this place when I allow you to leave, and not before.”
Landry listened for his footsteps on the stairway. Only when he could no longer hear them, did he try to raise himself off the filthy floor.
“Are you all right?” Draper asked, kneeling beside him.
“I’m no worse than I was.”
He sat up and reached for his breeches. The piece of iron remained where it had been, nestled in the folds of cloth near the waist of the breeches. Landry removed it and handed it to Draper. Then he dressed himself and staggered to his feet.
Draper turned the metal over in his bruised hands. “You believe it will work?” he whispered.
Landry lifted a shoulder. “We can only hope.” Draper handed it back to him and he hid it again in his breeches.
“He has a point, you know. The locks are only the first obstacle. Getting away from this place in our current condition…” He shook his head. “I do not believe it is possible.”
“I’m afraid that doesn’t matter, brother. He intends to kill us. As soon as he gets what he wants, or realizes that he never will, he’ll slit our throats and toss our corpses to the dogs.”
Draper didn’t argue.
“The question becomes: do we allow ourselves to be killed, or do we die fighting for our freedom?”
“When you phrase it that way, it does not strike me as a difficult choice. I do not know if you remember, but you woke during the night, and we spoke about—”
“Waiting for our injuries to heal, or fighting now. I do remember.”
“I take it you still believe we should fight now.”
“I believe it’s our only choice.”
Draper narrowed his eyes. “I do not recall you being so reckless in Acre or before. I thought as a man matures, he grows less rash, not more so.”
“I wouldn’t want to be like all the other knights.”
They shared a smile.
“Gawain is awake,” Tancrede called from his cell.
They moved to the door, making room for each other at the window.
“Can he speak?” Landry asked.