Four

In which two peasants are tortured for information they don't have and eventually decide not to put up with it.

Bess lay on the slimy floor, curled in on herself and shivering. The moss-coated cell offered some slight comfort beyond a stone floor, but the damp seeped through her linen dress and chilled her to her bones. They’d dragged Jonathan through that door two hours ago by her count, longer than they’d ever kept him.

The door banged open, and Jonathan was pitched face first into the cell with a weak grunt. Bess scrambled across the floor to him, chains clinking.

“Jonathan?” she whispered desperately.

“I’m alright, Bess.” He lifted his head and managed to smile at her, dingy blond hair trailing into his green eyes after their extended imprisonment.

She helped him scoot over into a slightly less damp portion of their cell, and they huddled together, chains tangling, trying to share some warmth.

“What did he ask?” Bess inquired.

“The Drageklek again,” Jonathan sighed. “Anything and everything I know, or else.” He shrugged his bruised shoulders.

“What do you think a Drageklek is?”

“How are we supposed to know? I’d never heard the word.”

“Why do they think we know what it is?”

Jonathan just shrugged again, and Bess somehow managed to laugh a little. They asked that question every day, as an angry dungeon master screamed questions in their faces that made no sense, leaving them frightened and bewildered, confused as to what was required of them and why they possibly could have been brought here.

Someone growled in the hallway.

“If they don’t tell me now, I’ll take them apart! Open the door.”

Bess and Jonathan looked up, clinging to each other, as the largest man they’d ever seen ducked to enter the cell. He was tall and broad, with a twisted face, his arms nearly as big around as Bess’s waist.

He crossed the cell in a single stride, grabbing Bess around the throat and wrenching her away from her husband, holding her off the ground effortlessly. She clung to his wrist, trying to pull herself up and ease the pain in her neck. Jonathan’s slight movement to help her earned him a kick in the chest, and he cowered down in mute fear under the giant’s massive boot.

Her shoulder hit the ground hard as he threw her into the opposite corner, where she crawled away and hid.

“We know nothing, I swear to you!” Jonathan implored.

The giant slapped him across the face, then picked him up and dumped him next to the other wall, locking the manacles around his wrists to another chain in the wall.

“Now, Missy,” the giant growled, turning to Bess again, “What do you know of the Drageklek?”

“Nothing,” she whimpered. The giant bore down on her like a terrible shadow, pinning her to the floor and leaning into her face.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not!” She shoved at him, but it was like trying to move a mountain.

“Do you need help remembering?” he grated viciously.

“There’s nothing to remember. I don’t know anything.” He bared his teeth with a click, and Bess began to cry with fear. “If I knew anything at all I would tell you!”

The giant laughed with cruel disbelief, and Bess’ world dissolved into stark terror and bellowed questions. She could hear Jonathan screaming as if over a great distance and turned her head to see him on his knees, reaching out for her, fighting weakly against the chains that held him close to the wall. She saw stars as the giant slapped her across the face and screamed another question she did not understand. Spittle splattered across her face and she shook her head painfully, not knowing how to reply.

It seemed that the cacophony Jonathan was raising disturbed the giant. He rose and stormed over to the other side of the room, looming over Jonathan in red-faced rage. The young man cowered down on the floor, hands out in desperate supplication. The giant only kicked him back, striking him with a short strap, and growled angrily at him to be silent unless he was answering questions.

Bess curled into the corner as the giant beat at her with the strap, finally slicing through her dress and drawing blood. Jonathan’s yells were frantic now, nearly incoherent, although Bess couldn’t be certain. She screamed in pain and frustration, clutching at her hair in agonized bewilderment. She knew to serve her betters, to pay the yearly tribute percent on time without complaint, how to remain unnoticed and subsequently not harassed. Hawkstream never mistreated its peasants, and they certainly didn’t beat them for not answering questions they didn’t even understand.

Something broke inside her, and she stared up at the giant in amazement. She though perhaps that he merely enjoyed tormenting her, as the dungeon master did. But she could see in his eyes that he didn’t believe her denial or her silence. He thought she knew, Bess wondered in amazement. He really thought she and Jonathan knew what a Drageklek was and intended to beat the answer out of her. She and her husband would die here, in this dungeon beyond the kingdom, tortured to death for information they never knew existed.

An instinct deep within her rebelled against that. The giant wouldn’t go away. He wouldn’t listen to their protests or their reasoning or their most honest words. Her eyes fastened on a dagger strapped to the giant’s side, and her mind locked onto a single idea.

She was not going to die. Not here. Not now. Not like this. And she wouldn’t listen to Jonathan scream like that a second longer or take the pointless blows from the giant in hopes that he might give up.

Bess grabbed for the dagger, the hilt thick and cool in her hands. The giant wasn't expecting the movement, didn’t notice it until the blade was buried all the way up to the hilt in his chest.

A fist glanced off her head, and Bess wrenched the dagger free, teeth gritted, and pulled out of her corner, lashing out again and again until the huge hands stopped striking at her and the giant lay still on the moss-covered floor.

“Bess?” Jonathan whispered, sagging against the floor.

Bess looked down at herself and dropped the bloody dagger in horror. Red coated her hands and splattered on her dress, and the giant was oozing great trails of the stuff into the moss.

“You just killed a man,” Jonathan said weakly.

“He made you scream,” Bess quavered, still staring at the dead man. Her shoulders still ached from the strap. She didn’t like the blood, but then again she had never liked blood. “I’m not sorry,” she realized out loud. “I’m not sorry, Jonathan.”

“It’s okay,” Jonathan croaked. “I don’t think you should be.”

He’s dead, she thought. By all that’s holy he’s dead, and what do we do now? I killed him. I killed him and I don’t feel sorry for it.

“Does he have keys?”

Jonathan’s question startled her from her thoughts, and she approached the body slowly, hesitantly searching the giant’s pockets until she found a key ring. Unlocking her and Jonathan’s bonds was quick work, but they dropped the last manacles to the floor with no particular idea of what to do next.

The door swung open, and a guard entered, staring distracted at the floor. The two peasants froze as he looked up, and they stared at each other for a moment, eyes wide with shock. The guard moved first, but Jonathan was on him a moment after, scooping up the knife and silencing him quickly.

He was about Jonathan’s build, Bess thought absently. She wondered if he was married, if he had anyone who might miss him, and she felt a little sorry. Jonathan stared quietly at the dead man, his shoulders slumped and eyes sad.

“We could escape,” he said quietly.

Working quickly before someone else came to investigate, they took the dead guard’s leather armor for Jonathan. He picked up the sword awkwardly and swung it, trying to understand the weight and balance. Bess took the dagger sheath and hung it from her belt beside the keys they picked off the two dead men.

The hallway beyond their cell was empty, and they realized that neither of them knew exactly where they were or how to get out. Setting off down the corridor, they passed empty cells until they came to a guard room. Food spread magnificently across the table, waiting for guards to eat it between shifts: meat and cheese and bread, fresh fruit and water. The smell intoxicated them, and Bess and Jonathan temporarily abandoned their escape plans in favor of eating. Cramming food into her mouth with one hand, Bess deftly made sandwiches with the other, carefully wrapping them in napkins after she finished.

Before leaving the room, they found armor and a small sword that fit Bess. Jonathan helped her into it, and she was packing the sandwiches into a loose satchel she’d found laying around when the second guard they’d seen walked into the room. He merely grunted in their direction, eyes on the food, and they cautiously finished their packing and slipped away, leaving him gnawing on a large slab of meat.

For as much action as they often heard in the castle above them through the stones of their cell, the halls remained strangely empty. No one patrolled or even seemed to be heading anywhere, and they wound their way upwards through the castle, tracking down corridors and back again, trying to find the way out.

At long last, they located where everyone was: the courtyard, neatly between them and the gate, listening to some man on a balcony yell. He shook his fists in the air, and the gathered soldiers and servants shouted in response.

Bess tried to listen, but the words were beyond her ken, something about marching and invading and brining Upper Vale to its knees. She rubbed her nose and turned away. Northmarch and Eastmarch halted invasions - everybody knew that - and besides, if anyone had any sense, they’d only kill the nobles and leave everyone else to work the land for them. And what did it matter what set of nobles ruled over you? Bess glared at the gate, so close, and yet so far away.

“There’s got to be another way out,” Jonathan muttered. “Nobles are too crafty to just have one big hulking gate and nothing else.”

They moved back into the castle, now able to find the walls, and began looking for some sort of side entrance, anything that might lead them to a way out. Eventually, their search lead them to a large drainage pipe, mucky and smelling of strange things. They hoisted themselves into it and began a long crawl in darkness, the terrible stench making them want to vomit.

“Do you think this goes out?” Bess asked.

“It better,” Jonathan replied, laughing a little. “For all this trouble.”

A small circle of light appeared ahead of them, and they crawled more quickly, catching the lightest breath of fresh air and eager to be out of the stinking pipe. The far end let them out on a small service bridge of narrow boards that spanned the moat. They dropped carefully onto it and fled into the dense woods beyond the castle, panic suddenly overtaking them as they heard more shouts from the castle. It was only a matter of time before their captors found the two murdered men and realized their prisoners were gone.

Bess’s feet made no sound on the mossy forest floor. Deep beds of ferns carpeted the forest in every direction, and moss climbed up the trucks of the red cedars, tinting the forest rich green. The thick canopy of green overhead hid the sun, filtering the light in scattered rays, and they ran aimlessly, splashing across small creeks and skirting pools, unable to find a trail or maintain any specific direction besides Away From the Castle. Her breath came in gasps, and she felt the weeks of imprisonment weakening her as her legs shook. Jonathan grabbed her arm, and they pressed on, fighting their exhaustion, hoping to make it away somewhere safe, although they had no idea where that might be.

***

“I can’t go on,” Bess finally gasped, falling to her knees on the floor and clutching her ribs, which ached from her gasping breaths. Her legs trembled with the pain of exertion, knees turning to water no that they were no longer forced to hold her up. Jonathan collapsed beside her, rubbing sweat off his face with a sleeve.

“We have to…keep going,” he panted. “Dogs. They’ll have dogs..and they’ll run.”

Bess shook her head. “Rest.”

“Until we can walk again,” Jonathan nodded.

They lay wheezing until their hearts began to slow again, then pushed themselves up and trudged on. Bess’s stomach roiled, and she couldn’t think of the sandwiches without feeling sick. She and Jonathan leaned on each other, dragging themselves over rocks and through little gullies, feeling worn down but unwilling to give up.

They’d escaped. That was enough to give them courage for now.