Dark Age (18 page)

“Remember why they are here,” she said. “They are more powerful than us, yet they come here, unarmed offering to give away their goods. And you still debate over some human sacrifice? Enough children have been sacrificed for this mindless war.”

The chief looked at his daughter for a moment and nodded. The elders formed a line again facing us. “We shall leave you in peace. I accept your offer,” the chief said and held his hand out. But before Terric could take it, an arrow pierced the heart of the chief.

Chapter 22

A
second arrow
struck his stomach, and a third delved into his shoulder. For a moment everything turned quiet before the world was lost in tumult. The villagers cried out and ran to their huts, while Guardsmen jumped out of the thicket surrounding the village with slashing blades and lit torches.

In the midst of the madness, the chief and Terric still stood in front of the town-hall facing another. Blood ran from the chief’s shoulder down his arms. His immortal blood dripped from his hands onto the ground. Their expressions were frozen, caged in their minds. They had come so close to their dream that fate had lain at their fingertips… so close to be grasped. In his mind Terric must have taken the chiefs hand wishing that all this was not real. It could not be real, I thought to myself.

In frantic confusion my glance drifted over to Janari who looked at me with bitter disappointment and disbelieve. “Why?” her lips spelled. By her mere expression I could feel what she saw in me; I was the monster. At last her disappointment turned into resentment. Furiously she jumped on me thrusting my whole body to the ground. Her hands clasped my throat, digging her fingers into my skin. Pain shot up into my chest as I fought for every breath of air.

“Why did you lead them here Adam? Why!” she cried. “I had trusted you. I had faith in you. You killed me. You killed us. You killed our dream.” As her fingers dug deeper into my flesh, a tear fell from her eyes onto my cheek. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t bring a syllable out.

I did not want to fight her until my love almost killed me. With all my remaining strength I pushed her from my body. “Go!” I incoherently cried ringing for air, “Not safe here.” She jumped at me again, but I stopped her when she was just inches apart from me. This time the tears came from my eyes and burned into the bloody flesh on my throat, “We don’t have time for explanations. Run Janari! Just run and don’t turn around. Take your brothers with you. Your revenge on me will be wasted, because I never did anything to hurt you,” I rambled hastily pushing her off me towards the northern end of the village. I wanted to say it, tell her that I loved her, but there was no purpose in it now. She ran off and looked at me one more time with the same longing and uncertain gaze she wore when we first met. At last fate had tossed us at another in enmity.

Half the village was blazing in fire. Women and children were slaughtered like pigs, while their men fought the best they could. Unarmed and outnumbered they stood no chance. Two guards teamed up on a young lad with nothing but his fists to protect him. They taunted him, until he struck first. With a quick strike, they cut of his right hand, and watched him go to the ground bleeding and whimpering. Bored of him, they cut his throat and went on.

One of the two raised his finger and pointed at Janari fleeing. With a loathsome smile the other nodded and started running her direction.

My blood was boiling. These men were not my brothers. They were monsters. With all my strength I sprinted towards them. What I would do with them I did not know, they just needed to pay, and stay as far away from Janari as possible. With a powerful jump I body checked them, ramming them to the ground.

The one I tackled was immediately unconscious.

“What are you doing you idiot?” the other yelled at me.

“All of you made a grave mistake,” I said and punched him in the face, till his dirty grin was covered in blood. When he was begging for mercy, I took his sword and left him on the floor.

Terric and the chief had not moved from their spot. While men were running around them, fighting and dying, they had only sunken to their knees. I needed him now more than ever. He had to pick himself up. Vehemently I shook him by his shoulder trying to wake him from his hypnotic state.

“Terric!” I yelled at him, “Get up and fight! You said yourself that this is our only and last chance. Don’t let it pass. We must help the villagers,” I rambled incoherently trying to get some sign of life out of him.

“It’s over Adam,” he said lowly, staring off at the bleeding chief. “It will take centuries to restore the trust we gained and lost. We won’t see peace, Adam. Your children and their children won’t see peace. We are doomed to kill and be killed in a cycle of hatred. Our cure for pain is the very root of it: Revenge.”

As the resistance shrunk, the sounds of death grew fewer. A laugh rang further down by the huts. I looked over and found Yorick facing an old man holding a cane. The man struck out. Yorick caught the cane with his hand and ripped it from his assailant’s hands. With a delicate smile he broke it over his knee. The old man was terrified, awaiting what came next. Before he could raise his fists, Yorick’s face turned hard. With a cut throat the old man collapsed to the ground.

By the time I looked back at Terric, he was already gone. He retrieved his weapons and approached his second-in-command.

“Look at what you have done,” Terric hissed throwing out his arm to the side as if needing to pinpoint the destruction that had been evident all around.

“I successfully destroyed the enemy,” Yorick responded with an air of superiority. “I did what you have not been able to accomplish in years. Instead you betrayed the Guard by working with the enemy.”

Terric unleashed his two handed sword from his back and spun around at Yorick. Like a snake Yorick dodged with lightning fast speed and stood unharmed next to Terric. With all the pain that filled his heart, Terric kept slashing out for Yorick. The death of the chief and the loss of the chance to peace distracted him too much to beat Yorick, whose focus was never better than in battle.

“I always knew that you should not be first-in-command,” growled Yorick who drew two battleaxes from his belt and spun them in his hands. The guards had finished the villagers off and set the last houses on fire. At last they formed a circle around their two leaders. Sparks flew into the air when the axes clashed against Terric’s sword in full swing. As the axes’ edges interlocked with the sword, Yorick ripped the sword from Terric’s grasp with a tug.

Without wasting a second he let the sword go and pulled two one handed swords from his belt. For a few seconds they walked in circles waiting for the other to attack. Yorick insulted Terric with every step they took, yet the latter kept composure. Once the first swing landed, chaos erupted in a quick and wild exchange of blows.

Blades clashed, weapons were dropped, and quickly replaced by others found on the ground. The fight was long, yet rushed by so quickly. No one had seen a fight this flawless in performance, yet filled with such emotional intensity. Their swords crossed up close and a battle for the upper hand began. Both colossal men pushed with all their might against the blade of the other. With an outcry Terric pushed Yorick’s weapon to the ground and rammed him with his shoulder. Yorick staggered backwards, almost losing balance, while Terric clenched his teeth, and stabbed his blade at his opponent’s throat. His arm was fully extended, yet the tip failed to pierce his enemy’s neck. Inches lay in between.

With utter control Yorick pushed the tip of the blade to the side and ordered his men loudly, “Detain them.” From all sides guards swarmed onto me and Terric. He tried to fight them but was knocked to the ground. From all around they kicked and hit his defenseless body. Resistance was only an excuse for them to kill us. I wanted to help him and pushed through their blocking bodies, but was immediately knocked unconscious.

Chapter 23

I
awoke in
a dim lit prison cell. A shiver ran down my spine, cold touching me all around. My clothes were moist from the wet stone floor, amplifying the freezing feeling even more. Except for the lampion that stood outside my cell, complete darkness consumed the room. For a moment I thought I was alone until I found Terric, beaten and bloody, on the floor next to me. I whispered to him but received no answer.

I could not tell what time or even day it was. The cell must have been somewhere beneath the ground offering not a single ray of light. My near naked body screamed for warmth. They had stripped me off everything: Armor, weapons, tools… even the eagle necklace, my last memory of her. The only thing they had left me was a shirt, now covered in dirt and blood.

Terric never said a word, lost in a state of muteness. He did not even look at me until the day they took him away. I was awoken from my sleep to the creaking of the cell door. Five guards pulled Terric out of the cell, and dragged him up a flight of stairs. For but a brief moment he glanced back. He did not say a word or signal me anything. He just left the prison as a broken man. The eagle had lost his wings.

There was nothing to do and nothing to say. I was lost in that prison cell thinking and thinking until I wished I could just stop thinking for once. I started resorting to sleep; long forced sleep, where I would close my eyes, whenever awake, until I fell asleep. After a while the concept of time had been lost, as it felt like one endless painful day that never ended.

Every now and then a rat scurried through my cell. In my delusion I tried to befriend it, seeing it as the only living thing around me. My wish for friendship was only broken when I found my tray of food havocked by the little creature while I was sleeping. My delusion turned into rage. I chased it down the cell with the burning desire to eat it; dead or alive, I just needed to fight my horrid hunger.

When I noticed myself slimming, I began to work out again. My hunger barely allowed me a complete set of exercises, but it was better than letting my physique entirely crumble. After I broke down in exhaustion, I stared at the dark dungeon ceiling and was carried back to the many times I watched the night sky with Katrina and Janari. It was almost the same, but Orion was no longer watching over me.

The more I delved into my past the more I began to question the turns my life had taken. “What if?” I asked myself. What if I had killed the Inquisitor that one night? What if I had run off with Janari? What if I had just worked with Yorick? What if I had never dropped my necklace and never went back to find it and meet Janari? With my current situation all scenarios seemed to lead me somewhere better than I was at right now.

When the dreams became too painful I forced myself to stay awake entirely. I decided to count seconds to regain my sense of time. My goal was to count through a whole day. It was a difficult task to stay focused for so long, but it helped me to think less of all that had happened. Every now and then I drifted off, but my mouth kept counting. I found that three hours had gone by when it felt like just fifteen minutes had passed. Other times the reverse was true. The only useful observation from the counting was that I received one tray of food a day and many hours later a bowl of stew with a piece of bread. I figured that the two signified breakfast and dinner, thereby giving me an idea of when it was morning and when it was evening.

My beard and hair had already grown out. For all I knew I was locked up for ages.

When I was ready to receive my supper one night I was surprised by familiar voices I had not heard in a long time, “Adam!” it whispered commandingly, “Wake up!”

Peter and Nigel stood outside the cell with their fingers wrapped around the bars, “We don’t have much time. We didn’t know you were being held here. When we found out we tried to break in multiple times, but couldn’t get passed the guards. We bribed them to let us in for a few minutes.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“That was what I was going to ask you,” he said with a frown. “Well, Yorick and his men successfully destroyed a savage camp. Rumor has it that you and Terric were there, but that makes little sense. Anyhow, when the Inquisition learned from Yorick’s achievement, they put him first-in-command. After Terric had healed, he left the hospital and rode into the woods with a few men. The men returned and said he disappeared. Nobody has seen him since,” explained Peter.

“Terric wasn’t in the hospital, he was right here next to me. This all doesn’t add up. Why am I here? How long have I been here?” I asked hurriedly trying to understand the blanks in my memory.

Nigel looked at Peter worriedly, “Ya have been in here for a year now,” he said. “But look at the bright side. One year less where ya could have been killed out there.”

“Don’t you remember Adam?” asked Peter interrupting Nigel. “You were convicted and detained for poisoning Jacob. He nearly died after drinking from that flask you gave him. He was in the hospital for weeks, nobody saw him. I knew you wouldn’t have done it, but there were so many witnesses attesting that you gave him that flask.”

“It was all Yorick!” I protested intending to explain myself.

“Listen, Adam. We don’t have time for explanations. You can tell me all about it when you are out.”

“But how?” I asked, still trying to comprehend all that had happened.

“We will get you out of here. I wrote an anonymous letter to the Inquisitor and put it in one of the carts of a recently deceased guard. If everything works out they will find the letter and deliver it to the Inquisitor. I heard that was one of the many ways Yorick communicated and traded with the city,” explained Peter with a calming voice.

“Why would the Inquisitor do anything?” I asked.

“Yorick had created this prison beneath the officer building without the knowledge of Terric or the Inquisitor. You have not seen the worst parts. When Yorick took over command he changed the rules on discipline and authority. Men that do not subordinate themselves to Yorick or disrespect him are tortured in public. A whole set of tools only the devil could have invented stand in front of the common-hall. Just being here could earn us a flogging,” he said with a worried glance to the stairs. “I wrote the Inquisitor that we have a shortage of men, and pointed out that some were being detained, which appeared rather wasteful. Knowing the man, he won’t send us any resources to help, so requesting the prisoners’ release will be an easy way out for him.”

A sound came from upstairs. Nigel tugged Peter by the sleeve, who let go of the bars and took a few steps back, “Our time is running out, stay strong Adam. We have to leave.”

Before I could say any more they were running up the stairs and I was once again consumed by the darkness of my prison cell. One thing was for sure. When, or better if, I got out of this cell, I needed to control my spite for Yorick. I had to act my part, and make him believe that I was one of his men.

The next few days I resumed my training in the prison cell and used every minute to get back in shape and focus my mind on the task at hand: Survival. I had to make it through less than six more years to return to the city.

Within that same week, a group of guards led by Yorick came down the stairs and unbolted the prison cell.

“I don’t know how you did it, but you are free to leave,” Yorick said slightly bothered.

“Thank you, Master,” I responded obediently.

He nodded pleased, “Seems like sitting down here has given you some sense. For your information it is January 7th, 2160 and it is Monday. It is fairly late, so you are free for the day. Go wash and shave, I don’t want any more letters to the Inquisitor about prisoner treatment. Tomorrow your camp is expecting you.”

I nodded thankfully and added, “One last thing Master, where can I find my armor, weapons and other things I was carrying when I was detained?”

“Your armor and weapons lie ready in the cottage at your new spot. As for the other things,” Yorick looked towards his men, “they must have gotten lost over the year.”

As much as I wanted to give him a feisty response, I contained my anger, remembering my plan to befriend Yorick. At last I had made my deal with the devil and as we ascended the stairs finally returned from hell back to the land of the living.