Reaper Of Sorrows (Book 1) (12 page)

“See how he begs?” Treon said proudly. “Show them how you can plead, dog. Quickly, now, before your master grows angry at your silence and beats you.”

Rathe could only see the array of shifting, dirty boots gathered around him in the gloom, but he felt the weight of many expectant eyes. Some might sympathize, even share his outrage, but others wanted him to concede defeat, to surrender as each of them must have done at one time. In seeing the famed Scorpion of the Ghosts of Ahnok beg a man he would have raised his nose at not a month gone, he knew their sense of worth would be elevated, allowing them to regain some measure of lost pride. If he resisted, he rebuffed not just Treon, but all of them.

“Beg!” Treon eased his weight onto Rathe’s neck, crushing his face against the damp loam.

“Ask for the water,” Loro said in a pained voice. “We will not think less of you.”

Others took up the advice, all but pleading with him to beg a drink of water.

“I cannot,” Rathe groaned.

“What was that, dog?” Treon snarled. “Speak up!”

Surrender now, and fight the battle of your choosing later
.

I will not break,
Rathe thought in answer, knowing it was too late for such resistance, but unable to accept his downfall, even now, with the boot of his oppressor pressing him down.

“Seems your training is not as adequate as you thought,” Loro snapped, provoking a few derisive sniggers.

“Beg for the water, you slinking cur,” Treon said, mockery giving way to seething wrath, “and you shall have it.”

Rathe fought for breath, filling his lungs. “Bugger your arse with a flaming torch!”

Treon jumped back, his boot swinging. Rathe reared back, mere inches, caught the captain’s passing heel, and shoved it past his head. Thrown off balance, Treon tumbled to his backside, spewing curses with all the thrashing zeal of the enraged snake he resembled.

Rathe scrabbled forward, balled his fist, and smashed the man’s lips against his teeth, once and again, before a pair of sergeants slung him aside.

Rathe struggled up, swaying, weak, so unutterably weak. “Any who stand with this serpent,” he grated, “are not men, but bleating sheep awaiting the slaughter.”

“Unlike you, dog, we
sheep
eat and drink our fill,” a man said, one shadowed figure among many.

Contemptuous laughter bubbled past Rathe’s lips. “I misspoke. You are not sheep, but worms crawling through the dung of your betters.”

Pensive silence held for a moment, allowing Rathe to believe he had convinced at least a few to look inside themselves and find the men they had been.

Spitting blood, Treon growled, “Take him.”

A handful of his men attacked. Weakened though he was, Rathe gave back until the flood of fists and boots drove him down into a thudding, bloody darkness….

Shivering and naked, Rathe gradually came awake sometime later, eyes swollen, face puffy, and covered all over in bruises and crusted blood. All was dark and quiet, save the faint rustlings of night creatures. In letting one hand wander over his torso in search of broken ribs, he found a waterskin nestled against his hip, and with it a loaf of rock-hard bread.

Rathe remembered the derisive sniggers at Treon’s expense when Loro had questioned his training tactics. Where one man openly criticized, a handful of others felt the same, even if they held the silence. Loro had probably left him the food and water, but there was a chance a Hilan man might have, and Rathe found in that possibility something upon which to rest a little hope.

Chapter 14

T
wice over, for concentration of any sort taxed his wits, Rathe counted back the days. Each time he came to the same number. A fortnight had passed since his leashing, where Rathe had feared only a ten day journey. Despite all his talk of haste, Captain Treon seemed more interested in prolonging Rathe’s torments than returning to Hilan. The torments had not eased in the slightest after the night he pummeled the captain, but thanks to Loro, or some other commiserate soul, food and water had become less scarce.

Night was falling when Rathe’s feet thumped onto a wooden surface. All around him, hooves clattered to a halt. He smelled the smoke of hearth fires on the air, and under this the distinct scent of penned livestock.

“Open the gates!” Treon bawled, his voice hoarser than usual after berating and taunting Rathe throughout the day.

“Captain Treon?” came a man’s shocked voice, who doubtless was looking on Rathe’s state of abuse.

“Open the damned gate,” Treon roared, “or I will cleave off your manhood!”

Rathe waited in hooded obscurity, listening to the clack and rattle of a rising portcullis, then the groaning squeal of unoiled hinges swinging open. Where Rathe would have expected calls of greeting, even insulting hoots at his bloodied nakedness, silence prevailed. He supposed the men of Hilan—all outcasts at one time or another—were sizing up the newcomers.

A moment later, hooves rumbled over what Rathe guessed was a wooden drawbridge. His rope snapped tight, forcing him into an agonized trot. After the bridge, the pitch of iron-shod hooves changed, ringing against stone flags. Captain Treon halted a final time, and dismissed his men with a sharp word of caution about showing up to dawn formation with a head of wine. Raucous chuckles met this, dwindling as the men moved off. From far away, a crow croaked greeting to the coming night, and a drizzle of rain began.

“You are home, dog,” Treon said. “Soon, we will begin your training in earnest.”

Rathe said nothing.

Treon grunted to himself, then shouted, “Alfan, Remon! Lock my cur in the Weeping Tower.”

“Should we feed him?” one man asked, provoking an unwanted rumble in Rathe’s belly.

“Water. No more. He can eat when he learns proper respect.” Knowing laughter met this, bouncing off stone walls.

Rathe stifled a relieved sigh when the rope was slashed from his waist. Hands shoved him forward with a warning, “Struggle, and Alfan’s like to toss you over a barrel and have his way with you.”

Rathe had no intention of resisting, threat or not. For the time being, he wanted only to sleep and to regain his strength. After, he would decide what he intended to do with his new life.

Alfan and Remon hustled him up a winding stair, hurling an endless parade of insults at his back. After the long climb, one of his guards dragged him to a stop, and the other rattled open a door. They shoved him through a doorway, and the door began creaking shut.

“Did you idiots forget Captain Treon said I was to receive water?” Rathe said.

“Nah,” one growled.

“Leave it by the door,” Rathe instructed. “I can help myself.”

A sloshing bucket crashed into his head, the blow dropping him to his knees. The door slammed on brutal laughter, and a key turned in the lock. Rathe knelt there, head thumping and drenched, listening to the retreat of heavy footsteps. When the door at the base of the tower boomed shut, he dragged off the reeking hood and cast it aside. He wanted for sleep, but he took the time to study his quarters.

Four windows circled the Weeping Tower’s highest chamber. Plain wooden shutters, gray and cracked with age, blocked off three of those windows. Disrepair or a storm had taken the fourth shutter, allowing a damp breeze to slither in and steal the heat from his naked skin. The last prisoner had used a bit of stone to decorate the walls with obscene, childish scrawls.

He stood and shuffled to a scatter of straw in one corner. Judging by the threadbare blanket nearly lost in that rat’s nest, Rathe supposed he had found his bed. Wincing at the prickly straw, he draped the blanket over his shoulders, crossed frayed carpets thick with mold, and came to the fireplace on the other side of the chamber. Miraculously, a store of cordwood and tinder waited to provide warmth. Flint and steel hung by leather cords from an iron peg driven into a crack in the wall.

He built a fire and warmed his hands, grimacing as he looked over the map of red misery covering every inch of his skin. With scant hope in his heart, he returned to the bucket lying on its side. A couple of mouthfuls still splashed about inside. He drank it down, wishing for more as he set the bucket aside.

A bawdy shout from the courtyard below drew him to the open window. Resting his hands on the sill, he looked on Fortress Hilan’s rain-soaked defenses with an eye trained for war.

It was a stronghold meant to secure nothing but itself and its occupants, and looked the part, stark and foreboding. The keep had been built into the side of a mountain, exposing only one graystone wall. Other than the glow of torches brightening scores of arrow slits, it resembled the face of a cliff sheared smooth by the axe of a god. A high, crenelated curtain wall ran around the bailey, shaped like tongue that jutted toward a grassy, rock-studded slope. A half mile down a broken cart path, a terraced village slouched behind a wooden palisade. Smoke rose from dozens of chimneys, chickens scratched outside the wall, and bedraggled villagers went about their evening chores. Beyond that, the forest pressed in on all sides, stirring with night shadows.

Nearly asleep on his feet, Rathe turned his attention to the lightly armored men striding the wall walks. All thoughts of sleep vanished, and his teeth began to grind together. Within nooks, flaming braziers and flickering torches sheltered from wind and rain, casting a fitful light on men he knew: Joeth, Othan, Elgar, Wyin, and Kevel. They were outcasts from Onareth, the same five that Treon had claimed escaped. He scanned the other guards and found a handful of Hilan men who had ridden with Treon—all had been presumed dead at the hands of the plainsmen.

Rathe recalled the night Treon had come from the darkness beyond Nesaea’s wagon to accuse him of colluding with the escapees. Rathe had no doubt that Treon had not only known they were alive, but guessed the man had sent them ahead…. But why the deceit? Treon surely knew that Rathe would eventually discover the men’s whereabouts, and in doing so would know he had been wrongly punished.

The answer came slowly, and with it Rathe’s mind became a cesspit of vengeful thoughts. Treon must have intended the discovery to be a final blow to his willfulness, a stark reminder that he was the Scorpion no longer, was nothing at all, save a slave to the whims of his master.

Rather than wild fury, peace fell over Rathe. Having Treon single him out marked him as the man Treon considered the greatest potential threat to the continued obedience to Hilan’s garrison.
And a threat I will be,
he thought, an idea of revenge taking shape in his mind that was not so much murderous as malevolent….

Rathe slept soundly that night in the litter of straw, and started awake at the rattle of a key. Loro flung open the door and bustled in carrying an armload of firewood, a large sack, and a plump waterskin. Seeing the fire had burned down to ashes, he built it back up. Only then did he turn, the sack dangling from his fist.

“Seems your master has decided to feed you after all. I think he sent me, in case you had it in your mind to bite him.”

“You have brought a feast,” Rathe said, feeling refreshed.

“A wedge of sour cheese, a heel of molded bread, and a skin of water is no feast,” Loro grumped. “The clothing, however, should suit you.”

Rathe considered Loro. “Was it you who brought me food and water on the road to Hilan?”

Loro looked surprised. “Had I gone so far, I would have cut your bonds. Seems you have an admirer or two amongst these Hilan dogs.”

With that knowledge, Rathe’s plan of bringing Treon low firmed in his mind.

Loro upended the bucket to use as a small table, and spread out the food while Rathe dressed in tunic, jerkin, and leather trousers. Most surprising was the new pair of boots, which fit his feet as if made for him.

Rathe picked up the cheese in one hand, the bread in the other, and took alternating bites from each. Between mouthfuls, long gulps from the waterskin washed it all down. He intended to get well as soon as possible. There were scores to settle, and he would need his strength.

While he ate, Loro sat cross-legged on the floor, his belly bulging over his wide belt like a small boulder.

“You are too kind,” Rathe said when he finished eating, and wiped crumbs from his chin.

“And you are so full of sheep flop, it’s dribbling out your mouth.” Rathe looked a question at him. Loro threw his hands up in exasperation. “Do you intend to suffer that snake’s abuses until he kills you, or do you mean to put that stump-buggering fool in his place? Say the word—
I beg you
—and I will sheath a dagger in his scrawny throat.”

Rathe sat across from Loro with a sigh. While he had indeed made up his mind, he did not want to tangle Loro in his troubles. The problem was, Loro was the rare type of man who, after tying himself to another, would fight and die with him, even if doing so proved to be wrongheaded. Only the harshest betrayals would turn his loyalties, and Rathe was not the betraying sort. The other problem was that he would need Loro’s backing when the time came. For the sake of his conscience, he had to make Loro understand the consequences.

“We are outcasts already,” Rathe began. “If we misstep here, our lives are forfeit. Even if we escape, we will be hunted until we are found, then drawn and quartered. Our other choice is to settle in, make our place here, and serve like honorable soldiers.”

Loro snorted in disgust. “I have never settled for anything I did not want, and I will not make a habit of it at this godforsaken heap of stone. Better to live as a brigand, even a beggar, than chained.”

Rathe nodded grimly. “Then we are of the same mind.”

Loro jumped up, a roguish glint in his eyes. As he reached the door, Rathe asked, “Where are you going?”

“We will need supplies, weapons. And do we climb the wall, or bribe someone to open a postern? These things and more need tending. Sooner done, the better.”

“Plan as you will,” Rathe said slowly, “but I am not leaving until I settle my debt with Treon. I could almost forgive him the abuses, but not the lie that earned me those abuses.”