The Elemental Jewels (Book 1) (6 page)

Another guard brought a metal key, and unlocked the shackle from the dead man, then from Grange, who hastened to obey the hard-hearted guard’s command.  He hadn’t known the dead prisoner at all, he reflected.  He’d stared at the man’s back for hours, seen the muscles cramp up and heard the man’s labored breath, when Grange’s world had constricted to only seeing what was directly in front of him during the run.  And now that man was dead.

Grange lifted the dead man’s body, reluctant to look at his face because he didn’t want to see what death looked like, and carried the heavy body on his back to the stream, where he lowered the body as respectfully as he could into the water, then watched it float slowly in the current, headed towards the larger river beyond.

“Please watch over his spirit,” Grange gave a momentary prayer, thrown to any and all deities who might be listening, in the hopes that the dead man’s own god might hear.

“Come along,” the guard called.  “Stop mooning and get going; pick up your pack.”  A minute later he was reattached to the chain, and walking with the other prisoners through the ford in the river to resume the day’s trip.  They ran on for hours more, the prisoners exhausted, but still moving to avoid the slash of the whip across their backs.

At sunset they passed through a small village, then entered an enclosure, and were led into a crude barn.

“This is where you’ll spend the night.  Each of you has your bundle, with your bedding and food for the next four days.  There’ll be guards at the door, so don’t try to leave the barn,” their guard told them as the two dozen prisoners stood uncertainly in the barn’s dim interior.

“Will you unchain us now?” one prisoner asked from the back of the group.

“No,” the guard laughed.  “You won’t be unchained until you reach the work camp.  Get used to each other,” he advised.

“But what about a toilet?” the prisoner wanted to know.  “How do we,” he paused without finishing the question.

“Watch where you step and hold your nose,” the guard gave an evil grin, then shut the door, and slid the clasp shut on the outside of the door frame.

The circumstances were miserable, but Grange and the others were all too exhausted to care any longer.  They settled in and all fell asleep until the guards opened the door shortly after sunrise the next morning.

“Eat your breakfast!  We leave in five minutes,” a guard shouted into the barn.  The men desperately tried to prepare for departure, and the guards mercilessly drove them out of the building five minutes later, sending them into another long, grueling day of running.  One of the prisoners died at midday; when they stopped for the noon shift at a guard outpost, the man lay down, and never got up.

That night they slept in an open field, still chained and guarded.  And the following day the routine resumed, except that they finally stopped following the river, and started to climb into the mountains, at the western end of the valley that was the nation of Verdant.  The third day was nothing but climbing through the mountains, following the large excavated ditch that was expected to become a shipping canal someday.

Grange was as dull and exhausted as any of the prisoners.  Every step was agony as the shackles cut his ankle, and his muscles strained and ached from the brutal regime of unending exercise.  He had no opportunity to speak to Garrel, nor did any of the prisoners speak more than a word or two, as they struggled to hold onto life and sanity under the brutal circumstances.

Two more prisoners died in the mountains, overcome by the stress.

“They took the easy way out,” one prisoner managed to express his opinion.

On the fourth day, they ran along the rough road that had been leveled beside the future canal bed, always rising upward through the mountains, and Grange was vaguely aware of the dark mountains that rose ahead of them in all directions.  There were no villages, no people, no cabins – only the empty, desolate mountain wilderness of stones and trees and streams, with snow and ice far overhead on the mountaintops.

They reached a large encampment shortly before sunset, where hundreds of laborers were housed in tents, while a substantial garrison of guards lived in stone and wood fortified homes.  There was a large, open kitchen cooking food for the laborers, a store where the guards could buy supplies, and even a few women walking through the camp, to Grange’s surprise.

“You’ll be housed with the yellow squad,” the officer from their last escort of guards informed them.  He gestured to the guards, and a pair of them went about removing the shackles from the legs of the survivors of the journey.  “We’ll escort you to your quadrant, and sign you in.  You’ll be responsible for yourselves after that,” he said tonelessly.

They walked for ten minutes through the camp, through areas where all the laborers wore red or orange or blue clothes.  They drew stares and jeers and indifference among those they passed, but they soon came to the yellow sector, and were led to a large stone building.

“Line up and give your name,” a new officer ordered, as they passed by a window at a porch, one by one, being identified.

“You’re in Tent Three,” the guard clerk told Grange when he had his turn to give his name.

“Where is it?” Grange asked.

“Next to Tent Two, I imagine,” the man said dismissively.  “Move along.”

Grange trod a few feet out of the way, then stopped.  Like all the new arrivals, he still carried his bundle of supplies.  He still had some of the dried food and hard bread he had carried, for he’d been too tired to eat at night.  His blankets that he slept in were dirty, but dry and still intact.

“”Where are you?” Garrel slouched over next to him.

“In a nightmare,” Grange answered.  “Tent Three,” he grew realistic.  “How about you?”

“I’m in Tent Five; they must be close together,” Garrel concluded.  “Let’s look over there,” he nodded to the right.

“Is this Tent Three or Five?” Grange asked thirty seconds later, when they reached a yellow tent in the middle of a row.

“Have we got some new volunteers?” one of the two men sitting in front of the tent asked as he inspected the two arrivals.  “It’s about time Yellow got some fresh meat.  We’ve about killed ourselves trying to meet quota.  You’ll come in handy.

“Go down three tents to Tent Four and tell Matey you’re new.  He’ll work you into the system,” the same man instructed.

The two accordingly trudged down the track between rows of tents and stopped in front of Tent Four, where a burly man stood at attention.

“What do you want?  Move along,” the man said.

“We’re new.  Someone told us to see Matey,” Garrel spoke up.  “We can go to our tents,” he added.

The man turned and looked in through the tent flap, then pulled it open.  “Go in,” he ordered.

The two boys pushed the heavy material aside and stepped into the muted light inside the tent.  A man sat in a chair behind a desk.  There were two more men in the tent, and only one bed.  All three men looked at Grange and Garrel as they entered.

“What do we have here, new members of the construction crew?” the man at the desk asked.

The two boys silently looked at one another, unsure of whether they were on the construction crew or assigned to some other task.

“Were you sent here to work?” the man asked impatiently after the silence dragged out too long for his tastes.  “Or are you here in a tour of the scenic mountains?”

“We’re here to work,” Garrel answered in a low voice.

“That’s better.  What charges were you arrested on?” one of the men in the side chairs asked, his eye glittering with interest.

“Pickpockets,” Grange spoke up.

“We’ve got plenty of those,” the man at the desk replied, as the man who asked the question no longer looked interested.

“You just do your work, stay out of the way, and expect to do me a favor when the time comes,” he told the two.  “Other than that, enjoy your time with us.  You’re dismissed,” he stopped looking at them, then picked up a cigar from the edge of his desk and took a deep draught on it as he returned to examining the papers on his desk.

“Who are you?” Grange blurted out the question.  “Why do we owe you a favor?”

The men in the chairs looked up at him with dark eyes, and Grange felt the tension in the tent rise.

The man at the desk waved them back into their seats before they rose.  “It’s alright.  He can ask the question.

“There are eight prisoners here for every guard,” he said.  “My name’s Matey.  I control the prisoners in the yellow sector.  My men keep things under control, so that the guards don’t get too stressed.  If it weren’t for me and a few friends like me to keep things smooth, the reckless young boys like you would get mad over something, and there’d be a riot.

“The guards would probably all be killed, and there would be chaos and trouble, until the new guards came, and they’d come in with the plan to kill everyone they could find,” he said as though explaining a patently obvious fact to a child.

“So I keep things calm and the boys under control.  In return, everyone here does favors for me when I need them,” he finished.  “So that’s who I am – I run this place.

“Now, go to your tents and get settled in.  You’re wearing yellow, so you’ll be working tomorrow in the tunnel.  Get your rest,” he said dismissively.

The two boys turned and exited from the tent, then stood outside.  The air at the high mountain altitude was chilly.  “I’ll put my things in my tent, and you do the same, then we can get some food,” Garrel suggested.

They parted ways, and Grange turned right to the tent he belonged to.  He pulled the flap back and saw eight bunks stacked in the space, the same space that held only one bunk in Matey’s tent.  There was a man sitting on one of the bunks.

“Who are you?” he asked with brisk words.

“Grange.  I just got assigned here,” the newcomer replied.

The man looked him up and down in a careful evaluation.  “That’s your bunk there,” he pointed to a middle bunk with little space above it.  “All the others are taken.”

Grange placed his belongings in the confined space atop the thin mattress.  “I’ll be back later,” he told his new tent mate.

“Make sure you’re here before curfew,” the man advised, “or you’ll owe Matey.”

Grange looked at the man momentarily, then shrugged as he turned and left the tent.

Garrel was already waiting outside, and together they walked back to the spot where they had passed the open kitchen.  A number of prisoners were lined up, so they joined the line, waited and moved forward, and received a slab of cold, hard, dry dark bread, hollowed out to act as a bowl for a sloppy stew mixture that was ladled into the opening.

They took their food and returned to a slab of wood not far from the yellow sector, where they sat down and started eating their unappetizing meal, picking out the pieces of vegetable and small slices of meal with their fingers, then eating the bread as it soaked up the soup stock.

“What are we going to do, Garrel?” Grange asked.

“We’re going to hunker down, stay out of trouble, and figure out what’s going on around here,” Garrel said matter-of-factly.

“What about an escape?” Grange immediately asked.

“We can’t escape here, at least not until the spring.  There’s nothing but wilderness all the way back through the mountains.  You and I are city kids; we don’t know a thing about how to live in the mountains, especially in winter.  Stay out of trouble, wait until spring, then make an escape,” Garrel advised.

“What’s it going to be like here?” Grange asked in a low voice, dismayed by the prospect of a future in a labor camp.

“We’ll find out,” Garrel sighed.  They sat in silence, watching the people in the camp walk by.  As the sun started to set, the air turned noticeably cooler, and they returned to their tents to climb into their bunks and wrap up in their blankets.

Grange found four men already in the dim interior of his tent when he opened it.

“Who are you?” one of them immediately asked.

“Grange – my name is Grange,” he replied.

“What did you do?” the man followed with a new question.

“To get sent here,” he added after Grange’s moment of silent confusion.

“Pick pocket,” Grange answered.

“That’s as good as any, I suppose,” the man ambiguously answered.  “I’m Tarn.  This is Gren, Mark, and Rill,” he introduced the others.  “The rest of the tent may or may not float in here tonight, depending on what they may be doing for Matey.”

“Does everyone do something for Matey?” Grange asked as he crawled into his covers, anxious to warm up.

Grange fell into an uneasy sleep that night, despite how tired his body felt from the terrible rigors of the journey to the labor camp.  He was vaguely aware of men who entered and left the tent, but when a loud bugle awoke him early the next morning, he found no further men had entered to sleep in the tent.

"Go get breakfast first," one of the others recommended. 

He sleepily complied, joining a long line to receive a meal much like the dinner the night before, except with lumpy porridge inside the bread bowl.   As he ate, he waved to Garrel when his friend passed by.

Before Garrel returned though, a guard roused him from his seat.