By the time dusk fell, Rathe noticed the air had grown cooler and damper, chilling his bare skin. Despite the stench of his hood, he scented a high mountain forest of fir and pine. Without question, the company was finally climbing the flanks of the Gyntor Mountains, and thus nearing Fortress Hilan. He vowed to hold on a little longer, to endure as would a true Ghost of Ahnok.
After night fell, Treon called a halt, and led a staggering Rathe away from camp. “A poorly mannered dog cannot be trusted to eat at the feet of his master,” Treon explained, the same as he did every night.
Although Rathe did not resist, the captain jerked hard on the leash, grinding the rope into the raw wound around Rathe’s middle. Thoughts muddled after two full days without food or water, covered head to foot in new bruises and scrapes, Rathe noticed the fresh pain distantly.
“Here we are,” Treon said, using a rock to pound a stake into the ground. He whipped the hood from Rathe’s head, glared at him a moment, then sauntered back toward camp.
“Water,” Rathe croaked, forgetting himself in his desperation.
Treon spun on his heel with a sneering grin. “What’s this, my dog has learned to speak?”
Rathe’s jaw clenched tight in anger at his weakness, and he studied his worn boots. The toe of one had been worn away, and a wide split showed in the other. Turbid thoughts and images revolved in his mind, leaving him uncertain what he intended, doubting his resolve to hold fast to his dignity.
Captain Treon produced his waterskin and let it swing before Rathe’s eyes. “Beg for a drink of cool, soothing water, dog,” he suggested. “Bow down on your knees … and I might even throw in a morsel of food.”
I will not break! In his confused state, those words did not mean what they had before. Did asking for water and food truly mean his spirit had been broken? Yes, a voice answered simply, but he did not think he could trust that voice.
“I … I,” Rathe struggled, “I request water.”
“You request?” Treon sniggered. “A dog does not request-he begs … on his belly.”
Bending is not breaking….
Oh, but it is….
Bend now, grow stronger later….
Rathe groaned in answer to the warring voices in his head. He knew the last voice spoke true, but hearing truth and accepting it were not the same. His knees bent and he sank down. Slower still, he pressed his face to the ground at Treon’s feet. Already he could feel the water’s cool, sweet wetness cleansing his palate of the dust he had eaten all day. The thought of refreshing liquid blinded him to his humiliation.
“Water … just a little … a taste.”
Treon laughed, a sound deeper and richer than the voice with which he spoke, and jammed his boot onto Rathe’s neck. “Come, men,” he urged. “My dog has learned a new trick!”
Fury swept through Rathe’s mind, clearing his thoughts, and he tried to push Treon’s boot aside. The captain pressed down all the harder. The soldiers gathered with haste, eager to see what their captain was going on about.
“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
Twice 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.