King of Foxes (27 page)

Amafi bowed toward Tal. “As you yourself observed the first night we met, Magnificence, ‘Until such time as you can successfully betray me without risk.’ This was such a time.”

“You will be rewarded, Amafi,” said Kaspar. “Now, go and get cleaned up.”

The former assassin said, “Yes, Your Grace, but may I caution you in one thing.”

“What?”

“I have served Talwin Hawkins long enough to know that despite his youth, he is an extremely dangerous man.

You would do well to put aside your debt and have him killed.”

“No,” said Kaspar. “I understand your caution, but I have my sense of honor, peculiar as it may be. He saved my life, so I can’t ignore that debt.” He paused, then said,

“But I will take your warning to heart. Now, leave us.”

Amafi bowed to the Duke and departed. To Tal, Kaspar said, “I give you your life, but it will be spent in a place no man should endure, and few have for long. You are to live the rest of your life in the Fortress of Despair. If the gods are kind, you will die quickly there. But in my experience, the gods are rarely kind.”

To the captain of the guards, he said, “When he ar-

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rives, inform the commander of the fortress that this man is to be fed well and not tortured. Well, not tortured after he cuts off the prisoner’s right hand.”

Tal stood numbly for a moment upon hearing his fate; then suddenly without further word, he was dragged off by the soldiers. His last image of Kaspar was of the Duke sitting on his throne, an expression of satisfaction mixed with regret playing across his face.

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P a r t T w o

SOLDIER

R e v e n g e s h o u l d h a v e n o b o u n d s .

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—William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act IV, Scene viii _______________

THIRTEEN

PRISON

Tal stood on the deck.

He had been dragged to Opardum harbor. He had been off the ship from Salador less than half a day before he was chained in the hold of yet another ship.

Rather than forty or more days, this journey took only a week. Thoughts of escape had run through his mind and more than once he had tested his chains where they passed through a large iron ring fastened to a beam. After the first day, he had fallen into a mood of dejected misery.

After a week, Tal had been roughly hauled up to the deck, where the ship’s captain waited.

“There’s your new home, Squire,” he said in an oddly convivial tone, pointing to an island.

Tal looked where the captain indicated and felt even more hopeless. The Fortress of Despair was an old keep, six stories tall, which overlooked the narrow passage be-

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tween this island and the mainland, merely three miles away. It stood bleak against a grey winter sky, as the wind cut icily though Tal’s clothing.

“One of the Duke’s ancestors built it,” said the Captain. “Then it was called Fortress Sentinel. When the City of the Guardian was built up, this place sort of fell into disuse, until one of the old dukes decided to make a prison out of it.”

A longboat was lowered, and Tal was forced to climb down a ladder to be yanked into the longboat by a couple of rough-handed seamen. As the boat was rowed toward the dock, the captain waved and cheerfully said, “Enjoy your stay, Squire!”

Tal sat in the boat, the winter sky as foreboding and dark as his mood. The salt spray that struck him in the face was frigid as it whipped off the spindrift. The boat rocked as the four rowers pulled to reach the docks as quickly as possible. The sooner they were done, the sooner they could be back on board the ship, back to a slightly warmer and drier berth.

Three men stood waiting on the docks, wearing heavy cloaks. The boat drew up, and the sailors steadied it. They didn’t even bother to tie off: two of them stood up and gripped the pilings, while another motioned for Tal to climb a short ladder. He did so, with one sailor following him, and when they both stood on the docks, the sailor said, “Here’s the writ, Governor.”

Without thanks, the man took the paper, and without another word, the sailor was back down the ladder and the boat pushed off. The man who had been handed the paper looked at Tal and said, “Come.”

The other two men were armed guards, both looking little more than street thugs. Neither wore a uniform, and they carried large cudgels rather than swords. Tal had no _______________

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doubt either man could and would quickly break his arm or leg with the clubs if he tried to escape. As he walked toward the fortress, he looked around and thought,
Where
would I escape to?

As if reading his thoughts, the Governor said, “You can try to run; you look like a fast lad, so you might outrun Kyle and Anatoli here, but with them chains on, maybe not. If you did, you’d maybe find your way down to the beach up there on the north side of the island, but then where’d you go? Looks close, don’t it? The mainland, I mean. Three miles, a bit more or less. But there’s a current there wants to take you north, and there’s sharks and other things. That’s if the chains don’t pull you down and you drown. But maybe you’re a strong swimmer. If you made it to the beach, you’re miles from food.”

They reached an old drawbridge that looked to have been down for years. As they crossed over it, Tal looked down and saw a twenty-five-foot ravine filled with broken rocks at the bottom. “So, maybe you’re a hunter,” said the Governor. “Maybe you get by, even though it’s winter.

You build a fire and somehow don’t freeze to death.

“Guess what?” he said and turned, and for the first time Tal got a look at his face. The Governor of the prison had no left eye, just a closed lid, and a notch in the bridge of his nose, as if someone had cut him across it with a blade. His own teeth had been knocked out, and he wore some sort of contraption made of wood and teeth—perhaps human or animal—that would serve him for eating. He grinned, and said, “The only civilization for hundreds of miles is the City of the Guardian, and it’s a border city, so the guards look close at everyone coming in.”

They reached the entrance to the old fortress, and the Governor stopped. “Take a look around, lad. Look up.”

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Tal did so.

“It’s the last time you’ll be seeing the open sky, I’m thinking.” He motioned, and the two guards escorted Tal up the steps into the old fortress.

What had been the entrance hall was now bare, a huge room with a set of doors in each wall. They marched across the stone floor, worn featureless and smooth by centuries of feet trudging across it, and passed through another door. “This used to be the great hall,” said the Governor. “Now we only use it for banquets.”

The two guards laughed. “Come along,” said the Governor.

They led Tal to what must once have been the private apartment of the commander of the fortress. Now it was an office, containing a large table littered with food and empty wine cups as well as papers. A rat scurried off the table as the Governor waved his hand at it.

Taking off his heavy cloak, the Governor tossed it across a chair. “Let’s see, now, what we have here,” he said, unrolling the writ.

“Squire Talwin Hawkins, is it?”

Tal said nothing.

“I’m Governor Zirga. Used to be a sergeant in the Duke’s father’s Household Guard. Got this,” he said, pointing to his face, “at the Battle of Karesh’kaar, when I was not much older than you. So as a reward, they give me this job. I get a week off a year to go to City of the Guardian and spend gold on whores and getting drunk.

The rest of the time I care for you prisoners.

“So we understands one another. You don’t cause trouble, and we’ll get along fine. You’ve come here to die, more or less, and it’s up to you how you fare between now and when we toss your ashes off the cliffs.” He waved the papers at Tal and said, “Says here you’re to be treated _______________

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well, which means a little more food and we’ll put you up in the keep, instead of the dungeon below. Them down there dies right fast. Most go in less than two years. Up above, well, you’ve got a bit of sunlight and some better air—though it do get bitter cold in the winter—but in the summer you’ll be glad for the breezes. But I’ve got a couple o’ lads up there been with us fifteen, twenty years.

“So, we’ll get you upstairs straightaway . . . as soon as we cut off your right arm.”

The Governor motioned for the two guards, who seized Tal by either arm, lifting him slightly off his feet so he couldn’t get purchase on the stones. They frog-marched him out of the door and across to another door, then down a long flight of stairs, half-carrying, half-dragging him along a narrow corridor.

“We don’t have a proper chirurgery here, so we have to make do with the dungeon when it comes to cutting and the like,” said the Governor. “Occasionally one of the lads gets a cut or scrape that turns putrid, and I’ve got to do some cutting.”

They passed a third guard, who was sitting on a stool next to a table, and the Governor said, “Fetch some brandy.”

The two guards who held Tal pulled him into a chamber that had obviously been used for torture in the past.

“From time to time the Duke sends us someone he wants
really
punished, so we bring them down here. Used to be we could do a lot with what was left over from the old days, but as you can see”—he pointed to a pile of rusty implements left on the filthy straw strewn on the floor—

“we’ve fallen on harder times. Don’t have that many good tools anymore. Just some pincers and knives and the like.”

He pointed to an iron ring in the ceiling. “Used to have a dandy hook hanging there. I could hang a man on it just _______________

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right and he’d be screaming for a couple of days. Last time I used it, damn thing broke off. I sent a request in for another one, but no one’s bothered to do anything about it back in Opardum.”

The guard with the brandy appeared, and the Governor said, “Start a fire.”

There was a large brazier that at one time must have been used for heating torture devices, and the guard quickly got a fire started with some dry straw and kindling. He fed wood into it until it started blazing brightly.

“Heat an iron,” said the Governor. “Can’t have you bleeding to death, now, can we?” he said to Tal.

Tal was motionless. He felt as if he wanted to lash out and fight, to run, but he knew the situation was hopeless.

He knew that if he was to have any chance at all for survival, he must not fight. He must just endure.

The Governor took off his jacket, revealing a dirty white shirt underneath. He went to the wall and found what looked to be a large cleaver. He put it in the fire.

“We used to have coal. I could get the sword so hot I could ruin the temper of the steel if I wasn’t careful. Just the thing. The trick is to sear the wound. Used to be, when I had coal, I could slice right though your arm and the metal would be so hot your stump would hardly bleed. Now, I make do with wood. If the hot blade doesn’t do it, then we’ll poke at where it’s bleedin’ with the iron.”

The blade grew red after a few minutes in the flame, and the Governor nodded to the guard who wasn’t holding Tal. He picked up a pair of bellows, like those a smith would use, and began pumping it, causing the wood to flare up and send a fountain of sparks spiraling upward.

Tal’s mind was in turmoil. He was thinking up to this moment that somehow he could devise a way to escape.

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As the Governor said, he could outrun these two and make it to the north beach, swim to the coast . . .

Suddenly his chain was yanked hard, tugging him off-balance, and he felt powerful arms wrapped around his waist. One guard held him while the other used the manacle to pull his arm straight, across a wooden table. With a swift motion, the Governor grabbed the sword out of the fire and in a single sweeping blow, severed Tal’s right arm between the elbow and wrist.

Tal cried out in shock, and his head swam. The Governor looked at the wound, then took up the iron and seared a bleeding artery. Then he tossed the iron back into the fire. He picked up the bottle of brandy and took a long drink. “This sort of work upsets me, Squire.”

Tal could barely stand, and the pain that shot up his arm was excruciating. He felt faint, and the Governor said, “I’d offer you a drink, but we can’t give strong drink to the prisoners. Rules are rules.” Then he poured some of the brandy over the charred stump of Tal’s arm and said, “But I did happen to discover, purely by accident one time, that if you pour a little brandy over the cut, it’s less likely to fester.” He nodded to the two guards. “Take him away. North room, third floor.”

Tal was dragged away by the two guards and fainted before they reached the first flight of stairs.

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Tal lay in agony. The stump of his right arm throbbed constantly, and he was wracked with fever. His mind lapsed in and out of consciousness, and at times he was lost in dreams and visions.