Robinson Crusoe 2245: (Book 2) (15 page)

“Another customer for the deeps, Drego,” Mox said.

Drego grinned, revealing a mouth devoid of teeth.

Mox elbowed Robinson toward the boat, the pistol twisting in his back.

“If you’re thinking about jumping once you’re out there, I’ll give you fair warning. There’s things in that bog that’ll skin you faster than a Flayer. Though I wouldn’t mind seeing you try.”

Robinson sat at the front of the rickety old boat as Drego paddled away. Before long, Mox and the others had disappeared, leaving him with only the gentle stroke of Drego’s oar sinking into the water again and again.

Once inside the cave, stalactites and stalagmites appeared, the lantern light making them look like teeth of an impossibly large mouth. Robinson thought it might be a karst mine with all the limestone formations, clints, and grikes. He could also see flutes and runnels overhead, suggesting that a mountain rose high above them.

If the odor in the train had been bad, here, it was downright paralyzing. The acrid stench grew stronger the farther they descended. Robinson’s eyes began to water, and he was forced to breathe through his mouth.

Just when it seemed like the trip would never end, Drego turned a bend, and Robinson saw several torches lining a smooth inlet. The boat clunked ashore, and Drego drew still.

Robinson waited for some command, but there was none. So he got out of the boat. A moment later, another figure covered in soot appeared from the mouth of a low tunnel. He held a club in his hand and smiled cruelly.

“New meat for the maw, eh?” the figure said. “Trog awaits.”

He shoved Robinson into the tunnel and down into the heart of the mountain. After a series of dizzying turns, a deep, booming voice emerged, accompanied by the crack of whips and cries of pain.

Robinson’s hands began to shake.

“Work, dogs. Work!” the deep voice from below shouted. “He who produces most, bleeds least!”

The whip cracked twice more, and a wail went up before it was silenced.

Robinson turned a final corner and entered a vast cavern lit by a dozen torches. A half-dozen guards lorded over thirty or forty men on their knees, using small tools to scrape soot off every surface they could find and use it to fill burlap sacks. At the entrance of the cavern sat a high mound of sacks already full. Robinson struggled to understand how such a minute substance could be amassed in such quantity or what could make it worth the effort.

“Trog!” Robinson’s escort called as he shoved the new prisoner to the cavern. “Fresh fingers.”

The guards laughed and then went silent as a figure stepped out of the shadows.

Trog was merely a few inches taller than Robinson, but he towered inside the cavern. He wore the thinnest of shirts, exposing a torso thick with corded muscle. His head was bald, but his beard was thick. And yet the most imposing aspect—the one that sent tremors to the core of Robinson’s soul—was the patchwork of scars that covered nearly every part of his body. Burns, cuts, gouges, even a dimpled skull—they revealed a man who had been tortured beyond all measure and had survived.

Robinson’s reaction must have seemed familiar because Trog smiled, revealing a mouth full of pointed teeth.

“Pretty,” Trog said. “Ain’t I?”

Robinson stuttered, but his throat had gone dry. When Trog stepped toward him, he tried to back up, but his feet refused to move.

“What’s your name, boy?” Trog said.

“R-Robinson,” Robinson muttered.

Trog hit him with a fist that filled his vision with stars and sent him plummeting to the ground.

“I said, ‘what’s your name?’” Trog asked again.

“Robinson Crusoe,” Robinson answered.

Trog moved quick as lightning and struck him again. Blood ran hot down his face.

“Tell me your name,” Trog said.

Robinson wobbled. He was struggling to stay conscious. But as his vision blurred, he noticed a small, bowed prisoner a dozen paces away. The man kept his head facing the earth, but he gave the subtlest shake of the head. Robinson seemed to understand.

“I … don’t have one,” Robinson croaked.

Trog’s smile faded slowly.

“The boy learns quick,” Trog said.

And then, to Robinson’s surprise, he tossed a hammer at his feet.

“First rule of the caves: every man who enters fights. Win and you win your freedom. Lose and you take your place on the line.”

Robinson glanced over the terrified faces of the other prisoners.

“Whom do I fight?” Robinson asked.

Trog grinned and held his hands out wide.

Robinson didn’t hesitate. He reached for the hammer and leaped toward Trog, swinging it with all his might. The strike was fast, but not fast enough. Trog caught his arm and swung his mighty fist behind Robinson’s ear. The hammer went flying.

Robinson charged him again, but his strikes seemed to have no effect. It was like hitting granite. Trog toyed with him for a while, but then he stepped up his own attack. Robinson did his best to minimize the crushing blows, but they came too fast, too hard. He flew against the cavern wall and crumpled into a ball as Trog assaulted him with kicks and blows that sent pain radiating through every cell in his body, until he eventually found himself withdrawing to that final sanctuary the mind seeks in such times, that no pain or suffering can assail.

Still, if Robinson could have smiled, he would have. For in his descent to Hell, he had noticed something that made him believe in fate for the first time. Wrapped around Trog’s neck was a necklace of bones.

The raiment of a Bone Flayer.

He woke sometime later, foggy and throbbing, to find the bowed prisoner quietly washing his wounds with a wet cloth. Robinson noticed the man only had seven fingers. Two on his right hand and one on his left had been shorn off.

Robinson tried to speak, but his jaw was swollen, and his mouth tasted of blood. Still, he managed a thankful nod. The bowed prisoner returned it before putting a cup of grainy black water to his mouth. Robinson tried to sit up, but felt a hand on his chest. And then, blackness.

It seemed like only seconds had passed when a shrill whistle snatched him from deep slumber. The prisoners rose, one by one. Robinson struggled to his feet to join them in line.

They filed out of the sleeping area. Robinson limped quickly to keep in line.

At the cavern’s entrance, Trog cut an apple in slices with a knife. When the brute saw the beaten face of his newest charge, he smiled garishly. Robinson forced his eyes down.

In the cavern, the prisoners were charged with collecting the aged black substance that covered everything in sight. With a small tool, they knelt on the hard floor. Knees were scraped raw. Muscles cramped. The work was exhausting.

The guards were also unmerciful in their abuse. Each carried some instrument of torture. The smallest violation prompted the crack of the whip and or the strike of wood on muscle. Just as often, they came without provocation. Trog let his men dispense punishment for trifling offenses. His attention was reserved for the more serious ones. He was particularly fond of fire. Wounds would heal, but no man could ever forget the smell of his own flesh burning.

Twice a day, prisoners were given a cup of rotting gruel of indiscernible composition. It was gray, foul, and was hard to keep down.

The days passed excruciatingly slow. Robinson lost track of time. At first, he thought the days were the worst. But the nights held their own horrors.

One night—his fourth or fifth—Robinson heard heavy footfalls enter the cavern. He peered up to see Trog leading another young prisoner away. The sounds of abuse that followed were almost too much to bear.

The following day, when Robinson was leaving the sleep area, Trog whispered into his ear, “soon.” That single word terrified him.

Robinson learned the black substance they were collecting was called “guano,” the feces of bats. He remembered reading once that guano was packed with nitrogen, but he couldn’t remember why it was cultivated.

One afternoon, Robinson was chosen to fetch water. The bucket was kept near the grotto where the guards slept. Stumbling through a dark tunnel, Robinson stubbed his toe on something hard and looked down to see ancient rails buried in the dirt. Someone once moved ore through there. Robinson started to rise when he saw an old iron nail pinning the rail to the tie below. Then the guard kicked him.

“Keep movin’,” he barked.

After filling two buckets of water and hoisting them on a wooden dowel across his shoulders, Robinson made his way back toward the cavern, but he halted near the tracks.

“I forgot the ladle,” he said to the guard, with the requisite tenor of fear in his voice.

After cursing him, the guard hustled back toward the grotto, and Robinson quickly knelt and pried the nail out. He hid it in his pants just before the guard returned.

Sometime later, Robinson was finishing his second sack of guano when another prisoner cried out. He had cut his thumb but quickly tried to hide it. Trog took notice and started over.

“Are you injured, friend?” Trog said.

“N-no, sir,” the prisoner stuttered. “I can work, I swear it.”

“Let me see your hand,” Trog said.

The prisoner refused until Trog reached for his truncheon. Then the prisoner raised his trembling, bloody hand.

“I give you rules,” Trog said loudly. “I treat you like men. Do your job, and the days will pass. But this man has let his concentration fail him. In doing so, he has failed me.”

“No, please!” the man screamed.

His cries fell on deaf ears. Guards surrounded him as Trog pulled a glimmering knife from his belt and cut his thumb from his hand.

The man’s screams echoed through the cavern, as the others quickly returned to their work. The prisoner’s wound was cauterized with a torch.

“You are a half bag short,” Trog told the sobbing prisoner. “Fail to reach your quota today and you lose another.”

The wounded man fell back to his knees and picked up his tool. Trog headed back across the cavern. Robinson noticed he hadn’t sheathed his knife. Instead, he used it to strip the flesh from the severed thumb. When he later tied it to the necklace of bones adorning his chest, Robinson understood the depravity of his fetish.

At that moment, Robinson realized that he would have to escape soon or he would die. He could take the beatings. A body can be broken again and again and heal, but the mind could only be broken once.

When the work was done, Trog stood at the cavern’s entrance as the prisoners staggered out. As Robinson passed, Trog uttered, “Tonight.”

Later that night, after the prisoners had all fallen asleep, Robinson lay on the muddy earth, tense, waiting. A single flickering torch coaxed shadows in his mind. But when he finally heard movement, he knew the moment had arrived. He slipped the iron nail into his hand and steeled himself for what was to come.

As heavy footsteps approached, the seven-fingered man suddenly rolled over to face him, his hand extended with something dark and wet.

“Eat quickly,” he whispered.

The man had never uttered so much as a single word before, but something in his eyes convinced Robinson to do as he was told. The substance tasted repulsive, but he forced it down just as Trog arrived.

“Hello, boy,” Trog said, his voice heavy with alcohol. “Time for a taste.”

Robinson turned over the same moment a stream of vomit exploded from his mouth, dousing his clothes and splattering Trog. Trog wheeled back, raging. He pulled his club out and struck Robinson over and over until he was winded.

“You’ll pay for that,” he seethed. “Mark my words. You’ll pay dearly.”

Trog stumbled off. Robinson vomited a second time, but the pain in his stomach soon abated. The seven-fingered man drew near.

“Tomorrow they’ll come for the take,” he whispered. “Find a way onto the detail that goes to the surface. It’s the only chance of escape.”

“There are no other ways out?” Robinson asked.

The seven-fingered man grimaced and said, “Only the dead leave this place.”

Robinson didn’t sleep that night. When the call for work came the following morning, Trog’s eyes stayed locked on Robinson, his anger infusing the cavern like a crushing storm.

Robinson knew he wouldn’t survive the day unless he did something, so as he was passing his giant captor, he suddenly fell to his knees and said, “Forgive me.” And then he added: “Master.”

Everyone in the cavern froze. They expected Trog to unleash his fury, maybe even kill him. Which was why they were all surprised when Trog reached down and lifted Robinson’s head with a finger before giving a single nod. Robinson smiled, even as Trog dipped his finger into his mouth.

The day passed surprisingly easy. The prisoners were thankful for the respite. But everyone knew Robinson would pay the price.

When Drego appeared hours later, Trog called a halt to the work and began choosing men to ferry the sacks of guano to the boat.

Robinson lifted a trembling hand.

“Master?” he called, his voice soft and his eyes wide.

Trog grinned and nodded.