Shattered

Nathan remembered her hair, and her hips, and the way it all swayed as she walked out in front of him, dragging him along too eagerly.  He
should have known better than to slip out the back with her, without telling his brother or his men, but at the time he hadn’t been thinking.  Not with the head atop his shoulders, at least.

They were no more than out
the tavern and around the back when someone waylaid them in the alley.  Yet his companion didn’t scream, she was too calm, and in the brief moment he knew the truth.  The blow to his head sent bright streaks of light radiating out across his vision as his legs crumbled beneath him.  Strange hands lifted him up from the ground, loaded him into a wagon, and then everything went dark.

It was a
sharp bump in their ride that roused Nathan from this latest bout of unconsciousness.  The wooden planks of the cart swayed beneath him, and not simply because they were moving.  In the darkness there was nothing but thunderous noise, of hooves on hard ground and the rickety cart as it rolled over an uneven road.  It dipped low on one side, only to jolt up and bounce back to level.  In the turbulent war, as the wooden planks pulled apart and crashed together again, it was a wonder the flat bed he laid upon didn’t fall apart beneath him.

Nathan
tried to bring his hands out in front of him and failed, only to realize they were bound behind him.  Another jolt and his fragile mind reeled.  A rush of nausea gripped his stomach and moved up.  He expelled it all over the boot planted near his head and it earned him a swift kick to the jaw.  A man’s loud curses joined the roar of the cart, for a moment, before a second voice calmed him and their conversation slips back beneath the noise.

He
had no idea where they were going.  He couldn’t hold on to consciousness long enough to make sense of any of this.  Every time he came to it was the same, loud and dark.  They had him blindfolded, bound.  His head throbbed.  He put all of his energy into remaining still against the sway of the rolling floor.

For a perfect moment the noise died away and the ground beneath him stopped rocking.
  In the rush of his abduction and the confusion of their flight Nathan thought his efforts towards stillness had been fruitful.  It was only as hands hauled him up from the wagon did he realize they had reached some destination.  His will had nothing to do with it.

His captors held him up from beneath his bound arms.
  He turned his head towards a distant rustle in the brush as it moved close, as branch was displaced and a second set of people joined them.  A torch moved near his face and cast a bright ring of light around the edges of his blindfold.  He felt the heat of the flame.  It was still night then, though which night he didn’t know.

The details of the exchange were hushed and Nathan felt himself being handed over to a new set of people.  They carried him from there, on foot, supporting all of his weight so that his toes need only drag along the ground.  He wasn’t sure he could stand right now, let alone walk
, and he was glad for their strength.  He wasn’t even sure he could speak, for every time he tried to form up a sentence his muddled mind throbbed again.

When they set him down it was on a stone floor. 
Someone cradled his head and lowered it gently down.  His wrists were freed from behind him and his clothing stripped away.  Nathan had no idea how many people hovered around him as hands descended upon his naked body.  They weren’t rough with him, simply focused, and as they washed him down they eased away some of his sharper fears.  No one that meant to kill him would take this much care.  Had it not been for the blindfold he might think himself back in the castle, at the care of his servants.

Nathan tried
again to speak but the words refused to come out.  His tongue felt heavy and swollen in his mouth, like it was much too big to be there. A cup was raised to his lips and he drank fully from it, aware but unconcerned by the sharp smell emanating from the infused water.  He felt dizzy, light, and with no reason to fight it he didn’t.  The sleep it offered looked like shelter.  He slumped down against those warm hands and let it take him.

**

Nathan’s headache
had diminished considerably by the time he came around again.  Now it simply throbbed in rhythm with his heart.  The blindfold he wore on his trip to this place had been removed but it was still completely dark.  Someone returned his pants to him though, for what it was worth.

His legs were
cramped, arms too, and he tried to uncurl from the ball he’d rolled into during the night.  But his feet hit a wall before his knees left his chest.  He stuck his hands out and found another wall, and one pressed against his back as well.  Two inches beyond his head was another and he knew before reaching out there was just one above him.  He laid his hand against the cold metal and felt his blood turn just as cold.

Everything was pitch black.  He wondered if he died, if they’d buried him, but even this space was no coffin.  It was too small.  Even the dead rested easier.

Nathan shouted and his voice echoed back.  He yelled again, as loud as he could, but no one came.  He screamed until he was out of breath and then imagined himself out of air.  He had used it all up.

He rationed his breathing, short shallow breaths only, until the pressure on his chest overwhelmed him and he had to gulp down air. 
And when the pressure relented he did it again, over and over, until spots of color penetrated the darkness, until his heart raced and his headache pulsed behind his eyes.

Adrenaline ran its course and left him drained.  He accepted asphyxiation as inevitable and decided he’d rather die in comfort. 
It might even be peaceful, drowning was supposed to be, but how anyone knew that at all was beyond him.  He breathed normally, and nothing changed.

How long he waited he couldn’t know.  His stomach growled and his mouth went dry.  Even swallowing he could not summon enough saliva to ease his parched lips or heavy tongue.
  He imagined he slept some, but he couldn’t tell.  It never grew light.  He cried some too, without tears, for his body wouldn’t spare them.  Mostly he waited.

**

Nathan
imagined the vibration of footsteps beneath his head.  He refused to believe they were real and eventually they stopped, and he congratulated himself on not being fooled.  But then metal scrapped metal and the ceiling of his world came off.  Hands yanked him up and candlelight blinded him, and before his vision cleared a sack was thrown over his head.

One moment he was laying on his side, bargaining with death, and the next he was being dragged forward by hands that felt very much alive.  He couldn’t untangle
the rush of his thoughts and before he knew it they stopped and he was forced to his knees.

He
tried to pick apart the separate sounds around him, to count the people handling him, but their steps were light and their feet padded.  It was impossible to distinguish them, even as several sets of hands still made contact with his skin.  He decided then that they were specters, for people had face and form.  The group around him now was constantly shifting.

“Where am I?” Nathan asked the darkness, but no one answered him back.  Instead he felt rope being looped beneath his arms and over his chest.  It dug into his armpits as it went taut, as the
length across his chest tightened and the rest was pulled upward at his back.

Another set of hands were working at the binding on his wrists.  They pulled until his elbows were straight
and his hands pointed at his feet behind him.  They tethered him to the floor from his wrists, to the ceiling from the rope beneath his arms.  Suddenly he couldn’t move.

The fog was slow to
fade from his mind and, surrounded by so many people, he could almost forget the isolating terror of that dark box.

“My name is Nathan Dorthorial
.  I am a prince of Surnat,” he tried again, speaking to whichever set of hands was currently on his chest.  The sack was loose and hot where his breath washed back over his face.  “I demand to speak to the man in charge here.”

Their silence and their lack of force unnerved him
, but he realized they needn’t be rough. He was cooperating and, besides that, they must see that he was in no condition to fight. They had no reason to hurt him, they were simply taking precautions.  He’d be ransomed back to his brother and this would all be over soon.  But knowing was not the same as feeling, and right now Nathan was starting to panic again.

A
s the ropes went tighter he lost his grasp on calm.  He tried to jerk away, but that only twisted him around against his shoulders.  He couldn’t lean forward enough to get his legs beneath him without yanking his arms in the same fashion.  The ropes chafed and held him firm.

Someone put a hand beneath his chin and cradled his cheek.  The sack was pulled back enough that a
cup could be brought to his lips and that was all it took to still him.  The water this time was clean and cold and the few sips they gave him were precious.

They secured his bindings and double-checked them. 
Nathan heard other movement, things being pushed around the room, being opened or shut, and sounds he could not identify at all.  He slumped against his bonds and listened as his captors left the room.  More waiting then, alone and in darkness.

***

“Hello?” Nathan
called out.  He thought he heard the door shut a moment ago, but it was quiet now and it could have been his imagination.  He had no idea how long it’d been since he’d been taken or how long it’d been since they strung him up.  His knees felt bruised already and his feet were asleep.  At least his headache had faded.  He strained his senses through the darkness, against the silence, for any hint of another.

“Hello
Prince Dorthorial,” a woman spoke at last.  She must have been standing in the doorway for he heard no sound but her voice.  When she moved towards him the loud heel of her shoes gave away her steps.

Na
than brought his eyes up as that sound approached and when she pulled the sack off from over his head he was immediately surprised.  She sounded older, but her voice didn’t match at all with her smooth, round face.  She looked to be twenty perhaps, certainly no older than twenty three.  He had nearly a decade or more on her, there was no need to be scared of her, and yet something about her did just that.

Black hair hung in
thick rings off her shoulders and landed above her elbows.  It framed her face and her upper body, and what it didn’t hide was left mostly exposed.  Her outfit did little to obscure her figure.  Tight darkened leather hugged her hips and constrained her breasts.  A crisscross of ribbon, black as her hair, ran up one side of her body and pulled the outfit tight to her curves.

Nathan
meant to take in the room as well but her clothing demanded his attention.  Her dress serve the same function as a corset in its tightness.  It constricted and emphasized her breasts in just the same way.  For the moment he forgot about his captivity.  And despite all his weariness, uncertainty, hunger and thirst, he felt another need stir.

He
had to force his eyes and his mind off her breasts.  He followed the arch of each of those fleshy orbs to her shoulders and down her arms, to the gloves she wore.  They were made of matching leather and ended at her elbow in a tie of black ribbon.  He followed along her skin and down again, across the curve of her waist and the flare in her hips.  Her skin was darker than his, though not as dark as the browned leather she wore.  His eyes wandered to her feet, to the boots that produced that distinct click on each step, of heel on stone.