Thief (29 page)

It was a village as Mikel found out over the following days and weeks. An abandoned village of stick huts which the five of them, - six now including himself, had taken over. It had no running water, no electricity, and was surely one of the coldest places on Earth, even though it wasn’t on Earth.

They slept on beds made of the leaves they gathered daily from the surrounding trees, their bulk insulating them from the cold hard earth beneath. They ate their food raw, and occasionally lit a fire for the comfort of light rather than for warmth or cooking. Toilets consisted of holes dug every few days and covered. Bathing was a dip in the ice-cold stream, something left for truly desperate times. For when the smell and the itch became truly unbearable.

The only food came from the fruit trees that grew in abundance around them, a wealth of wild roots, and the fish in the stream. Unfortunately, looking at the fish set out on that first evening, Mikel knew instinctively he couldn’t eat them. Even in her absence he couldn’t go against Sherial’s wisdom. He had failed her in so much, he wouldn’t fail her in that as well. Instead he found himself foraging for legumes, wild grains and anything with a protein component over the following weeks. It was not a good diet, but probably a healthy one.

Clothing consisted of what he had brought with him, the remains of his supposedly undetectable suit, and what could be woven from the flax like plants around them. It itched when it got wet and smelled, and it was cold, but again he could not find it within him to go against Sherial’s ways and wear fur like the others. He accepted the chill as his reward for failure and put up with it.

Yet for all its primitiveness, life in the village didn’t really bother him that greatly. It was the reason that they were all living in it that grieved him. For they were the failures. The ones the angels had recruited, and who had failed them. These were the ones Sherial had shown him that day she’d shown him Hell. And now he was one of them. The six of them were truly prisoners, for the brand prevented them going too near to the pit as Mya called it, yet geography conspired against their leaving. They were bounded on three sides by a massive mountain range, and the fourth was the black castle he’d escaped.

Yet even had the geography been kinder, they still couldn’t have left. Their own sense of shame and failure prevented them. No guards were needed to keep them in. This village of the damned was the only barely tolerable place between two forms of hell and a slow death.

And Mikel was trapped in here with them.

If the climate itself was bleak, the mood of his neighbours was equally cold. No one spoke, not really. They exchanged words, and greetings in the village’s own pigeon language, but even that only when there was need. They didn’t meet, they didn’t gather together against the nightmare that had been, they didn’t share conversation. Mostly they didn’t talk unless it was necessary. Seldom could they even bear to face one another, for the most part choosing to merely nod in the open area as they passed one another. Life for one and all consisted of doing the few chores necessary to continue living, and wallowing in misery for the rest of their days. It was not a happy place.

But at least it was an interesting one.  When his pain allowed him to be interested. For his companions were as none he had ever imagined.

For a start there was Abrax, the barbarian as he thought of him. A man, a creature so large and powerful he made Conan look like a wimp. Seven feet or more tall, four hundred plus pounds and not an ounce of fat on him. He moved like a jungle cat and cracked small rocks with his hands for – fun? Yet he had not the brain of a ten year old. Still, of them all he alone was not afraid of Lea’s wolves and cats. In fact Mikel suspected, he looked forward to the challenge. Abrax too was the only one who found the conditions of the village acceptable. His only real gripe was that he spent too long in a single place. His people were normally nomadic. Being cooped up in this one place was a form of prison for the big man.

Abrax was also one of the two who most liked to spend time with him. For some reason the big man looked up to him, thought him the one who was so strong he would break these chains. Often he spoke of Mikel’s power, in his lilted doggerel, almost as if he were a mystic. Yet he was speaking of forces and strengths that Mikel couldn’t even begin to understand. Abrax believed he was in some way, the strongest of them all. That he was the one they had prayed for. Yet the big man’s faith in him, was if possible even worse than the others’ despair, as Mikel had no way of answering it.

Then there was Lea, the youngster. He claimed he was twenty three, but Mikel would have put him at seventeen, - a young seventeen at that. Average in every way, he could have been at home in any shopping mall across the Earth, except for his pets. The wolves, large as ponies, the lions and tigers larger still, and the things that looked like wild boars only the size of bison. He had sixty plus of them, all of which obeyed his commands, and for the most part stayed away from the village, which was a relief. They tended to be more than a little terrifying. For Lea they were pets. Too everyone else they were sudden death on four legs.

Lea; he thought of him as a kid, was a nice sort. Of all of them he alone wanted to talk, too young perhaps to understand that the others couldn’t stand to speak of what had been. He looked up to the rest one and all, as though they were his salvation and Mikel knew he was simply afraid. He too had met the evil and lost. He too had no idea how to overcome the nightmare that had become his life. But alone among them Lea had enough courage to hope that one of the others might be able to get them all out.

It was Lea that taught him most of the village’s pigeon language, though in truth he found he could understand what they said even when he didn’t know the words. The effects of having been so close to Sherial he guessed. He only wished he was closer still.

Grould was the vampire. Tall, white and impossibly thin, with a face that spoke of the living dead. Yet in personality he was anything but. He was warm and soft, kind hearted to a fault, and above all, filled with his failure. He was the type that wore his heart on his sleeve and yet said nothing, letting his gaunt face speak for him.

Perhaps more than any of the others Grould showed that he had a different origin from Earth. His skin wasn’t just pale, it was tinged blue. His teeth in the front were double fanged, his eyes slanted in a way that had never been seen on Earth, and he had only four fingers on each hand. Four glass clawed fingers. Yet for all that made him different, he too was the same as the rest of them; a failure.

Grould was a psychic, in every sense of the word. He could read minds, move objects with the mere touch of his thoughts, and even - so he claimed - predict the future. In that Grould was the village’s only hope, for it was he that predicted eventual success, though he couldn’t see how. His ability was limited. But Mikel knew that he like the rest, always would wonder if the psychic was simply trying to raise their spirits with a fairy tale.

Hermen looked to Mikel like a born again surfer. He had long platinum blond hair that he wore in a ponytail, skin that tanned golden brown, and the long slender physique of a beach bum. He would have fitted in on any beach on Earth except for his eyes, which were slitted like a cat’s, They were golden too.

He claimed to be a technologist, though the only things mechanical he had on him were the circlet around his forehead which he said was a controller, and a watch which seemed little more advanced than Mikel’s own. Hermen was perhaps the sorriest of them all, for he had absolutely nothing left of his technology, nothing left to occupy his mind or lend him hope. Lea had his animals, Grould and Abrax their normal strengths. Mya had her magic staff. Hermen had only his knowledge, and no way of recreating his super science in this backwater.

Mya rounded out the group, a complete contrast to everyone else. Now there was a kettle of fish. A middle aged woman, tiny almost pixie like in stature, yet with a rage towering out of all proportion. She carried herself as though she was a princess, yet the bitterness that shot out of her mouth was in no way regal. Within her minute frame dwelt the chaos and rage of an angry tornado.

Mikel had to admit she had some power, though he had no idea what it was. When she pointed her staff, she could light fires and move things, and she could also set up a pretty good light show if she wanted. Still he asked himself, was it really magic, or simply science he didn’t understand? Whatever it was, it hadn’t been enough.

In his first few weeks here he had studied his companions, as they in turn studied him, trying to understand what made them tick, and underlying that, why they too had failed. It wasn’t easy with no one saying anything of substance. Few were even willing to say anything at all about their experiences inside the demon’s lair. Then again, perhaps they were simply unwilling to recall it, a feeling he could understand.

Of the little he knew, all except Hermen had entered the lair. All had lost. All had been caught and branded something none could bring themselves to speak about, not that that surprised Mikel. It was something he himself could barely bring himself to recall. Every time he tried, the feeling of overwhelming horror possessed him, making him want to run, to be sick. It grew no weaker with time.

Instead he spent his time shying away from the horrible darkness of that time, and instead tried to focus on the positives. And despite the air of gloom that seemed to surround him, there still seemed to be a few bright sparks to cling to. For a start while he was down,  - well down - he still wasn’t out. Mikel still somehow held a glimmer of hope. He still had every intention of trying to rescue the prisoners, to finish his mission, even though it might be nearly impossible. Perhaps it was a genetic thing, perhaps just false bravado, but he knew that that hope, was the one thing that could save him, and he clung to it with a fierceness he’d never before known.

Hope was something the others no longer had. He could see it in their eyes when they stared back at him, and perhaps more importantly, when they couldn’t meet his eyes. It had left them to be replaced only with a terrible sadness, an overwhelming melancholy. A resignation and an admission of defeat. As if on some level they had given up. As they had. Perhaps he couldn’t blame them for that. But in doing so, they had also given up on life. The five of them were now effectively sitting here, rotting. Waiting to die. The terrible part was that they one and all knew it. It shone out of their eyes. They all knew it and could do nothing.

It depressed him. But more seriously, it scared him. For they had been here much longer than him. They had adapted. Every question he had asked, would ask, they surely had already asked and had answered. Was he destined to follow them down this bleak and foreboding road to death? Every fibre of his being resisted it, no matter how bad the pain became. Every single atom knew he had to move forward.

Yet the pain caused by the brand was unbearable. It hit him daily, perhaps twenty or thirty times. It brought him to his knees screaming uncontrollably, and left him vomiting with reaction afterwards. In the depths of his mind he knew the same questions as they must have known. How long could he resist before it broke him. Before he became a babbling idiot. Logically he knew he had to break free and break free soon if he was to have any hope of surviving this. But logic thus far had been useless.

After weeks of struggling to find a solution he had gotten precisely nowhere. He still didn’t have a single scrap of a plan.

All he did have were ways to minimize the pain, to decrease the number of times it hit him each day. But he also knew instinctively, that if he used them they would leave him further behind the eight ball.  For while they were effective against the pain they crippled his ability to fight back, and ultimately wore down his will to live. And they were ways that the others had started to use, just to survive.

There were certain things he couldn’t think of. Things that would bring the brand screaming back into life. Yet things that he had to think of, or give up.

Highest on that short list was anything to do with the angels, with Sherial. The merest thought of her brought an inferno to his face, and an answering response from the imprints where her hands had held him as they made love. Yet he was unable to stop thinking of her. A free moment, a stray recollection and he was on his knees screaming. Even knowing the pain, he knew not knowing of the glory that was Sherial would be intolerable. He prayed it would always be so.

Positive thoughts were also frowned upon. Love, hope, happiness all were an anathema to the brand, and it told him so daily. This then was its purpose, he knew. To drive away all hope, all love, all goodness. To leave behind the bitter and twisted empty shell of what had once been a man. It was something he fought with all his might. But for how long?