45 - Everyone knows my name

Sometimes senselessness is peace, and waking the nightmare.

Having passed out fighting I woke fighting, until pain and strangulation and nausea made me stop. I threw up onto the floor right beside my head. I kept my eyes closed, and tried to convince myself I was in the Hearthstone, sick with some childhood ailment, with my mother near if I called her, with caresses and medicines.

That didn’t go with the rope choking off my breathing, though. I felt fingers pulling on it, to loosen it, and my wrists, bound behind my back, yanked up a little. I was Lakan-bound, which is to say, my wrists were tied such that if I struggled, the loop around my neck would tighten. Other than the ropes I was naked. I lay still, and breathed deeply. My head was in throbbing agony in several places.

The thousand implications that lay in this, I almost felt I’d rather die than think, but my heart knew. I felt tears coming, and mastered them, hard as it was, for no more reason than seeing a pair of sandaled brown feet close in front of my face, and not wanting to look weak to a captor. He said something in Lakan, and with one toe toyed with my forehead.

Klajen broke his oath, I thought. Why? Does he know who I am, from seeing my face up close? Or is he just a sore loser? Not knowing, I must give away nothing. Whether my warriors were dead or alive or captive, how many and who we had lost in the battle, I could not know. I could only hope that the knowledge would somehow slip my way. So it is for prisoners. But for the one man, I was alone, on the floor of a room.

The Lakan turned me onto my back, which sent spikes of pain through my elbows and shoulders, and poured water over my face. Just raising my head a little set it to spinning and the pain spiking, but he hauled me up to sitting. A least he had the kindness to wait until the room mostly stopped spinning end over end before he made me stand by yanking upwards on the rope up my back, strangling me and twisting my arms at once.

My ankles were roped with just enough slack between them to allow short walking steps; I was naked except for my father’s wisdom tooth. Someone is wearing my crystal as a trophy, I thought. The only reason the tooth was left came to me later: it was both frightening and worthless to them.

Where Chirel was, I could not know. The thought nearly made me lose the mastery over my tears. Worse that Chirel had been captured than I, far worse; I thought of my father, of my grandmother, of my forebears before them. Then I turned the thought away. Another lesson of captivity: one must stifle most of one’s thoughts, at least at first, for they are unbearable.

My guard led me by the arm to the hearth-chamber of the house, where Klajen sat with his attendants. The guard pushed me forward and stepped on the rope between my feet at once, so I fell on my face at the noble’s feet. When I tried to turn my face out of the dust, Klajen put his own foot on the side of my head and pressed down.

“Well, quicklime boy,” Klajen said. He doesn’t know who I am, I thought, else that, and not the quicklime, would be what I am to him and what he’d call me by. “You look a little less proud now.”

He got up, and gave orders. They kicked me over onto my back, and one of his men stood on the rope between my feet, while another put a foot on my shoulder, so I could not move. I caught sight of what was leaned against his chair: a sack of quicklime, taken from our own store. He sat beside me cross-legged, dipped a cup into the sack with a gauntleted hand, and grabbed me by the chin with the other, which was bare, to make me look at him.

“You may not believe in them, but still, the Gods don’t look kindly upon one who profanes a sacred duel, by using magic,” he said.

“That’s why you broke your oath? I used nothing but what is natural to me, second Fire come if I lie!”

“Your oath has as much weight as your respect for the honour of a duel,” he said. “When you struck, your eyes were closed!”

Kyash… Of course they’d think of weapon-sense as magic. Now seemed a good time to lie. “I didn’t want to see his eyes, so frightening was his look… you can tell where the sword is by its whistling when someone does that, if you know how… it was his mistake for doing moves I could predict!”

He struck me hard across the face, whipping my head to the side, hissing some curse at me in Lakan at the same time. It made little difference to how much I already hurt. He grabbed my chin to make me look at him again and lifted the cup of lime over me.

Be afraid, I told myself. Be afraid, but do not lose your wits. I felt sweat break out all over. Fear must have shown on my face, for I saw his retinue, guards and squires and servants in an upside-down circle, grin at me in amusement, their teeth bright in dark faces. I remember his scent, which was patchouli.

“I wonder if you barbarians, who have no gods, are aware of the concept that what a man subjects others to he shall be subjected to himself,” he said.

I used it as a weapon of war in defense of my people, I thought, not to torture someone helpless. I opened my mouth to say this, and then thought better; he’d just hear it as defiance, not reason. There was no answer I could make to help myself, if he intended to do it. So I set my teeth and held my silence.

Tightening his hand on my face, he brought the cup near my eyes. Terror has a taste and a scent, as well as a feel, so like illness. “Why shouldn’t I do this, snake-belly-skinned savage, hmm?” I didn’t clench my eyes closed, though, keeping my eyes on him. He put down the cup beside my head, took a pinch between his gauntletted fingers, moved them over my sword-side nipple, and let fall a tiny pinch.

I have kept quiet through two floggings to falling, I thought as I began to feel it burning; this can’t get worse than that. Why am I so afraid? Simple: I was wrong; it could get much worse. Those floggings came from friends; I’d never been in enemy hands before. Now I knew how different it felt.

I scraped my tongue along my lips. He looked close into my eyes, grinning, and moved his hand with the lime again. It stopped above the tip of my penis.

Always, in such times, I split into two, some part of me staying cool and sensible even if the other is gibbering. “I’m being tortured,” the calm part thought casually. “So this is what it’s like.”

“You know, quicklime boy, I’d like to kill you,” he said. “And doing it just with lime would take a length of time I’d find deeply satisfying. But I wonder if it’s possible that you can talk me out of it, by speaking of your ransom value to the other wool-heads, and such things.”

Wool-heads, my calm part thought; it was almost funny. I understood his intent, profit as well as vengeance; he was trying to find out from me the most I could be worth by putting me where I would dearly want to tell him. I know, for I did. “A boy with fighting-magic, quite expensive, you should be. Perhaps you are a noble’s son too, so that you might sell for more than the pleasure of killing you, and destroying your magic, is worth?”

Don’t be a fool, I told myself; you’ll be in a thousand times worse trouble if you tell, and the people of Yeola-e, too. He might be lying; what I’d earn in the slave market might be more than the pleasure of killing me was worth, too, and, as Mana had said, “There are cracks in the walls, for captives.” I need but lie one better.

“Ran…s-s-som…” My voice came out rasping, my mouth being dust-dry. A young setakraseye, of good promise; how much? No one I’d met who’d been through this had ever wanted to speak of it at all, let alone tell me his price. “I don’t know, how much… I don’t know the standard rate… I’m good, you saw, I have a very good name, that’s how I command a hundred so young, I’m going on eighteen, I’m just filling out slowly, I won all the contests in my village, Unsword, wrestling, sparring, running, everything… it’s Rao Kyavinara, tell the Yeoli generals that, Rao Kya-vi-na-ra, they know that name!”

They did. I had told Hurai the story of my time with Sinere Circus, and Tyeraha, of course, had known it long before. They’d know exactly who they were getting for the price of a setakraseye; for that I was willing to be sold. I forced a brave I’ll-prove-myself grin. “Everyone knows my name!”

Klajen absently dropped the pinch of quicklime on my middle, then brushed off the fingers of his gauntlet on my side. Thinking of my father branding himself, I kept my silence as it consumed my skin. I have the scars still. Then they dragged me back to the room I had awakened in, and left me. By turning over and rubbing myself against the floor, as best I could without letting my wrists pull on the neck-loop so it would tighten, I managed to get most of the lime off.

This will not be long, I told myself; tomorrow, or the next day, or soon after that, the ransom will be paid and they’ll let me go. I cheered myself imagining the joy on my warriors’ faces, when I sauntered into wherever they were camped; since none of them were here, as far as I could tell, he’d apparently honoured that aspect of his oath, perhaps not wanting to fight them. The thought that they might all have been killed was too horrible to admit into my mind. Of course they could still be holed up in the prison.

What had become of the rest of the army… of my shadow-parents, my friends who were not in my unit, Emao-e, Hurai? More unbearable thoughts; I decided I’d just hope the best for all had happened, for now. I thought of Kamina, and wept again, now I was alone.

After a time a servant came in; you can tell them easily by their bearing, subservient in every motion. He gave me a draught of water that wasn’t enough, washed, salved and bandaged my lime-burns, and led me to the midden, watching me all through. Then he took me into the hearth-chamber again.

There, two of Klajen’s warriors put me down face-first on the floor again, clamped my head between their knees and pierced and ringed my ears, as I had learned Lakans do with slaves.

I underplayed my worth too much, I thought. I was in the dark, as anyone is, haggling for something he has never haggled for before and so doesn’t know the price of. Have I been sold? Or are these Klajen’s tags? I could not know; these men probably didn’t even speak Enchian so I could ask. I remembered the Benaiat Ivahn’s words, “No one will ever own you,” with acid irony.

Then I thought, though they have my hands bound and I must go where they lead, for now, he is still right; no one truly owns me until I choose to be owned. I’d find my crack, and Tyeraha would save the ransom money.

†

[Author's note: this is a long weekend in Canada, so there won't be a post on Monday. More likely I'm helping some dear friends open their cottage. See you Tuesday.]