One Night at Sea (2)
Hidden in the undergrowth, Jordy closed his eyes at the sound of distant voices.
Most people of the kingdom would have found the words incomprehensible, but as a prince who had studied foreign tongues from childhood for the sake of diplomacy, Jordy could make out a fair amount of what they said.
That he understood only in part, never completely, was not because he had been lazy in his studies. It was simply the natural gulf that dialects, accents, and individual speech habits opened between speakers.
In truth, it hardly mattered whether he understood them or not. The men approaching were foreign mercenaries or soldiers come to take his head. From the snatches he caught, they already had a rough idea of where he was.
Nearby lay the campfire he had lit with a lighter to cook his meal; there were no tracks leading elsewhere, and his horse remained tied to a tree. Sooner or later they would find him.
Therefore Jordy decided to kill them before they found him.
Foreign mercenaries.
At least they were not regular soldiers. Mercenaries tended to be more poorly equipped, which meant more openings to exploit.
Jordy quietly drew his sword.
The famed blade once presented to the royal house had, under his long and careless use, grown dull and crusted with rust and dried blood, its former brilliance lost. Yet the tip remained keen enough to drive straight through a man without trouble.
He settled into a careful stance. The instant the mercenaries’ eyes turned elsewhere, he burst from cover.
The bushes thrashed violently; their gazes snapped toward him—but his blade was already buried in one man’s side.
“Guh—!”
Unable to kill the momentum of his charge, Jordy tumbled and rolled. From inside his coat he pulled another weapon.
A weapon he had smuggled in from abroad by every means during the war. A weapon whose use by the revolutionary army had left so deep an impression that he had been determined to possess one at any cost. And now he did.
Bang!
The pistol spat fire. A second mercenary crumpled where the bullet struck him.
“Wh-what the—!”
Two men down in an instant, Jordy lunged for the last. The remaining mercenary, though startled, met him with cool composure.
Swordless, holding only an empty pistol, Jordy—no matter how wildly he fought—could not overcome a man hardened by years of brawls.
A fist reshaped by long seasons of beating every sort of opponent slammed into him. Jordy’s vision went black in a single heartbeat.
When he next opened his eyes, the first sensation was of his body being dragged somewhere.
He jolted and scraped over rough, uneven ground. At least they had fashioned some sort of sled or litter so that his skin was not flayed raw against the earth; that much he could count as luck.
Hearing returned next: a tuneless humming and the steady thud of hooves. Recognizing the horse as his own, Jordy felt a surge of disgust that the animal now obeyed a stranger’s commands.
Traitorous bastard. Just like Tiara.
Cursing the lover who had vanished without a word during the war, he carefully cracked his eyes open and surveyed his surroundings.
He tried to move his limbs; they were bound fast and would not stir.
His nose—whether broken or merely swollen from the punch—made breathing a labor. He began to breathe through his mouth and soon realized the beating had continued after he lost consciousness.
Probing the inside of his cheek with his tongue, he found the flesh torn where teeth had cut it under the force of the blows. Agony washed over him.
His whole body hurt. Not merely the ache of being dragged behind a horse while bound. Every joint throbbed as if the bones themselves were bruised.
Jordy had been sent from battlefield to battlefield at his father’s command, yet never before had he been beaten so thoroughly…
No.
His seniors in the army had once caught him nodding off on night watch after taking drugs and had beaten and trampled him half to death for it.
Not the first time.
It had hurt like this then, too.
Just how hard did this mercenary work me over?
To inflict pain equal to a mass lynching by dozens of men—Jordy ground his teeth, thinking that was precisely why one must never deal with vulgar, low-born “livestock.”
How long they rode he could not tell.
When a village appeared in the distance, the mercenary hung a marker on Jordy that proclaimed him a war criminal, then led him inside.
At first the gate guards tried to bar the way of a man hauling what looked like a barely human corpse. One glance at the marker and they stepped aside without further protest.
In these days, when the flames of war still licked across the neighboring kingdom, mercenaries dragging in war criminals were hardly rare.
Inside the village the mercenary chose a suitable tavern, ordered drink after drink, and drained every cup the moment it arrived.
Crude, low-proof swill born of primitive brewing—yet to a mercenary just returned from the grinding misery of the front it was sweet as honey, soaking every bone.
“Ahhh!”
One cup. Two. Three. When he was properly warmed, the mercenary began spinning tales of his own valor, lifting the whole tavern’s mood.
War, war—everyone spoke of war, but that was the neighboring kingdom’s affair.
Here, of course, the shadow of conflict had tightened supplies and cast a pall, yet they themselves were the invaders, not the invaded. The damage was far lighter than in the land where the fighting actually raged.
“There I cut down no fewer than ten soldiers and rescued our men who were cut off! After the clean-up the commander himself called me over to praise me, didn’t he?”
“Ohh!”
“That’s something, brother!”
“A commander—must be a noble, right? What’s it like, seeing a noble up close?”
In return for the entertaining stories the listeners bought him more drink; the mercenary, merely by opening his mouth, soaked his throat and spirit in free liquor.
“So this is the war criminal?”
“That’s right. What was it they said? He threatened people who couldn’t fight and forced them onto the battlefield. Set them on fire so the pain would drive them wild!”
“What kind of mad bastard—!”
“Filthy scum!”
“Hey, why keep a monster like that alive?”
“Alive he’s worth more money!”
The mercenary rapped Jordy’s head for emphasis, then—to demonstrate that even so wicked a war criminal was as harmless as a trembling virgin on her wedding night once he was in the right hands—seized Jordy by the hair and smashed his face into the table.
“Ghk!”
The skin of his forehead split; blood ran. Pain and the jolt of the impact set Jordy’s vision reeling. He clenched his teeth and glared, but the mercenary simply grabbed his face and shoved him aside.
“See? The bastard can’t even talk back—just takes it!”
“Huh! Impressive. From the stories you’d think he was some demon who didn’t fear the gods themselves.”
People who had first regarded Jordy with fear now, watching the mercenary’s casual contempt, mastered their dread and began to edge closer, testing him with small touches.
“Hey now, don’t damage my merchandise.”
“Aw, just want to feel him once.”
Gulp. Gulp.
Seeing their disappointment, the mercenary upended a brimming tankard down his throat and declared,
“How about this, then? Pay me a little something and I’ll let you touch him!”
“Pay? Money?”
“Times are hard enough already…”
“Yeah, that’s a bit much.”
“Come on! This is the hell-spawn who burned men alive to make them fight! You men—if you’ve got any guts, land one good punch on this demon!”
“And if he curses us?”
“If you’re proving you’re real men, you’ve got to risk that much!”
Drunk and loud, the mercenary’s words snared other drunken men who, eager to prove their manhood, paid their coins and began to strike Jordy or spit on him.
“Ugh! Ah! Gyaah!”
Fists cracked against his skull; boots drove into his belly; a wad of phlegm-laced spit landed square in his eye, bringing a fresh wave of agony.
Still bound hand and foot, Jordy could offer no real resistance.
All he could do was grind his teeth and glare at the people he had always dismissed as livestock.
In a quiet corner of the tavern several men watched Jordy, then the mercenary, then Jordy again. Speaking in low voices that blended into the general din, they soon rose and left.
And the next morning, when the mercenary woke from his drunken stupor, he discovered that his precious prize—Jordy—had been stolen by persons unknown.