Captive
hmmmm – this is really bad – i think i’ll go and edit it. Right – the work here is absolutely nothing like the original except for the plot and (not even) a bit in the middle. u could really say that the two are nothing alike and that this piece is just inspired by that other. (BTW – when this is printed its 4 pages (c3600 words) long.)
The ending is really bad in a very corny way. I would change it, but i just couldn’t be bothered.
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They had entered the safe-house. She knew it was only a matter of moments now before they found the trapdoor and the stairs leading down. She cleared the last of the mehdar from her desk just in case they should enter. Zech wasn’t frightened; Ranmed and his men had stormed this smugglers’ haven before. It had been a routine show of force that time, the city guards hadn’t been interested in stopping the lucrative operations that went on in the catacombs under the city. She hoped this time would prove similar.
Heavy boots pounded down the wooden stairs accompanied by the ring of steel drawn from leather scabbards.
“Nobody gets out,” a loud voice shouted into the dimly lit corridor. “We have all the exits blocked and have orders to kill anyone who attempts to flee or resists arrest.” Zech felt her spirit drop, they would arrest her and she would hang for the illegal import of the hallucinatory herb, mehdar. Well she would not go easily, she would risk death now as opposed to an embarrassing public hanging later. Pulling a dagger from her boot she prepared to meet the burly men that poured in her door. Their eyes locked on her, they came at her silently, deadly, two at a time; the only noise was the whistling of steel through air as they flexed their weapons. The first guard smiled and brought his glinting shortsword up, ready for the downstroke that would slice her dagger hand and then come back around to release her head from her neck.
Zech turned her head slightly sideways and closed the eye that faced the lethal guard. She prepared for the blow.
“Wait!” Ranmed, the captain of the guard’s quiet voice broke through the tension. The guard’s arm halted in mid-swing. “We shall keep this one for questioning. Disarm her, bind her and bring her along. I shall be outside.” With that he vacated the doorway he had been dominating.
The smuggler figured she should show some resistance as a statement of her unwillingness to go along with whatever that pig Ranmed ordered. She raised her dagger once more and glared at the guard who had been willing to kill her a second ago. He made no move towards her, she noticed that he did hold his sword ready though. Knowing that she had absolutely no chance Zech charged at the man, her dagger held high, aimed for his face.
An instant of confusion and she was on the floor with her dagger spinning across the stone tiles. That had gone even worse than she had expected; he had been so fast. Her wrist stung from where he had clipped it with the flat of his blade before his other hand had come down to push her to the floor. Two guards jumped her and held her arms down while a third sat on her legs. They knew what they were doing, there was absolutely no way she could move. The guard who had disarmed her lifted her up by the front of her shirt and the other guards bound her hands behind her back. A sword point pressed into the soft flesh at her neck.
“You behave now, or this sword will know you most intimately.” Zech couldn’t even nod.
Outside the hot summer sun shone down on the bloody entrance to the catacombs, a testament to the number that had ignored the warning not to leave and had tried to escape. The dark sand was matted with dark blood and bits of flesh. Thankfully the bodies had already been cleared away. A crowd had gathered around the entrance to the round, sand-coloured building, held back by a ring of burly guards. When they saw her come out a loud cheer went up for the arrest of the most notorious mehdar smuggler this side of the ocean. She did recognize a few faces that did not look pleased, those faces had a vacant, abstracted look to them, the mehdar addicts, her best clients. A few jeers and mocking calls came from the gathered crowd, she ignored them.
She kept her head up as the guards forced her into the very open cart that went as a conveyance for the arrested. The cart consisted of a wooden base that was solid enough and then a few rickety poles that formed a cage around the edges, the top was open. A guard rode with the convicted to make sure they didn’t try to escape or to stop them if they did. The cart was specifically designed to humiliate the convicted as much as possible as everyone could see in and it was a common sport to see who had the best aim at vegetable or egg throwing.
By the time they reached the prison she was covered in egg, flour, rotten tomato, and something that smelled loudly of manure. She had a few bruises from potatoes and other hard vegetables as well. The fallen smuggler’s only consolation was that most of the people in the city had a bad aim and the guards were filthy as well. The only difference was that she would be left to molder in her filthy stinking clothes, while they could wash as soon as they dumped her off.
The cart lurched to an unsteady stop outside the grotty native desertstone building. As they pulled up Ranmed was dismounting from his perfect black stallion.
In a moment of distractedness she wondered what his name was. Probably something beautiful and powerful like Storm. Zech jumped for an instant as she recognized the onset of the effects of the mehdar she had consumed just before the guards had entered the catacombs. The slight jolt of fear and adrenaline that always hit her at the onset of a trip lasted only moments to be replaced with a happy, carefree feeling. She looked around as she always did at the way her surroundings had just changed so suddenly. She was still outside the prison, but at the same time she was miles away. She felt as if she had just fallen asleep, the buildings, people, sky, earth had taken on a surreal quality, a seeming of not being exactly real; not unreal, just not totally solid. She looked around to see if any of the guards had noticed the change in her. It seemed as if they had not, though she could not be entirely certain. She wondered why they were delaying in taking her inside.
Then she saw the wizard.
He was young, carrying the ceremonial longstaff that was the mark of his profession. Zech wondered what he was doing here. She seemed to recall something about truth verification to ensure her guilt but the details eluded her intoxicated mind. He was so young, and wore such an earnest expression that Zech thought he looked at odds with himself, comical even. She laughed. Then she covered her mouth with her hands. It was too late. The guards looked over and knew from her distant eyes and slack expression that she was under the influence of mehdar.
“Here, captain. This one’s been sampling some of her own stock. She’s no use to us until she comes out of it,” the guard beside her seemed to call out. As soon as the words entered her ears they seemed to vanish until she couldn’t even be certain that he had actually spoken. She didn’t want to speak up for herself in case she had just imagined that he had spoken. She didn’t want to look like a fool speaking for no reason. Her mind drifted in and out of reality, she caught only snatches of the conversation between Ranmed and the wizard. She wondered how the mehdar had taken effect so quickly. Then she remembered that Saldar, the man she had bought it from, had said to test it first as it might be too strong due to a slight accident during its processing.
Her head spun and her heart started to beat wildly. She was loosing control, had to sit down. How had she come to be sitting on the floor of the cart? She could not remember sitting down. All she could think of was the lack of feeling anywhere, physical or mental except for the anxiety of when reality would reassert itself. She wanted the trip to end, but at the same time didn’t. She sloughed apathetically against the wooden poles of the cart trying desperately to stop the world from spinning.
She felt strong arms lift her to her feet. She could walk well enough and followed the dark blue shirt of the wizard into the dim interior of the prison. The change from light to dark was sudden and Zech’s eyes were slow to adjust. She spent a few agonizing minutes walking blind trusting to the bodies around her to keep her on the right path.
The smuggler sat on a hard wooden stool, facing the wizard. She had no sense of the journey to the room, having slipped out of time for a while along the way. She seemed to hear him arguing with Ranmed about the negative effects a spell could have. She had no idea what spell they were talking about or what the negative effects might be, she didn’t really care either. She looked from the wizard to Ranmed one deferential, the other angry. Finally she heard Ranmed say, “Just do it, I don’t really care what happens to her.”
She slipped out of time again then and came back to reality some time later with the wizard standing over her. He was peering into her eyes, as if to judge the state of her mental being. He seemed to be dragging her out of herself. For an instant Zech felt as if the spell was lifting her roughly out of the effects of the mehdar. Only for an instant, then everything felt wrong. She felt her body slump to the floor, but didn’t realize that it had happened. She saw the wizard from a skewed perspective, he looked to be standing on his side. His face seemed to ripple as if she was looking up at him from the bottom of a pond.
The ripples seemed to get wider in rhythm with her quickening heart beat. Her skin prickled, she began to see purple and black spots in front of her eyes. She looked at the wizard in fear, his face showed that something had definitly gone drastically wrong. Her eyes wouldn’t move, she couldn’t even blink. The wizard started to blur and change. She could only see shapes where he had been, as if some crazy artist had taken all the groups of colour and painted them as blobs on a moving canvas.
The smuggler gripped the leg of the fallen stool to steady herself in reality. It wasn’t working. Her existence shrunk to encompass only herself, her fear and the agonizing pain that the wizard’s spell was inflicting on her. It was trying to pull her soul out of her body by the most painful route possible. Zech heard a scream and was uncertain if it was her or the wizard. The sharp dryness in her throat told her that it was her voice screaming, she had no recollection of when she had started, it felt like hours ago. She felt herself lose her grip on reality and fall into darkness.
*
The first thing she became aware of was the hard, cold stone floor she lay on, the bitter chill and the damp seeping though her clothes. The next was the throbbing pain in her wrists. She moved them experimentally. Pain shot up her arms, she heard scabs cracking and felt a sticky warmth ooze over the lacerated flesh of her bound wrists. She remembered twisting and rolling on the ground in the grip of the spell, trying to pull her wrists apart and not realizing that the rope had bound them together. She had only managed to rip the tender flesh. She moaned, but no sound came out. She tried to form a sound, but her voice refused to work. Her throat felt as if it had been for a session with a meat grinder. She remembered her screams and how they had filled the room she had shared with the wizard and possibly the corridor outside as well.
She looked around at the small cell she had been thrown into. It was bearly big enough for her to stretch out in. The door had a small opening in it, just big enough for a hand to pass food through. She listened for a second, but there was no movement from outside the door. She looked up to the ceiling and down the wall opposite the door. That wall had a small grilled window set high up in it. Light slanted in through it from a lamp outside, giving her enough light to see by. Zech was just as happy that the window was there, even though it let the cold night air in, it also let out the smell of blood and stagnation that could build up.
She tried to sit up by levering herself up on her elbows and then pushing off the ground. She did not want to put any pressure on her wrists. When she was sitting with her back leaning against the damp wall and her knees pulled into her chest she turned to the sickening task of trying to loosen the rope tied around her wrists. To her relief she noticed that it had already been cut, but the blood of her wounds had soaked into it and as the blood had dried the rope had fused into the scabs. She would have to rip open the sores to get the rope off.
Zech really didn’t want to risk infection in this filthy cell so she tried to pry the rope off gently, without disturbing too much of the actual cut. It was a slow, painful process and by the time she had finished her wrists were throbbing with a hot pain and bleeding from numerous small rips. Her hands shook from the strain of muscles tensed for so long. She took a few deep breaths and tried to suppress the tears of frustration turned to relief. Eventually she managed to calm her turbulent spirit and come back to balance. The pain in her wrists eased off a little as the bleeding stopped and the scabs hardened once again.
The smuggler settled in to wait. She knew from the deathly silence coming form outside that it was close to dawn, the partygoers had gone home, but the next day’s deliveries had not started yet. Very quickly boredom grubbed its way into the monotony of the cell. Zech didn’t really care if she was bored, just so long as she kept her imagination well in check and didn’t get frightened. For something to do she tried to think of all the different cells she had occupied over the years. That quickly became depressing so she thought instead of all the mehdar trips she had been on. Some had been normal enough, but some like the most recent had been freakishly lucid and frightening in a thrilling way. She loved the exhilaration of not knowing if she would wake up the next morning or if she would succumb to the madness and surreality of the herb.
She was just starting to fall back to sleep again when she heard creeping footsteps. They came from outside so she walked over to the window and climbed up the rough stone to see who was trying unsuccessfully to walk unnoticed through the abandoned city streets. She peered into the gloom beyond the street lantern and could make out a cloaked figure coming towards her. It seemed to be looking into each of the cells along the wall. As the figure came closer to her cell she debated ducking back down into the cell or confronting the figure. She decided to wait and satisfy her curiosity. If things did start to go wrong she could always duck back into the cell then.
The figure finally reached her cell and jumped back a little at seeing a grinning face smiling up at him. Zech knew this nighttime stalker. It was Saldar, the mehdar farmer she had bought her latest batch off. His small, narrow face looked relieved to have found her.
“Zech, there you are. I’ve looked all over this prison for you.”
“Yes, it’s nice to see you too, Saldar.”
“Yes, yes. Good. How have you been? Well? Good.” He rushed the greeting, seeming a little distracted and hyper. “You want to get out? Of course you do. I can get you out.” He stopped and took a breath. Zech smiled a little at his quirky manner. It was a result of a lifetime of exposure to mehdar. He continued, “you do want to get out, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course I do, Saldar. How did you get here? How did you even find out so fast that I’d been arrested?”
“So fast? Zech you’ve been gone for over three days.” His face turned down into a look of concern. “You tried it, didn’t you? I guess I didn’t give you warning enough. My latest batch? It gives you the fastest, most lucid trip and then knocks you out for about three days. It’s my fault. Oh no, all my fault.” He rambled off and then fell into silence, shaking his head and pursing his lips together.
“Do you have a plan for getting me out of here, or did you just come because you needed my riveting conversation?” Zech couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice. Here he was all ready to get her out and he was making small talk. Then it hit her. Three days. How could she have been out for three days? It didn’t really matter, what had happened had happened and there was very little she could to change it.
She looked back up to his crouched figure, hunkered down to speak with her. “What exactly is your plan to get me out of here?” she asked.
“Well I have this horse.”
“And…?”
“And I can attach a rope to him on one side and the grille over your cell window on the other and he can run away and take the bars with him and you can crawl out. Right?” He did not sound at all certain of himself. His mouth formed a tight O shape as his eyebrows formed into a bewildered frown. His eyes shifted from side to side. “Well, it could work. If you can squeeze out this hole. Window.”
Zech examined the space of the window. She might fit, it would be tight though.
“So where is this horse of yours, Saldar?” she asked.
“He’s in a stable in a safe-house,” came the reply. “I’ll go and get him and you can be out of here. Just sit tight and don’t go anywhere.” He squinted momentarily. “Well I guess it’s not like you can go anywhere.” He laughed and was off up the street, his cloak flapping behind him. Zech hoped he remembered to come back. She tried to extinguish the spark of hope that was budding in her spirit, Saldar was unreliable at the best of times and when he was excited chaos was likely to follow closely on his heels.
She jumped quietly back onto the ground and paced the tiny cell waiting for the jumpy, absent-minded junkie to return. Time passed and the light outside grew brighter as the sun began to rise. The busy sounds of morning began to reach her cell as carts pulled into the market and stall-keepers shouted at helpers and assistants. Zech began to worry that Saldar had forgotten. Even if he did come back, by now there were too many people around and they would not have the element of surprise to the escape.
In the distance she heard the clop of horse shoes on hard-packed sand. She jumped to the window to look out. To her horror it was Saldar, riding Ranmed’s perfect black stallion. Where had he found him, or what stable had he stolen him from? Zech felt herself go weak at the thought of what Ranmed would do if they were caught. She looked up and down the street. It was blissfully empty.
Saldar halted the horse just outside her cell and pulled a rope off the saddle. He tied one end to the pommel and brought the other end to her cell window.
“Do you think this will work, Zech?” He asked with a puzzled frown on his face. “Ah, well. We can always try.” He gave the grate an experimental tug. It did not budge. Zech feared for the well being of the horse. She had little time to worry though as Saldar had already leaped up on the horse and was backing him towards the wall. With a whop he slapped the horse’s rear and the two charged off down the road. Zech was amazed that no one had come running with all the noise he was making. The slack on the rope shortened. Zech jumped off the wall and took cover by the door of her cell. She heard a loud crash and then a series of metallic thuds as the grate bounced along the sandy road behind the horse.
Zech jumped for the window and being careful not to scrape her tender wrists along the edge pulled herself out. It was a very tight fit and she scraped most of the flesh off her shoulders getting through. By the time she was standing on the road Saldar had come back around. He reached down and pulled her up onto the stallion’s back. She cried out as he gripped her sore wrists. He winced and quickly told her that he was sorry. They raced off passed the market, passed the guard barracks and out into the morning heat of the desert. The city faded behind them and Saldar turned east toward a rocky outcropping and safety.