Fraul, II

He was angry–Lord, he was angry. The woman leaning on the crank could hear it in his scream, which had gone from indignant hurt to a childlike wail, past meltdown, past tantrum. She stopped the crank and he gasped for air. Veins stood thick and ripe in his forehead.

People got like this quickly, she reflected. Well, quickly was a relative term. It had been morning when he’d come in. At that moment it was evening.

She almost didn’t want to continue. If he’d had anything to tell them, he would have told them already. She pressed her lips together.

Her prisoner was somewhere else. She saw his head turn side to side. He murmured, and his eyes followed invisible things. In the first few hours, he had been aware of his own vulnerability–stretched out with arms fastened overhead, his ribs bared–and he had resisted the overhead ropes while she tried to crank the stretching rack. Every ravine of his lateral muscles, every string of his forearms, had stood out in sharp relief as he tried to protect himself. He was strong. Even with no water, even a full day hungry, he was stronger than she.

She had gone up and gotten the general, and the tall man on the torture rack had stuffed his fear although everything in him told him to give up. The general knew something the woman did not–he gave the prisoner no time to resist and drop-kicked the crank while he was relaxed. Even she had winced. The prisoner's enraged screams became tears.

Now, both elbows dislocated, he was murmuring words in another language so low she couldn’t hear his voice. His teeth were stained with blood.

She went upstairs to the general, who was eating in the soldiers’ barracks. He stabbed a piece of meat with a vengeance, ferried it to his mouth with the knife, and met her eyes as he tore it off with his teeth.

“Well?” he asked, chewing loudly.

“I don’t think he has any information,” she said, hands clasped before her. “I think he lied.”

“He’s a captain,” growled the general, stabbing another piece of meat. “He’s got to have something.”

The woman rolled her eyes when she turned away and clomped back down to the cell. Keys jangled from her belt and her boots echoed on the stone spiral staircase.

She sat down beside the rack. The tall man was breathing deeply, eyes closed, trying to move as little as possible with each inhale. She put elbows on her knees and said, “Tell me honestly–do you have anything, anything we can use?”

Eyes still shut, taking long nasal breaths, a smile crept over his face. She grimaced, huffed, and left. Her shoulders shook. Who was he to do this to them? Who was he to make her torture a man for no reason? No one ever said she liked her job. She did it because she was good at it; it made her feel valuable. And it made their pain mirror hers.

The next morning, it was not the woman but the general himself whose boots echoed down the stone staircase. The tall man, Fraul, opened his eyes at the sound.

The Oreian general kicked the table, nose wrinkled. Fraul spat at him. The man laughed.

“I see you slept well,” he said. The general felt the fever coming off the tall man in waves. His elbow joints stuck out like a bag of marbles. The general folded his arms and put their faces very close. The slender man smelled like blood. “Are you sure you have nothing more to say to us?” he asked. Fraul felt his stomach turn. He had nothing to say at all. He had lied, he had lied. But it was too late to say so now.

Still, he felt a kind of satisfaction in how he had fooled them. He turned his head away and faced the ceiling, waiting for the sickening pain. He wondered where his company was now, if his lieutenant had been promoted yet. Well, of course he had. Fraul felt lonely at the thought. He’d known they would move on without him. He just didn’t know it would feel like this.

His eyes went sideways to his sword and clothes in a pile on the floor. The green sword knot lay on the hilt. It should be Raru’s. Raru, his lieutenant, should have taken it from him upon his death, and yet here he was, still alive, still a captain, having left his company in the middle of–

The ropes yanked at his wrists and he heard the pop in his left knee. A second later he felt it.

He just kept screaming, though his throat was broken. He was angry, he was furious, and he snarled at them and yowled and kicked at the general whenever he could. He saw no more of the woman, which he registered dully in the moments of silence. The general stepped around the rack with hands clasped behind his back, leaning over to see his prisoner’s face.

Fraul’s honey-colored eyes were littered with blood vessels, but of humanity the general saw nothing in them. The feral pupils fixed on him, roved to follow him. Each time he nudged the crank, the ropes went tight on Fraul’s wrists and ankles, and his howling snarls wafted up the staircase and through the heavy wooden door.

When evening fell, the general left for dinner and sleep. He left the crank a little bit tight, and Fraul cried and heaved deep breaths and focused on freeing himself. It was the only way he could stay sane. He couldn’t pull at the ropes–his arms were useless now–and he turned his head this way and that to see how the rope was knotted. He thought of home.

He couldn’t sleep. His heart pounded and he wafted in and out of a feverish doze. Each time he would start awake and his dreams would slip out of his fingers like sand. He tried to remember them, anything but the condensation that dripped from the stone ceiling.

He saw moonlight through the window. Was he above ground? He didn’t remember. He didn’t know how long it had been. He smelled something lovely, like baking bread, and he lapsed into a dulcet fever dream where he lay on a straw-stuffed mattress and held someone close to him, someone who smelled of whiskey. He liked this dream. He would stay here, he decided. He had finally gone into shock, which eased the pain and the shaking and the ugliness of mortality.

He opened his eyes and heard footsteps. Was it morning already? No, it was dark.

He strained to see behind him, since it wasn’t boots that he heard. He felt someone standing there. He tilted his head upward and rolled his eyes to his brow, but he could only see the ceiling which had been his view for almost two days.

He asked, “Who are you?” No one answered; he asked again.

“I don’t understand you,” she said in Ezuran. He had been speaking the other language, the first language, and he frowned and tried to pull up unfamiliar words through the muddle of despair and fever. But he didn’t need to ask the question again; he recognized the woman’s voice.

She had come around to the front of him and stood staring down at him, no sympathy in her face. She held a torch, and her face garishly lit was also colored with bruises. Fraul frowned. This was no good.

He felt the friction of something sawing, but he had lost all feeling in his hands and he barely registered when the ropes snapped free. She went to work on his ankles, and then said, “Hold still,” and pushed his elbows back into their sockets. This, too, he didn’t feel.

Speaking Ezuran brought a pang on his heart, thinking of his lieutenant, marching out there alone somewhere. He rasped, “I can’t get up.”

“Then die here.” She turned and left.

Fraul watched in disbelief, cradling his arms to his chest. He wondered how close to dawn it was. His heart pumped faster and he tested his feet. He bent his ankles. Both feet were numb, and he tried to push himself up as if made of wood. A flash lit up his hips. He fell backwards, back into a supine position. His arms still wouldn’t hold him.

He blinked and shook his head like a dog. He wouldn’t pass out here. He rolled himself over and off the table at last, and he clocked his forehead against the stone ground and lay on his stomach, trying to remember how to breathe through the sudden tension that bound up all his muscles. His forehead was rumpled all the way through. He lifted himself as his stomach heaved and he fought the waves of nausea and blissful unconsciousness.

He would almost rather die here. But he thought of the general, finding him, strapping him back down, and Fraul pushed himself to hands and knees. His left knee was out for the count.

Fraul stayed there, on hands and knees, head bowed, combing his mind for something that would give him strength. Sandrine? No, he only ever saw pity in her eyes. He thought of Raru. He wanted to see Raru again. He wanted to see the camp, the smoke from fires, the smell of coffee. This did not give him strength; rather, it made him cry. He’d been stupid to give himself up.

He saw his sword on the floor by the wooden door. It glinted in the cold moonlight, and Fraul dragged himself elbow by elbow over to it. The blood was coming back to his joints. He struggled into the shirt and rolled onto his back and negotiated with the pants. Raru be damned, he wanted to get out of here for himself. He was hungry.

Fraul dragged the sheathed sword toward him. He pressed its tip into the ground and gripped its hilt with both hands, and his shoulders trembled as he placed both feet under him. The sword wobbled. He kept his weight on his right leg.

Good. He could stand. He collapsed back to hands and knees and the sword clattered. He reached out for it, belted it to his hip and breathed deeply, feeling like himself.

He crawled elbow by knee up the stairs. The dungeons were placed so that any noise, any screams or sounds of death, wouldn’t carry to the people who had ordered them. No one heard the scrape of his sheath on the ground, or the wheeze of his lungs.

Once up the stairs, he used the wall to get to his feet. He could see the door. It was unguarded–perhaps that had been the woman’s job. He thought of her bruises. Well. She was better off than he was. He smelled smoke. He thought he heard screaming, saw a fire down the hall. It could not have had better timing. He sent up a prayer.

Gritting his teeth, leaning on the wall, Fraul limped heavily toward the door. The adrenaline was wearing off and the pain was taking its place. He was near the coast, he knew that. He also knew he was near to collapsing. He ripped a piece of his shirt off and bit down on it, screwing his eyes shut, walking blindly so as to better focus. One foot, then the other.

Once outside, he saw moonlit stables. He saw the road down which he’d come, his hands tied with rope–had he really walked all the way here on his own? Now he lurched off the wall of the stone keep and shuffled toward the stables. Twice he fell. The second time, he crawled on his belly. The horses started with surprise when he heaved himself into the stable like some nocturnal snuffling creature.

He lay on the hay and groaned. Summoning the image of the camp, telling himself all he had to do was get to the docks, he found a donkey with a bucket of hay and oats.

Fraul shoveled the oats into his mouth before offering some to the creature. Hands knotted in the donkey’s short mane, he pushed off his right leg and tried to swing his left leg over. He couldn’t do it, and he landed back on his right foot. His knee locked out, and the bone alone kept him standing.

Fraul exhaled slowly, soothing himself, and jumped upward just as his leg gave out. His groan was furious, an unf of frustration. He slid on his belly over the donkey’s back and then negotiated his way around until his legs fell on either side of her ribcage.

He sighed soft. He was never going to hear the end of it.

Fraul didn’t have the strength to nudge the creature’s sides with his legs. Vaguely he heaved forward with his body and his steed hawed in protest and started walking. He sighed and dropped his forehead to her neck.

The donkey, unsung heroine that she was, walked him the four hours to the coast without even a hitch in her stride. He nearly fell and he jolted upright, thinking he was riding with his company. The discs of his spine lit up and his face turned red. This pain was something swelling in his veins that pushed all his breath and blood outward, up his throat, which made only a vague rasping sound. He felt his own heat, since the fever had not broken.

He just had a little more to go. The donkey ride and the handful of oats gave him some life, and he tugged her rope toward the rows of ships. It was nearing dawn. Fraul glanced at the boxes that lay ready to be loaded and found the ones that said Shipway, Ezure. He breathed in relief. He saw also boxes that said Ilcoceum City, and he paused before those. Either way he would be stowing illegal passage. He just wanted to sleep. He didn’t particularly care which boat he slept on.

Since the Ezuran boat was closer, and because he knew a healer there who might be able to help him, he paused the sweet donkey before the Ezuran ship. All was quiet. Light was leaking over the eastern sea. He meant to put his back to it.

He leaned over the donkey's neck and pivoted his body, ever-so-slowly, until he was draped sideways over her back with both feet hanging toward the ground. He allowed himself to slide one more inch, and his long legs touched jet-black, chunky dirt.

He limped up the dock and onto the ship, still using his sword as his left leg. Furtively Fraul glanced up and down the dock, and then he paused. He knew ships. His father had been a merchant. There was a place where they tossed their old food, and since the journey was more than three weeks, this was the place he needed to find.

He scanned the ship as he heard the donkey haw and wander toward grass. The vessel was of Ezuran make, unlike him. From the outside, below deck, he saw a little room with a hatch where the food could be dumped into the ocean. He hoped that this ship, too, had an automatic lever for the trash portal. He might go undiscovered there.

He took a few breaths and tried to distract his mind while he made the slow and wobbly walk. He had never been on an Ezuran ship alone. Always it was with a company of a hundred-plus men with him. Always his passage had been paid for. Now he looked down at his single-handed sword with the green knot dangling, and he almost laughed. He would never hear the end of it.

It turned out that he didn’t eat much; the fever got worse from the inflammation, and he tossed and turned in the falling rinds of food and felt rats crawl over him. He must have smelled awfully good to them, because he smacked them away many times. In his dreams they were the hands of people holding manacles.

The ship docked and Fraul fought off hallucinations, trying to pick out reality.

He opened his eyes as he smelled the trees. He was close now. Suddenly he thought of his rings. Where were his rings? Had they been taken?

He tried to sit up and the stiffness of his body prevented him; laying on his back, Fraul felt on his sword belt for the little leather pouch and squeezed it. Something clinked from the inside. He sighed and slipped them on, each one lethal. Fitting together across his knuckles, they formed a continuous band. They needed sharpening and oiling. He had a single golden ring, but it was on his thumb and was more family crest than weapon.

He felt safer. He waited and waited until he heard no more movement on the ship. Night was falling. He heard the thumping of crates outside and guessed the ship was making for another voyage.

Ever-so-carefully, Fraul pulled himself out of the trash heap and into the open. Then again, down the gangway, down the dock, into the trees.

The stable here was guarded. There was no way he was walking another week to reach the camp. He saw gentle lamplight coming from the inside and looked down at his single golden ring. He sighed.

The stablehand was blonde and looked up sharply at Fraul’s scraping entrance. His eyes widened and he gave a little curse of wonder.

“Sir, you need a doctor.” His eyes went to the sword at Fraul’s hip and he gave the man another quizzical look.

“I need a horse,” rasped Fraul. He leaned on the table and negotiated the ring off his thumb, sliding it over. The stablehand pocketed it without a word.

Fraul found the only donkey in the place. He didn’t see how he could jump onto a horse, with one leg out of commission and his arms all but useless. He felt the blonde boy’s gaze as he shut his eyes and pushed himself off the ground, sliding on his belly onto the donkey’s back and turning himself rightways. His shins swung on either side of her ribcage like doll legs. Then, meeting the stablehand’s eyes with a tired look, he walked out into the dawn and found the broad road.