|
|
|
|
Betrayals: twentyby Steve Bowers |
Zero plus fourteen hours
(subjective time x 10^3)
They
managed to drag a
few of the prisoners out of the burning keep; the Mummers had tried to
destroy the evidence of their torture chambers by killing all the
prisoners, which of course was the same thing as releasing them. After
they had been murdered, here in the dungeons, the prisoners would
reappear far away, to start a new life from scratch. In truth, each of
those reborn would find themselves far from anywhere they had ever been
before, and would think themselves lucky if they were accepted as a
servile; but this was the way of the world.
The unlucky ones were the maimed and twisted husks that survived, and
would linger in these ruined bodies for a while.
Gusta gave water to these luckless survivors; she was looking for the
guards and torturers of this castle, some of whom had escaped by
killing themselves, some had disguised themselves in rags and pretended
to be victims. Their discarded masks, fashioned into the likeness of
crows and vultures, lay everywhere. Even though death was an easy
escape, anyone who disappeared into rebirth at this stage in the great
game would lose any chance of being chosen by the Traders.
That was the true escape; no-one ever came back from wherever the
Traders took you; even this uncertainty was better than the endless
cycle of painful death and starting life again from the bottom of the
pile.
Or so everybody here believed, rightly or wrongly. Who really knew what
happened to those lucky ones? They could go to a worse world than this-
But the Traders were late. They didn't come when they had been
expected, which had never been known before. Those waiting in
the camps outside the Mummer's keeps were becoming uneasy, even
frantic, in their disappointment; now the ferment had boiled over into
this attack on the Keeps, and once Gusta and the others had fought
their way into this shabby old stone castle it was obvious that the
Mummers behind their walls had been in turmoil also.
The keeps were nearly out of food, for one thing; all the
poison gardens were dug up and given over to scrawny vegetable plots,
and there remained very few and skinny foodbeasts.
“Get out- you bastards have come too late. You are all too
late. Too late.” A familiar voice came from one naked and
swollen bundle of spice-covered flesh.
Gusta froze, shocked by the figure before her, which was barely human.
“By the sky- you are living. Oh – how could I have
known ?”
"You left me, in the river. Left me behind." Tommo raised his head,
which caused a hundred cuts to weep.
"I thought you had –vanished, I thought you were, gone." She
cradled his head. He was covered in spices and poisons, which the
Mummers used to inflict pain; they irritated her right hand where it
had been wounded in the fighting.
"No- they wanted me. The crows took me. They wanted my pain. But it
wasn't enough."
"Shush; I'm here now. " But she didn't expect that he was much
reassured by her presence; he only seemed to look at her with reproach,
not with relief.
There was not enough water to wash the poisons off his body; she dabbed
at the red and orange powders with a rough cloth she found on the floor.
"The crows wanted me to suffer; they said it would make the Traders
come. My pain would call them out of the sky, or where ever they be.
But they didn't come, and they didn't come, and they didn't stop
hurting me."
"Perhaps they will come, now you are free."
"Too late for me; I am for to vanish soon, I feel it in here." Tommo
indicated his bullet wound; it was even more swollen than the rest of
him. "The damn spices killed off the maggots; if they had let the grubs
eat out all the bad flesh this damn wound would be healed by now."
Gusta, repulsed, said nothing, but gave him a little more water. He was
slipping into the vanishing-sleep. To calm him, she talked softly about
the Traders.
"They will come soon, I know it. Now the Mummers are gone they will be
sure to take us; they have potions to cure you, I know it too. I saw,
them, once, long ago. Did you know that?"
Tommo looked at her, but could no longer speak.
"I was far from here, I think it was upslope-rightwards; you could see
the Hogsback Mountains way downslope sometimes. The Traders came and
took ten thousand souls; none of them ever came back to be reborn and
reborn, over and over. There were only two of them, the Traders, two;
and they had a great wide tent, which shone like silver; none that went
into that tent came out."
Tommo closed his eyes.
"One of the traders seemed to be young, and thin, and long of hair;
only he spoke, but I was not close enough to hear what he said. The
other was shorter and old; he wore a vest of gold cloth, and spoke not,
but he smiled, and the other deferred to him in everything. How they
chose who was to go and who stayed, I don't know; then they went, and
the tent folded itself up and disappeared."
In the grey smokey light of morning after the battle, they could be
dimly seen, a woman in warrior's clothes, and a spice covered man; soon
the woman was alone. She remembered somehow another time, long ago, and
far away, in a desert, in a pit; but it was in a very different life,
and she could remember almost nothing.
But there had been snakes there, she was sure, Lots of them.
And another dying man, and another time of despair.
But soon the memory faded into the torment of here and now.
