The Wolves of Gryning: Chapter 16
Chapter 16: The Red Warrior Imprisoned
The waves became mountains, and all the foam was grass upon the ground. The clouds were storming and the wind whipped the sails forward into frenzy. The little ship was driven up the sides of the mountains, between cliffs and valleys and bluffs. The world parted before them and raced by on either side, and the light vanished from the world. Valdigt saw no end to the darkness and looked back at Thess to see what kind of reaction she might have. But Thess was gone, and so was the crew. She felt a fogginess like the absence of light in her head, and the events of her week swam before her eyes indistinguishable from dreams. A new panic tightened her chest and she breathed and thought, Let it pass. And the panic didn't pass, but it did lessen, and she was able to suppress her worry while her mind got to waking up.
There was a cold bite on each of her ankles, and she rummaged blindly forward till her hands found the length of chain that bound her to the floor. She traced the length with her hands; it had been fastened securely to a metal loop on the ground. A lightning bolt of nausea rippled through her abdomen and she felt herself struggle not to retch.
Don't panic, she warned herself. Or you won't ever make it out of this. Let's figure out what's going on here.
But she had no memory of anything after setting sail. She tried calling out, "Thess?" but nobeast responded. She thought maybe nobeast would be able to understand her either. The word had clotted in her mouth, which was dry and swollen and felt thick with cotton. She spat, and a globular sticky mass hit the ground, blood and mucus and bile, but very little saliva. Her throat felt closed up and she was wracked by a tremendous thirst.
She wasn't sure when she had woken up. Time had quickly lost meaning, and her dreams had been of nothing, so when she awoke in the total darkness she wasn't aware of the shift in consciousness. But then the thirst came back, cloying, and her every sense awoke with its fire. She felt the frenzy of thirst grip her with bitter nails, and she crawled to the length of her chain in every direction, exploring the cell with arms outstretched. She tried calling out in whispering croaks again, and still got no reply.
Back and forth Valdigt canvassed the floor, experiencing it through touch. And then her fingers closed on something. A cool, cracked piece of pottery. She felt her fingers slip over some sort of rim, and dipped into something wet. Water! she thought, and greedily sucked the moisture off the tips of her fingers. The relief was immediate and fleeting. A few drops wouldn't outdo her dehydration, and by her estimates it could have been over two days since she'd had anything to drink. She doubted she could go much longer without it.
Valdigt pressed herself to the floor, fully prostrate, and reached out. Her fingers caught the edge of the little vessel, but barely. Panic raced through her in quick bursts, her breathing rapid. She felt it inching closer, and closer, and...
"No!" she cried. She heard a tip and a trickle and knew she'd knocked over the vessel. She felt water coursing over her wrists and finger tips in a small puddle. She could just reach the water, and so she cupped her hands and brought the water to her lips one palmful at a time. Little by little her strength was replenished, but soon enough it was all gone. Her tongue was still heavy and a desert fire lingered behind her teeth.
Valdigt was a strong wolf. She'd always been tough, courageous, and unafraid of a good challenge. But this was something new, something she'd been unprepared for. And she had no doubt now what had happened. She'd been captured and robbed in Grey Port, more likely than not. It seemed likely that she'd been sold off to the wardens at the Prison of Molokhn, where beasts were sent to die. And what tortures before death? The Molokhiin were notorious for their cruelty, the vile wardens patrolling the halls with whips and hooks and implements of torture. And then Valdigt felt very young. She was no brave warrior, no soldier of the king. She was barely a grown girl, barely old enough to leave home. And now she would die here alone.
In the dark she curled up on the floor and, for the first time in years, cried till she could cry no more.
And thus began the darkest chapter of young Valdigt's life. She was no wolf to give up easily, but if ever in her life she came close to giving up, this was that time. She woke up alone, without help, and lived alone, without hope. But luckily for us all the story does not end here for Valdigt. It was by her hand that we would all one day be saved. She did not know that then, and would have wept for joy if any hope lit her dark days. But no hope came. And soon she found she had no more tears at all. Nothing but the dust and the quiet.
She never saw the sun and lived in an endless bitter night. The night was hunger, and the night was thirst. Sometimes she would find a scrap of bread or a cup of water, always placed just within her reach, so she had to stretch and bend and grope to find them. They came so infrequently that she lost all of the strength in her body, and always lived what felt like moments from death.
One day morning came. Bright and blazing above her, dazzling her, she saw the sun. And from the light emerged two mighty trunks like trees, and from the trunks grew long knotted branches. In her fading vision she saw the branches growing and cracking through the air towards her, morph into fingers, and then the hands closed around her and pulled her to her feet. She didn't hear them unlocking the chains, but she knew they must have, for she felt rather than saw herself hoisted out of the cell and into the halls.
It was one of the wardens, one of the Molokhiin, and she looked straight into its eyes. They wolf wore an iron mask, faceless, molded in a shape only vaguely recognizable. The wrought-iron face had jagged edges and curls of bent metal, and the warden wore a white cape stained all over with blood and dirt. The Molokhiin's clothes were tied about the waist and shoulders with rope, and in its hands it carried a long and weighted whip. The weapon, curled in one hand, had a bladed tip that dragged on the floor. It resembled a bloodied serpent. The rope was studded with bits of broken flint, pieces of keys, sharp metal scraps, thorns, and even old teeth. She took all of these things in at once, and could barely handle the horror that filled her. She bucked backwards and fell out of the Molokhiin's grip. But she was yanked back to her feet and the warden growled beneath its mask, shaking the whip and daring her to try that again.
Her fear got the better of her, and she jerked away again. Anything to be free of that hideous wolf's grip. She broke away but for a moment, and the force of it brought her to the floor. The beast above her shrieked, and though she couldn't understand the words she could hear the rage and the fury. It let loose the length of its whip and judged its target once. The noise of the bladed tip hitting her back resounded through the hall; it sounded like the toppling of books into piles of wood and bone. And layer of pain fell across her, and then another - dull and low and jagged and sharp, all at once. She felt the end of the blade lodge in her shoulder, then yank loose She screamed once, loudly, and the little strength she had left she lost. Valdigt felt herself adrift again in something not quite like sleep, and was dragged away down the hall.
When again she could open her eyes, she was suspended several inches above the floor. Chains held her on each hand and foot, and the warden had not left her. She managed to lift her head and saw the masked beast approaching with a series of weighted ropes. The little weights were inscribed with symbols she didn't know. The edging was fine, obviously done by someone with a reverent hand. She wondered if the grunting, shrieking beast that shared the room with her would have been capable of such a delicate act. It didn't matter. When the Molokhiin approached, it laid the ropes across her back, stretched over her taut muscles. The weights hung off either side of her. And then it wrapped them around her, once, twice, three times, the weights secure. She saw that the ropes the warden wore on its clothes were also weighted, and she wondered if the other Molokhiin shared this weighted existence. The ropes put pressure on her limbs, the pain slowly building, and her muzzle and belly sank till they nearly scraped the floor. The warden stepped back and barked a command. A sound of rust on rust groaned into the room, followed by a tugging sensation as the chains pulled her up. She was jerked inch by inch high into the room. She saw the door, leading back to the cells, and saw the Molokhiin standing below her, the masked face watching her ascent. She was hoisted higher and higher towards the roof of some tall tower. She was now so high that a fall would hurt quite a lot, and that only if she was lucky. Then she was so high that she knew she couldn't survive a fall. Still she kept on climbing. The warden now looked like a miniature, so far away that she lost all sense of recognition, of definition.
Then, she stopped.
Valdigt felt the emptiness of the plunge beneath her, the brittle shackles that held her feeling ready to break. The weights were not heavy enough to pull her out, but they tugged painfully at her limbs and kept her in perpetual fear of the fall. There she stayed. She had no food or water again, and couldn't sleep with her fear. Exhaustion would break her down and she would slip into a doze, then she would feel the rushing wind and the ground slamming beneath her, and she would jolt back to life in her prison of chains. It was a lonely and horrible season she spent in the air, and it lasted so long she was sure she would never see the light of day again.