Windlegends Saga - The Windhealer Part 7

"Who does the laundry?"

Du Mer stared. Montyne's face was carefully blank. If Roget had not known this man, known him like a brother, he'd have thought the young Ionarian Prince was serious. "You, of course," du Mer answered with a straight face. "The Ionarians always have laundry detail."

"I thought that was the Viragonians," Shalu remarked.

"No, the Ionarians," Jah-Ma-El corrected. "It says so in the tour guide."

Chase smiled and it was the first smile he had had in a long time. He held out his hand to du Mer. "Just thought I'd check."

Roget looked at the hand. He had hated this man once, had hated him badly, since Chase Montyne had helped put him in this terrible place. But Chase had once been his friend, too. He took the proffered hand. "I like just a tad of starch in my shirts, Montyne."

"But, of course." The Ionarian pulled du Mer into his arms and held him. "Anything else?" "Aye," Roget said, tears forming. "Take a bath!" * * * It was the second day of his internment at the Labyrinth and Prince Grice Wynth was tired. He had never worked so hard, or so long, in his life. He had trained under a tough Master-at-Arms at Seadrift Keep, the capitol of Oceania where he was regent to his father, but that old warrior's tutelage had been nothing compared to the physical labor he had endured in the mine shafts that day. He trudged out of the mine along with the other inmates and wearily sat on a dilapidated wooden bench near his barracks, bent forward, and hung his head.

"We'll have muscles on our muscles when we get home," Prince Tyne Brell of Chale remarked as he sat beside Grice.

"Where would you put muscles?" Grice quipped, eyeing the effeminate-looking Chalean.

"That's just it," Brell said in a chipper voice. "I figure I'll develop quite nicely while I'm interned." He lifted one slim arm and tried to make a muscle. He couldn't. He shrugged. "They'll pop up eventually." He leaned back on the bench and let out a tired sigh. "I heard Hern Arbra is here. Has anyone seen him, yet? He'll help me beef up."

"He's in the Indoctrination Hut for picking a fight. I heard he's to get out this afternoon."

"What do you think that fellow did to warrant such punishment?" Chand asked as he joined the men. He had not gone to the mines with the others, but had spent the day in the cook tent. When his brother and Tyne looked up, he pointed to the lone man behind the row of huts.

Stooped over, picking beans in the garden, the man paused, straightened, bent backward in an obvious effort to relieve the strain on his muscles, then wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his arm before bending down again.

"I was watching him for almost two hours while I was peeling spuds," Chand remarked. "They haven't let him take a break." He pointed to the guards who stood close by the man.

"And they won't," a pa.s.sing inmate said.

"Why?"

The man shook his head. "Because of who he was."

Sentian and Chase joined them at the bench. He looked up at Chase.

"Did I hear you say something about laundry last eve?" He plucked at his filthy, sweat-encrusted shirt. "Do you have any freshly ironed tunics available?"

"Eat s.h.i.t and die, Wynth," Chase said wearily, sliding to the ground beside Brell's feet. He ran a dirty hand through his equally dirty blond hair.

Sentian Heil plopped down, too. He was more used to physical labor than the n.o.blemen, but he was just as tired. His head ached and his hands were already forming blisters. He looked in the chapped, cracked palms and had a vivid memory that made him look away.

"I'd hate to be him," Chand said. He was still watching the man laboring in the garden. His tender heart was aching for the inmate.

"Must be hard picking beans with one hand," Paegan Hesar replied as he slid to the ground.

"Have they allowed you to see Rylan, yet?" Grice asked. He was speaking of the Viragonian prince, Paegan's older brother, whose foot had been injured when these new men had arrived.

Paegan shook his head. "They wouldn't even let me talk to the Healer."

A loud roar shattered the quiet words. They men turned to see huge boulders crashing down the side of the bluff just beyond the huts where the solitary man was gardening. Standing, they watched with horror as the man glanced up at the careening rocks and tried to dive away from the avalanche. With ear-splitting shrieks, more rocks split apart from the bluff and cascaded into the compound with a thundering crash that shook the earth.

Men and guards ran away, their hands thrown up to protect their heads from falling debris. A ma.s.sive thud shook the ground as the last large boulder hit. Then the screaming began.

At first, it was a sharp, quick stab of sound, and then another and still another, ripping out of a tortured throat, hanging on the still air. The inhuman cry of unearthly agony pealed out over the stupefied men who had stopped running and turned to stare.

Guards made toward the area where the rocks had settled. Roget du Mer and Shalu Taborn crashed out of their barracks, their faces stricken. Anyone watching them would have sworn their feet never touched the ground as they sprinted toward the pitiful screaming.

"Wynth! Montyne! Hurry!"Jah-Ma-El yelled as he ran by, his thin legs pumping furiously.

It was the first time in nearly three years Sentian Heil had seen Thom and Storm. He looked at them, smiling his greeting, but neither noticed him. Their full attention was on a large boulder and what lay beneath it. Storm bent down, digging at the loose sand cradling the rock; Thom fell to his knees, scooping sand away as fast as his big hands could move. Others scrambled down beside Storm: Shalu, Roget, Jah-Ma-El, and a newly-released Hern Arbra. They dug frantically at the boulder partially blocking the trench that had been dug the day before. The screaming still poured from under the rock and the men dug faster as the screaming began to weaken.

The Commandant ran foward. "Get him out!"

Sentian knelt beside Thom and began to dig. He saw Thom recognize him and then the big man began to strive harder to clear away the sand. "Dig, Heil!"

A man's arm, the flesh hanging in tatters from elbow to wrist, could be seen from under the rock as more sand was cleared. The fingers flexed, once, twice, then shook, before going still. A soft keen replaced the horrible screaming, and the keening was losing volume.

Storm drove his hands into the sand all the way up to his elbow. "I have hold of him!"

Roget du Mer and Shalu put their backs to the boulder. Thom scooted joined them. They braced their muscular legs against the side of the trench and heaved. Sweat ran down their dusty faces; veins in their necks, arms, and thighs bulged. Hern added his back to the effort and grunted as he shifted his weight against the rock.

As the boulder moved, a hideous cry tore from under the rock.

The men stopped, afraid to lift the boulder any higher.

"You can't leave him there!" Appolyon screamed. "Drake! Get down there and help them!" At first Lydon Drake refused, turning a sullen, hateful face to the Commandant. "If he dies, you die!"

Cursing violently, the ex-Temple Guard wedged his ma.s.sive shoulder under the boulder. He took a deep breath and pushed upward, the cords in his thick thighs bunching up like iron pilings.

Blood gushed from a torn artery in the arm beneath the boulder. The fingers flexed once more and then lay still.

"Heave!" Hern groaned, seeing the man's life-blood soaking into the sand.

As the rock eased back, Storm tightened his grip on the victim's shoulder. Thom got down on his belly, reached for some of the tattered bulk of clothing beneath the rock, and pulled at what he reckoned to be the man's hips. He saw another body lying directly under the boulder and guessed that man was dead. He could see only crushed skull and a glob of red ooze.

"I've got him!"Storm shouted, pulling with all his might.

Thom tugged hard on the fabric covering the man's hips. The body began to slid toward him from under the ma.s.sive stone. Others helped him lift his burden from the trench and they laid the man on the ground, turned him onto his back. What Thom saw made him cry in frustration and fear.

"It's not him," Storm whispered, his gaze going to the other body beneath the rock.

It was, in fact, one of the two guards who had been a.s.signed to the solitary prisoner. He was indeed dead, his neck bent at an odd angle. There was utter stillness as the man's ident.i.ty pa.s.sed back along those gathered.

"It ain't the boy. It's that Johnny fellow."

No sound, no movement, came from beneath the ma.s.sive stone. The rock could not be completely lifted out of the trench unless one of the heavy lifts was brought up from the mineshaft, and that would take the entire night. Even as the men watched, the stone was settling in the loose sand and would become the burial vault for the any man who was still trapped beneath it.

"No!"Jah-Ma-El screamed, scampering across the sand. Using his hands like shovels, looking for all the world like a thin, mangy dog burying a bone, he began to claw at the dirt. "No! Get him out!"

Roget grabbed him, Shalu did, too, but Jah-Ma-El surprised them with an inhuman strength that no one would have believed existed in his frail body. He kept digging even as Storm and Thom dragged him away by his ankles. The sorcerer cursed, shrieked at them to let him go. Finally, Roget effectively silenced Jah-Ma-El's wild cries with a short jab to the nape of his neck.

Appolyon's face lost all of its color. His pig-like eyes strained out of his head and he continually ran a nervous tongue over his rubbery lips. His breathing was quick, and there was a noticeable tremor in his hands. His look turned to Roget and what he saw made him back away, a hand up to ward off the murderous glare. "Not my fault!"he screeched. Urine squirted down his fat legs as Roget stepped toward him.

Sentian Heil wasn't sure if he had actually heard the soft voice as it cut across the highly charged air, or if he had merely sensed it. He remembered turning toward what he thought he heard and shielding his eyes to the glare of a sun setting on the horizon. He thought he heard a sigh of, what...relief?...thanks?...from some of the men closest to him.

Outlined against the brilliant flare of the sun, a man stood wavering before them. He appeared dazed, shaken, but since no one could see his face because of the light at his back, it wasn't until his knees began to buckle that the men realized he was hurt.

Sentian, the closest to the man, leapt forward, catching him under his armpits as he hit the sand with his knees. Heil heard a gasp burst from the man's lungs, thought he heard his name whispered with regret, then felt the man's head drop against his shoulder. Something wet and sticky stuck to Sentian's cheek as the back of the man's head touched him. He was dead weight in Sentian's arms and Heil almost lost his balance as he half-knelt in the sand with the limp man.

Everything, then, seemed to happen in slow motion. He caught Roget's relieved face, Shalu's mumbled words, the Commandant's suddenly enraged face. Sentian didn't have time to wonder about the sighs or the looks, for one of the guard's stepped forward, grasped the unconscious man by one arm, and started to jerk him upward, out of Sentian's arms.

Hern leapt forward only to be backhanded to the ground by another guard. Storm tried to rush forward, but a drawn sword brought him up short, soliciting a growl from the Serenian's lips that vividly reminded Heil of a snarling wolf.

"Be careful! Can't you see he's hurt?" The Necroman took several steps forward only to have his way blocked by a sharp pike pointed at his chest.

Swinging his head up to those gathered, Sentian could only gape in stunned surprise as the guard named Lydon hurried forward and, together with the guard who had grabbed the unconscious man's arm, hustled him to a nearby upright.

"My G.o.d!" du Mer screamed. "You aren't going to whip him?"

"His hand is broken!" someone shouted. "Ain't that enough for you?"

Grice Wynth was totally baffled. The unconscious man's wrists were quickly bound with a rawhide thong, which was then attached to a thick metal spike in the wood. There was a hollow groan as consciousness flowed back to the man. The enrage the Commandant further.

"Gag him! Shut him up! I want to hear nothing from his mouth!"

Hern's snarl of rage came like the snap of lightning as a gag was wedged between the man's lips. "d.a.m.n you! Let him go!" he shouted, straining against hands that tried to hold him. He bellowed with a loud grunt of frustration as the prisoner's head slumped forward into the hollow between his raised arms. A single drop of scarlet blood fell to the sand and Hern shrieked as though the demons of h.e.l.l were upon him. "Don't do this to him!"

Sentian came slowly to his feet, staring at an enraged ex-Master-of-Arms, who was swinging mighty fists at guard and inmate alike. He looked at Storm's set grimace, at Thom's tearful face, and wondered at the loyalty these men were showing the man being punished for having survived the rock slide. He looked at the unconscious man and felt a deep pity run through him, for it was obvious the wound along the man's head had to be a throbbing agony. Blood was seeping down his temple and matting the dirty blond hair that hid his face.

"Why the h.e.l.l are you punishing him, Commandant?" an inmate shouted. "The boy's hurt."

"Don't make no difference to these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds if he is!"

"One more word, one more defiance of the law, and I'll have him flogged!" Appolyon's bellow shattered the mumbling, cursing voices, bringing an immediate, deadly, sullen quiet.

It was Prince Tyne Brell of Chale who noticed something odd about the prisoner, something odd and yet familiar. He edged closer to the upright and skirted several guards, who, at his approach, fingered their serviceable swords. One guard turned his head, obviously considered Tyne no threat, then turned his attention to the Commandant.

"To your huts!" Appolyon screamed. "Now!"

A few men reluctantly shuffled toward their barracks, looking back over their shoulders at the prisoner with something akin to remorse on their hard faces. Some seemed to be genuinely grieved at the man's predicament, while others appeared to be gloating. But most of the men stood and waited.

"Get back to your huts or do you want him to pay for it?"

The remaining men began to drift away, their faces hard, their fists clenched.

"You, too, Brell," a guard mumbled to the Chalean Prince. "Get back to your hut."

Tyne Brell didn't even glance at the guard. Instead, he strolled to the upright and craned his neck sideways to look up into the prisoner's face. He wanted to a.s.sure himself the man was all right. His compa.s.sion, something for which the small man was known, had driven him to help. His courage, something as much a part of him as the air he breathed, had spurred him on despite the Commandant's insane raving. He wanted to help, and if it meant taking a beating to help the poor fellow, he would gladly suffer it.

But when Tyne took in the battered, b.l.o.o.d.y face, when the man opened his eyes and stared blankly back at him, Brell knew, for the first time in his life, total and complete cowardice. His mouth dropped open and no matter how hard he tried, no sound would come out. He drew in his breath. His chest felt like someone had wrapped a steel band around it as if he were a keg of ale. He turned around, searching for Grice Wynth.

"Get away, Brell!" the guard cautioned. "Now!"

Sentian squinted in confusion. He almost grinned at the stupid look on Tyne's thin face, but something in those dark brown eyes made him stop. He saw Tyne put distance between himself and the prisoner, grab another upright as though his knees were about to buckle. A shudder of cold went through Sentian's body, and a kind of psychic premonition-his "special insight," as the lady called it-made the air around him waver. In a blind trance, he made his way toward Brell.

Sentian was not alone in his feeling. Prince Chase Montyne of Ionary had also been watching Tyne, and he, too, started toward the prisoner.

"Keep away from him!" Appolyon shouted. "Or else he'll suffer for it!"

Lydon strode purposefully toward the upright. He put out his hand to stop Paegan Hesar, who had been about to join Brell. "If you men don't get your a.r.s.es inside your huts, I'll turn the little b.a.s.t.a.r.d inside out!" Lydon shouted, shoving Shalu out of his way as he made for the upright.

Roget covered the distance between himself and Tyne Brell in less time than he would have thought humanly possible. He jerked the stunned man toward the hut, but Tyne kept turning his head to stare back at the prisoner.

Aftere shoving Tyne into the hut, Roget gathered the others-Grice, Chand, Sentian, Paegan and Chase-into the room, waited until Thom, Hern, and Shalu had joined them, then slammed the door. He heard a m.u.f.fled sob and yanked open the door to see Jah-Ma-El standing there, holding his b.l.o.o.d.y nose.

"I think you broke it," Jah-Ma-El said through the m.u.f.fled constriction of his fingers.

"Sorry." Roget shoved him toward Shalu, and then shut the door once more.

"You men are just going to leave that poor fellow hanging there?" Grice asked, his face angry. "What did he do to deserve that? Live through the rock slide?" "That's about it." Thom sat on one of the two chairs in the barracks. He bent forward and put his big head in his huge hands. He was crying.

Tyne managed to find his voice. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"We were waiting for the right time," Shalu answered.

"As if there was one!" Hern snapped, going to the window, shoving Chase Montyne aside. "Sit down, Montyne!"

Tyne shook his head. "How long has he been here?"

"From the very beginning," Storm said.

Brell shuddered. "You could have warned us."

"I can't believe it," Tyne mumbled and sat on his bunk. "I can't believe that he's even alive."

"Who the h.e.l.l are you talking about?" Grice screamed.

"Who the h.e.l.l would I ever back down for?" Hern asked, a sneer in his voice. "Who any of us would back down for, Wynth?"

"Who would we have such love and respect for that we would risk losing our lives to protect him?" Thom asked. "How many men have you ever known that could inspire, and desrved, such loyalty? Or who has had less reason to deserve the abuse he's been subjected to?"

"What one man has garnered the enmity of the entire Domination?" Shalu asked quietly, his gaze steady on Chase Montyne.

"It can't be," Chase breathed, shock turning his pallid blond coloring even whiter.

Paegan Hesar, having guessed the prisoner's ident.i.ty, shook his head. "No one saw him die."

Grice slammed his hand against the wall. "I know I'm just as smart as the rest of you, but I'll be d.a.m.ned if I know who you're babbling about! I can't pull a name out of the air."