†
Ravan slept when needed, which seemed much more often as the days passed. Mostly, though, he lay motionless, drifting in and out of dreams. Subconsciously, he watched the slowly changing countryside as it crept by. He couldn’t remember eating. He lay still for hours until his hip and shoulder were numb, and then when he moved the newly formed pressure wounds stuck to the coarse blanketing beneath him. The fleas tortured him, and when it became too much, he would pick at them and fling them, one by one, from the hold.
Sometimes he sat bent over, holding onto the rails, his wrists and ankles shackled. Peering out between the folds of the swaying canvases, he felt as though he was in a cave. Looking blankly at his bonds, he wondered to himself why Duval thought it necessary to fetter him so. What were the shackles supposed to accomplish? Should he happen to make it from the cage, would they keep him from a dramatic escape from the men on horses? Fate had already determined the outcome of that scenario, had it not?
He ultimately decided the manacles were simply a weapon of demoralization. Bind the flesh—bind the heart. The metal was so very cold, and his wrists and ankles took on a dull, gray hue as the iron familiarized itself intimately with his flesh.
Why am I even here? he wondered. What purpose would a man such as Duval have of me—a mere boy?
These were questions he asked only of himself. Reasonable answers neglected to surface, and in time, he stopped trying to rationalize his circumstances. He was weak and increasingly dulled. Concentration held for only short moments before he would again lay down and drift away.
As days went by, Ravan watched blankly as the terrain turned from rolling hills and vast forests to much steeper country, with sharp mountains and deep valleys. Travel was arduous and unbearably slow.
It would take almost three weeks for them to reach the Chamonix Valley along the Arve River. Many of the small villages along the way were dead and vacant, left like societies’ forgotten tombstones after the plague had taken them. Untraveled, the road sometimes turned into little more than frozen, rutted trails. Ravan’s body ached as he was thrown about the cage. He longed to be out—to walk or run freely through the woods.
At some point, he recalled when he’d been strong—remembered running for hours in the forests. It was now that he recognized his weakening state and decided to monitor his health as best he could—eat or drink when offered food or water and turn over more frequently in the cage.
His wounds slowly mended, his breathing became more normal, and his hair was growing longer again. However, his legs only weakened. Ravan was only rarely allowed out, sometimes to relieve himself, but more frequently he simply urinated from between the rails. Forced to defecate in his cage, he pushed the waste between the rails with as little straw as possible, trying to conserve his bedding.
Disheveled as he became, his appearance made him look more animal than human. With the tarps covering most of the cage, the effect was complete. This was very convenient for Duval. In the few villages they passed through, it was easy to brush off any local curiosity with a short explanation that Ravan was simply a captive being transported to the prison in Belfort. Public scrutiny was limited, and no one suspected the creature within was a mere boy.
When the band of men happened to stop in a village for revelry or supplies, children would sometimes call the prisoner names and throw stones at him. Men occasionally spat at him, and women, when they noticed him at all, hid their eyes and turned away. Most of the time, however, he was ignored—a nobody, an unworthy creature-man. There were no kind gestures or acts of compassion to be had from the whole of humanity, it seemed.
It made his heart ache that people could be so unkind to someone they knew nothing about, and he struggled to remember if he’d ever been guilty of such an unkind thing. He wondered if hatred was something that the human heart required, just for the sake of it, and turned this question over in his mind for hours at a time. Eventually deciding that for some it must be so, it made him sad that such a thing must be true. It was at this moment that despair threatened, and he would close his eyes and try to sleep the thought away.
Ravan spoke very seldom on the trip, partly in belligerent defiance, but mostly because of a subconscious reversion to an earlier time in his life. This seemed to perplex and irritate the other mercenaries. They, like himself, had been chosen, sold, or bartered into their service with Duval, and they found the arrangement quite satisfactory.
There had been no great resistance from them, not like there had been with Ravan. Precious resources had not been wasted for their enlistment as they’d been with the boy. In fact, most of them had jumped at the opportunity to become a mercenary for Duval. Notoriety, salary, and good keep were theirs for the job they did. They seemed to resent that Ravan should be so reticent and stoic about the whole affair, as though he were someone special. Convinced that their trade was acceptable, they believed that with time Ravan would join their ranks and become one of them. Ultimately, they simply assumed a bewildered acceptance of the odd boy for which Duval, in their opinions, had sacrificed too much. After even longer, they ceased to care at all.
Sometimes, Ravan used his time to study them—to study each of their mannerisms and characteristics. Amongst the troop was Renoir—oily and thin and with a hooked nose. He carried with him two falchions and delighted in exhibiting his skills with them, which were significant. He was fast, arrogant, and short-tempered.
Once, Ravan watched as he’d frightened a young maiden into submission after dragging her from a roadside hovel outside Brignais. She’d been alone, with no defender. Duval ignored the incident, not even bothered enough to intervene. It shook and paralyzed the boy to see such a thing as he observed the atrocity of it. Renoir was cruel, reckless, and very dangerous. He, Ravan decided, was like the plague—black and vile, dragging life from those he touched.
Then there was LanCoste, the giant. He was quiet and slow—an enormous mountain of a man who stood nearly seven feet tall. Easily dwarfing even Pierre Steele, he was never far from Duval. Ravan thought the monster might be Duval’s first in command, and he studied him closely.
The giant’s brow was protruding and thick, his body hairy, and his jaw like a mammoth. His crooked teeth were long and overlapped in a mouth too large to close properly so that he appeared to be engaged in an eternal snarl. Drool ran unfettered from his maw. He did not grow or shave a beard in the fashion of most of the other men but simply used a knife to hack from it chunks of hair when it became so long as to be considered by him. Without the benefit of a looking glass, the effect was bizarre.
His weapon was an axe. It was enormous, a good four hands across the blade. Though Ravan had yet to see him remove it from where it was strapped onto his back, he was sure that with one blow the giant could cleave a body in two.
LanCoste’s horse was a stallion, a Belgian-Perche valley draft, an enormous animal by its own right, but only just big enough to carry the giant. Ravan had heard once of a great warrior who’d crossed an awful mountain range called the Himalayas riding a mythical beast. He wondered if they had mistaken this awful warrior for the giant, LanCoste.
When this man was assigned to the cart and it became his turn to take the prisoner out, he was not rough but matter-of-fact about it. He never jerked on the throat shackle the way the others did but waited more patiently as Ravan hobbled weakly from the wagon. As the boy would squint at the brightness of the sun on the snow, his legs increasingly unsure beneath himself, the giant would simply watch—impassive and almost…patient.
At times, Ravan tested him, pulling on the chains as though he may attempt flight, looking at him sideways with squinted eyes to see what the giant interpreted of him. LanCoste would grunt and pull the smaller one to him, lifting him from the ground easily by his chains until he could see the prisoner eye-to-eye. As Ravan clutched at his shackled throat and gasped, the giant would grunt a single, deep throated sound as if to say, “Do not betray my master’s trust in me, small creature. It would be fruitless.”
Then, there was Pierre Steele. His bulk was fat, and he had a vicious mean streak as Ravan had already seen. Steele enjoyed causing others pain just for the sake of it—a truly perverted man. The larger question was, “What was he to Duval?”
In addition to a clumsy sword, Pierre carried a strange weapon Ravan had not seen before. It consisted of a wooden handle with straps of leather, a half dozen or so, attached to it. Something glistened along the length of the straps, though Ravan could not make out what it was.
Of course, given their history, Ravan had already developed a healthy disdain for Pierre. This was the first time that Ravan ever truly hated someone, and the feeling was new, raw, and a bit frightening. However, he allowed it to stay. It was like armor, and he needed it. This hatred was returned entirely; Pierre would try to strike Ravan’s knuckles whenever he rode close to the cage, especially if Ravan didn’t see him coming.
More than any of the others, Ravan studied Duval every second he could. The mercenary leader, for all practical purposes, seemed oblivious to him, and this confused him. It was ironic that the man had invested so much time and money, not to mention the death of two men and two hounds, to gain his young captor. His whole journey south had been to get the prize he now wholeheartedly ignored.
It seemed illogical, and Ravan puzzled over it, struggling to figure the man’s motives. Despite his youth, he realized this made Duval the most dangerous for he was an enigma. The boy was most at ease when he knew his attacker. A bear was straightforward—a lumbering rage that could be anticipated. The mountain lion, however, struck without suspect. Ravan had always feared it more, and Duval was a mountain lion.
Thinking again of the mercenary leader, he reflexively shuddered. The man’s eyes were incendiary, like a predator's eyes—forward facing and with too much white around them. To Ravan, they appeared black, dull, and too small—not quite human. He begrudgingly admitted to himself that Duval was to be feared.
As the cold weeks passed, Ravan wondered—when had the frosty breath he puffed started leaving icicles tugging from his scant, adolescent shadow of a beard?
* * *
Duval never allowed Pierre to take Ravan from the cage. He knew Pierre’s intent—to rape and possibly kill the young captive. He also knew that Pierre only feigned allegiance to him. Duval preferred sodomy not be part of the conditioning he intended his new capture endure. It was his observation that sexual liberties on new captures created problems further down the line, complicated battles, and delayed conditioning. He was content to keep Pierre on only as long as he had work for him. Eventually…he would kill him.
The Mercenary King, for all his apparent indifference, did spend time studying his young captor, though he was careful not to let on. This one was different; he knew this. Ravan was most superbly suited for the plans Duval had for him. He must be cautious not to fracture the primitive instinct the young man possessed. It would serve to make a decidedly profitable killer of him. Weighing his losses against his gains, he was ultimately satisfied, deciding that he had come out favorably ahead.
To be on the safe side, he ordered his men to limit Ravan’s meals though not his water. He wanted the young man weak but not ill. It would make his training that much easier when they reached the fortress.
* * *
Ravan had no fat to lose and dropped lean weight rapidly. Sleeping whenever possible, he struggled to conserve energy. Even so, he knew his senses were becoming dulled. He shivered more and spent more time curled up, his shirt pulled over his head as he breathed precious warmth back onto his chest and belly.
When Renoir opened the hold in the middle of the night, Ravan was defenseless…and caught utterly by surprise. He smelled the alcohol, sweet and thick on the man’s breath, as the mercenary yanked upon the neck shackle, nearly dragging the boy out the door. Ravan had been deeply asleep and sputtered, not sure who pulled at him.
“Why are you—” he started to exclaim.
It wasn’t until Renoir dragged him full out of the hold and allowed him to tumble to the ground that Ravan saw Pierre Steele, swaying, sick grin and gruesomely scarred face shining in the moonlight. He stood, un-girthing his belt, reaching to stroke the small of his own penis to life.
Ravan panicked, struggled to gain his footing, and started to yell. Renoir yanked him viciously off his feet by the neck shackle, choking the alarm from him before it had a chance to escape. He plunged face first into the snow, failing to catch himself as his hands clawed at the shackle, trying desperately to protect his throat.
He felt a rag forced into his mouth and bit down savagely on a finger, taking brief satisfaction in the scream that the man had to swallow. It was at that instant that Steele hit him, violently, across the temple with the butt of his heavy sword, dazing him almost to the point of losing consciousness.
Then, he was only vaguely aware of Renoir tying the gag into his mouth, the crushing ice and snow pressing into his eye sockets and nostrils as his face was pushed harder into the snow drift. He only faintly recognized that his trousers were yanked to his ankles, and he was held, bent with his knees spread, scarcely able to breathe.
Pierre Steele knelt, grunting and panting, and fulfilled his desire, raping him abruptly and violently as Renoir bent with a knee cruel upon the back of his neck, masturbating to his own relief as well.
It was over in moments.
The men stood, lacing their trousers and sneering at the boy lying in the snow. Ravan curled on his side, naked from the waist down, trousers tangled about his ankles. Blood smeared down the insides of his thighs and stained the snow beneath him in dark spots. His eyes were fixed and vacant, black as a midnight slaughter.
“Get up, you little bastard,” Renoir kicked him between the shoulder blades.
Ravan just lay, unmoving, dazed from the blow to the head and in shock from what had just occurred. It was forever before his subconscious slowly permitted recognition of the horrible defilement.
“I said get up!” Renoir hissed from under his breath, kicking him again. “Hurry up!”
Ravan gasped, reflexively protecting his only recently broken ribs. He struggled to turn himself onto his knees, grasping for his trousers. Staggering to his feet, he pulled at his clothes, clutching them as they draped baggy upon his slender frame. He stared at the horrible red that stained the moonlit snow.
Renoir dragged him, still dazed, back to the cage and shoved him inside so that moments later he was again in the hold. It had all happened in a matter of minutes.
* * *
The next morning, it was LanCoste who rode onto shift. However, the boy did not rouse for food or water, only remained curled up beneath the blankets. Turning from the hold, the mercenary paused, seemed to consider the snow, scuffed and pink as though something had died there last night.
Riding cautiously by the cage, Renoir glancing furtively at the giant before swiftly looking away. LanCoste stared blankly ahead as though hardly noticing the expression upon the face of the wicked man with his contemptible grin.
Renoir sneered, likely believing that the giant was daft—a “stupid waste of human flesh,” he’d called him once. Evidently satisfied that his midnight secret remained undiscovered, Renoir rode on. It was only then that the giant glanced from beneath his brow, eyes narrowed, at the mercenary riding away from him.
Pierre Steele was gone, having made off in the middle of the night, finally satisfied with having fulfilled his rape of the boy. He’d wanted to murder him—had wanted to make him bleed until he bled no more—but knew that Duval would have caught and killed him for that. Steele doubtless believed Duval would never know of the event, and as the giant said nothing of the circumstances, the caravan moved on. Duval shrugged at Pierre’s absence; the man was useless and ate too much as it were.
The boy had become ill; that is what Duval was told. He hardly stirred and neither ate nor drank for nearly three days. LanCoste, in an unusual gesture, made himself the wordless guardian of the cage. It was uncommon for the giant to self-appoint himself to something such as that. Duval had no issue with it, however, and thought little of it. The giant would be utilized even more with the boy’s training once they reached the base, and so it served his purpose to let it be.
Ravan spoke no more.