Chapter 24
We rode long hours and the Captain of these troops was neither Hussars nor Dragoons. Blackfin called them Marines after some ancient order he had researched in the city that I had found before the ice city found me. He expanded on the magical technology that they had unearthed and his wizards had deciphered. Only he called them scientists instead of wizards. He boasted that they possessed vehicles that flew through the air and traveled above the ground on the old roads on a cushion of air. When I asked why he wasn’t riding one now, he merely tweaked his fingers and let loose the icy numbness on my collar. Mind-destroying pain gripped me for a millisecond and then abated. I shuddered and paled, sweating instantly.
“Do you want me to loose it for ten minutes, Tobias? I can, you know.” He threatened.
“Please, master,” I begged, my soul shrinking in the enormity of the horror he kept at bay. “Please. I will do whatever you wish if you keep that from me.” He purred. The look on his face would have broken and disgusted me if I hadn’t already been destroyed. We rode on in silence and I wondered how these mundane horses could keep up such a pace.
Our destination when we reached it, was a long, flat meadow that had been scraped down to dirt, and then covered with poured concrete on a scale that nearly rivaled the achievements of the old world. We dismounted and one of the marines held the horses as the wizard marched me towards a half-round building with open ends. What was inside made me marvel in astonishment. Several machines were parked inside, vehicles that I had seen before in books inside the Ice City. Called hovercraft, they were piloted by one man but could carry many more. I tried to gawk but his soldiers pushed me forward to enter a broad hatchway with a ramp designed to load cargo or animals. Once inside, I was shoved towards an open deck area with a steel cage standing on its short end. The pair pushed me inside and the moment the barred gate snapped shut, my cuffs smashed into the bars with the force of magnetism so that I was pinned to one side like a bug on a thorn. Even the collar held tight to the metal. I was stretched in an awkward, uncomfortable position and Blackfin ordered the guards to lay the cage flat so that they had access to me. I watched with weary acceptance as the men brought out hoses, funnels and strange bags of blood that I knew were made of the material called ‘plastic’.
Despite my discomfort and meager complaints, the pair stuck the funnel in my mouth, connected it to the tube and slowly poured the blood down my throat. I gagged but couldn’t fight and no sooner had the liquid reached my belly, it erupted in a geyser that drenched them. I could feel the collar reacting to my disobedience yet the pain of that didn’t reach me. What I did feel was a white-hot burning in my gut, as if I had swallowed acid.
“Stop,” Blackfin ordered. “He’ll drown in his own vomit if you continue. Your master is correct, Toby. You cannot eat. What to do…” He tapped his foot and then told the soldier on my left to get the emergency field kit. He came back with a box and from it, removed sealed plastic bags containing thin lines, needles and boluses of fluid. All things I had seen used in the med labs of Cabor’s Ice City.
Within seconds, he had pierced both my inner elbows and had blood going directly into my veins. It burned and I screamed as if I was on fire from the inside out yet he continued the torture. “Tobias, shut your mouth and suffer in silence,” he ordered and I did so. My skin and the muscles under it writhed in uncontrollable spasms, did not cease until they removed the empty bags. He left the lines and needles in my arms. They were the stinging bite of a dust adder.
“It gives me great pleasure to watch you suffer, Toby,” he whispered in my ear as his hand reached down to my crotch. “It makes me so hard for you. I wanted to tear out your heart when you killed Tomas. He was truly a fitting match for my desires. I hope to make you fit in his place. So to speak.” He giggled and told them to hook up the bag of fluids.
The craft slipped smoothly sideways and then up as the hatchway slowly closed. There was no movement inside and for the next two hours, they watched me shivering and biting at myself as I endured the firestorm ravaging through my veins. When we reached our destination, I only knew it by the sudden stomach-lurching drop as we descended and hit the ground no harder than being bucked off a horse. Blackfin came over and lifted my eyelids, pulling back my lips to stare at my gums as if I were a sick horse.
“He’s had sufficient fluids and blood. Too much and he becomes too powerful to control. That is, if he could stand the pain of disobeying the collar’s magic. Right now, if we force-feed him too much, he’d be in so much agony, he could not function even with my spell negating the collar. Tobias, can you hear me? You may speak.”
My voice was raw, hoarse and quivered with the strain of not screaming. “Yes, Master Blackfin.”
“Good. We are outside the city of Elassan, what is left of Bordertown. We go to meet this Elassai wizard Connacher. You will obey me or I will let loose the collar’s full force on you.”
“I understand,” I swallowed.
“You will protect me and not be swayed by his magics on you unless we come to an understanding and I permit you to serve him.”
“Yes, Master Blackfin.”
“I will release you from the cage and the cuffs. The collar will remain on you, as I must study the spell that powers it before I can remove it. When we are done here, I want you to take me to the Forgotten Way. Once I have examined that place, you will bring me to the Ffordd Anghofiedig from whence from you escaped the Ice City.”
“Yes, Master.” I bowed my head to hide my tears of compliance.
“Sergeant, Captain, unload the supplies. Set up a camp and contact the Rangers camped near here. They have horses we can use,” he said. The two soldiers nodded and opened the hatch and we disembarked. I could not believe how rapidly we had traveled from the south of the Newlands to the old border town ruins. Or how swiftly the men set up a camp complete with pre-fabricated rooms. Into the one that housed Blackfin, I was dragged like an unwilling pig to the slaughterhouse. He threw me into a corner and told me to stay. As an obedient cur, I kept my face in my arms and stayed.