*(Fevin)*
Sleep comes hard in the prison, wakeness comes easy for me at least, routine actually. Just as the sun breaks the first of the bars in the ceiling, just before the guards come to rap on all of our cells, I awake, shuffling the hairs of thatch that had slipped out from my bed back into shape.
Our cells had been small, nothing inside but a small space beyond our thatch beds that hung from the walls with chains. The floors weren't clean, sticky too, but they weren't dirty. In routine, I grab a small handful of the thatch using it to sweep the dirt from under my bed and from the corners of the room out of our cell in a small pile.
The front doors to our cell block open, the guard coming to wake all of us up, me pulling back my hand from beyond the cell quickly just in time to finish tidying the cell. I hadn't been the only one to do this though. I hadn't looked that day but I knew at least a good half of the people here had been soldiers of a banner army for the kingdom before being taken as prisoner here, you could tell who they were through how long they'd usually lasted living here too compared to the average person.
Had it been our hardened constitutions from our days holding spear and buckler? No, what remained of tough skin and a soldier's body eroded long into these walls in our time here. Had it perhaps been that we had been used to such conditions already? Not really. No, no, what allowed us to survive was our discipline. We still tidied up after ourselves, kept ourselves reasonably groomed and stood up straight whenever we were ordered to. It didn't put food on our plates, nor did it heal our bruises, but it let us keep some inch of our former dignity, a resistance against the tactics of the imperials against us here.
Sieghardt had told us that his folks were planning a breakout that day, heard him say that a dozen others were already in on the plot and would use some of the ink they'd stolen from the warden to force their way out of their cells. We hadn't been exactly close but… I knew him and his gang. Nice enough folks. I told them I was in
Sieghardt was one of the older men in the same banner I had served under before as a conscript for the kingdom. Reliable bloke, when push came to shove, you knew you could trust him, looked after his own you know? I had recognised all of the faces of the men in the plot that stood by him in the showers that day too. Fellow countrymen, and… how could I not really? Such packed quarters did we sleep in that I knew which one of them snored and what each and everyone's jobs had been before the war, though I suppose the same could be said about every one of us then.
It was poetic, they'd say, full moon giving its blessing on our escape and its assurances that our labours and toil would earn us a life anew; a renewal from the hell we'd suffered. I guess it had been true for all of us in different ways. Some of them were loyal to the crown, and desired to return to their duties as men of nails. Others had family still to return to whilst others had nothing to lose but chance to give a specific imperial their comeuppance. Looking back, I suppose that our shared commiseration in those mildew-speckled halls had done much in the way of pouring our fantasies into a crockpot of the delusion that we'd somehow earn our right to escape then. I know I certainly deluded myself on that much then.
We were sheltered children playing in busy streets. Turmoil we had perhaps endured and toured the many sights of the underworld we have done but in our minds, we remained brimming with naivete then. Like children, we are told of the fates that await us if we play on them for too long and like children, we roll our eyes, already knowing before then of those fates. We think we know what they really mean but in the many graces afforded to us from our cruel carers that gave heed and warning plenty, we were protected from the truth. Who knows? Maybe in very much the same way that children are, that we too would not conceive the dire consequences of our actions after seeing others get run over.
I had been a particular fool that day. Hindsight's Hennessy I drank of; and from that spirit gave unto me vision clear mere seconds after stepping onto that hot summer's tarmac, and that fine cognac of the cellars came in Taylor.
Yard work, shower and then sleep. Maybe out of some joke or irregular imitation of the sweet dough balls all of us shared with our families at one point in our lives, the guards had served us tapioca flour served in cooked down cane water. The tastes of both the two ingredients were bland and incompatible, egging on the toddlers teetering on tantrum in their cribs – what a cruel joke it was.
A firm hand palmed my shoulders, shaking it, the man's breath right by my ear, "Tanner has the ink… and that wall o'er there…" The man stoic as he had been in far better military attire extended his fingers to the bricked wall at mess hall's end, "Got the weapons behind them. Got it? Enough of us are committed, let's escape tonight eh?" He gives me firm pats on my back before moving on to another. That had been the last time I'd see Sieghardt.
That had been the last I'd see that commandeering strength as a cane whacked my legside.
"What are you doing here? I hear the roof's open tonight and they say sky's clear c-, can you help me up there?"
I glanced at Taylor. At that point, his finer functions and dexterities in his legs had eroded but strength he still had to push himself up with that cane of his. He adjusts his leg, placing the weight on his other as he helps himself off the chair, my gaze still on him then.
"I- I'm tired tonight alright? Just quickly help me up there Fei."
Taylor had looked off, and it hadn't been subtle either. Craning his head back, many a glance did he sneak to the mess halls as we progressed to the roof. The way he walked then, the way he shuffled with my support had been awkward, as if tucking his arms in for some strange reason. And it had only been when we'd reach the stairs up that I'd figured out he had been hiding something under his shirt, holding it between his pressed elbows and torso beneath his top.
"Guards'll know you know? Heavens, we an't even supposed bein here are we?"
I say that and yet with Taylor's silence came the best decision I'd made that day. I continued helping him up.
Past the showers and past the store, I pressed against the shut door and carried that cripple up the steps. And then wind. Bearing dead weight on that awkward incline to the roof, I'd nearly been knocked off my feet as I pressed up against the door frame, taking in that bouquet that bush and brush gave. First snow had passed days earlier and most trees were barren. Plants and any wilt of flowers barren yet give they did of a perfumed sweet lost on me in my days in that dungeon. So intoxicating that cold concoction had been that I hadn't realised Taylor's shuffling in my shoulders.
The door behind me closed off, the push that gave its closing click barely giving the strength needed for even that. Half jumping I swung around half expecting guards or the other folk there to tell me their escape was about to begin, but all there had been was his troubles and mine too.
"Taylor wh-"
Cut off not by his words, no, but by the black tincture he procured from his shirt. Ink, and a whole bottle of it.
``` ```
*(Narrator)*
Many a dozen in the mess hall bore arms against the guards, fewer than the number of the imperials that had been in there with them there. They thought they'd come out on top. But out from the doors came lines of more men, too many of them. The breakout hadn't merely failed, neither had it been the mere graves of the men involved in the plot. It had been the graves of the dignity left to the remaining men.
That winter solstice had been the last they'd eat with dignity.
Morning raps on the cells of the lesser. Tang of potent metal, the rancidity of seared flesh.
The mutts bred well that learnt to fear the rattan emerged into the yard to the perfunctory nods of morning from their braver fellows. Never so tall did they stand, their statures even now, taller than the meek dogs that emerge from their kennels. Different hounds were given their unique legacies, their valor earned and kept by their sculptures, some resting, some awake to see the awe of their compatriots. The fittest be damned, they had been the fighters, they had been the martyrs – they were the true survivors.
Staked and strewn their effigies laid. For some, they lay supine, appendage rotted with frost and broken off at parts, whilst others still gave their choked gasps, the last of the weights that were dropped on them still giving them their resting quilt. Many cried. Their remains would not be given funeral, none could be with due dignity of rebels.
Pang of nothing, the pinprick of dull nothing and the rope that pulled taut on a twisting nothing bringing waves of that exquisite nullity. Fevin did not cry. Fevin did not feel. Fevin's eyes squinted trying to blink forth tears he promised would come but he just could not help himself then. Like a dam breaking, his inner embankment was left dry hollowed.
Words. Feet… hanging over a void and heart wrested like a vice on metal, but lies those words had been. Not everything feels like something else, not everything was something and not everything was acted in the anima of another. How could one even spit that poison one's body hasn't recognised? Fevin felt an arm tug on his sleeve, a head leaning on his shoulders, a cane against his legside. Then and years after, the faces of the children who were punished too heavily for being in the wrong lanes remained blurry to him that sought out tears for his friends.
You get burnt, you apply ointment to make the pain feel better. You get sick, you take medicine to make the pain feel better. What concoction or remedy do you take when you stop feeling pain?
``` ```
You hear your stomach growling. You're hungry, find something to eat.
You crawl off the side you laid on the night before, phantom pains prickling and trickling in through the numbness as you support yourself up. Floor, you see the chewed and strewn thatch and straw of your beds around you. No sustenance there, at least none that hadn't been sucked out already. Walls, they have moss and mildew that smell deceptively sweet. Too bitter, look elsewhere. Taylor, he's a little bluer than usual, a little colder, but he was still him. He's just sleeping, probably tired. Not food. The divots in between the floor bricks, you've been eyeing just one bloodied opening you've scratched through it for the past few days already, hoping your bait attracts food that might crawl out.