He looked back over his shoulder, not deigning to turn around entirely. It was another creature like the other two, except this one had perhaps had his nose broken less often.
So the brains of the operation, then, he thought. Perhaps gangs were sent to the Prison all together in a lump, which was easier to handle.
The being’s grunt told him that it didn’t understand his big words, so he tried again, speaking as much to the two flanking him as the one behind.
“It is a bit stereotypical, don’t you think? The slug creature controls the general population, and you stay out of his way, waiting for anyone traveling alone so you can beat them up. You think it’s clever because you can talk and call it a toll? And playing on the amnesia, how droll. Bravo.”
“Hey, you don’t talk to us like dat.”
“My apologies, I obviously overestimate your intelligence, then. Your command of language is as succinct as your smell. Do not worry, your fearsome leader got the point across, regardless.”
The third member of the trio who had thus far been silent added his brilliant contribution with, “Hunh?”
Outcast rolled his eyes.
Obviously, the witty banter would need to be reserved for other members of the inmate community.
“Let’s just get to the part where you try to kill me, shall we?”
There was a pause while the two flankers looked to the third for instructions. He managed to understand enough to sound exasperated when he commanded them, “Get him!”
The two lunged at him in a spectacularly uncoordinated attack of what was more general intention than any skill at hand to hand combat. Also, they were both armed, which made their ineptitude even worse.
He stepped backward, which they didn’t expect, then grabbed the wrist of the one on his right. With an exasperated sigh at the ease with which he was able to, he removed that one’s dagger with a deft twist.
The weapon was then his—a short, double-edged blade, but with a nice little curve and a notched tip. He knew exactly what this was, ingrained skill with weapons told him it was a skinning knife.
Not a weapon so much as a tool, but for right now, it would do nicely.
He struck, first by pulling on the man he still had by the wrist to send him toppling over toward the second and then stabbed into his side. The knife went in well; with a sharp twist, the wound opened.
The being gasped in pain and teetered away, stocky fingers grabbing at his side to try stemming the flow of, interestingly enough, bright green blood. The second had stepped back and sideways, unable to follow the speed of movement as their prey turned predator.
The knife came around in a graceful slice across his neck. There was a slight hitch as the nick in the blade caught in what was probably the neck bone or larynx, but his strength carried it through.
Blood spurted out, also bright green, and the being staggered back, trying to stem its own death in foul mimicry of the first.
Outcast turned to find the fearless leader right behind him, holding a thick branch in both hands, ready to bring it down and club him senseless.
Crude, but effective, if it landed.
He crossed his wrists and brought them up as the club came down, the dull thud of impact absorbed by his callouses and fighter’s arms.
With a twist of the hips, dip in the knees, pull and pivot, the third thug went helter-skelter over him in a throw that ended crushingly against the trail itself. He took a single short step forward and jabbed the makeshift club down, hard.
The recently deceased thug below him went still and then shuddered, not in his muscles, which would make his body move against the ground, but his entire body seemed to be changing, intrinsically, from the inside out.
The corpse bled away color and substance into the air, evaporating in black and white smoke that spread quickly to dissipate into nothingness. Unlike the way with which the dead convict had turned to dust from Old Man Page.
This corpse evaporated into white and black specks that quickly blew away, that one had become a pile of dust.
I wonder if this is how these beings die?
The unfortunate would-be trail toll collector with the slit throat succumbed to blood loss a second or two later; he fell over onto his side, and the same thing happened.
The body, the blood, all of the vigor and life left him, while the body simultaneously seemed to shrink in on itself and expand away in all directions at once.
It was a most curious effect and Outcast turned to watch the third and last thug in keen anticipation.
The being was down on his knees, holding the waning tide from the wound and looked up to stare in horror at the eager observation of their supposed victim.
Short huffing breaths came and went, the pain sending ragged gasps through the being as it slowly died before him. In the end, it fainted from the blood loss before it recognized its own end and passed away quietly, face first into the trail.
The same strange effect happened, but with a longer time to observe it, he saw that there was something else odd.
Looking down at the corpse by his feet, he saw that the shriveled up husk no longer resembled anything that was once living. He reached down tentatively and brushed his knuckles against the withered surface. It broke apart and collapsed into the ground, flakes of it vanishing like soot from a fire.
There, lying on the ground, was a tiny little orange stone with a sort of inner glow.
Outcast touched it and could feel that it was ever so faintly warm, not enough to really be called heat, but a comforting warmth. Moreover, it held power—only a small portion, but power nonetheless. Taking the small pebble along, he touched the other two remains as well and found two more stones, each perhaps a tiny bit smaller than the first.
Each one was as hard as stone when he squeezed them and then tried to scrape them in the dirt, then against another rock under a bush. They didn’t break, nor did they scrape away like chalk.
Quite fascinating really.
What was surprising was when he put them all in one palm and then closed his hand to force them together, instead of scraping and grinding against each other they made no sensation at all.
On opening his hand, he could see why, the three individual lumps had somehow joined together into one stone, slightly larger than the first.
How intriguing.
So he had their sackcloth pants, some leather they had tied as belts, and a new dagger. Not bad for the start of the day. Now all he had to do was see how things went in this Festering Warrens place.
**
It turned out the name was apt.
The ramshackle clusters of buildings grew like cancerous lumps spread across the tract of land visible from the latest bend in the trail he had followed. A small river spread in a Y shape from the north of the land mass down to split northeast and southeast, trisecting the attempt at a town.
There were enough structures to house thousands, and it was clear from this distance that no planning had gone into layout at all.
As far as Outcast could tell, from recollections about architecture that were dismally short of complete, there was a variety of mixed styles. But all of them were along the lines of survival accommodations, simple homes, with very few impressive residences in view.
Timber and daub structures with peaked, flat, paned, and angled roofs were alongside rough tents and tepees.
Some of the stone dwellings were square, while others formed L shapes or T shapes with peaked and tiled roofs. Animal hide overhangs from some structures bled into the overlapping square ones that covered large areas.
A good fire would wipe out most of the place.
There seemed to be a lot of activity, with dozens of beings in groups moving about from one area to the next.
The people made their way along whatever route seemed to pick their fancy—he couldn’t even call them streets really. There was enough space though, the Festering Warrens appeared to cover dozens of square miles.
If he wer
e right, it would take him the rest of the day just to get to the outskirts, and that distance was only about half the span of the Warrens area.
That such a large amount of space could be used up was impressive, it would have taken a long time and a lot of prisoners to build it all.
Outcast wondered just how old the Prison itself actually was.
**
He took his time getting closer to the ramshackle town, or what something of that size, spread out like that would be called.
It would have taken him the rest of the day to get there, so instead of arriving in darkness, he decided to play it safe and wait out the night a short distance away.
Idly, he mused that the other prisoners who got to the arrivals area must have seen signs of new convicts being ejected a day or two earlier. He could see all the way up to the stone monolith and the swirling vortex around the arrivals platform from down here.
So it wouldn’t be hard to see any change in the patterns from the dwellings, and probably for a reasonable distance further as well.
Otherwise, there was no way that the yellow being and its cohorts could have gotten there in time. Even those other beings with the teleport stones would need some warning to know to travel.
If they were busy, then it was unlikely they could always be there in time without enough advance warning. Which meant that there was some sort of lag time for passage to the Prison from wherever he had started.
Not that the notion helped him much, but it did help him visualize the structure of the Prison and ponder any means of escape. Sadly, no memories or skills jumped out at him while he led his thoughts through the options he could conjure up.
It did help pass the time through the night.
Outcast’s drive to escape had not diminished; it may, in fact, have gotten a particular push from within him. He could not explain what it was, but something inside him was eager to explore the Prison and find his way out.
Obviously, it knew something he didn’t know at that point.
**
The blazing orb of the sun rose, sending his shadow in a long length behind him as he came up into the western edge of the Festering Warrens.
The place didn’t look any better up close than it had from a distance, although it smelled better than he had expected. While the odor of many unwashed beings was present, as well as various musky and spicy smells, there was no hint of sewers or sewage.
Come to think of it, he hadn’t gotten hungry or thirsty the entire time he had been here. Even for him, as far as he felt on instinct, two days would show some sign of need. He had not had to relieve himself either.
How interesting.
Just inside the outskirts, he got a better look at the locals, most of whom were even less impressive than the buildings.
There were many different kinds of beings, mostly humanoid, although some scuttled about on a few extra legs. A few had horns or spines, others were smooth-skinned. There was a distinct difference that was obvious to Outcast from the moment he looked carefully.
Most of the general population seemed to be listless, apathetic even.
They stood slumped against walls or sat cross-legged on the ground and stared off into space. Added to that, these beings were all wan, drawn and thin. He had the impression that they lacked a life force as if they were not able to continue with the energy they had left.
He found that tremendously strange given that there had been a lot more movement the previous day. That activity was nowhere to be seen today, the vague impressions that passed for streets were mostly empty except for these creatures.
Their vacant eyes did not track him as he moved past, their blank expressions did not change. It was almost as if the entire place had become the ghost of a town overnight. Perhaps it was just this area, he realized when off in the distance he saw more movement, across one of the rivers among the haphazard buildings.
Strange.
Perhaps a lot was going on here that he did not yet understand.
He carried on, carefully, through the almost empty spaces between homes. The sudden activity was immediately apparent compared to the stillness, a shorter creature was scurrying over to him.
It loped along using the knuckles on hands that were overlarge for its arms.
A head with a long nose like a beak and flapping ears complemented its gangly appearance. The legs it had were shorter than the arms but also thin, he thought them quite agile, as well, until he saw that it had a tail briskly swishing among the flail of arms and legs as it loped closer.
“Ho!” it cried when it got a good look at him.
The sound was generic among many species. It then spoke to him in a clipped speech that he did not recognize. With its ruddy tanned skin and slight build, he didn’t consider it a threat, though of course there were other possibly hidden capabilities it could possess. It was after all also a prisoner, and therefore he should consider everyone dangerous.
He held his hands out and painted a look of incomprehension on his features.
It understood and tried another language, then a third, none of which he understood, before trying again.
“Ah, stranger. I do not recognize you from this part of the Warrens. Are you new?”
He nodded. Although he understood the words, he could not quite recall how to speak the language.
“Hum, I see.” It blinked, and its eyelids swept over bulbous yellow eyes. “Are you looking to find work? The mines always pay well.”
He shook his head slowly from side to side, and it got the idea clearly enough. He would not want to get involved in anything local anyway, and it could just mean trouble to do what it seemed a lot of the population was doing.
Granted, he didn’t know what refusing would indicate, but since he had already declined at the arrivals platform, he wasn’t going to change his mind just yet.
“Well, stranger, then you have to work out for yourself what you will do. There are those who survive on their own of course. Or I will see you again, like one of them.” A narrow finger with one joint instead of the two most humanoids possessed pointed at a nearby example of the pathetic beings who sat around doing nothing.
He didn’t know what it meant, but he was going to find out eventually.
He made to move on past, and it didn’t take any action to stop him, which was good. If it survived alone and was not actually at the mines, he wasn’t sure he wanted to tangle with it. It did speak up once he was almost far enough away to turn a corner.
“Stranger, do you remember your name?”
He stopped to look back at it.
Obviously, the question was pertinent, and the small creature seemed to take it quite seriously. It looked eager for his answer in some way, evinced by the body language and keen way it gazed at him.
Even if he did, the impression he got was that it would be dangerous to admit it. He shook his head slowly from side to side again. It nodded once in reply, then winked at him and scampered off with its strange method of movement.
**
The day brightened as he explored, although the town did not. It stayed in a perpetual haze, but not caused by the height of buildings, since most of them were a single floor.
The cliff face to the south drew a shadow across the area as the sun traversed the planar sky.
Still, it wasn’t enough consistent darkness to put everything in such gloom. He could only imagine that nighttime would be worse, making this a hazardous place indeed.
Outcast did find beings that are more active when he noticed a branch of the river that trisected the town and crossed into a bustling area. It seemed that just one portion of the town was busy, while the rest were nearly deserted.
In this area, all the beings were conducting business or participating in a sport of some kind. He skirted the edge of the crowds and took his time to carefully look everything over.
With one eye on the passage of the sun, since he needed time to get out of the Warrens before nightfall, he looked closely
at what passed for commerce in the Prison.
The general goods he saw bothered him because they were not consumables of any kind. Not a single item of food was in sight, not grains, fruit, bread, or roasted meats. Interestingly, however, there was a tavern of some kind, and inside various beings were drinking and, in fact, eating.
Not outside, and it troubled him slightly.
Among the various goings-on was slave trading of those prisoners unlucky or weak enough to be sold as property. Most of them looked to be female specimens of the different beings. Or big and strong male specimens.
As to why they were slaves, he did not hang around to find out. The dangerous air around the sales told him all he needed to know about how you kept a slave around here.
There were also a few areas with recessed pits or raised platforms for fights.
Outcast passed nearly a dozen in one location alone, and it seemed to be the general pastime to either take part in the matches or wager on the outcome. He observed a few, the populace appeared to enjoy the ragtag matchups and even impromptu volunteers taking on existing champions.
He expected the real fights to be happening elsewhere.
What he did look for was how to make payment. If he was going to take part in anything or be able to supply himself, he needed to know how commerce took place.
The prisoners all jealously guarded whatever it was they used for currency, and it took him quite some time to get a good look at an actual exchange. Even then he only got it right by going onto the roof of a nearby building and carefully watching the wagers getting paid out.
It turned out that the Prison made good use of life for its currency, in a quite literal sense.
The being who had won a bet and the one who lost would get very close together, and both pulled out similar examples of the glowing orange stone he had acquired from the thug’s corpses.
The two beings pressed the bits of stone together, and they would brighten slightly. Then one of the stones would shrink while the other would grow.
When the transaction was complete, the happy winner was in possession of a now larger lump of rock.
Convict Fenix Page 6
