by Trevor Zaple
“Carolyn?” he asked, his voice going loud. It was her. She was badly bruised on one eye and her lips were split and bleeding. Still, he thought, she had never seemed more beautiful than she did at that moment.
“Richard?” she asked, confused. “Richard, they know”.
“I know,” he replied. “We have to get out of here. NOW!”
“They knew all along,” she said hazily, and Richard began to worry that she might have a concussion on top of everything else. “They took me over here as bait for you, and you took it. Now they’ll kill us all and we’ll never escape”.
Richard laughed shortly. “Well, I don’t know about that,” he said. “If anyone on the other side of the river has any brains at all, they’re already well on their way to escape. I had them blow the bridge after I crossed it, once the fighting started”.
Carolyn sat up slowly, blinking. “You had them blow it anyway?” Richard nodded. “But you’re trapped here on this side”.
Richard shrugged. “We’ll find a way out,” he said, trying to keep his own disbelief from infecting this sentiment. “It gave them the chance they needed, though”.
Carolyn reached out tentatively and caressed his face. “I love you,” she said, and Richard encircled her hand with his own.
“I love you too,” he said, letting all of his worry and relief flow into that one sentence. “We have to get out of here, though”. Carolyn nodded and followed after Richard as he began to crawl away into the newly moonlit darkness.
The Richard that watched that city burn from the top floor of the tower would never have believed this Richard he thought, with something approaching wonder.
It took them an hour to crawl out of the battle zone; by the time they were away from it, it had become clear that the black-robes were not going to win the battle. Most of the barricades had been overrun, and the screams of the dying filled the night air like a symphony of hell. Richard and Carolyn crawled away towards the river; once they found the bank, they made their way carefully down to the edge of the river and began to walk along it quickly. There was a thick mass of weeds lining the edge of the river and they used it as rudimentary cover, trying to keep themselves hidden from prying eyes. A half-mile down the river they began to hear a low, coughing thump, followed by the fat sound of explosions. Several of the cars that formed the black-robes fortifications flared into hideous, flaming life. They looked back and saw that there were several small figures covered in flames running towards the rivers like torches in dire need of quenching. Richard bit back a spurt of vomit and forced himself to turn his eyes away from the scene. I tried to warn them he thought, but he knew deep down that it wouldn’t have mattered. Regardless of whether or not the cult had put up a fight, this would have happened.
“That’s terrible,” Carolyn said, her voice crawling with revulsion. Richard simply nodded, not trusting himself to speak.
They made their way along the river in silence, keeping the noise of their passing to a minimum. The bank of the river passed into a small forest and Richard began to relax. Every once in a while he would look through the trees to see if he could observe anything on the other side. The moon reflected off of the water like a shimmering silver ribbon, but the far bank of the river was shrouded in dark mystery. Richard found himself wondering if the majority of those grey-robes had managed to get away, and what direction they had gone in if they indeed had gotten away. For all he knew they were fleeing in opposite directions.
“There’s no help for it,” Carolyn sighed after he voiced these concerns. Richard nodded gloomily but had to admit that she was correct.
After forty-five minutes of walking the trees petered out and they found themselves on a wide, low barren that sloped gently down into the rushing highway of dark, glittering water. They paused by the edge of the treeline, exhausted and unable to comprehend the scene that was unfolding before them. It was instantly obvious what was occurring, but their tired minds refused to make any sort of sense of it.
There were somewhere in the vicinity of fifty people gathered on the bank of the river, with more in a motley assortment of canoes, rowboats, and pontoons mid-stream. Here and there in the crowd on the shore there were oil lanterns providing a stunningly bright illumination to everything. There was no shouting, or really any vocal noise at all. The silence of the scene was almost as unnerving as the activity. Carolyn turned to Richard.
“We should go back into the trees,” she said, her voice badly frightened.
“You should step back into the trees,” said a voice behind them. Richard whirled around and received a vicious blow to the nose for his efforts. He sprawled backwards, hitting his head particularly hard on the ground and blacking out.
When he awoke he was in a tent, and it was dark. He thrashed out and there was a scuffle on the far side of the tent as soon as he began to move. A figure moved past his position and out through the tent flap. A moment later several figures entered the tent and an oil lamp flared into life. After Richard’s eyes adjusted he saw three people crouched around him. Two were blunt-faced men, the kind that Richard would have once expected to patronize cramped sports bars and mutter dark secrets to each other about transactions involving greasy stacks of paper currency. The third was the ambassador, the one who had brought a severed head as a meeting-gift. The ambassador saw that Richard was awake and grinned, in the same sharkish manner that Richard remembered so well.
“Good morning sleeping beauty,” the ambassador said, his voice light and jaunty. “Thought you might take a little walk along the river tonight?” Richard grimaced and looked away to the wall of the tent. The ambassador’s face grew angry in shocking speed and he snapped his fingers. One of the blunt men swung down and clipped Richard on the jaw; his head jarred painfully off of the ground.
“Let’s try this again,” the ambassador continued, his voice back to its previous aren’t we so jolly? tone. “Where do you think you were off to?”
“Getting away from here before the whole place goes up in flames,” Richard groaned, spitting blood. “No point in sticking around when everyone’s going to be slaughtered anyway”. The ambassador laughed, a rich, cultured sound.
“Oh, I doubt that,” he chuckled. “I’d suspect otherwise. I know who you are, you see”.
Richard swore inwardly. “Is that so?” he asked neutrally.
“It is. You’re one of the council members for that ancient idiot you think is some kind of...saint, I guess? I know none of you would have abandoned him willingly, so let’s try this one last time. If you don’t answer me correctly, I’ll ask my friends here to begin breaking every bone in your body, starting with the smallest and working their way along. What were you doing out here?”
Richard shook his head and laughed weakly, although he really felt like sobbing.
“Since you won’t believe the truth, I guess I’ll tell you I was out spying and let the festivities begin”.
The ambassador rose to a standing position, stooping slightly under the roof of the tent. He stretched and cracked his knuckles, and the sound was as loud as a gunshot in the tent.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said easily, “and anyway, I think that I’d best leave your bones intact. My prestige trophies should be as damage-free as possible, after all, although I hope to gain many more in the coming days, and perhaps you won’t be so valuable after all. We shall see. Still, as a leader of these people, you shall net me great prestige”. He crouched again, and his knees popped loudly. “You will also help us quickly pacify this area. The people here will see you in our hands and despair will come over them much more quickly”.
Richard began to laugh again, harder this time.
“I doubt that,” he spat. “I really do. In fact, I really hope you don’t encounter any resistance at all”.
The ambassador stared at him, angry and confused. Then he got back to his feet.
“Have a bit of fun with him,” he told the goons that still crunched over Richard. He then
left through the flap without a second glance.
Later, as he lay bleeding and bruised in the darkness, struggling to breathe, his reeling mind associated a snatch of Tolkien, and he could hear the boom and the clang echoing through the broken crawlspaces of his head.
PART THREE:
THE OPEN BOOK OF SECRETS
“I asked myself about the present: how wide it was, how deep it was, how much was mine to keep”
-Kurt Vonnegut
ONE
The sun rose into its apex above the parched, beaten circle of grass upon which Richard Adams stood, contemplating the tawdry emptiness of the ring of rough, lashed-together wooden walls that surrounded it. They seemed like the crudest paradox imaginable, rickety logs that looked to be in danger of collapsing at any moment yet were psychologically more permanent than the seasons. He squinted in the hard sunlight, feeling a dull pain grow behind his eyes as a result. The warmth of the suns rays was a great comfort to his aging bones, but they did play havoc with his fading eyes.
He eyed the ring in which he stood with a critical eye; everything would have to be just so for the bouts that night. Garret Spaulding would be making an appearance, or so Richard’s master had intimated. Karl Tiegert, entrepreneur and fighting impresario, would not pass up a chance to impress an honest-to-goodness member of the Speaking House. It could only mean great things for his business, and as Karl was fond of reminding Richard, great things for Karl Tiegert’s business would mean great things for Richard Adams. Continued existence, for one thing; increased prestige, for another. As an indentured servant, Richard had never really found much worth in having a large amount of prestige, but his existence was at least semi-precious to him, and he aimed to keep what he had.
The stands were swept and fresh-looking; this was the first thing that Richard had attended to, knowing that Karl harped on keeping the area clear for the fans above almost anything else. There was no debris within the flat, beaten circle either. There could be nothing that might trip or otherwise disadvantage a fighter when they were engaged in their work within the circle. Remembering what had happened the last time, he checked each of the painted posters that plastered the inner wall that surrounded the circle itself. It would not be seemly at all to have a paid advertisement catch an errant breeze and go flying off into the stands at an inopportune moment. His back still ached from the punishments that had resulted from that.
He realized that it was meaningless to inspect the place again; he’d already gone over every last inch of the arena in the time since he’d arrived, just before dawn. It was as ready as it would ever be. A breeze whirled through the circle and tousled his thinning, iron-grey hair. He scrambled to run his fingers through it to put it back into some semblance of order; Karl was a stickler for personal appearance, as well.
There was a heavy steel gate that was the only exit from the circle, and so this was the exit that Richard took. They creaked loudly as he pushed them open, and he made a mental note to make a trip to the market to see if anyone was stocking oil that he could use to fix them. He decided that he would stop in at the farmhouse to see if Karl wanted anything else from the market before heading out.
The farmhouse stood twenty yards or so from the lashed-together arena; it was an imposing structure of dirty yellow brick, sagging slightly in the front but otherwise in startlingly good repair for a house that had been standing for over a hundred years, with irregular maintenance at best for the last quarter of that. It was seemingly devoid of life now, but when the crowds came to the arena it would be crammed with fans placing bets, getting food, and discussing business before taking in entertainment. Richard preferred this scene to the one in front of him now. Without the crowds, the farmhouse seemed haunted, as though the ghosts of the mass dead hovered about just out of Richard’s eyesight. The wind whistled through the yard and made strange noises as it passed through the cracks in the patched-up windows of the house.
The interior of the house was just as deserted as the outside; with the amplification of the sound of the wind and the creaking of the walls and foundation, it seemed even more so. His steps caused the aged floorboards to groan, but he paid them little mind. He walked past the deserted betting counter and through the messy kitchen; the stairs were on the far side of the kitchen and his ascent was just as noisy as his walk through the ground floor. When he reached the top of the stairs he paused, trying to listen for any movement or other sounds. There was nothing. He wondered if Karl was even in his office, and then berated himself. Of course Karl was in his office. He would be going over the books before the big rounds of betting began that night. Richard offered up a short prayer to whomever was listening that Karl was in a good mood.
He rapped his knuckles twice on the thick wood of the first door on the right and waited. Presently there was a muffled “come in!” from the other side, and Richard carefully pushed the door open and slipped inside. Karl Tiegert, a short, hatchet faced man possessed of a harsh, hacked crewcut, sat behind his cheap-looking desk with a heavy, cracked ledger open before him. He was staring down at it, his lips moving in silent accompaniment to the numbers he was reading off. Richard stood awkwardly on the other side of the desk, waiting for Karl to acknowledge him. He had learned, long ago, the value in waiting for Karl to speak first. Karl continued to stare down at his ledger, however, ignoring Richard’s existence.
Eventually Richard had to clear his throat and that was when Karl chose to look up. The look in his eyes was dangerous but he didn’t immediately launch into a tirade, for which Richard was grateful. Instead he shook his head and gestured disgustedly down at his ledger.
“These numbers are all fucked up,” he said, biting off each word. “There are people that owe me so much money it would take them a lifetime to work it all off. I should send people after them, but they know how to hide themselves so well by now that anyone that I hired might never find them”. Richard said nothing, and Karl shrugged with resignation. “I’ll find them sooner or later. How is the arena? Is it ready for tonight? There is a House Speaker coming, I shouldn’t have to remind you, and if the slightest thing...”
“The arena is fine,” Richard interrupted him. “I just need to go to the market to see if they have any oil to fix the gates. They’re screeching when they open and we should probably fix that before tonight”.
“We?” Karl asked contemptuously. “You can go to the market, try not to spend too much on it. If that asshole Beanie is there, see if you can bring back on of his dahlpouri, and one for yourself”. He grinned expansively. “I’m feeling generous today”.
“As you say, sir,” Richard replied carefully. He nodded efficiently and left the office without waiting for Karl to add anything else onto the order. He made his way down the stairs with loud steps and was outside within a minute of leaving the office. The breeze was blowing stronger, and his thin grey hair seemed to fly through the gusts.
The market was an hours walk down the crumbled, broken road that had once been a two-lane rural highway. It was not a scenic walk; the land on either side of the decayed road had been mostly overtaken by wild-growth forest and brambles, with the occasional smoothed-out area that denoted where a family had retaken the land for agrarian purposes. Those farms had been slow to appear, but in the last five years more and more of them had been established; it was far-fetched to say that civilization was returning for good, but Richard wagered that it had made definite inroads since the day that he had first arrived.
That day had been an overwhelming one and Richard’s mind floated back to it as he undertook his boredom-inducing walk to the market. It had been the fourth time he had been sold since that night on the riverbank in Brantford. His previous owner, an exuberant libertine in the seat of power in central London, had died of an overdose following a week-long binge on adulterated poppy mixtures. He had never put forth a will but his prestige was such that the Republic had come into possession of his belongings – which meant that Richard had briefly become a war
d of the state. He had been put up on the auction block in the London Trading House, which had been a first for him. The previous three auctions he had been an item in had been held in rough, dusty buildings decaying at the edge of large towns. Those times had been grimy, seedy affairs, where men in varying degrees of finery had poked and prodded at him by flickering lamp light. The auction in London had been a far grander affair, full of as much pomp and circumstance as could be mustered in the rude age that human society found itself in. He had been marched out onto a lacquered wooden stage to face an audience full of men and women in expensive, lordly clothes. They had eyed him critically while the auctioneer listed his skills and qualities; the high-speed chatter had washed over him in hazy waves. One of the men in the crowd had been dressed much shabbier than the others; his clothes seemed to be sturdy and built more for farm work than for impressing the upper strata of society. Despite his appearance he had outbid everyone one of the other interested parties in the audience, by a comfortable margin. This had been his first encounter with Karl; the sharp-faced man had coolly dropped a shocking amount of money and then had calmly roped him and led him away. At the end of the other auctions he had felt degraded, like common cattle being traded amongst gentlemen farmers. The looks that Karl had thrown his way after the last auction, however, made him feel like something different, something inherently more valuable than a beast.
He was a hard man, there was no denying that, but at the same time Richard reckoned that he was a fair man. Karl had purchased him because, over the course of Richard’s previous three owners, he had proven himself to be a trusted servant that could be counted on to accomplish whatever tasks were set before him. Karl had thrown him into the thick of things; Richard had been set to making sure that the man’s makeshift arena was set up and ready to go for every fight. He was also set in charge of the other servants, to ensure that the kitchen was being run efficiently and that the betting counter was being run without anyone trying to skim money off of the bottom of Karl’s earnings. When Richard failed at one of these tasks, Karl would let him know with swift and painful force; when Richard outperformed his normal duties, however, Karl was generous with his praise and with rewards. Richard was, for the most part, well-fed and well-kept.
