Medieval Rain

by J. D. Sonne

  That night, lying under the rancid animal skin, as much as it galled her, Rane realized that she was going to have to pretend to get along if she were going to have any chance of acquiring her freedom. Of course, blunt force appealed more to her nature, as she was unused to waiting for things. She was accustomed to taking control of her surroundings. Well, that was not going to work here, and she had better adapt to what was going to work. She would have to do her best to seduce the virul, but she hoped the seduction would not lead to coupling with him. It might be that she could just befriend him just enough for him to reduce his vigilance over her. If she could just gain freedom of movement even within the camp that could increase her chances of escape a hundred-fold.

  The next morning when the virul kicked the arch of her foot to awaken her, Rane sat up and watched him place the bowl in the same awkward position as before.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  The virul was already halfway to the center of camp. He whirled in surprise and asked, “What did you say?”

  ‘“Thanks,’ I said ‘thanks!’” Rane repeated even before she started hogging the contents of the bowl. She fingered a scoop into her mouth and lied, “It’s good. What is it?”

  “I don’t think you want to know,” the virul said uncertainly, but moved back toward her.

  “It tastes like a grain of some sort,” she said, ignoring the comment, now wolfing it down. “And I think it is seasoned with nutmeg?”

  “Among other things,” the virul said, sounding a little embarrassed.

  This is going to be easier than I thought, Rane decided, trying not to think about the ‘other ‘ cryptic ingredients in the gruel. “It must be the same grain that they are baking into the bread that I smell.” She finished the bowl and handed back to him, extending her arm awkwardly so he would see she was in no way trying to gain a physical advantage. “Again, my thanks!” She said, trying not to sound too earnest or false.

  He stood and looked at her for a moment, his face very still, his expression unreadable, and turned away from her and walked to his hearth. By now, she was acquainted with the layout of the camp, at least in her immediate view, and she had ascertained that his hut was the third from the outlying dwelling nearest the wood. He sat down before his fire and patted the head of a little boy who had sidled up to him for warmth.

  Another reason she wanted to make nice was that she was going crazy not having anything to do. At first, the new environment had captivated her attention, but the doings of the primitive camp soon bored her. It seemed that all they did all day long was tend the fire, roast, bake, mend, repair the huts, etc, etc, etc. Prisoner or not, she could not see herself immersed in the mundane activities that assured the community’s survival. That was another inducement for her escape. She felt she would rather die than live such an existence.

  The morning passed just like the previous two with Rane bored out of her mind. She amused herself, badly, by gathering every rock she could find in the circular range of her shackle chain and arranging them in various configurations, including letters, animals and little houses, eventually creating a miniature map of her immediate surroundings. Then as the group started gathering the midmeal and cooking, she noticed her virul conversing with the female who had brought her food the day before. Their whisperings were interspersed with covert glances in her direction. She feigned inattention, but her periphery allowed her to watch their approach.

  The female stayed well behind the virul who crouched before Rane and stared at her for a few moments. Picking up a small branch, he made a great show of inspecting it, shearing off its barbed branches and leaves until he had a sleek strand of wood about two feet long.

  Rane assumed disinterest, but wondered if he were planning on striking her and wished desperately that he would try. Her shackle would ensure that the altercation would not end in her favor, but she was willing to endure anything to ease her imposed stultifying inaction.

  He moved closer but did not raise the stick, plunging it into the dirt and drawing a diagram of some kind. As he continued, it was impossible for her to pretend indifference and she found herself engrossed in the rough etchings of what could only be a dyke system with a network of troughs. She was intrigued: it looked like this little disheveled community was trying to civilize itself. And on a world like Maraquan, civilization could only begin with a harnessing of the flood that surrounded its inhabitants.

  Rane grabbed the stick and the female gasped, but the virul let her keep it as Rane alternated between rubbing out some of his design and drawing improvements in the diagram. Some time went by as the two worked together, the female bringing the virul another stick at his behest, and a tidy engineering plan print appeared in the loose sediment around her shackles.

  For the first time, the virul spoke. “But can it be done? We have been driven to this little space,” he indicated the camp around him, “by the water around that stream back there. I think you can help us. You obviously were an Aquan Leader in your sector. We would like to stay here, but we must tame the flood.”

  Rane followed his gesture and looked into the trees, imagining the swamp that he must be describing. She was very excited. Her duties as Aquan Leader for the past three years made her more than qualified to build the thing drawn in the dirt, and gave her an unsurpassed opportunity for escape. She had better not sound too eager, however.

  “What makes you think that I care about any of this?” Rane put as much vitriol as possible into her voice. “I am a prisoner, kept here in the foulest conditions imaginable, and you want me to help you? You, virul, have to be the stupidest virul I have ever met, and that is saying something. Now, go away.” She threw the stick at his feet.

  The female handed a loaf of bread to the virul, and he tossed it to Rane whose deft snag kept it out of the dirt. It was warm in her hands and instinctively she held it up to her face to allow her nostrils to suck in the delectable wafture of baked grain. She wanted to weep with joy, but restrained herself and even kept the bread away from her mouth until the virul and the female turned away. She waited until they were back at their respective hearths (for they did not seem a couple) until tearing into the beautiful grain flesh that when eaten felt like clouds in her mouth.

  The bread filled her thoughts until, too soon, it disappeared. She could have eaten ten more loaves like it, but for the first time since her capture, her stomach was not experiencing the clenching hunger that she had been very hard pressed to ignore.

  Her mind returned to the exchange with the virul, and she inspected the drawings again. Perhaps she had offered too quick a rebuff to his overture. But even after her nasty tone, he had given her the bread which in turn gave her hope; maybe she was playing this correctly.

  To her intense dismay, not much changed in the next two days, and she spent her time as she did before, using rocks to produce art, or designs or whatever. She even used the dirt prints to embellish her ideas for the water system the virul proposed, using twigs, leaves and anything else lying about to bring the flat dirt into more of a model.

  Finally, on the third day, the virul approached her, throwing something on the ground when he was a few feet from her. He crouched again before her. He said, “so, I have a proposition for you.”

  She said nothing, and waited.

  “Well? So, you are not interested,” he said, standing and beginning to move away.

  Rane caught his eye and nodded curtly. He came back into a crouch.

  “I have begun to reroute the water in the swamp, but I need help in putting this design—” He stopped. He had just made an airy gesture toward what he thought was still a drawing in the dirt. Then his eyes followed his hand, and he noticed her microcosm of water works. “You have been busy,” he said moving toward the sculptures to get a better look. “So, you are interested.”

  “Don’t confuse my efforts to avoid boredom with interest in your little project,” Rane said, but keeping the barb out of her tone. She decided to start the nego
tiations. “You have hardly made it worth my while to consider helping you.”

  “That is why I am here,” the virul said. “I want to appeal to your logic and see if you understand the reality of your situation.”

  Rane found her rock and sat back against it and folded her arms. “Go on,” she said impatiently.

  “Those shackles do not even need to be around your ankles.” To illustrate a coming point, he retreated a few feet toward the object he had dropped and picked it up. It was a forked bar which he wielded meaningfully then plunged it into the base of the shackle pike that had been driven into the ground. He wedged the fork under the lip of iron that was flush with the dirt and gave a mighty yank. After a few such exertions and a lot of sweat, he was able to extract the six-foot pike from the ground. He detached the pike from the shackles, then pounded the pins out with a hammer that hung from his belt. The shackles fell from her feet. She was free.

  He nodded toward the wall of forest that surrounded the glade. “That wood is more powerful than your shackles ever were. There is no escape. Five feet into that morass of leaves and you will become hopelessly lost, and since you had a hood over your face, you have no idea where we entered the camp. So, that is your reality. If you venture out there, you will die.”

  Rane had been watching the camp so intently for the past four days that she had all but ignored the wood surrounding them. The trunks of the immense trees crawled with ragged ivy creeping up from the forest floor, and dense hanging mosses spiraled down to meet the undergrowth. Between the trunks, the undergrowth and the moss, there was a blackness that testified to the truth of what he was saying. She stretched her legs, pointing her toes and rolling her ankles about to get the feeling back into her feet. She rose.

  He went on, “But, if you help us build the waterwork, I will see to it that you are fed, have enough water, and liberty within our camp. And, who knows, perhaps you will find that you like this life.” Then, suddenly his face was not two inches from her own; he had covered the distance between them in seconds and it was only a steel effort that kept her from reeling back. “But, now that you know that escape is impossible, if you do anything to disrupt us, if you hurt anyone or sabotage our efforts, I will not hesitate to kill or maim you as I did your sister.”

  He stood back, wary, and seemed to assess her movements. Rane simply looked at him as she arched and popped her back, testing her joints. She cracked her knuckles and brushed the dirt from her pants and the rest of her clothing the best she could.

  The virul must have lost his wariness, for he started walking back in the direction of the huts. Rane watched him, wondering if she dared to defy the danger of the forest and knowing that this may be her only chance to escape. Then she looked down at her tiny waterwork design.

  The array of tree bark, twigs and stone were more than just a product of prisoner idleness. They presented a wild challenge. Not only would she be engineering a water network here for the exiles, but she would also be softening up a foe for exploitation. For that is how she regarded all of them, as foes. She would build the waterworks, vowing that this community would never use them. She would learn a way out of this camp and bring its existence to the notice of the council and her people would populate this glade of blue crystal. She decided she did not want to die in a dark forest, but would meet this challenge. She could almost hear her mother’s voice as she trudged up the incline toward the virul and his camp. “Rane, you cannot control the trouble that may come, but you can control how you answer it.”

  “Well said, Mother,” Rane said to herself as she settled herself beside the virul’s hearth fire.“But I hope this trouble doesn’t beat me down before I can answer.”

  Chapter Five

  That first night, at least she had not had to contend with worrying about where she would sleep. Rane was afraid that the virul would make good his initial threat as to why she had been brought here. But after she followed him to his hearth, he had just left her there before retiring to his hut for sleep. She had retrieved the smelly animal blanket from her old spot and happily wrapped herself in it as close to the fire as she dared and slept soundly for the first time since her kidnap.

  No, sleep was not a problem at all, and after a few days, the virul even indicated that she could sleep under a rather rickety lean-to, which she soon improved with a little inexpert carpentry. But on the first day of attempting a start on the project, she discovered that the working conditions were atrocious, and it was nearly impossible to get any work done because of the lack of tools and even more important, the lack of discipline among the viruls and even the females.

  Rane was used to trained viruls, who did not need prodding to follow instructions. But these viruls were not only stupid, but supremely insubordinate. They questioned every directive, and when finally convinced to follow her orders did so with sullen mumbles, their chins jutted and their brows low. Her virul had to stand alongside her at every step of the process—the survey, the time planning, the water rerouting, the digging, the logging, the gathering and laying of pitch, the trough construction—because the other viruls would not obey her.

  Even more surprising was the total absence of command presence among the females in the group. She, along with every Lead and Titled of her acquaintance took advantage of the hierarchy of their world and assumed leadership roles just as a matter of course. These females were not like that at all. They seemed content to work around camp, cooking, mending huts and even looking after the children—not very well as far as Rane could see—and taking on more of a secondary role. She also noticed something else that made her stomach turn—viruls and females openly engaged in the beginnings of coupling. At least they retired to a hut when things really got warmed up, but the grotesque scenes of such indecencies filled her mind at the most inopportune times and sometimes distracted her.

  For instance, one of the viruls whom she had seen in such a grasping, kissing, groping tableau the night before was before her asking where he should put the log he had just harvested.

  At first she just stared at him, both because of the scene in her mind and because the question was such a stupid one. “Put it over there, virul! Do you not see the other logs stacked there?”

  The virul seemed a little shocked at her aggressive tone. “I only thought that since that pile was getting a little big, that we should start—”

  “Well, don’t think!” Rane snapped. “Just do as I say, virul.”

  “My name is Shrono,” he said and turned slowly away.

  Rane had been drafting out the project on one of the rare pieces of parchment that her virul had scrounged from a corner of his hut, and she returned her attention to dipping her stylus in the coarse blacking. She looked up and watched the virul’s retreat. What went on in that hut? She shook her head and etched out the mistake his interruption had caused.

  “Shrono is probably the kindest man in our camp. You did not have to yell at him like that.”

  At the voice of her virul, she said, “He is probably one of the dumbest, too,” she retorted. “Where do I put this log?” she mumbled. “What an idiot.” She looked up and saw two viruls attempting to lash together some logs in an effort to create the scaffold for the first trough. She gasped and ran at them, her virul following.

  “What are you doing? Nobody told you to do that! And you over there,” she said to another group who was raising another scaffold, “put that down. You stupid brutes need to wait for my instructions.”

  Now that she had pulled her attention away from her drafting, she saw that a lot of unauthorized activity was going on. Viruls were lathing out huge logs, not paying attention to uniformity, size, or even shape. Another group was building a fire and pitching leftover scraps in the flames. She stalked to that group.

  “Do not burn ANYTHING,” She said. We can use those scraps for repair later, not to mention sawdust for mulch and wedges for construction.” Swiveling her attention around to all of the groups helter-skeltering various project
s, she raised her hands in frustration, shouting, “Stop everything, you stupid mulebeasts!”

  More than half of the viruls working on the site were still ignoring her. She was not used to such insubordination from viruls. These big stupid louts seemed to have no idea what order, planning or even listening was!

  “You stupid viruls! I say, YOU STUPID, WRETCHED, LAZY, REPULSIVE PIECES OF FLESH! Stop talking and listen to me! I am a LEAD! You must do as I say!”

  That last got their attention. She saw the various groups turn toward her. The faces were filled with a mixture of amusement, hostility, indifference and even murder. She recognized this last, as the virul rat she had put in the healers for a week had that look. It did not occur to her to be afraid. Instead, she plunged into training mode. She stalked over to the unburned pile of scraps, picked up a sturdy short log, and moved to the nearest virul. She raised the makeshift club and brought it down on his head.

  Howls filled the swampy glen, and she felt the club wrenched from her hand. Surprise assailed her. Why were they reacting so dramatically—she was only going to kill one of them! Surely they understood that their erratic behavior had to be quelled. She felt many strong hands upon her, and one set of eyes filled her gaze. Her virul was shouting at her, his face not an inch away.

  “What are you doing? You cannot do that! Look, he is bleeding! You could have killed him! Who do you think you are?”

  She tried to shake off the hands that held her and found she could not. Instead, she relaxed and tried to assume as much dignity as she could with the words, “I am a Lead of Maraquan. Take your hands off me.”

  No one was more surprised than Rane when the viruls relaxed their hold enough that she was able to step out of the sweaty male crush and assume a defensive crouch. At least this way, she could fight, if not overcome them.