The Three Kings by Slawomir Rapala

Table of Contents Chapter V: On the Brink of Madness part 2 of 3

He could already see the wicked Nekryan with his skull crushed, blood splattered all around him and gushing uncontrollably from an open wound in his head as he slowly sank to his knees. He could already see the man’s features twisting horribly in pain as the hot steel plowed savagely into his flesh and bone.

He could already hear his wailing cries of pain as he struck him again and again and again, crushing his face, unleashing his hatred on the man’s wretched body, disembowelling him, bathing in a pool of his blood and trampling all over his precious insides...

But the guard was quicker than the boy and he scrambled back swiftly, avoiding the vicious blow that would have split his head in two.

“Son of a bitch!” he hissed.

Iskald was pulled forward by the sheer force of the blow, lost his balance and tumbled to the ground. The guard took this opportunity to kick the weapon away with his foot, far beyond the boy’s reach. His features twisted with rage and the Nekryan kicked him savagely over and over again. He kicked and beat him sadistically, using his whip, hands and fists, cursing and screaming all at the same time.

Iskald curled into a ball and instinctively covered his face to protect his eyes; he did not attempt to rise and escape because he knew there was nowhere to run. The mine was swarming with guards. He would take the punishment, he would suffer through another beating and humiliation.

Shira had trained him well: Iskald was used to such savage beatings; the brutish Tha-kian guard had made sure of that. The boy’s body was already scarred for life after the floggings, the whippings, and the clubbings he had gone through.

Suddenly it all stopped though, the blows stopped, the ringing in his ears stopped, and all he could hear now was Cisil’s hoarse voice rising above all the noise. “What’s goin’ on ‘round ’ere, goddammit?!” The head guard quickly pushed through the crowd and used his burly arms to separate the guard from the boy. Iskald remained on the ground and continued to cover his face with his hands.

“Whadda ya doin’?!” Cisil stood in front of the fuming guard and looked hard at him with his one good eye peering from behind all the scar tissue that grew on his face.

“The little son of a bitch tried to kill me!” the guard hissed and pointed at the steel axe lying on the ground some distance away from them.

Cisil looked at the Nekryan with hint of disbelief and then turned to glance at Iskald who still lay on the ground. Then he gazed at the tool for a moment, then looked back at the guard and finally he fixed his good eye on the boy. He grinned maliciously, showing off a row of yellow, rotten and diseased teeth.

“Tryin’ to be tough like Emilio, ain’t ya, ya li’l bastard?!” he snapped at the boy. “Yeah, he’s tough as nails, chewin ’is arm like that each time I beat ’im! Ya wanna be tough like that, huh? We’ll see ‘bout that, boy! Git ’im up! C’mon, git ’im up now!”

Two men quickly hoisted Iskald back up to his feet. The boy did not struggle. He lowered his hands and looked at Cisil with an indifferent gaze.

“Yeah, ya’r tryin’ to act al tough and all, but ya ain’t so tough, boy, I can see yar knees shakin’ there, boy, don’t pee yar britches now, huh?” Cisil sneered. Then he turned to one of his guards and said, “Bring da bench and da clubs, we’ll see juss how tough da li’l bastard really is! Hurry up! All da rest of ya, git back t’work, we ain’t feedin’ ya to let ya watch nuttin’, we’re feedin’ ya t’work, goddammit!”

The Nekryans turned and shouted at the gathered slaves, lashing out at them with stinging whips and chasing them away from the spectacle. One of them in the meantime brought the items Cisil had asked for and placed them beside Iskald, who was still held firmly by two Nekryans.

The young Duke gazed at the strange items, unsure what to expect. He thought that whatever punishment Cisil had designed for him, it would be severe. Iskald had been clubbed many times before, however, and the prospect no longer scared him much. He remained still and indifferent and only eyed the strange instruments with a mixture of fear and confusion.

The bench that Cisil asked for was long and narrow and was missing two legs at one end. The guard turned it upside down, so that the two remaining legs pointed into the air.

Cisil looked around and then pointed a crooked finger at one of the Nekryan keepers standing at the back of the group.

“Tetoy, come ’ere! Ya got da muscles ’n ya know what to do! See if this li’l maggot’s as tough as Emilio! See if he chews his fingas off too! C’mon!”

The named guard pushed through the small crowd and approached Iskald with a cruel smile plastered to his flat face. He rolled the sleeves of his dirty cotton shirt, showing off his thick forearms and the crude tattoos that covered them.

“Git ’im on da bench!” Cisil ordered hoarsely.

Two guards forced Iskald to lie face down on the wooden board. Two other Nekryans tied his legs to those of the bench and Iskald could no longer move. His feet pointed to the ceiling, their soles flat and exposed.

“Don’t give ’im more than ten,” Cisil cautioned. “We don’t want ’im bleedin’ to death jus’ yet or t’pass out and die on us! He’s still t’work here!”

The guards chuckled and elbowed one another while Tetoy picked up one of the clubs brought. It was heavy and thick, just the type of club he liked to use for this kind of flogging. He weighed it in his hand, then approached the bench where Iskald now struggled to free himself, unsure of what was about to happen.

Without any warning Tetoy swung wildly and brought the heavy club down with great force, crushing the boy’s heel with one savage blow. Iskald roared like a wounded animal, overcome by a sudden explosion of horrific pain. His whole body jerked, but the bounds held fast and before the echo of his tearful cry died in the cavern, Tetoy crushed his other heel, tearing another agonizing wail out of the boy’s throat.

What followed was the most shocking experience of Iskald’s life, one that he would remember for the rest of his days, one that would leave him limping for the remainder of his life, and one that took months for him to get over. He was never before or after treated with such inhumanity and such cruelty, and he hoped to all the gods that no one had been treated in the same way.

When the guards finally untied him from the bench some time later, they had to pour cold water over him because he was coming in and out of consciousness. He was in shock and shaking; he could not stand on his own and fell to the ground sobbing uncontrollably.

For days he was unable to stand, walk, to speak or to think even, overcome with the memory of the anguish, his body remembering. His head was full of screaming pain and it was to be like that for what seemed to be an incredibly long time.

He spent the next few days in a dark, foul cellar, a cold and repulsive hole in the bedrock, locked behind a set of massive oak doors situated directly in the rock. He did not know how much time he spent in that black hole. The sun soon became a distant memory and the boy was not even able to distinguish between day and night. And even if the sun for some reason would decide to look inside, it would certainly run for its life, away, away from this wretched place, away from these wretched souls, away from the terrible things that took place there.

The cellar, as it soon turned out, served as a lair for some of the mineworkers and slaves. The first time Iskald saw his companions, despite the wicked pain and fever he tried to rise to greet them and to ask for aid. He was bitterly disappointed when his pleas and wails of pain were met with an utter lack of interest, and sometimes with outright anger and resentment.

The first night spent in the lair in the company of his fellow workers left him even more bruised and sore. After he was kicked and pushed against the wall several times, after someone repeatedly stepped on his injured feet, Iskald curled up in the corner of the cellar and quietly cried himself to sleep.

He found no friendly soul in there; he was met with hostility and hatred even from those that shared his fate. Years of torment and inhumane treatment at the hands of Isla, the diabolical Cisil, and the rest of the Nekryan keepers, left the wretched creatures with little or no humanity of their own.

Was it not for their familiar form and the language they spoke, Iskald would see them as nothing but wild beasts: vicious, selfish and violent. When working in the cave and extracting the precious ore from the hostile earth anxiously guarding its treasures, they kept to themselves and worked steadily. Once the guards’ watchful eyes were no longer on them, however, once they were no longer under the threat of being beaten or tortured by their keepers, they turned into wild and uncontrollable beasts themselves.

A careless look, a whispered word, an accidental push, all such things quickly lead to a fierce exchange of blows, and could just as quickly led to a brawl involving everyone in the lair. The small cellar would then fill with shouts and screams, angry screeches and inhuman howls. Such clashes escalated rapidly and often ended in broken noses and jaws, limbs or digits torn off, heads crushed against the wall, and eyes ripped out of their sockets.

Iskald once witnessed the crowd tearing a boy to pieces in a matter of moments because he refused to give up a portion of his food; his agonized screams were quickly drowned in the general uproar. The guards failed to notice that anything had happened. The next day they discovered portions of the dismembered body scattered all over the lair floor, and the walls and ceiling painted with blood. Most of the body was gone, eaten by the hungry mob.

The main perpetrator used the boy’s mutilated head as a stool, as if wanting to show everyone that he was to be blamed for the death, as if provoking a reaction from Cisil and the guards. There was none. Everyone except Iskald, who was still too weak to move, was sent to work as usual while the Nekryans cleaned up the gruesome evidence of the murder. They fed what remained of the body to the dogs.

Iskald not only feared this crowd of slaves: he hated them and pitied them at the same time. He realized he could hardly blame them for what they had transformed into. It was Isla’s greed that caused this. It was the guards’ inhumanity and their sadistic ways that caused these poor wretches to degenerate to this point. They were stripped of everything they could possibly ever value.

Everything was taken away from them; first and foremost, their pride and self-respect. Humanity itself was ripped out of them by sheer force. They were forced to watch as the Nekryans mutilated their companions, as they maimed their friends, as they let loose violent instincts, as they unleashed their cruelty beyond any imaginable limits.

Years later, having already witnessed the most atrocious and despicable acts of violence, having been repeatedly beaten, cut, maimed, and raped themselves, the slaves could no more hold on to their sanity or their humanity. All was lost for them, even if someone was to come and rescue them from this hellish pit. They knew nothing else, no other way of life.

Life as other people lived it, as they themselves had lived it before, that life was nothing but a distant memory, one that was buried under hundreds of more recent and much more brutal recollections. These remained more vivid in their minds, having been reinforced on continual basis.

All they could do was survive; often at the expense of their companions. They were treacherous, evil, and malicious. And Iskald was horrified to realize that one day he might become just like them himself. He wept at that thought, but was careful not to show his tears to others, fearing they would see it as a sign of weakness and turn on him.

The several days he was forced to spend in the lair with the wretches, barely able to move his brutalized body, they were arguably the most miserable and discouraging of his entire life. The presence of the degenerates was a continuous reminder of how far down he was driven over such an incredibly short period of time.

From Duke to slave, from the palace to the cellar, from lavish ornaments to iron shackles, from delightful meals to half-cooked and half-rotten beef, from extravagant clothes to dirty and flea-infested rags, from charming and graceful company of the Estate’s aristocrats to the degenerate and mind-numbed mineworkers.

And the worst thought of all was that there was still room to sink even lower, given enough time. Iskald dreaded that thought and waved it off as best as he could. As soon as he was well enough to stand, he willingly went to work. Although it was difficult for him to keep up with the others, although his body was injured and weak and just about ready to give in, the boy clenched his teeth and worked hard. Dumbfounding physical labour, exhaustion and fatigue, these were the only ways for him to rid himself of the frightening thoughts.

His life became dreadfully monotonous and dull, and terrible at the same time. Horror became a part of every day and surprisingly soon he became accustomed to it, even to a certain degree immune to it. Day after day they were all forced to do arduous work, with little or no rest, under the constant threat of being beaten and hurt, or even killed.

Iskald pummelled the wall with his pickaxe, extracted the precious ore day after day. When he stopped to wipe the sweat off his forehead or simply because his arms could not take anymore punishment, his already scarred and injured body was beaten again and again.

Having completed the work for the day, he retreated back to the lair, so exhausted that he was barely able to keep his eyes open. He would drop to the cold, hostile floor, barely touch the meat that the guards brought them to eat, and he would try to get some rest.

But sleep quite suddenly became a luxury he was hardly ever able to attain; the lair was kept awake most of the night by the savage screams of those that had gone mad, the pathetic wailing of those who were just going insane, the crying of those that had been beaten or flogged during the day, and the constant arguments and shouts, violent and bloody brawls.

Iskald would close his eyes so as not to see these pitiful creatures and he would try to shut their voices out. He would sometimes manage to get a few moments of sleep, sometimes with his eyes wide open, sometimes just leaning against the wall because there was not enough room for everyone to sleep on the ground. Exhausted beyond any comprehension, delusional almost, he would wake at the sound of the guard’s voice, pick up his tools and stagger back to work on unsteady legs.

No one would now look at this shell of a human being that could barely stand on its own legs and believe in the story of the noble birth, the luxurious upbringing, the extravagant life, and the enormous wealth. No one would see the Duke in the slave.

But Iskald continued to live because of his unbreakable spirit. This same spirit had kept him alive during the nightmarish voyage from Lyons to the Kingdom of Tha-ka, this same spirit that had not allowed him to give up, and this same spirit kept him alive during the time spent in Isla’s mines. He did not die, he did not go mad like so many others.

Despite the horrific existence not only did the boy survive, but he also matured, both physically and mentally. Where so many others had lost their minds, his cultivated itself. The dull and awful existence failed to numb his thoughts and feelings, he was able to reason with intensity and clarity remarkable for someone in his condition.

Months passed, and then years.

Iskald had never lost hope and continued to believe that because his torment was unjust, it would have to end someday. Gods would have to right the wrongs eventually. Even if he doubted them before, they were now his final resort, his last hope.

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Proceed to part 3...

Copyright © 2008 by Slawomir Rapala