Thema: Work in progress - fuer Enkidi & Micha

[AlexW]

Ein Stueckchen meiner neuen Idee. Noch voellig ins Unreine geschrieben und gedacht.

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A Fragile Light

When the prison door opened, he was ready. As ready as he’d ever been lying in a ditch dug before the assault, as ready as crouching on the battlements, laden with ammunition, waiting for a lull in the hail of fire.

They must have thought him broken, or ill, or insane, when he was all of those, and neither. Not enough to yield to what surely was the final blow: execution.

The scraping and digging, the slow, patient wearing through of stone, and he could move more than he had been able to for what was surely years. Apart from the times of the mock executions, but even those had stopped a while ago. Likely because he had no more military secrets to spill, no more lords or retainers to forsake.

The person opening the door was frail, much more frail than Nelson Hawkwood ever feared to become, and strangling him with the chain was an easy task. A bucket of hot water and two clean towels fell to the ground. And, wonder of wonders, a straight razor. The man had been a barber.

Nelson slipped the razor into the pocket of the rags that were left of his clothes, and, dizzy from the sudden freedom, stepped out into the corridor. It was cold, cooled the sweat between his hand and the knife. Faint light barely guided him. Not a guard in sight.

He listened carefully, breath low, and faster than he’d wanted, but he’d lost too much of his strength and patience in that cell. And it could only be a matter of time before they’d find the corpse.

He couldn’t remember the way out. He’d been brought here with a hood over his head, driven along like cattle by rifle butts, down stairs, into walls, for the laughter, and he remembered the pain and humiliation like old friends, old masters.

Up, then. This part of the prison was empty, he knew that much from his attempts to establish contact by rapping against the door in all military codes he knew. Nobody had answered for a long while. Nelson had assumed the others had been shot, or sold back to their families.

Never him.

[AlexW]

He had merely endured, waiting for the victors to claim his life, after they had taken his freedom, his pride, and his unit. Had cursed them in the darkest nights for not killing him, - but he couldn’t allow thoughts like these.

Hawkwood. Pride and honor, and, of course, sacrifice.

He found stairs, stumbled upwards, both arms stretched out, fingers leading him, the stone cold, so cold, and ever colder the closer to the surface he came. At least he assumed there was a surface. Assumed this was a planet, not a moon, not a rock trundling through the void. Planet meant it had a way out, an escape route. He couldn’t touch the metal railing now, his hands were burning with cold, and he slung his arms around his chest, coughing, half blinded by his ow misting breath. Lungs almost bursting with the exertion of climbing stairs.

The same man who’d duelled two or three nobles a night without spilling a drop of sweat, the same man who’d bragged he’d been born for the heavy ceramsteel armor. If they could see him now.

Nelson gritted his teeth and drove his tired body onward, knees shaking by now, and he had to stop when his thigh muscle tensed up so badly it felt like it would snap his femoral bone. The cold, and the luxurious food.
 

(to be continued)