Fallen Victors Read online

  Fallen Victors is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the writer’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual person, living or dead, events, or locales is coincidental.

  Copyright @ 2015 by Jonathan Lenahan

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Hanna La.

  ISBN-13: 978-0692365410 (Henna La)

  ISBN-10: 0692365419

  First Edition

  Angras

  Let me out.

  “You know I can’t do that, Angras.”

  You ARE Angras.

  “No, not entirely.”

  Crumbling stone bridge beneath me, clouds a parade of black elephants above me.

  You need my help.

  I shifted, closer to the edge. “I can do it on my own.”

  Remove your chains, your metal scarves. Throw them in the abyss before they choke and claim you.

  “No!” People stared. I held the mask over the frothy waters.

  You wouldn’t dare.

  “Wouldn’t I?”

  Blinding lightning, ear-splitting thunder.

  Why are you special?

  “Because . . . ”

  Why are you special, Angras?

  “I’m not Angras!”

  Then why are you special?

  “Because I have you, and you have me, so we’re like two people in one, and two is always better than one,” I recited.

  Which means you need me.

  I hefted the mask. Tossed it in my hand. Rain like liquid steel in my face. Tossed it again, and watched it disappear beneath the dim blue.

  Turned away, began walking. Stopped.

  “I can’t,” I whispered.

  The water was cold.

  Whispers:

  “Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’entrate.”

  “Abandon all hope, ye who enter.”

  Dante

  Isaac

  Eyes blacker than the bottom of a deep well opened, and Prisoner Twenty-Four blinked away the remnants of his sleeping nightmare. The pungent odor of unwashed bodies mixed with the earthy smell of the dirt floor violated his nose. Brick walls stole warmth from the air. His arms interlocked, he burrowed further into the straw mattress, his thin body rubbing against the splintered wooden slats. Above him, close enough to bang his head against, a bed shifted, his cellmate’s ankles hanging over its edge. Prisoner Twenty-Four closed his eyes, shudders shooting through him as he imagined his death, courtesy of the ancient bunk’s inevitable collapse.

  He swung his feet onto the grimy floor and walked six tiny steps to the opposite side of the room, careful to avoid the raw filth seeping from the overflowing rusty bucket in the corner. On the top bunk, his cellmate’s thundering snores sounded like the beating of a hundred hammers against a hundred oaken shields. Trusting the noise to cover the movements of air, he began a series of exercises, the last remnants of his days on the outside, before they’d sentenced him to this prison where the spoken word was more valuable than a warhorse in an army of foot soldiers.

  Pushups became one-handed pushups, which then became wall-assisted handstands, and finally, freestanding handstand pushups. Lunges became squats, which then became pistols that segued into planches. A sweat built upon his brow, but still no emotion crossed his face. Breathe in. Breathe out. Wipe sweat from forehead. Breathe in. Breathe out. His joints, filled with dead air, popped in relief as his body warmed to the task.

  Another day in Whispers, a name appropriate for a prison where talk was forbidden and contact was forcibly kept to a minimum. A place where the silent seconds turned into minutes, hours, days, months, and finally lapsed into years as he languished away with only his thoughts for company. A muscle in his back twitched, and he clenched his jaw to keep the pain from escaping.

  His cellmate’s rhythmic breathing sputtered, stopped, and then restarted. In the cell across him, Prisoner Twenty-Two stood and yawned, arms stretching to brush the low-hanging dirt ceiling. Mindful of the shuffling feet and creaking wooden bunks echoing down the passage, Prisoner Twenty-Four finished his routine and tiptoed back into his bed. While he waited, he idly scratched phrases into the dirt floor, never building past nine words before erasing and beginning anew.

  His fingers smudged a word from existence, and then added another. A beautiful red rose is worth little in a sea of them, but when grown in a desert, it is beyond worth. Here, in Whispers, where silence and pain were layered atop one another, leaving small room for anything else, the spoken word had become equivalent to that desert rose. He found himself mouthing the words scratched on the floor, not daring to voice them aloud.

  On the wall next to the Prisoner Twenty-Two, a palsied hand had etched a crude number eleven, its ends jagged and uneven. Inside, the prisoner’s gaping mouth finally shut and he leaned against his cell’s iron bars, each the size of a big man’s wrist. Thump. Thump. Thump. Prisoner Twenty-Two kept a steady beat against them, the sound barely audible a few feet past the cell.

  On the hundredth beat, footsteps approached, muffled by a thick curtain of dirt. Prisoner Twenty-Four rose. The cell’s bars felt cool against his face. A trio of guards walked down the passageway, at the front a strong-jawed man, two thick-necked companions close behind. They passed cells One and Two, and then Three and Four. Prisoner Twenty-Four wondered at his own steady heart rate: when had this become the norm?

  Stopping at Cell Eleven, Strong Jaw said, “Prisoner Twenty-One, you have saved a total of zero words. How many would you like to save?” The prisoner in question, possessed of a round head atop a spindly neck, sat mutely on the bed, eyes studying the floor.

  Strong Jaw nodded. “Prisoner Twenty-Two, you have saved a total of six words. Would you care to use them now?”

  A slow shake of the head.

  “How many would you like to save?”

  Prisoner Twenty-Two raised a hand with dirt-encrusted nails. He held up two fingers, and then, wincing, unfurled a third.

  “Very well,” said Strong Jaw. He inserted a small, golden key into Eleven’s only door, grinding it against the rust that clotted the lock’s mechanisms. Prisoner Twenty-One moved farther onto the bed, bringing his legs to his chest.

  Prisoner Twenty-Two backed against the wall, ribs sticking out like a long decayed skeleton. Face creased, Strong Jaw released both of his hands to gift Prisoner Twenty-Two with hard, sharp strikes to his face and torso. Prisoner Twenty-Two moaned, and the occasional cough forced its way through his mouth when a blow found a vulnerable floating rib.

  Nobody said a word.

  Face impassive, Prisoner Twenty-Four watched. On the bed, Prisoner Twenty-One’s body shook silently. A final blow to the face crumpled Prisoner Twenty-Two’s orbital socket, and his eye drooped. Standing over the beaten man, breaths coming in short spurts, Strong Jaw looked around the cell with a wrinkled nose before his face slid back into blankness.

  Outside the cell, the two thick-necked sidekicks wore identical smirks. After locking the door, the trio left, Strong Jaw leading with long strides, nothing left behind but a spreading pool of blood and the labored breaths of punctured lungs.

  Three minutes - that’s how long it was supposed to last – a minute a word. What could it be that Prisoner Twenty-Two so desperately wanted to say? Not that he blamed the man. Sometimes, he himself wanted to scream random words into the night, whatever came to mind, and then await his death at the hands of the guards, but it took courage to do that.

  He sat on the floor, upper back against the bottom bunk. With Prisoner Twenty-Two beaten into unconsciousness, the keeping of time fell to him. He put his hand to the iron bars and spelled out a beat. Isaiah? No. Isaac? Maybe. It sounded right. He chewed on the name. It t
asted familiar on his tongue. Isaac Coel. Yes, that was it. A name makes the man, or maybe the man makes the name. It didn’t matter, because he knew his.

  He licked his lips, the bottom one a spider web of bloody cracks. A cup of water will come with the breakfast they give him, hopefully. Sometimes they forget. Maybe they did it purposely, but life was unfair and his greatest complaint was that it was never unfair in his favor.

  Strong Jaw’s face crammed itself against the bars, startling Isaac to the back of the cell. “Thought I’d forgotten, didn’t you?”

  Isaac stared past him. Prisoner Twenty-Two had begun convulsing.

  “No, I remember. You’re due tomorrow, aren’t you? How many words you saved up so far, ten, eleven?”

  A shrug. Isaac’s hand groped an object in the dirt, released it.

  “It’s at least ten. Bet my life on it. What’s it going to be tomorrow, another three, maybe four if you’re brave? But no,” Strong Jaw’s teeth took on a rictus of a grin, “I beat the brave outta you last time, didn’t I? What are you going to do with those words of yours, choke on them?”

  His cellmate woke, coughed. Prisoner Twenty-Two’s convulsions worsened.

  “Nobody’s ever made it past fifteen, and you’re sure as hell not going to be the first. Tomorrow, you best say the words you have to say, or you best do like your buddy over there and decide that saving ain’t worth it, because if you decide to save any more, I’m going to kill you.” By now, Strong Jaw’s eyes looked to be popping through the bars, bulging as the pressure increased. “You want to waste one of your words right now? Maybe two of them? Say it. I know you want to. Just two little words. Spit them out. Go on, do it!”

  Prisoner Twenty-Two fell still. Isaac looked at the floor.

  “Shame.” Strong Jaw stepped back and held a cup in front of Isaac’s cell. “Thirsty?”

  Isaac turned his face. He knew the games of Whispers too well.

  The water splattered. Isaac resisted the urge to lick it up.

  “Get some rest.” Strong Jaw dropped the cup to the floor. “Tomorrow’s your big day . . .”

  Isaac buried his face in his hands. His shoulders shook, he but relinquished neither sound nor tear. Did he even know how to cry anymore? Where had his compassion gone, his goodness? But Isaac knew. Whispers had devoured it, torn it apart and brought him low, laughing as he struggled to lick up the few crumbs of humanity he’d once worn with pride. His mentor would be ashamed.

  Isaac was ten again, sitting in a patch of foot-sucking mud disguised as a front yard, fresh tears streaking his face like steam in a glass teakettle. His father had sent him out here, and through a small hole in the front window, he could hear his parents yelling. “What are we supposed to do with him!”

  “Shouldn’t you know? He got it from your side!”

  “My side? Lemme tell you something. My family’s blood is twice as pure as whatever yours is, or should I bring up your cousin?”

  The voices faded out, however, as a man in a black cloak bent in front of Isaac. “You want to see some magic?” he asked.

  Isaac looked up at the man, wiping viscous snot from his nose with the back of his hand. Slowly, he nodded.

  He smiled at the memory. It’s funny what he’d gotten used to over time. The insane had become the normal and the normal had become what had formerly been the unthinkable – the smell of bacon gone, replaced by the fragrant aroma of piss soaking into a dirt floor. The part of his mind still capable of shame yelled at him: Coward! But it was overruled by the rest of his mind, too busy with survival to worry about miniscule things like pride and dignity.

  Isaac slid down the wall opposite the bunks. He was living something not worthy to be called a life. To continue this façade was easy, routine. Wake up, exercise, watch others die. Repeat. Never try. Never change. One day it would be his turn, and he’d be nothing more than brief spectacle in a prison devoid of anything better. A simple recipe, but as he looked at Prisoner Twenty-Two, he saw change - change in the form of blood.

  One move, one action, one second, and Isaac could provoke the guards into a rage, his death all but assured. The thought bounced around and, with a feeling of surprise, Isaac found that he was almost happy. Hope had blossomed anew.

  Tomorrow, he would do it.

  His eyes were twin buttons of black, eyes that had once belonged to a hard man. He remained against the wall, feet sunk into the floor. Tomorrow. The eyes of the hard man returned for a moment in time as he gave himself fully to the idea.

  Tomorrow would be his last day.

  Dradenhurst:

  “Any city, however small, is in fact divided into two, one the city of the poor, the other of the rich; these are at war with one another.”

  Plato

  Crymson

  The swish of the whip’s tails split the air as they arched and gained momentum, finally cracking against her dusky, sweat-covered skin. Harsh, grating sounds tore at her delicate throat, a vocal acknowledgement of the bodily infliction. The tails whistled. “God!” she gasped.

  Blood dripped, morning dew on a blade of grass. Crymson’s grip on the whip tightened, its rawhide handle cutting small rifts in her hand, knotted cords dangling from its end. One more strike and the sin would be purged; God would have his due. She swung. Red ink the color of confessional pamphlets welled beneath her skin.

  “Dammit!” She clapped a hand to her generous mouth and looked at the whip, but then shrugged and grabbed a grey towel from the corner of the bed, its posts carved in intricate whirls, cloud-spun tornadoes.

  The towel scraped against Crymson’s skin, its roughness a reminder of her holy vows of poverty: ceremonial, as far as she was concerned. A dip in the unadorned water pail next to her bed, and the towel’s coarse fibers turned soft. She pulled it away from her open wounds and wrung it over the pail, the liquid an imitation red.

  Her dress, slim and powdery blue, slid over her head. Narrow slits up to her knees were cut on either side, and the material from the waist up was form flattering, cinched together in the front with a column of knots. Sleeveless, the material ended at the edges of her toned shoulders, and the back of the piece boasted a hood, rarely employed: standard dress for a priestess of the Cao Fen, though she’d taken liberties with its hue to cut a more vivid contrast between it and her skin.

  She ran a quick hand over her buzzed head, wiping away the early morning fuzz and lingering hair follicles. Morning ritual completed, she gathered her things with a bend of her knees, conscious of the taut cuts.

  Crymson swept out the door and into the hallway that led down the old but well-maintained stairs to the foyer. She passed pictures of generic landscapes, painted in dull greens and browns, but noticed none of them. As she walked, she arranged her face into something more suitable for the morning’s entrance. Her eyes, a mixture of pine needles and a river’s bottom, narrowed and glazed over. Her mouth flattened into a hard line, and she stiffened her upper back, arms close to her sides.

  She reached the bottom of the stairs and didn’t hesitate to make a beeline for the exit, the hardwood floor shining brightly in the morning sun.

  “Mistress Crymson!”

  Why, God? Why couldn’t you have just sent the plague?

  She turned to face the voice, one that belonged to the inn’s owner, a squeak of a man with whom she had cut a deal many months ago. “It’s Priestess Crymson,” she said, holding his gaze long enough to make the moment uncomfortable. “You’re up early. What do you need?” Her left foot, clad in a buckskin slipper, tapped the floor beneath her dress.

  He ducked his head. “Apologies, Priestess Crymson. Just reminding you that your rent is, ah, past due. I’ve held off for a few days, but, uh - ”

  “I know, Nest. You will have your payment, as you always do. Standing price, I assume?”

  “Of course.” Nest smiled, lips pressed together as if ashamed of his teeth, which Crymson knew from experience were covered with a thin film.

  “At any rate,
” she said, “I have an appointment, and as you so kindly reminded me, it is rude to be late for such things . . .”

  Nest bowed from the waist, one hand on a nearby table to steady himself. His hair, lank and combed back from his forehead, fell over his eyes, and he almost tumbled forward when he removed his hand from the table to sweep it back.

  Don’t laugh, keep it in. “Good day, Nest.” She turned and made her way to the door, aristocratic nose held at an angle. Not that anybody noticed her composure. Aside from a few drunks at the bar, deep in their cups from last night, the place was empty. Her foot hit the street, and behind her Nest screeched, “Quit slobbering on my bar, you fool!”

  She put a hand over her eyes, sunrays illuminating the copious amount of dust particles filling the air. Dradenhurst had once been green, trees lining the city walks and grass as far as the eye could see. But it had become a retreat of sorts for the mercenaries who guarded Prolifia’s borders, and their feet had stamped it clear of color, grinding the grass to dust while they cut the trees to make homes for the expanding population. After a few years, the dust from the passing mercenaries had grown stifling, and cobblestones were laid, but the irritant still managed to drift through the more loosely constructed parts of the city, where it clogged her nose and made her eyes water.

  A pale-yellow carriage passed, its bearded owner stealing a furtive peep at Crymson before snatching closed the blue drapes. Spurred by the sight, she began down the street toward the Count’s house, tracing a path through the dust.

  Dradenhurst: a city of opportunity. The shops of her childhood, with their alleys through which a young street rat could run, were gone, replaced by tall, narrow buildings constructed nearly atop one another, the better to take advantage of the untaxed sky. She walked past them, on the lookout for the smallest gap between the shops, years spent leaping fences and narrowly escaping lead-footed pursuers fresh in her mind, her long-limbed frame a whisper away from being dragged before a magistrate. While the city had not provided a happy childhood, it still provided a modicum of comfort, and it was still her city.