The other man has gone down on one knee, cheeks bloodless with the effort of suppressing a scream. For good measure, I kick him in the jaw, breaking it. I'm making a point here.
Charn licks his lips, takes a step back. He's scared that if he hits me I'll hurt him worse, but he knows that the only chance he has is to get the first blow in. When he finally plucks up the guts to take a decent swipe, I catch his fist in my hand and nerve-punch his forearm. I've had the same done to me before, at the Academy. The pain is excruciating; it'll be dead and useless for several turns. His scream is embarrassingly high for such a big man.
I grab his nose between my knuckles and twist my wrist. Gristle crunches. He really screams now, flails away from me, falls to the floor clutching his face. That's for what you tried to do to me when I was drugged, I tell him silently.
And suddenly something comes swelling up and fills me, pushing the numbness aside, something harsh and bright and burning. Hate. But it's not directed at Charn; it's for myself. Because I failed to save the man I love. Because I let the Gurta take me. Because I wasn't good enough again.
I stand over the man who thought he could rape me. He's done. All the fight has gone out of him. My point has been well made.
He gets up onto his knees, so I hit him again. The first blow doesn't have a lot of conviction behind it, but it feels good. The second one is harder. He collapses, prone. So I kick him, hard, in the guts. He whimpers, flinches, moans. Doesn't even try to crawl away.
It's that submission that really unleashes me. The way he just fucking gives up, surrenders to me. Something breaks at the sight, and I lose control. I lay into him with fists and kicks, stamping on him, raining blows that are barely aimed. Spittle and gore fly from his lips; he yells and shrieks and cries as I batter him. I hardly hear the voices of the guards, shouting down at me from the caged mouth of our cave.
Then the boy puts a hand on my shoulder. The touch is gentle, letting me know he's not an attacker. It stops me more effectively than force.
'No more,' he says quietly.
I look at the bloodied mess at my feet. The hate has exhausted itself for now. I feel nothing.
The guards withdraw, content that the disturbance has ceased. They don't care enough to climb down and deal with it properly.
I step back to address the cave. My voice feels rusty from lack of use.
'Nobody touches the boy,' I say, and then I go back to my spot and go to sleep. The moans of the men I've just injured don't keep me awake like Feyn's sobbing did.
29
I don't know where I am.
My eyes won't focus. There's a heaviness on my body, a great weight anchored to every muscle. Even the thought of lifting an arm seems an impossible dream.
It's dark in here, but there is a darker shadow looming over me. Big, broad, like Rynn. Sour smelclass="underline" dried sweat, a wound gone bad, the breath of someone ill.
My mouth is dry. There's light in the corner of my left eye. I tip my head till I can see the jagged blur of it.
'ooo aakiii uuu?'
I swallow, but it does no good. It takes me a while to understand that the drone I just heard was a voice. I don't connect that revelation with anything. By the time it's formed, it's slipped out of my head. Keeping my thoughts together is like trying to catch live eels.
'omiii eee uuiiik'
The voice is deep, male, but there's something threatening in it and I don't know why. Everything's happening slow. He moves and leaves after-images of himself as he goes.
I take a huge breath suddenly; I can't help it, it's like I'm drowning and I need air. My head lolls away from the light and now I can't see anything.
I'm conscious of lying on something hard. Hard ground. As the man's weight shifts I realise that it wasn't only weariness keeping me down. He's sitting on my upper legs. His hand is on my shoulder. His other is on my cheek. Stroking it.
Things are tightening now, like a screw turned. A desperate energy is seeping into me from somewhere. I know I'm in trouble but I don't know why. My body tells me what my brain has yet to work out.
What's wrong with me? Something's wrong with me!
A tugging, my hips lifted, dropped, lifted again. Pulled upward by something wrapped around me. A slithering around my lower back, and the man casts something aside. I watch it go, my eyes crowded with ghostly trails in the aftermath.
It's my belt.
I can smell the sweat on him. Acrid. New sweat trickling over old; damp and unwashed clothes. It's hot in here, like an oven. I'm making little noises in my throat but I don't know what they are or what I'm trying to say.
I'm pulled downwards, but it's not down, it's along because I'm lying on my back. Bright alarms burst in my head and the tiredness in my muscles is pushed out by repulsion. I don't know why, but this is bad. I twist, but I'm pulled downward again, irresistibly. He's tugging at my thighs.
'y donnnee oo juuust lie still?'
He's taking my trousers off.
I begin to writhe, driven by some force, some primal thing that makes me kick and thrash even though I'm not exactly sure what's happening. My foot connects and there's a grunt. An instant later I'm hit by a slap that whiplashes my face back towards the light. White, fizzing stars crowd in around the edges of my vision.
There are other people here too. Shapes in the corners.
Why is nobody stopping him?
My senses are settling. I can almost see him now. One hand around the waist of my trousers, pulling at them while I buck my hips. He's trying to hold me down with his other arm. He's bigger than me, but he's clumsy and I'm getting less so by the second. Something about my clothing is foiling him and he can't get it off while I'm fighting, so he hits me again.
This time it doesn't faze me. I lash out. He recoils, holding his throat, wheezing. I don't think I hit him hard enough but it doesn't matter: he's hurt and I'm not half so helpless now. I get my foot to his chest and shove him. He's heavy, but there's no fight in him any more and he stumbles away, trips, goes down coughing. I can tell by the sound of his breathing that I didn't crush his windpipe, but he's going to have trouble speaking for a while.
My body feels connected to my brain again. Things are beginning to assemble themselves into some kind of clarity. I pull myself back, up against the wall, tugging my trousers up my thighs with one hand.
I push with my heels and somehow I sit up, though I almost faint doing it. The rock is damp and warm. I look for the man who was on top of me, but he's retreated into the shadows. I'm exhausted from the effort of moving.
Drugs. They kept me drugged. That's how I'm here.
Faint memories come swimming up like fish rising to nibble at the surface of a pond. I remember the sound of water and the creak of timbers, the rocking of a hammock. The weight of manacles on my wrists. I look at my hands and I can see the marks. Gurta manacles, toothed on the inside, that grip harder the more you struggle. I must have been a good girl. The cuts aren't deep. I still have my hands.
I remember the sound of their voices, laughing and shouting and joking. Sometimes talking to me in their own tongue. Jibing, insinuating. I hope I didn't reply. I don't think I did. Better if they don't know. Better if they think I can't speak their language.
There must have been a journey. I have a sense of time passing, a jumble of images. We went through caverns. Past crystalline outcrops and giant fungal blooms. The creaking of a cart beneath me… Yes, I remember… I was in a cage, on a cart. We travelled along roadways, the ground made even by chthonomancy, protruding rocks spread and flattened by Gurta Elders. I remember crossing a stone bridge over a chasm, the red glow and warmth of magma far beneath us. At one point we passed into a rockworm tunnel a hundred spans in diameter, streaked with phosphorescent algae still feeding on the residue of the ancient monsters millennia after they disappeared. I remember the sense of expansion, of coming out from the narrow, enclosing earth into that vast, cylindrical cavern, stretching away into darkness.