“No. The risk of his accomplices trying to free him would be too great. He'll be confined in the camp. I intend to make an example of him that the Medalonians will not forget.”
They spoke Karien, perhaps not aware that Tarja understood them. He did not react to their words, preferring them to remain ignorant of the fact that he spoke their language fluently. If anything, Roache's determination to hang him in the Citadel gave him heart. It would be a month or more before they could get across the river. A lot could happen in a month.
Roache turned back to Tarja and addressed him in heavily accented Medalonian.
“You will be confined here and transferred to the Citadel at the earliest opportunity. If you wish to prolong your life, you will provide us with the names of your conspirators and the location of your rebel headquarters.”
“You don't seriously expect me to tell you anything, do you?”
The Duke shrugged. “One is never sure what a Medalonian considers honourable, Captain. You might be willing to barter your friends to save your own neck.”
“A word of advice, my Lord. If you expect to hold onto Medalon, you would do well to learn what we consider honourable.”
“Looking at the list of your crimes, Captain, I'm surprised you have the word in your vocabulary.”
While hardly luxurious, Tarja's accommodation proved better than he expected. He was confined to a tent in the centre of the Karien camp, guarded on all four sides by knights who held their loyalty to Karien and the Overlord above even their own mothers, Tarja suspected. They were taciturn to begin with, but as the days merged into weeks, they relented a little and from them Tarja learnt what was happening in the outside world.
The knights told him when the news arrived that Princess Adrina was now in Hythria and married to the Hythrun High Prince. Tarja appeared suitably surprised, not wanting to spoil their outrage by informing them that he had known about her marriage for some time. The news that Damin was the High Prince worried him a little. He wondered if R'shiel had had a hand in it. She had killed twice that he knew of and never shown a moment's remorse over either man.
Although he had no idea of the fate of Mandah and the rest of his squad, he learnt soon enough what had happened to the Fardohnyans they had found in the abandoned boathouse. When Paval informed the remnants of Adrina's Guard that the Kariens had arrived, instead of fleeing south, which would have been the sensible thing to do, Filip and his men rode straight into Cauthside in a futile attempt to aid the Medalonians. By the time they arrived, there were enough Kariens in the town to outnumber them considerably. The fight had been short and bloody. A number were killed in the skirmish, including Filip and Paval. The remainder were summarily tried and hanged as deserters the following day.
Tarja saw their rotting bodies swinging from a temporary gallows the Kariens had constructed in the town square when he was escorted to his new quarters in the Karien camp. He felt a pang of guilt and wondered why the Fardohnyans had risked such a fate when they could have gotten clean away. In the end he decided it was some incomprehensible idea of Fardohnyan honour that made them turn back. He had seen the look in Filip's eyes when he had offered their surrender to Damin on the border. Perhaps it was easier to die attempting something heroic against ridiculous odds than return home to Talabar to face the King. The Princess' Guard had not only deserted a battlefield, but had abandoned the Princess they'd been sent north to protect. That Adrina had ordered them to do both would not matter to Hablet. Tarja realised that the same fate probably awaited these men at home. All they had done was hasten the inevitable.
Tarja spent almost a month in the Karien camp before the rafts were completed and he was transferred across the Glass River to the Citadel under heavy guard. He saw nothing of the journey or the Citadel when the Kariens entered it in triumph. Lord Roache had commandeered a closed carriage in Cauthside, and Tarja was confined to it, night and day, for the entire trip, allowed out only once each morning and evening to relieve himself. He was transferred to a cell in the Defenders' headquarters under cover of darkness, and there he remained, completely cut off from news of what was happening in the outside world.
Tarja did not know if the Citadel had surrendered quietly, or if there had been a pitched battle for it. He did not know if the Defenders still existed, or if Roache had disbanded them. The guards on his cell in the Citadel spoke no Medalonian and he did not want to reveal that he spoke their language, so there was no conversation between them. If they discussed the events of the day as they whiled away the hours on duty, they were too far from his cell for him to overhear them.
As he lost track of the days, Tarja found the isolation beginning to wear on him. He had spent enough time behind bars recently to grow accustomed to incarceration - a circumstance that bothered him more than he cared to admit - but he had always had something to occupy his mind. The torturers who had tried to extract the identity of his fellow rebels from him with batons and hot iron pokers had given him some purpose, even if it was merely to resist them. But here, so isolated that he had not seen another soul for days, he began to appreciate the need for human company. He saw no one. Even his meals were delivered anonymously through a hatch in the metal door.
At first he tried to occupy his mind with plans of escape, but with no tools to break out and no contact with anybody who could provide them, he was helpless. He wondered if feigning illness would bring his guards running into the cell, but he had banged on the door until his knuckles were raw and his voice grew hoarse from calling out to no avail. Tarja began to wonder if his isolation was a form of torture in itself. There were worse things than pain, worse than humiliation or defeat. To be forgotten; to be so inconsequential that it mattered to nobody if you lived or died - that was proving to be the bitterest pill of all.
With escape, or even the hope of it denied him, Tarja turned his thoughts inward. Introspection proved a dangerous game. His mind was filled with a past that horrified him, yet he was coming to accept it as real. For some reason - perhaps, as Mandah suggested, on the whim of a god - he had fallen hopelessly in love with R'shiel. He could remember it all, every thought, every longing, every kiss, every embrace, every moment of intimacy, every time he slept with her curled in his arms. What puzzled him was why it had not bothered him at the time - and why it bothered him so much now. He knew, on an intellectual level, that R'shiel was not his sister, but a lifetime of thinking of her as his own flesh and blood was not so easily swept aside. Yet he had loved her, seemingly without regret, until he woke in that wagon on the way to Testra and discovered his world completely changed and no memory or inkling of what had changed it.
When the door to his cell finally opened, Tarja leaped to his feet with pathetic eagerness. The man who opened it was a knight with dark hair and the disillusioned look of a young man who has discovered that war is not nearly as romantic or heroic as he imagined. His tabard was decorated with three stylised pines against a red background.
“My name is Sir Andony,” the Karien said in broken Medalonian. “You come with me.”
Tarja looked down, aware of how bad he smelled. He was unshaved and filthy and his cell reeked, the bucket in the corner long since filled to overflowing.
“Where are we going?”
“Must be clean. You hang tomorrow. Lord Roache say you must look like Defender.”
So, they were finally going to hang him. Roache had said he wanted as many witnesses as possible and he obviously wanted to remind the citizens of Medalon that he was hanging an Officer of the Defenders. The desperate, unwholesome creature he must appear at the moment would threaten no one. Tarja debated resisting for an instant then rejected the idea. There might be some hope of escape once he was out of his cell, although looking at the men arrayed behind Andony it was unlikely.
Tarja followed Andony and resolutely refused to give up hope. He had escaped this fate before. He had
