The 9th Fortress

breeze blew the sleep from my eyes and I could see nothing there but a starless vacuum. Bludgeon stepped inside this void, giving orders to follow. I stalled, unable to conquer a paralysing anxiety eating at me. I called for the master but there came no reply. The wind was like a singing spirit beckoning me in, so I shook off trepidation and took on the darkness.

The very second my body was immersed, the door trapped shut at my back, sealing me inside this pitch-black world. 'Bludgeon?' I cried, my sound echoing everywhere.

'Bludgeon! Are you here? Where are you?'

'Remain where you are!' he answered. 'Remain!'

His voice was far-off, and when a torch sprung into life, Bludgeon came into view underneath it. Near forty feet away, he waved the spear above his head like a victorious war flag. 'Come along!' he yelled, chewing on an unlucky spider which happened to crawl up his coat. 'Move your dirty arse over here!'

Obeying, my first two steps where on rock, but I fell with the third. Solid earth was whipped like a carpet from underneath me. Gasping, the air rushed at my face and my arms flapped at the night, frantically attempting to snatch at anything.

After that stomach in the mouth moment, my hand found a wire; thin and taught, it was the sort of metal used to cut cheese or string a guitar. This line was all that separated me from a fall, so I held on with all my strength while my legs dangled over nothing. I sweated and my eyes blurred, mixing torch light and bottomless darkness. 'Help me!' I pleaded, the pain increasing as the wire cut through my palms. 'Bludgeon! Help me!'

'You're going to fall speck!' he exclaimed. 'Wrap your feet around the wire pork brain — oblivion awaits! Believe it!'

'Help me! Help!'

'The fall will not kill you, speck! No, no! You will lie in thirty-four broken pieces at the bottom. Precisely thirty-four! Unless! Unless you shift your sorry legs up and around that wire! Secure yourself mouse! Secure yourself pisser!'

'I…can't!'

'Then hurry up and die! You're giving me a bloody earache!'

The only way to find my feet around the line was by placing more weight and torment onto my hands — the blood already seeping from my grips and dabbing onto my forehead.

'Help me!' I begged; but Bludgeon remained unmoved, rubbing his chest and singing aloud.

'There was a man who hung from a wire! Lost his grip and fell to the fire! There he goes you won't believe your eyes! Come quick or you'll miss his cries!'

No help was coming, and I did not want to die this invisible death. Therefore, with considerable difficulty, I raised my lower half — pain indescribable — impossible to distinguish between the tears and blood on my face. Somehow, miraculously, I hooked one heel over the wire. One then two. My legs shuffled until locking securely around the other, and with enormous relief, I let go of the line and hung like a wounded monkey.

'Balance is essential!' Bludgeon hollered, applauding in a bored manner at the other side. 'I cannot stress how important… discipline — then balance! You will learn balance speck, learn it well and learn it early! One learns by becoming familiar — thus this will be your route every morning and night, every night and morning! Balance will be thumped into your head mouse! Each lesson learned you will scrutinize until they are no longer lessons, but day to day, easily accomplished routines! Now… I'll be waiting for my breakfast when you've managed to cross…'

***

Months passed, and having crossed over the pit countless times, my body was covered in welts from the wire's impression, but I was at last finding my balance. Speed followed soon after. My slowest crossing was over an hour, with Bludgeon complaining the entire time of his hunger. Eventually that time shrunk to forty minutes, then twenty five. After more bleeding palms and near fatal falls, I had the art down to five minutes — then three. Finally, and at the end, I could cross that perilous filament in under fifteen seconds, much to my master's concealed delight.

The minutes, the hours, the days, weeks and months passed with solid routines of eating, sleeping, cleaning, discipline and balance — stringent discipline and steady balance.

I was given dozens of books and a limited time in which to read them. Each was a work of non-fiction written by people or creatures who once lived in the Distinct Earth; souls who found themselves banished here, with nothing but time on their hands and a tale to tell. Although I did not have much (or no) spare time, I did have my own tale now, and hoped I would survive to tell it.

The books never bored me, sure, I was never much of a reader, but these books were not the usual airport fare — they were stories of alien afterlives, encounters with Gods, monsters, and general survival in the Distinct Earth. Plus, having my nose in a book meant I would spend less time being cursed at or spat on by my tetchy master. At the end of every day, Bludgeon would test my knowledge on new books read; there would be one less meal or hours sleep for an incorrect answer, and no reward for correct ones.

'Knowledge is your reward!' he said, many times over, and, 'With every question asked, the answer could one day save your useless life!'

One day however… was a very long way away.

Dawn arrived and I followed the master — as usual — expecting to cross the wire. I had the magic ten seconds in mind. I'd be satisfied crossing in ten. I couldn't top that and Bludgeon himself couldn't beat it. What an achievement that would be for a useless speck!

I would not be reaching the magic ten this morning unfortunately, for I was led another route to breakfast, a new route to a new door, and I had to wrestle with a belly full of sick nerves on the way.

The route was like every other — bleak, confined walls leading to an ugly wooden door with burning torches at each side. Bludgeon said no more than necessary, but his boozy breath and reliance on his spear for support revealed all too much. He opened the door and I cautiously followed; naivety gone, those alarm bells going off in my head; even if this room held a marvellous and wonderful secret, I'd expect the unexpected until my eyes and guts told me otherwise.

Light assaulted me. Fantastic light. Not the shine of geode crystals in the dinner hall or that droning refrigerator light of the Waiting Plain, but healthy rays of real sunshine, invigorating me inside and out. This good, great, splendid place had the same gleaming marble found in the traps upstairs; was lavishly laid over with thick scarlet rugs, detailed paintings, golden candelabras, silver platters and many other ancient looking treasures. For all of this splendour, that magic number ten could wait.

'This room,' Bludgeon said, 'is now open to you…'

Speechless, my eyes enjoyed the feast. I wandered over the rug and crumpled my toes in the shag-pile. Above my head was a gaping window of circular glass with a vista of blue skies and fluttering birds. A view like this would have taken a thousand years to carve out of the mountainside. Each pain of glass was larger than my entire body, and there must have been over fifty pains making up the window. It was, without question, the most spectacular sight I had yet seen in the afterlife.

One busy wall caught and fed my hungry eye. Hanging there was no exquisite painting, lush drape or beautiful mirror… but weaponry, every sort imaginable and unimaginable; from blades to bows, metal and wood, not to mention alien; loved with care and polish. Bludgeon joined my side to admire his unique collection. 'I've trained many in here,' he said, closing his eyes and inhaling a deep breath. 'Their sweat still lingers in the air. Do you smell it? That's hard work!'

'Is that a weapon?' I asked, directing my finger to a piece of long wood broken in half, yet taking pride of place in the centre of the wall.

'It is a broomstick,' he answered. 'Belonged to… a friend.' Bludgeon considered that broken broom with a tinge of sadness in his eye and heart; I even heard him mumble the word eternal under his boozy breath.

'Bugger it!' he added, with a pithy wave. 'Well, what do you make of it, speck? What do you say pisser?'

'This is all very impressive master. Very impressive.'

'Of course it is!' he barked moving to the centre of the room, expecting me to join him on the scarlet rug. When I did, he placed a short, rusty looking sword in my hand. The weapon felt foreign, clumsy, and unfamiliar in my grip.

'You hold that sword like a bloody pansy boy pisser!' he giggled. 'That weapon has taken forty-seven lives! Show it some damn respect!'