'Very well,' I agreed with a sigh, and began to tell him about my sojourn among the Danes, how I came to be first Gunnar's and then King Harald's slave, and the Sea Wolf king's grand scheme to raid Constantinople. I told him about meeting the emperor, and about how Jarl Harald had given the silver cumtach to Basil as a token of surety in a legal dispute, and the Viking longships had become part of the imperial fleet.
I spoke a long time, pausing now and then to relate what I was saying to Gunnar, who grunted his rough agreement. Oh, it was a fine thing to speak my mother tongue once again. I talked more in that short time than I had in many a day. I told Dugal briefly about my few days in the city and Harald's bargain with the emperor, and more, and at last concluded, saying, 'We were sent to Trebizond to serve as bodyguard to the Eparch Nicephorus, who negotiated peace with the Sarazens.'
Likely, we would have gone on talking endlessly, but the sun's heat became oppressive and our tongues cleaved to the roofs of our mouths for lack of water. Gunnar, his head hurting him terribly from the blow he had endured, cautioned us to preserve what little strength remained us, so we closed our eyes and lay back against the rock and waited.
The day ended in a white blaze which gradually turned deep yellow as the sun fell behind the ragged hill line. The shadows crept out and covered us, and night slowly folded us into its dark heart. We remained chained to the rock through the night. I slept fitfully, sometimes waking to stare up at the immense star-dazzled skybowl. It seemed to me that all the eyes of heaven gazed down upon us, pitiless, cold, and silent. No cheerful light bathed or soothed us; a hard, merciless glare, stark in judgement, mocked our pains instead.
I recalled the times I had prayed beneath these selfsame lights, imagining them angels eager to bear my prayers to the throne of heaven. But no more. The pain in my shoulders and on my livid flesh was nothing compared to the torment of my soul. Had it done any good, I would have poured out my agony to the Lord of Souls. Ha! Sooner plead to the stars, Aidan, and beg mercy of the wind; either way, the answer will be the same.
Misery, I have learned, is not content. It is restless and multiplies without ceasing. If I, for the merest space of a heartbeat, imagined that my tribulation was soon to cease, the truth soon struck me hard in the teeth: my torment was only beginning.
They came for us at dawn.
46
Six guards and the pit overseer that Dugal had man-handled arrived as the sun rose on another blistering day. The overseer, one side of his face bruised and discoloured, glared down upon us with a malicious sneer; he spoke out a lengthy discourse which we could not understand, then motioned to the guards with him. They leapt forward, unshackled us, and bound us each separately; our hands were crossed and tied together at the wrist. Then, passing their staves through our arms with a guard on either end, they half-carried, half-dragged us away.
We were brought to a large dwelling at the edge of the guards' settlement. In the bare yard outside the whitewashed dwelling stood a thick wooden post with an iron ring fixed to its top. Leaving Gunnar and Dugal in a heap to one side, they threw me against the post and, taking a long leather rope, tied my hands to one end and put the other end through the ring. The whipping post was half again as tall as a man, so that when the rope was pulled taut, I was stretched full height, with my weight resting only on the tips of my toes.
As this was happening, I noticed that the chief overseer of the mines came out from the dwelling to stand looking on, his arms crossed over his chest. Under his gaze, I was stripped naked, and the guards then began to bludgeon me with their wooden staves-slowly at first, alternating their strokes, taking it in turn to hit me, first one and then another, striking wherever they would. Oh, but they were thorough. Very soon there was not a single place on my body that had not been pummelled-save for my head; I suppose they did not care to knock me senseless, so they avoided hitting my head lest I pass from consciousness, and thus beyond their torture. Neither did they break the skin, for loss of blood would have had the same effect, and it was clear they wished to prolong the agony as much as possible.
With the aching sting of the first blows, I felt the helpless frustration of the victim; futility, potent as pain, overwhelmed me, as I experienced the most wretched helplessness. My soul recoiled in horror at my own weakness. Tears came to my eyes, and I was ashamed of myself for weeping. I bit my lips to keep from crying out, wishing with all my soul that the ordeal would stop.
As the beating continued, however, it soon became apparent that my torturers had merely been warming to their task; the blows became sharper, and more keenly judged. Again and again, I was struck in the places where I was certain to feel the most pain: forearms, shins, knees, elbows, ribs. At the same time, the rope was pulled even tighter and I was lifted off the ground entirely, so that I could not brace myself even by so much as a single toe.
With each blow, my body jerked and swung uncontrollably-only to be struck again while still swinging. The guards laughed at this. I heard their voices, ringing in the yard and any sorrow I had felt for myself vanished utterly, consumed in a sudden surge of white-hot rage.
Never had I known such anger. Had it been a flame, the entire mining settlement would have been scorched to ashes, every house and all the inhabitants: men, women, and children. I ground my teeth on my lips until the blood ran down my chin and onto my chest, and still I did not cry out. Far away, as if from a great remove across a vast distance, I could hear Dugal praying out loud for me, beseeching God on my behalf. The exercise was but a meaningless act born of desperation, and I scorned his useless prayers.
When at last they took me down, all my wounds had spread and fused into a single massive bruise which pulsed agony through me with every gasping, rattling breath. Blinded by pain, I could not see properly; I was conscious, though-some small part of my mind remained aware. I knew that my limbs were intact and that none of my bones were broken. I knew that Dugal was now undergoing the same torture I had just received.
I knew also that I was a changed man, for the insane rage had consumed me from within, and my heart was now as cold and hard as a spent cinder.
When they had finished with Dugal, and then with Gunnar, they bound our hands behind our backs and tied them to our ankles. We were made to kneel in the sun like this during the hottest part of the day. My awareness drifted; sometimes I knew where I was and what had happened, and other times I thought I was alone in a coracle on the sea. I could even feel the waves undulating beneath me, now lifting my little boat high, now dropping down once more.
It seemed to me as I lay in the bottom of the boat, a solitary cloud drifted in front of the sun; the shadow passed over me and I opened my eyes to see that the cloud had an unusual shape and solidity. Roused by this curiosity, I looked again, and saw that the cloud had the face of a man, and that its white billows were the folds of a turban; two dark eyes in that face regarded me with deep apprehension and concern. This baffled me, for I could think of no reason why my torturers might distress themselves over my plight.
I heard a voice like the buzzing of an insect, and realized that the man whose face hovered above me was speaking. He seemed to address me, but I could not understand what he was saying. Then he raised his head and spoke to someone else. Yes, he addressed someone else; his face contorted in anger as he looked away from me. Someone shouted, and the man shouted back in reply as he disappeared from view. I had not the strength to raise my head and see where he went. But even as he vanished, it came to me that it was a face I knew-I had seen this man before-he had a name, and it was a name I knew, but could not say. Who was he?
This question gnawed at me through the day; I kept remembering the face and thinking about it until the sun began to sink low in the dust-hazed sky, and the guards returned to give us another beating. As before, we were hoisted up onto the post, and set upon with wooden staves. The only difference was that this time they struck flesh already bruised and wounded, and which had had ample time to swell. Thus, the second battering was even more painful than the first.
The hard place within me refused to yield, however; I did not cry out. Neither did I endure the full brunt of the punishment, for after the torture began in earnest, the pain became too great and I passed into blessed oblivion. The next thing I knew, water was being poured over me, to revive me. I awoke to throbbing agony, every muscle and bone aflame with pain. When the first wave of pain had passed, I found that the sky was dark, and that we were receiving the attentions of a small man in a large black turban. The fellow gave us each a drink of water,
