The worn wooden door creaked open with a whine , exposing Andreij to a blinding orange light outside. Or, so he presumed.
With his scraggly form seated down over a table in his room, Andreij found himself with a hand raised upwards in shielding from the light. But it became a motion of mere reflex, as there was not a lick of an overbearing orange light that would blind his vision .
The still and persistent smoke-laden gray clouds remained, and from what he could see through the space of the opened door, it appeared only a slight shade brighter than Andreij's own room.
A dark silhouette of a humanoid figure presented itself in front of the now opened door, towards Andreij's own field of vision.
His eyes quickly adjusted to the silhouette, and he was revealed to an armed guard holding a metal tray, containing what appeared to be food.
The Guard was adorned of an iron helm, concealing and covering the whole of his head, in which there were only the undisturbed darkness through the narrow slits of the bulky iron thing, of which the guard peered through to Andreij.
A Metallic clacking rang throughout in the small bedroom with every step the guard took in approach to Andreij, who in return could only offer in return a narrow-eyed stare of tepid wariness at the armored guard, as Andreij currently was seated on a worn wooden chair, over by a small wooden table of the same decrepit condition.
Decrepit . It was the one word of the English language that materialized in the forefront of his mind between every second longer he stayed in the room.
As the guard came close enough to the table, Andreij saw a quick turn of the guards head towards him as instantaneous as he laid the tray.
And the transmigrated man could catch a glimpse of the furrowed brows and narrowed eyes, through those slits boring deeply into his own, only for the briefness of a single second.
As the guard laid the tray down, he immediately turned back, hastily walking back towards the still opened door, leaving as swift as he came, slamming the door shut and audibly provoking its hinges.
He spared a look at the tray, and turned to a window just a little bit to the right of him.
A large patchwork-like curtain flung up and draped over. Andreij had closed the curtains himself, as the few days he felt went by so painstakingly slow when he had it opened.
He knew there was only that damned dreary sky waiting outside anyways.
And it was only just over a week since he had been here, locked in a pitiful excuse of a bedroom.
He was told that there would be something coming up that required the need of his literacy.
But he had not heard nothing since, just the daily delivery of meals sent to him. There was nothing else.
The dripping of a single drop of water in the room rung and echoed through both of his eardrums as he sat. It began a few days before. Andreij had started to count it as the days went by.
The intervals, all of it he counted. Piece by piece, or rather, drop by single drop. Some days it was slow and some days, it found itself on a pace quicker and so rushed in its extremity. And any more measure of time nor self-occupation was nonexistent in his room, aside from the gloom of the grey sky past the windows.
And the sky as of recent due to its endless stretches of abnormal grayness, had increased the gradual decline in Andreij's trust and faith of it. Time, as it would seem, could no longer be reliably measured.
Because at some moments, during tenderly moments of thought and mulling, time itself had threatened to turn back on him.
A hand from Andreij slipped into one side of his trousers, and so quickly he realized his own action, due to the nonexistent pocket his hand tried to grasp for.
He found himself clicking his tongue in slight disappointment.
"The hell did I even expect there?" He remarked meekly to himself in sighing breath. The sensation of a little minuscule bottle was vacant in its presence.
He brought his eyes down to the sides of his strange garish pants. A lack of pockets or anything similar only greeted his eyes.
A few more quick pats he performed over himself to anything that had some form of a little space in was done in an instant after. And still nothing.
Another sigh escaped his throat, and he grabbed a loaf of bread from the tray on the table, and started to gnaw on it, his eyes gazing off to somewhere.
A shaking ran through himself with every bite he took from the teeth-grinding piece of baked wheat, and it hastened quicker.
A wetness welled up to his eyes, and Andreij found his peripheries clouded, and otherwise misted. A sound of a sniffle had also escaped him.
Still chewing slothfully on the bread with the texture of rock and the taste of dirt , an amalgamation of something illusory, something wholly unreachable, spun itself into a process of intruding upon his own thoughts. His lips shifted slowed into a slight tremble.
Neither of his home and his own loved ones were made manifest to the screening of his thoughts, but another entity was stirred, and etched its place into and of his innermost parts; a crop of inextinguishable regrets.
The faint sound of turning locks and gears then echoed into Andreij's ears, interrupting his less than hurried stream of thoughts.
With a swift motion from the palm of a hand, he wiped across the edge of his own two eyes across his tightening cheeks in quick haste. He then faced his head to the door, feeling the muscles on his neck tensing.
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The door opened in a pace a tinge too fast. And there at the foot of the door Andreij's eyes adjusted to the figure, which he saw was another armored man.
He also somehow figured that It'd be too soon if he ever saw another man in armor. One way or the other.
A man head to toe draped in a thick coat of mail, adorned with a coif drooping and clacking along one side of his neck, in which Andreij couldn't make out the color of his hair but a movement of brows raised in recognition still came to Andreij's features to the man at the door.
Andreij in immediate sight at the man at the half opened door, cleared his throat and dropped his bread.
"Ye-yes?" He meekly asked whilst still seated, to the man at the door whose name he overheard, was called Joern.
A face stretching smile cracked on his features, and with a hand grasped on the door's handle, Joern answered with a tone diluted with a slight sneer ,"Top of the mornin' to you too."He then gestured with a shake of his head "Looks like you're up. Don't know what for, but you're up."
He then pushed the door wider, his whole figure appearing.
Andreij spotted the quick view of Joern armed with a crimson-handled stiletto by the other hand, positioned just inches by his waist, and there he could see its thin tip clear from where he sat.
"Come on. Let's move." Joern made a quick gesture with the dagger armed in his hand, and outside towards through the door.
Andreij swallowed a lump in his throat, and in a quick heave of his frame, followed shortly behind Joern.
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His field of view and his peripheries as he stared up above were now , in a split second, overloaded with the view of a sky that had adopted an unsightly palette of lead.
And down below he peered down where his place was, were the momentarily stretching jagged rows of wide spaced connecting places of residence, seeming contrived of either fair timber, thatch and of reddish mud-bricks. It omitted itself to him a coldness he could feel from the distance.
A few souls wandered about on the mud-caked ground of which was the wide path of where and which led to a centre; presumably of which was of the town itself .
And whereas in view, Andreij could only spot ne'er more a few structures of chipped stone that remained aside, widely spaced away from any other residence, and taller and over-towering of any other structures spaced and surrounded aside.
The platform of which he now stood from, in front of the building in which he was as of current kept a captive, from there nothing more he could rein his eyes on remained.
He descended down the wooden stairs off the platform, with creaks and screeches of the wood beneath his foot gracing his every step. Looking to the bottom of the stairs, he found his captor Joern, elbow leant against the railing with a free hand fiddling with something out of Andreij's view.
As he came by closer down the stairs, Andreij saw Joern briefly face him with look of upturned brows and an unmoving mouth before turning back to whatever he was fiddling with.
"Mhm." Andreij heard him mutter out lowly right before he faced his head back. Andreij then saw him put a smoking pipe between his lip, with a free hand sprinkling something into the chamber.
"You, mister Argie," Joern raised a finger with his back still faced towards him, "have been reining in the sights for a little too long there. Half the hour, to be exact."
"And why is that, huh? I wanted you here following me to the Kapitan a little ways before that." He asked as he finally turned and stared up to Andreij just a little ways from him up the stairs.
He searched for words to say, and a drop of sweat trickled down one of his temples as his mouth stayed open and moving with vocal cords humming , but an answer didn't come forth.
But before he could continue with his babbling, he saw Joern approached a little closer. Andreij felt his muscles tense
"Eh, Don't worry for it." Joern told him through his teeth grinded on the pipe, a smile also procured," My wages are by the week, not the hour. Wasn't really counting either."
He then turned his back towards Andreij again, "Let's go."
And so he did, stepping onto the mud as soon as he heard the command. The unfamiliar boots which he was adorned of sank into the ground. Letting out a groan, along with a crease of his brows, he followed in slowed steps behind Joern.
The view of the place from the platform and now walking through it as if with the aspect of some wayward pilgrim, and with your own two feet was different, that Andreij already knew.
As he walked behind Joern, he saw that the large path was still filled with most of what he had already seen from the view up.
Still a few dozen wandering souls, who of which wore tight to themselves a wardrobe which Andreij did not recognize one second, which still irked his urbanite mind to no end.
And the smells that barraged his nostrils were many, but he found comfort in knowing it was a step far above tarmac and exhaust fumes.
Everything he saw as he walked along seemed soaked in some way. The muddy path he was walking on, the stacked crates and barrels near to the side of buildings, the buildings themselves, the empty market stalls, and the people too.
He found himself stopped of his mulling when he saw Joern stop in his tracks, and him waving over to a group of people a few dozen steps away, whom of which also waved back.
Andreij eyed over to said gathering of people, people of which he recognized most in there. Of Which he dreaded recognizing.
The first of whom Andreij found himself setting his sights on was the Kapitan, whom was still clad in his armor seated on a bench in conversation with a man in front of him who wore robes with a strange plumed cap.
And the others that stood around him were Rublev and Claudi, who looked to be idling by, the tools of their trade by their side.
By the approach to them, Andreij's ears picked up on the conversation the Kapitan was having.
"A quarter." The man of the plumed hat proclaimed in some terse tone. His back was turned to Andreij.
The Kapitan was faced elsewhere, his iron-clad arms and back leaned against the wooden fence-line behind him, the whole of his weight also leant against the wooden thing.
He turned to the plumed-hatted man, his sunken eyes and fair visage present through the raised visor of his bascinet.
"Lower." replied the Kapitan, still staring at the man.
"Come on now, that scuffle was of high expense." The man argued, raising a finger," All that, and the Luthiri leaving without touching a speck."
The Kapitan elicited a hum in reply.
"The dukes might come to know." The plumed-hatted informed.
"There's already a portion sorted for them, Quail."
"So you've already waved through the remains." The plumed hat man, that Andreij now knew as Quail, stated, his robed form beaming.
"My men did, a few moons of labour that took. And not quite all of it." The Kapitan added.
"Well they might come ask for the exact figures, one cut and they may not even ask." Quail proclaimed, wiggling a finger.
"Ah, the joys of the regional banker, "The Kapitan mused in reply, "The numbers on those papers justify its own existence, eh? Or rather, they believe it does."
Andreij still listened on nearby, whilst briefly turning his eyes to Joern, who had already gone to the other men bantering.
"So?", Quail inquired. "What'll it be then? Holding out is a tad worse than utter rejection, I'll have you know."
While the man called Quail spoke on, Andreij saw the Kapitan's face slowly turn to him.
"Listening in well there?" The Kapitan asked, now looking to him. "Come over here."
Swallowing a lump in his throat, Andreij strutted towards them in haste.
"And here’s that new lad I mentioned Quail," The Kapitan explained, also in interruption of Quail. "that one that might handle the accounts, aside from myself. And maybe help with another task."
"Hrm? Ah, well yes hello there." Quail responded facing Andreij, his expression a bit miff to being intruded upon. Nevertheless, He held out a gloved hand towards Andreij.
"He's an Argie we caught. I believe he was at Sanzarin." The Kapitan added.
A frown forming quick upon his features, Quail reared his hand back swiftly in the flicker of an instant, just before Andreij could grab it himself.
A dumbfounded expression fell upon Andreij's face, and he was held up with befuddlement.
In a welling nervousness, he turned to the Kapitan to chance that he had to him a sardonic smile, a faint tune of a chuckle trickling through from that austere helm-bound complexion.
The Kapitan heaved his form up and turned to Quail,-whose frown still hasn't left him- and spoke, "Alright, Quail. Tell one of the men to help you eke a portion, and get those damned dukes off. Carrion have no need for competition much."
"Huh? Ahem, Of course, sure." Quail replied, corralling himself out of a stupor. He hastily strolled past Andreij, and to the guards conversing in the back.
"And you, Argie. Come along now ." The Kapitan gestured to Andreij with a quick sleight of his hand, "We are going along a trip to familiar sights. Of course, it's not quite of my own familiarity , but of yours. You are going to help a bit with it, see?"
Seeing the lack of a choice, Andreij followed along, suppressing any voice or a tone of complaint for his own dear life.