Chapter 63
No man can
12 years ago
Even in dreams, their faces are blurs. I scream and cry at my parents as a man wearing the bleeding stone icon of House BloodRock, which I now know is a much younger Muraab easily drags me away. I hysterically plead that I will do better, and be more obedient. It's pathetic, I know that now as I watch the scene from my youth play out from within the eyes of a little cursed boy I don’t remember being.
My pleas fall on deaf ears and soon Muraab is chaining me to the same wagon he still uses now. There are other slaves here, dozens of them. They are chained in the same manner I am. Your neck and one arm in a collar and shackle respectively. Both are connected to a thick main chain that runs down the line keeping each group of new purchases linked together and to the one of the pair of BloodRock wagons.
I try to bite at the metal links but all I manage to do is cut up my gums. I should have tried to bite Muraab instead when he first grabbed me, but my past self had been too scared, too shocked, too pathetic.
I must have lived somewhere in or near the GrassLands north of Far Mantys as the next thing I know we are pulling the wagons down a dusty road with grass taller than I am now encroaching from the edges. The grass itself makes a sort of prison as it's all I see for the entire rest of the day. When finally the sun begins to set and we stop to rest they don’t unchain us or give us any sort of shelter. We just sit there backs against the wagons as the BloodRock guards set up a pair of tent things that cover the wagons.
They feed us some sort of curd gruel that I can barely choke down. I almost toss it away but after hours marching on that chain line I am utterly ravenous. After that, most of the guards retreat to the now-covered wagons, but three are left on the first watch to make sure none of us try anything.
They shouldn’t have bothered, not only are all the slaves myself included exhausted but a debilitating cough takes root among us and spreads like wildfire. I think I am the second or third slave to start coughing, and even as a dumb little kid I quickly realize something is wrong.
The coughing once it starts simply does not stop. I don’t feel like there is something in my chest to get up, it's just constant coughing. By the next morning, almost half the slaves are dead. These are removed from the chain and tossed callously into the long grass by the BloodRock soldiers.
We are given water, but no food and are back to pulling those wagons along the uneven path through the GrassLands before the sun has even begun to make an appearance. Almost every slave is coughing now, and it makes us all weaker. Combining that with the massive drop in numbers and the day’s march is made harder than the first by far. By midday, there are so few of us left that Muraab orders the guards to assist with pulling the wagons. For me, the world has been reduced to staring at the ground before my shuffling feet and whimpering in pain as each new cough sends sharp pains shooting through my overworked chest.
At some point it grows dark meaning we stop and eat, and pretend to sleep. Of the dozens that started this march, there are five of us slaves left, and each one spends the night alternating between pained moans and coughing. Strangely none of the guards get sick, a fact my young self resents bitterly.
Stolen story; please report.
I’m still coughing when they rouse us on the third morning, but something has changed inside me. Something that feels even worse than the unrelenting sickness. Every breath I take sends a stabbing pain through one side of my chest, that only seems to get worse with each inhalation or cough. If the pain from coughing my lungs raw had been a dagger in my chest, this is an axe rammed into me every few heartbeats.
I’m walking, but the chain behind me is slack. I stumble along coughing and crying and pulling the wagon I am attached to not at all. Sometimes I even snicker when the fear of what's happening to me gets too much. I will fall over like the other slaves and never rise again, the guards will toss me into the grass and that will be that. It won't be long now, I can tell because of how my body is refusing to breathe. It simply can’t keep handling the pain, I can’t keep handling the pain.
I don’t see the man approach but Muraab suddenly appears crouched down in front of me.
“Yep blue lips, an I can hear your wheeze from a mile away boy. You have coughed till a lung collapsed haven’t you?” He doesn’t wait for me to respond, not that I can between my occasional shallow breaths.
“But you aren’t dead and you are coughing less.” I drool a little and look at him glassey-eyed.
“You probably haven’t noticed but the GrassLands fever only lasts about three days, and once it's gone you can never catch it again.” I’m not sure why this huge armored man is telling me these things.
“If you can make it to camp tonight I think you will be alright, there is a catch though kid,” I remember this conversation even now. Not that I’ve thought about my vague memories of this horrible death march in years.
“You need to start breathing in deep again, I know it hurts worse than anything you have ever felt, but if you don’t start getting more air into the lung of yours that is still working you are going to die.”
I shake my head a little as he doesn’t understand. I am doing these quick little sharp breaths because big ones hurt too much. Of course, that's when the former King On The Sands slaps me hard enough that I see stars.
“I said fucking breathe, now do it. We are only two days from the greatest city in the world and I am bringing it fighters. Are you a fighter kid?” I don’t know how to answer that question but the way his steely gaze digs into my own eyes brooks no dissent. Instead of speaking, I try to breathe. It triggers another coughing fit that almost makes me black out but Muraab is still there staring at me, staring and smiling.
“The life I’m taking you to isn’t going to be pleasant kid, but if the GrassLands fever can’t break you, no man can.”
I manage to croak a word at him that makes the pitter tilt his head in curiosity.
“What was that?”
"North” I wheeze out.
Now
I come to with a gasping breath that hurts bad enough to bring tears to my eyes. There is the haft of a fucking spear sticking out of my chest and the shattered end of it ever so slightly protruding out my back. I still have one lung left, and it is just going to work extra hard. Sure breathing hurts, but I am a BloodRock pitter everything always hurts.
Snapping my head forward I lock my teeth around the spear and bite down as hard as I can. The wood shatters easily and sends splinters sticking into my gums, that hurts too but I add it to the pile of pain I’m ignoring. Before me I can see Xael doing his best to hold off the enraged elephant cursed. Klash might not be armed but the punches he is swinging at the foreign boy will put him down if they even sort of land.
Miraculously my axe is still in my hand, which I tighten my grip on and rise. It isn’t a slow stumbling climb to my feet. I am probably not that far away from drowning in my own blood or passing out from pain or lack of air. I do not have time to be disorientated, and waiting will only make my injuries worse. So I leap to my feet and start running at the fighting pair laughing like a maniac while I do.