The Bounty Hunter

Chapter Thirty Three

Chapter Thirty Three

As soon as Safita had been thrown into her new cell she had begun to think of a way to escape; with no idea whether her brother, Finred and Favia were still alive she reverted to the way of thinking which had helped her survive so many years in the Outlands, namely making sure that she stayed alive. Safita knew that with every passing minute she was at a higher risk of being killed – she had refused to help Lassirus and she couldn’t think of any further use that he would have for her which would mean he needed her alive. Eventually she decided that her best hope of succeeding in getting out would be to wait until someone brought her food and trying to overpower them; her wrists were still bound but the rope was beginning to fray. Safita, still shaking and crying silently, searched the cell for something which she could use to cut it; the dungeons had barely been used by anyone because of the laws on criminals which had been put in place years ago and there was a fair amount of debris left behind by its last inhabitants. Amongst the dust in one of the corners, half hidden in the shadows, she found a rusted nail and so she contorted herself as she wriggled her hands past her back, some of her former flexibility still helping, and bringing her hands behind her legs she collapsed to the floor, wincing as she struck the stone floor. Then she brought her legs through her arms one at a time and, after a bit of a struggle, ended up with her hands in front of her again.

After that she used the nail to start picking the threads of the rope apart and breaking them. For each thread she had to hook her wrists over it and push all of her weight backwards, hoping that it would work. By the time she had broken about fifteen tiny threads her shoulders were aching and she was finding it harder and harder to break the next one; the rope was chafing her wrists and each time she tried to break another thread she saw more trickles of blood run down her arm past the raw skin under her bonds. She had just managed to make a noticeable difference in the rope when the door to her cell opened again, revealing two guards who stood in the door like solid shadows, wordlessly brandishing their swords at her. The nail clattered to the floor as she looked up, mute with shock and fear. Here were her executioners, swords out and ready to slip through the skin of her neck, severing the fragile bonds which tied her to life at the same time as they severed her head from the rest of her body; she had lived a hard life but she had never properly prepared herself for death, never truly faced it the way it stared her in the face now and Safita began to shiver. It was childish of her to be so scared of something so unknown - she had faced so many unknowns before in her life and this was just one more - but she couldn’t help it.

“Get up,” one of the guards grunted. Safita blinked and looked around the swaying room. “Get up.” His words were barely audible over the rushing that filled her ears and it took a moment for her to realise that he meant for her to stand up. Her legs shook beneath her as she got to her knees and slowly pushed herself up, every limb in her body quivering and freezing cold as she was grabbed by the two men.

The march through the back corridors of the castle, presumably to the ballroom again so that Lassirus could see her die, barely registered in her mind. Everything seemed to swim in and out of focus and Safita’s whole body thrummed with the pounding of her heart; she swayed as she walked, crashing into the guard on her right, and her breaths came quickly, as if her body was trying to get in as many as possible before she died. Images burst into her mind in fragments, exploding into colour before fading away again as she panicked once more, and she couldn’t focus on anything for more than a couple of seconds; if she had found it hard to work out where she was going before the corridors of the castle had now become an impenetrable labyrinth where she would be lost forever. Safita would never make it out of this maze alive and, doomed to haunt its twisting corridors, she would stay there forever. Her dress, still filthy with the blood and sweat of battle, stuck to her back as a cold sweat drenched her skin and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth; every breath dried her mouth out even more and she couldn’t swallow, every time she tried bile rose in her throat, trying to force its way out past the fear blocking her windpipe. It took a minute for her to realise that the room she was now in was the ballroom again and it was only when she tasted salt in her mouth that she realised she was crying. Suddenly, just as quickly as it had come on, her fear drained away again and left her instead with a heavy numbness which settled in her stomach and throughout her body, transmuting her limbs from skin and breakable bone into iron. The cold which had plagued her on her way over faded into the chill of determination to see what she faced through until the end and her shakes subsided as she mastered herself.