The Dark of the Stars

Chapter Eight

Dixie was a much better captor than Falalian and his men. As soon as Dixie marched off the commander hit me square in the jaw, which was so unexpected and forceful, I toppled to the floor. Falalian rubbed his knuckles and looked down at me with the same look a hungry animal gives its kill right before its eaten. My jaw throbbed and my vision blurred. I couldn’t open my mouth without an eruption of pain. 

“Take him to the stables and place a guard outside to wait for me, and whatever you do, don’t let anyone know he is here” Falalian barked orders at a nearby soldier in Low Taun, the language of peasants. I had only ever heard it spoken by the servants of the royal family before and it sounded so incredibly strange coming from an officer in uniform, even if that uniform was not all that formal looking.

Two men grabbed my arms and lifted me up. One of them shoved a burlap bag over my head and the other one pushed me forward keeping my arms behind my back. I started to miss Dixie’s cold sharp fingers grasping my wrist as enough to keep me in place. 

After I stumbled with them through several turns in the path, the bag came off my head and I was shoved forward at the same time. I didn’t have good footing so I fell flat on my face into the mud. 

My frontside was now completely covered in mud, and my best suit, that I had been wearing for two days now, was covered. I looked around the dark space to see that I wasn’t in a dungeon, but what appeared to be some sort of giant cage. When I looked more closely I noticed that it was more like the stables than a dungeon. So Falalian had actually meant for me to be taken to the stables, not the dungeon, I thought that was strange. 

“Cavalries' out on raids” one of the henchmen laughed through his thick southern accent and low Taun, noticing that I was looking around. Then I stood up quickly. It dawned on me that it wasn’t mud that I was covered in...This reaction caused both henchmen to keel over laughing. 

The two men sat outside my cage and spoke to each other in rapid Low-Taun. I couldn’t make out a word they were saying due to their accents and their language. I felt like a failure. I always boasted to my siblings how I could understand Low Taun so much better than the both of them. I was the one who would be able to speak to the peasants, and here I was faced with a possibly important conversation in front of me in Low Taun, and I could barely make out a word. 

After an hour of sitting in the horse shit it had started to dry on my clothes and skin. I started to feel a bit more easy about the situation. When I was first handed over to Falalian I thought the worst, but maybe I would get out of this how I’d originally thought. 

How I was wrong. 

Eventually, Falalian and several of his men came around. Falalian was still wearing his dirty uniform. He ordered for the men to open the doors and he stepped in the shit filled cage with me. Out of habit, I stood up when he entered. Maybe it was just habit of showing respect to authority, or maybe it was that I didn’t want him to know how afraid I was of him. 

He brought something out of his pocket. Brass knuckles. I breathed in deeply. 

“I’ve been fighting this war for six years now” he started talking, looking down at his knuckles and rubbing them, “But you know what really got me motivated to fight, and what lead to my promotion to commander?” He paused as if expecting an answer, even though we both knew it was rhetorical. 

Before he answered his own question, he bent over and ran me into the wall behind me, crashing me into it with such force I could swear that some of my inner organs ruptured, because it felt like I was hit by a train. I slumped to the floor, my vision blurring. 

Falalian grabbed the front of my suit and ripped down the front, leaving my bare chest exposed. “My sister was kidnapped and murdered by the royal guards” he said angrily, “I never even got to bury her!” he spat in my face, bending down to yell at me. It crossed my mind that I should have fought back, but I was outmatched and exhausted from being prisoner, I wouldn’t have made it much better for myself if I had fought him.