Deathless

Deathless Chapter Twenty-Seven: Broken

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Broken

The blacksmith sat with his back against the wall, his legs bent at awkward angles, his hand resting, solemn, on his thigh, where a large, gaping hole ringed with dry, crusty specks of red was positioned.

Thymil took slow and steady breaths, but every so often he would wince in agony as his wound throbbed once more, where, apparently, the rebels had put a dagger through his thigh as they questioned him. Wounds riddled his body, from gashes on his torso and his face, tearing through his ripped green tunic, to deep stab wounds in his arms and legs.

Vanya looked on at the broken man before her, the eerie glow of Risselyn’s torch casting haunting shadows across the ransacked room, with furniture and such askew, Thymil’s many belongings, his hammers, spare bits of ore, tossed unceremoniously across the floor, most lying in cinders.

“Tell me again,” Vanya said, her expression unreadable, as her companions remained silent. Sirya had gone out to scout the land around them, as the news that Thymil had given them had put them in the vilest of dangers. Lindale and Risselyn remained with her, taut as a drawn bowstring, ready for action, as was likely to come in the near future.

“I’ve already told you all I know,” the smith growled. “What more do you want, whore?”

Vanya ignored the insult, and instead pressed on. “One more time. I want to get everything straight.”

“Fine, fine,” Thymil gasped. “If it’ll let you leave me in peace, then fine.”

Vanya nodded. She glanced sideways at Lindale, and then at Risselyn, as if in askance of any advice at all as to how to proceed. When she got none, she turned back to the broken man.

“Just as I’ve already told you imbeciles before, yes, I was an Imperial spy, posing as a blacksmith in this godforsaken smithy,” he said in a defeated voice, his eyes staring at virtually nothing.

“Fat lot of good that did me.” Thymil showed a gap-toothed grin, and a sound issued from his mouth, which Vanya supposed was a weak attempt at a chuckle. “About a month ago I got a message from an Imperial courier. Saying that I was to be expectin’ you lot here. Said I was to give you supplies and send you on your way. To where, you ask? Damned Imperial bastards never told me. I was to obey, as I did to those  cowards all my life.”

A touch of hatred flashed across Thymil’s face, then, and his eyes knit for a second, then he relaxed, wincing again in his pain. Vanya gestured to him to continue.

“Well, about two days ago now, I was sharpening a shortsword that one of the rebels from the Southport garrison had given me,” the smith continued. “When I got a lovely surprise in the form of a couple rebel assheads, with a couple of very large swords drawn. Said I was to surrender to them, or suffer.”

“And so you did,” Risselyn broke in, his voice laced with disapproval.

“Yeah, you pale-faced bastard, I did,” Thymil snapped. “What else was I supposed to do? Grab a goddamned axe and go in charging in? I don’t know about you, but I very much still wanted to continue my pitiful existence.”

Thymil made that sound again, the one that could have been a chuckle, had it not come along with a hacking cough. “Heh. And look at me now. Not much to show, eh? Those bastards let me keep my life, but in this godforsaken state.”

“They tossed me in the house, then ransacked the place, going damn crazy with their swords and torches until there wasn’t much left that I owned. Then they shoved me up against this very wall and drove a dagger into my thigh.”

He winced as his finger grazed the wound, then continued. “Then the bastards started questioning me, about what I was doing here, and what that informant had told me a month ago. Seems they caught the poor bastard and got him to spill about whom he was giving instructions to.”