by deddings » Fri Feb 21, 2003 1:11 pm
Upon his arrival to the Myrken wood gaol, Eurykleides of Lycanea had no particular clue what to expect. He knew his imprisonment was good for only as long as he had to live until the day he was executed.
It was all a freak accident, to his knowledge, but he had nonetheless put a spear through the center mass of a merchant who stiffed him on a caravan-guarding contract. He still had yet to figure out how fat Kobard’s family could demand final justice when he himself was an injured party in all this.
What hadn’t crossed the Lycanean warrior’s mind was that the merchant was brutally murdered (an eight foot spear shoved all the way through his chest cavity with so much force that it came out the back of the man, his chair and stuck in the wall; the warrior had to leave without it) and that the merchant’s families had rights.
Such as it was, he scratched his beard and looked about the place where he was to have an abbreviated stay. He wasn’t, as it stood, the tallest of men, nor the stoutest but neither was he short and skinny. Rather, he had a lean-waisted build with powerful shoulders, powerful forearms, and a well-developed set of trapezium, dorsal and pectoral muscles.
There were men who developed great muscles or a prodigious agility, but this was a man whose fitness was more utilitarian. It was also mostly hidden in the thick garb he favored for the winter. But it all came off when the gaolers gave him new clothing.
“Eff me, look at ‘is muck-pissed back! That one’s taken a thousand stripes if ‘es taken one, I’d wager a pile of pig**** to a chest of gold!” exclaimed one of the guardsmen when the got a look at the naked man’s much flogged back. The Lycanean heard much of it, but he declined to comment and instead just assumed a blank facial expression.
“Aye, and look at this one’s arms and shoulders,” commented the senior of the two guardsmen, as he looked over the man’s athletic form with a more discerning eye than that of his rather dull minion, “Looks like a fighter to me. They say this one’s strong, put a spear through a merchant’s chest cavity; broke the bastard’s ribs going in and came out the back of the bastard’s chair. It’s stuck in the bleedin’ wall now and there’s a pool for whoever can pull it. Be sure to keep an eye on this one, he’s a dangerous sort.” The senior guardsman gave a satisfied nod and walked away.
“Don’t just stand there like an idiot!” yelled the junior guardsman, “get the effing clothes on. You’re wasting my time! Get yer arse in there!”
****
The next few days passed in solitude for the Lycanean. Even with another man in the cell with him, he declined to speak, holding himself in an arrogant silence and not even deigning to give his name. But he did take a short, three-foot length of rope he filched (Lycanean youth were skilled at this) and tied it into two knotted handles and a length between them. He looped these onto a hook in the ceiling of his cell and pulled up.
There was a man that tried to question him, but he simply ignored the bastard, without even a pretense of politeness. He merely kept pulling his body up by his own strength, letting the man soak in the smell of sweat, the man’s body heat in the cell and the cold arrogance of the bearded, long-haired warrior.
“Why bother?” his cellmate asked lazily, after the questioner left. To his surprise, he got an answer. So much so was the surprise that he bumped his head on the bunk in sitting upright.
“I could just save my strength every night so I could play with myself like you do, but where would that get me?”