Chapter 43 Nightmare
Nightmare
There were no windows in the dungeon. No way to know what time had passed.
He woke to find a plate with stale bread and boiled vegetables had been slipped beneath his door.
He ate, and then stripped his boots off to see if the snowy march to Liron had cost him any toes.
A childhood in Eyron had provided him with a thorough education in frostbite.
He’d guessed correctly there was cold damage, but saw no black skin.
He’d keep all ten toes, but they were already blistering.
Not that it was likely to matter, in a day or two. Dead men didn’t need toes.
If there was one good thing about the cold, it was that the foul smell coming off Niel and the other prisoners was easier to bear than it would have been in the heat.
He inspected the cell in the dungeon’s sputtering light. No gaps in the bars wide enough for anything other than an arm. No loose stones or loose hinges on the door.
Nothing else to do but wait for his execution. He wrapped himself in the blankets and went back to sleep.
This pattern—wake, eat, putter, sleep—repeated twice, until Niel could not have possibly slept more. He studied the patterns in the stone wall, finding shapes and letting his mind wander. Where was Ayla, just now? He hoped she was warmer than Niel. And cleaner.
For a moment he let himself daydream what it could have been like, if he’d run with her, like she asked.
But that was too painful to consider for long.
Imagining a life with her filled him with a longing so intense it felt like he couldn’t breathe.
She was free. That was all that mattered. Niel could not afford to dream.
Would the Aronthians use Niel’s death to fuel their war? They would need someone else from the Arevon dynasty—Niel’s bloodline, the one he shared with the royal family—if they wanted to conquer the whole country. Well, it was his father's problem now.
He slept, again. Fitfully.
He was dreaming of a march through the snow, but he wasn’t trying to get to a specific place.
He was trying to find a unicorn. Always, it seemed to be just out of his reach.
In the logic of dreams, he knew just where it had been, and no matter how fast he ran he seemed to get no closer to that point until the unicorn was already gone.
“Well, isn’t this a shame,” Hannes’ voice said.
Niel jerked awake, heart thundering, and took a gasping breath of air. He was having a nightmare, like any other.
Except the shadow of a man blocked the grate of his cell, standing outside and watching him. The hairs rose on the back of his neck.
“You aren’t here,” Niel whispered, trying to convince himself he was still dreaming. If he could just wake up…
Hannes chuckled.
“I had business in the city. Almost didn’t believe it, when they said they’d captured you. And I hear it’s to be the headman’s axe. Shame you went so wrong.”
Hannes fumbled with something at his belt. And then Niel heard the scraping of a key fitting into a lock.
“I’ll kill you,” Niel warned, voice rasping. “I’ll kill you if you come in here.”
His heart pounded so loudly he could hear it; could taste metal in his mouth.
“With what, your shackles?” Hannes drawled. “Or the smell?”
Niel pressed back against the wall, raising his wrists. Hannes was right, even if it was meant as a cruel joke. But he'd fight to the death. The chain between Niel’s wrists could be used as a weapon. If he could get it around the older knight’s throat he could strangle Hannes with it.
Nobody was coming to save him. They were deep below the castle, in the Queen’s dungeon.
And nobody, not once in his entire life, had ever come to save Niel before.
Hannes grabbed a spear from beside him. It had been outside the door, and outside Niel’s field of view. Flipping it over skillfully, Niel’s former knight-master rammed the butt into Niel’s chest.
Niel was not in as good condition as when he’d fought Ditmar.
Niel was exhausted, freezing, and underfed.
He barely saw the blow coming before it hit.
Pain burst like a star through him, and he doubled forward with a grunt.
Hannes hit him again, then grabbed the chain between Niel’s wrist and yanked him forward.
Niel felt the sensitive, raw skin of his wrists split at the sharp pull of the metal. He stumbled from his cell.
He was alone. He was alone, and if he didn’t find a way to save himself, it was all going to happen over again.
He thrashed, kicking out blindly, fighting like a fish in a net to escape.
It was futile. His arms jerked up over his head as if by their own will, and Hannes stepped out of reach.
Niel’s arms swung higher. In the hall just outside the cell, Hannes had gotten Niel’s shackles hooked onto a chain that had Niel standing with his arms straight over his head.
He tugged down, not even caring about the pain, but could not budge it.
A strangled, helpless sob escaped his lips.
Not again. Not again.
It was all so futile. He thought he’d escaped Hannes. Thought he’d made himself impervious. Worn armor, and hidden knives all over himself, and slept with one eye open. Sided with his father to gain an entire army, all to kill this one man.
But here he was. Again. Helpless. Alone. With nobody coming. It had all been for nothing. What a fool Niel was, to think he’d actually escaped Hannes before. He was like a wounded hare that had fled a trap and dragged itself off into the forest, only to be caught out by a hunting dog.
“You needn’t worry. I’ve been promised an hour to myself,” Hannes said. “You’ll be back in your cell long bef—”
Niel flinched back as a bright red line appeared across Hannes' neck.
Hannes didn’t have time to lift his hand to it before a hot spray of blood spurt over Niel’s chest. And then Hannes did clasp a hand to his throat.
Another pulse of blood seeped between his fingers, too strong to contain.
Hannes crumpled, his eyes glassy and wide with shock as more blood sprayed between his fingers and seeped down his chest. The wound had come from nowhere.
“Luck and Mercy,” Niel whispered. He panted, his whole body shaking, and stared down at the dying corpse of his tormentor. Niel's vision grayed.
And then Ayla, her hands trembling and her mouth grimly tight, peeled off the unicorn cloak and dropped the knife she’d been carrying. It clattered to the stone floor. She seemed to appear from empty air, stepping from some other world into the rank dungeon.
“What…?” Niel whispered, his voice high and strained. The room spun around him.
Someone had come. Had saved him. But nobody ever did. Nobody had before.
Was he dreaming? Had Hannes been a nightmare after all, and this, her, a desperate, last grasp of his broken mind? But the pain in his wrists, where the shackles held him upright, was real. And the copper stench of Hannes’ blood filled his nose.
“I’m sorry,” Ayla said, her own voice barely a squeak. “I tried to get in earlier—they would never open the door wide enough, and then—oh, Mercy, Niel,” she said.
Hannes lay gasping on the floor, the blood pooling out from him.
Niel stared at her in shocked disbelief as she worked the mechanism Hannes had used to string him up. And then, as the chain holding him up unspooled far enough that he could slip his shackles off the hook he’d hung from, Niel collapsed.
She caught him. Her body was real, and soft, and her lips pressed to his cheek, and Niel panted against her.
And for a long moment, she held him, her arms tight around him, until Niel realized she had no choice but to hold him up.
Because he had dropped himself on her and she was the only thing holding his weight up from the floor, up from the ground where his tormentor’s body lay.
He straightened slowly to stand on his own two legs, and bent his forehead against hers, still caught in disbelief.