Chapter 4 Torture Time
Torture Time
Bronwen didn’t return to the hut after their less-than-ideal conversation, which he wasn’t exactly happy about.
After she’d dropped that tidbit about planning a rebellion to set fire to Lord Morfran (i.e.
, him), he’d argued with her about just about everything: how he doubted there were a thousand able-bodied men hiding out in the forest. How sharp sticks did not a sufficient weapon make, not when they’d be facing men with stishovite arrows and black iron swords and fancy siege gadgets called trebuchets.
And lastly, he argued how much his “prison” was a pathetic makeshift, and that a true rebellion would at least have a deep, dark pit in the ground in which to stash its enemies.
Her glower had only darkened. “We do have shovels out here. We can make such a prison happen.”
“Make it happen, then!” he argued.
“I will. And I’ll have you dig it,” she shot back, to which he—childishly, he admitted afterwards—snapped, “Make me!”
She hadn’t bothered to reply, and frankly, he was embarrassed. He was left alone after that, still fastened against the center pole, his leather journal tucked covertly under his butt. He didn’t get the chance to wiggle free, however. He soon had visitors.
First it was three little children with hair so blond it looked like flossy, sun-bleached hay.
They peeked in through the hut’s door flap, drawing the cloth back with dirty fingers and peeping at him with wild, round eyes.
The fresh scent of pine and elm floated towards him, and he gladly breathed it in.
“See?” said the eldest, a boy of around twelve. “Told you he was here.”
Morfran ignored them. They were the filthy spawn of people mounting a rebellion against him, and frankly, he was feeling a little insulted.
Bronwen made it sound like they all believed it was him behind the pillaging and looting, when in reality, it was his men.
He’d warned them about something like this.
A burned home was fuel for vengeance, he’d said.
Honestly, his men had started to grow too uncontrollable.
He noticed it. They noticed it. And Ravana certainly noticed it.
It was one of the one hundred and four reasons (he’d created a list of pros and cons) why he’d fled.
“And he really killed ’em all with his bare hands?” What looked to be the youngest child—a tiny boy missing the entire front row of his teeth—whistled. “He ain’t even wearing armor. You sure you heard right?”
“I hear right just fine,” the eldest boy replied. “They said he looks deceptive but is a flat-up liar, though. So maybe Brim is right and he just stole the sword off a dead man.”
“No honor in that.” The toothless boy shook his head sadly.
“What do you think of him, Drezella?” the eldest asked.
The third was the only girl, perhaps ten. She hadn’t blinked once since seeing him. She released a slow, breathy sigh. “I think he’s handsome, Tad.”
“I don’t mean it like that! Do you think he killed some of Morfran’s men?”
“I don’t see why it matters if he’s handsome…”
“Great,” the eldest boy—Tad—grumbled, irritable. “This is why we don’t like playin’ with you, Drezella. Whenever a question of great importance is asked, you always go off about how so-and-so’s eyes are dreamy, or how his muscles are so big, or—”
“Can you three please discuss this elsewhere?” Morfran asked, more polite than he should have been.
His wrists had been tied to the post for hours, and all sensation up to his elbows was non-existent.
Add that to the fact that he’d had nothing to eat or drink since last night and a headache was forming, and he was in no mood to sit and listen to them argue.
The three of them fell utterly silent upon him speaking. Then:
Drezella sighed again. “Oh, even his voice sounds handsome…”
“That’s it. I’m leaving,” Tad announced. “If all you’re going to do is talk about how handsome someone is, then consider yourself no longer a Fleet Foot.”
She finally tore her gaze from Morfran to protest this. “I was the one who named us! You can’t kick me out of my own club!”
“It’s not your club. We created it together, and since I’m oldest, technically I’m the leader—”
“But that’s no fair!” Toothless cried. “Nana told me I get to be leader today, remember?”
I think I may tear my hair out, Morfran thought, then bemoaned the fact that his hands were tied behind his back, then bemoaned further how swollen his wrists had grown over the hours. “Children,” he begged. “Please.”
For once, good luck floated Morfran’s way in the form of someone outside passing by and saying, “You three shouldn’t be over here,” followed by the three children scattering away like sparrows spooked by a cat.
Before vanishing behind the door flap, however, Drezella turned and gave Morfran a shy smile and a wave.
I beheaded men for a living, little girl, he wanted to threaten. Begone.
He had approximately thirty-seven seconds of peace before someone even more obnoxious visited him. It was the one who’d snared him in the net out in the woods: Hugh. He came in with a proud expression and a puffed-up chest, which Morfran decided made him look like a gangly, bloated-bellied stork.
A bloated-bellied stork with a blade strapped to its waist.
“Is that my sword?” Morfran sat up as high as he could, angrily incredulous at the image.
His sword had become something of an icon to his legacy as Dark Lord of Ruthven?.
Black and wicked-looking, it was forged with sweat, tears, and red food dye #7, and a blood amber in the pommel topped off the sword’s devilish appearance.
It was so popular kingdom-wide that his men had taken to having their swords styled in a way just like it, and Morfran was quite pleased to know he was a trendsetter among his villainous peers.
Now this…this peasant with an inflated head was walking around wearing it. Morfran repeated himself, growing angrier by the minute. “I said, is that my sword?”
“No,” Hugh replied, stepping just inches out of his reach. “It’s my newly acquired sword.” He pulled it from the sheath and began swishing it with flair. “She’s quite a beauty, isn’t sh—”
He dropped it. Morfran ground his teeth together as it rattled to the dirt floor.
Hugh plucked it back up as if nothing had happened.
“So.” He rested the flat part over his shoulder like it was a club.
“My father told me you’d been nothin’ but full of lies earlier.
You gonna start answering truthfully now?
Because if you don’t, think how embarrassin’ it’ll be for you to be tortured by your own sword. ”
“You’re the one they sent to torture me?
” Morfran asked, and despite his agitation, he sincerely meant the question.
This idiot couldn’t even hold a sword properly.
Perhaps if he was sent to torture him, the other revolters were equally pathetic.
Despite everything, the thought offended him.
Surely they could have sent someone actually intimidating to torture him?
Hugh’s chin dipped deep as he nodded a little too vigorously. “Of course. I’m the one they always send for…eh…stuff of this import.”
Morfran huffed. “If you could tell them to bring the actual torturer in, I’d appreciate the haste. And while you’re at it, could you ask them what type of torture it’ll be? Whipping? Maiming? Removal of fingernails? I’d like to be mentally prepared.”
Hugh looked mildly disturbed. “Are you tortured on a regular basis?”
I married Ravana, so…yes.
“Look,” Morfran said tiredly. “I stand by what I’ve said. I’m just a goat farmer whose lands were burned down by our lord’s men—”
A horrendous noise shrieked somewhere outside the hut. He fell silent. It sounded like a dozen cats all shrieking different, discordant tones at once. Morfran went stiff. “Is that my lute?”
“No,” Hugh replied snootily, as if Morfran were an idiot for suggesting it. “It’s Pete’s newly acquired lute.”
The only things keeping Morfran from murder were his bound wrists. “I want my things back,” he snapped. “And where are my goats? If any of you hurt Benjamin and her kids in any way, I’ll tear your hands off.”
“See, that vehemence there”—Hugh straightened, pointing the tip of the sword at Morfran like it were a finger—“is why I don’t believe you’re just some random farmer. There’s more to you than you’re saying, and you’re not fooling none of us.”
What would they do if they knew who he truly was? Perhaps it would be advantageous to reveal himself. At least then they’d stop treating him like dirt and give him the respect and fear he’d earned.
But no. He’d left that life behind the moment he abandoned Ravana’s side.
He’d left covertly under a new moniker because he wanted to live out a quiet life now, and although he enjoyed garnering fearful respect from any and all, you couldn’t live undisturbed if people were constantly peering out from the corner, pointing and whispering, “Anger him even once and he’ll remove your nose with forceps. ”
Never in his life had Morfran used forceps to remove any appendage from a person, but that was how his reputation had developed when he’d wed Ravana fifteen years ago and invited her into his war room.
Before, he was just known as their standard Dark Lord.
He’d usurped Good King Richard—who was aptly named, for his name was Richard, and by all accounts he was a good king—and took the rebelling nearby cities by force, then swept southward and conquered the independent kingdoms and added them to his domain.
It was thanks to Ravana’s influence that people began tacking the adjective “Evil” before “Dark Lord.” He was sick of it.
He wasn’t Evil. He was just Dark. Evil rulers kicked puppies.
Dark rulers kicked people. Vast difference.
Besides, he beheaded people who deserved it, cleanly and swiftly and fairly, and that was the end of it.