Chapter 4 Torture Time #2
“All right, my new friend, I hope you’re ready for this.
” A massive man parted the hut’s door flap, striding into the room and blocking out the dusk light as he did so.
It was Brim; behind him, also blocking the light, were at least three or four other men roughly the size of oxen, and they all halted when they saw Hugh poised on a crate before Morfran.
Hugh instantly teetered forward to his feet, keeping the sword inconspicuously at his side as he fidgeted.
“I gave him a fierce talkin’-to to let him know what he can expect from you tough lot.
” He gave Brim and the others a firm jerk of a nod.
They just stared. “Right. Well. I’ll just be on my way, then.
” He swung the sword back up to his shoulder like it was a club—nearly swiping Morfran’s head with the movement—and started marching confidently towards the exit.
That confidence lasted for two and half seconds before he had to squeeze himself around the muscular men, all of whom refused to budge, and his squirrelly frame eventually oozed between them like watery slime, and he was gone.
Morfran watched him leave with both relief and dread.
On the one hand he was utterly annoying.
On the other, these men now huddled in the room were clearly the cream of the crop of the forest dwellers: upper bodies built like thunderhead clouds, fists as large as cow skulls, thighs that were twice the size of that smallest, toothless child who had wandered in earlier.
What do you lot do for a living? Morfran gaped. Chuck trees and break stones between your thighs for fun?
Brim rubbed his face in the wake of his son’s antics, then dropped his hand and asked Morfran, “Are you going to answer our questions truthfully now? My daughter didn’t seem to like whatever it was you told her, and she’s a smart woman.”
Morfran considered the men. They held no weapons to maim him with and no tool kits filled with devices for removing appendages.
No raw meat juice to pour over his foot, and no starved dogs to gnaw on it freely.
Their hands and belts were free of any items, so he figured it’d just be the good ol’-fashioned Beat ’Em Bloody torture method. It could be much, much worse.
He grimaced. “Not smart enough if she didn’t tell you I was innocent.”
Brim only grinned in reply, as if he were hoping he’d say that.
Over the years Morfran had learned there were different types of violence.
There was the violence of anger, which Ravana was prone to committing should anyone get on her nerves.
There was the violence of punishment, which he’d inflicted on enemy spies, court lords and ladies who’d attempted to betray his rule, and citizens in his kingdom who’d refused to bow to him whenever he graced their presence with one of his visits.
And then there was the violence of gathering information, which was what Brim and his men attempted to do now.
Morfran didn’t enjoy it—a broken nose and blood stinging your eyes wasn’t fun—but he did respect it.
Violence had to have intent. If it didn’t, he considered the inflictor a step beyond tolerable.
Because he had respect for what they were trying to do, he didn’t hate them.
But he wasn’t grateful. Especially when they eventually resorted to taking breaks, because he still hadn’t talked, and he had to hang limply from the post (they still refused to untie him) while they panted and wiped their bruised knuckles clean of blood and looked to Brim for guidance.
After the fourth break, which took place long after night had fallen and a woman had to bring in lanterns so the men could see what exactly they were pummeling and that they weren’t in fact pummeling each other, Brim finally stood up from his seat on the crate and said, “Stop.”
Morfran raised his throbbing head, hopeful but not too hopeful that he’d finally convinced them he was innocent.
Brim glanced at his men, who looked not just exhausted but also a little sickly, and left the hut.
A few minutes later he returned. In his hand was Benjamin’s leash. On the other end was Benjamin.
Despite his rearranged bones, Morfran straightened at once.
Brim said, “There are thousands of us in these woods, split up into three different encampments.” The goat tried to wander up to Morfran, concern in her yellow eyes, but Brim held the leash firm.
“Only a third are able-bodied men who can fight. An additional few hundred are able-bodied women and young boys who might have to. The rest—young children, pregnant mothers, and our elderly—cannot.”
He paused, and Morfran said nothing, because the man’s voice was strong and authoritative for a peasant, and yet there was something close to breaking in it.
“I refuse to lose even one of them,” Brim continued, his grip on Benjamin’s rope tightening as he looked down at her.
“The reason we have been able to build up such an army is because we’ve remained tight-lipped about this dwelling.
And if a spy were to walk into our midst, and if we were to let them go and they returned to tell Lord Morfran’s men, then all of us would die. ”
Morfran fidgeted, uncomfortable. When he said nothing more, Brim knelt beside Benjamin, holding her gently with one hand and with the other placing a small carving knife against her throat.
All thought fled Morfran’s mind except: Tell him tell him tell him.
He’d only known Benjamin for a month, but already she consumed his daily thoughts and prayers.
He thought of the gentle happy bleats she belched whenever she was eating, his suspicions that she fainted constantly on the road only so she could be carried up over his shoulders, how she nudged his knee for another block of cheese, her wide, lazy-eyed stare peering up at him as if to say, I love you, Morf.
Plus, there were her children. He was going to orphan two kids because he was too much a coward to speak.
Tell him!
Morfran’s jaw was nigh broken. That’s why he couldn’t open it. That’s the only reason he didn’t speak. It was them, it was their pummeling fists, it was their fault he couldn’t open his mouth and tell them something, anything, to satisfy their suspicions.
And yet the words still thundered through him like raindrops spitting against his back.
Tell him tell him tell him!
Brim’s grip on the knife tightened. His forearm flexed as he went to saw through Beni’s throat, and Morfran drew in a painful, quick breath—and that was when Brim shut his eyes and lowered the weapon.
The bearish man couldn’t do it. All the buzzing panic within Morfran instantly cooled as Brim turned to his men and muttered something, passing Benjamin’s leash over and then facing Morfran. Through the blood leaking into Morfran’s eyes, he could see the man’s glower.
“I know you’re still lying,” he muttered.
“Many of Morfran’s men carry a sword just like the one you have.
If you were who you say you were, you wouldn’t keep it.
No one who considers Morfran their enemy would dare possess such a symbol of evil.
Which means you’re either a spy or you’re untrustworthy, and we can’t release you. ”
Morfran wanted to scream. Of course he shouldn’t have run off with his sword. Of course he should have kept it buried. It’d been a vain thing to do, he knew, but he was too attached to it and had had too many encounters where he needed it. Now, ironically, it was the thing that’d cut him down.
With that stated, Brim left the hut. The men who’d been pummeling Morfran followed closely behind, with Benjamin in tow.
Morfran tried to get her to look at him so he could apologize, to no avail.
They took the lanterns with them, abandoning him to the dark.
Morfran slumped to the side, as far as the bindings allowed him.
Coward. He was too selfish to admit what they wanted to hear. He should’ve left his sword behind. He should’ve fought harder in Hugh’s net earlier to get away. Now he couldn’t feel his face, and Benjamin had almost died. He’d almost let Benjamin die.
Perhaps he was evil after all.