Thanos saw one of the women there prod the unconscious man with her foot. He felt a thrill of fear then, because if the man woke, he would be able to tell the others what had happened, and that would set them searching.
Yet he didn’t wake, because the woman knelt and cut his throat.
Thanos tensed at that. Beside him, Herek put a hand on his arm.
“The Abandoned have no time for weakness of any kind,” he whispered. “They prey on anyone they can, because the ones up at the fortress don’t give them anything.”
“They’re prisoners?” Thanos asked.
“We’re all prisoners here,” Herek replied. “Even the guards are just prisoners who rose to the top, and who enjoy the cruelty enough to do the Empire’s work. Except you’re not a prisoner, are you? You don’t have the look of someone who’s been through the fortress.”
“I’m not,” Thanos admitted. “This place… it’s prisoners doing it to other prisoners?”
The worst part was that he could imagine it. It was the kind of thing the king, his father, might think of. Put prisoners into a kind of hell and then give them the chance to avoid more pain only if they ran it.
“The Abandoned are the worst,” Herek said. “If prisoners won’t submit, if they’re too mad or too stubborn, if they won’t work or they fight back too much, they’re thrown out here with nothing. The wardens hunt them. Most beg to be brought back.”
Thanos didn’t want to think about it, but he had to, because Ceres might be here. He kept his eyes on the group of feral prisoners while he continued to whisper to Herek.
“I’m looking for someone,” Thanos said. “She might have been brought here. Her name is Ceres. She fought in the Stade.”
“The princess combatlord,” Herek whispered back. “I saw her fight in the Stade. But no, I would have known if she’d been brought here. They liked to parade the new arrivals in front of us, so that they could see what was waiting for them. I would have remembered her.”
Thanos’s heart plunged like a stone thrown into a pool. He’d been so sure that Ceres would be here. He’d put everything he had into getting here, simply because it was the only clue he had to her whereabouts. If she wasn’t there… where could he go?
The hope he’d had started to drip away, as surely as the blood from Herek’s feet, where the rocks had cut them.
The blood that the Abandoned were staring at even now, following the trail of it…
“Run!” Thanos yelled, urgency overcoming his heartbreak as he dragged Herek with him.
He scrambled over the broken ground of the rocks, heading in the direction of the fortress simply because he guessed it was a direction those following wouldn’t want to go. Yet they did follow, and Thanos had to pull Herek along to keep him running.
A spear flashed past his head, and Thanos flinched, but he didn’t stop. He dared a glance back, and the lean forms of the prisoners were closing, hunting them as surely as a pack of wolves. Thanos knew he had to turn and fight, but he had no weapons. At best, he could grab a rock.
Figures in dark leathers and chain shirts rose from the rocks ahead, holding bows. Thanos reacted on instinct, dragging himself and Herek to the ground.
Arrows flew overhead, and Thanos saw the group of feral prisoners fall like cut corn. One turned to run, and an arrow took her in the back.
Thanos stood, as a trio of men walked toward them. The one at their head was silver-haired and angular, putting his bow across his back as he approached and drawing a long knife.
“You are Prince Thanos?” he demanded as he got closer.
In that moment, Thanos knew he’d been betrayed. The smuggling captain had given up his presence, either for gold or because he simply didn’t want the trouble.
He forced himself to stand tall. “Yes, I’m Thanos,” he said. “And you are?”
“I am Elsius, warden of this place. Once they called me Elsius the Butcher. Elsius the Killer. Now those I kill deserve their fate.”
Thanos had heard that name. It had been a name that the children he’d grown up with had used to try to frighten one another, that of a nobleman who had killed and killed until even the Empire had thought of him as too evil to allow to stay free. They’d made up stories of the things he’d done to those he caught. At least, Thanos had hoped they’d been made up.
“Are you going to try to kill me now?”
Thanos tried to sound defiant, even though he had no weapons.
“Oh no, my prince, we have much better plans for you. Your companion, though…”
Thanos saw Herek try to stand, but he wasn’t quick enough. The leader stepped forward and stabbed with brisk efficiency, the blade sliding in and out of the other man again and again. He held Herek up, as though to stop him dying before he was ready.
Finally, he let the prisoner’s corpse fall. When he turned to Thanos, his face was a rictus that had almost nothing human about it.
“How does it feel, Prince Thanos,” he asked, “to become a prisoner?”
CHAPTER SIX
Lucious had come to love the smell of burning homes. There was something soothing about it, something that built excitement in him too at the prospect of everything that was to come.
“Wait for them,” he said, from his perch atop a grand charger.
Around him, his men were spread out to surround the houses they were burning. They were barely houses, really, just peasant hovels so poor that it wouldn’t even be worth looting them. Perhaps they’d sift through the ashes later.
For now, though, there was fun to be had.
Lucious saw a flicker of movement as the first people ran screaming from their homes. He pointed one gauntleted hand, the sunlight catching on the gold of his armor.
“There!”
He heeled his horse into a run, lifting a spear and throwing it down at one of the running figures. Beside him, his men caught up with men and women, hacking and killing, only occasionally letting them live when it seemed obvious that they would fetch more in the slave markets.
There was, Lucious had found, an art to burning out a village. It was important not to just rush in blindly and set light to everything. That was what amateurs did. Rush in without preparation, and people just ran. Burn things in the wrong order, and there was the possibility that valuables would be left behind. Leave too many escape routes, and the slave lines would be shorter than they should be.
The key was preparation. He’d had his men arrange themselves in a cordon outside the village well before he’d ridden in wearing his oh so visible armor. Some of the peasants had run just at the sight of it, and Lucious had enjoyed that. It was good to be feared. It was right that he should be.
They were on the next stage now, where they burned some of the least valuable homes. From the top, of course, flinging torches into the thatch. People couldn’t run if you fired their hiding places at ground level, and if they didn’t run, there was no entertainment.
Later, there would be more traditional looting, followed by torture for those with suspected rebel sympathies, or who might simply be hiding valuables. And then the executions, of course. Lucious smiled at that thought. Normally, he just made examples. Today though, he was going to be more… extensive.
He found himself thinking of Stephania as he rode through the village, unsheathing his sword to hack left and right. Normally, he wouldn’t have reacted well to anyone rejecting him the way she had. If any of the young women of this village tried, Lucious would probably have them flayed alive, rather than simply sending them to the slave pits.
Stephania was different, though. It wasn’t just that she was beautiful and elegant. When he’d thought that was all she was, he’d thought nothing of the idea of simply bringing her to heel like some glorious pet.
Now that she’d turned out to be more than that, Lucious found his feelings changing, becoming more. She wasn’t just the perfect ornament for a future king; she was someone who understood the way the world worked, and who was prepared to scheme to get what she wanted.
That was a big part of why Lucious had decided to let her go; he was enjoying the game between them too much. He’d had her backed into a corner, and she’d been willing to bring him down along with her. He wondered what move she’d make next.
He was brought from his thoughts by the sight of two of his men holding a family at sword point: a fat man, an older woman, and three children.
“Why are they still breathing?” Lucious asked.
“Your highness,” the man begged, “please. My family have always been the most loyal subjects of your father. We have nothing to do with the rebellion.”
“So you’re saying that I’m mistaken?” Lucious asked.
“We are loyal, your highness. Please.”
Lucious cocked his head to one side. “Very well, in view of your loyalty, I will be generous. I will permit one of your children to live. I’ll even let you choose which one. In fact, I command you to.”
“B-but… we can’t choose between our children,” the man said.
Lucious turned to his men. “You see? Even when I give them commands, they don’t obey. Kill them all, and don’t waste my time with any more like this. Everyone in this village is either to be killed or put on the slave lines. Don’t make me repeat myself.”
He rode away toward the sight of more burning buildings while the screams started behind him. It really was turning out to be a beautiful morning.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Work faster, you lazy whelps!” the guard called, and Sartes winced at the sting of the whip across his back. If he could have, he would have spun and fought the guard, but without a weapon, it was suicide.
Rather than a weapon, he had a bucket. Chained to another prisoner, he was expected to collect the tar and pour it into large barrels to be hauled back up away from the pits, where it might be used to caulk boats and seal roofs, line the smoothest cobbles and waterproof walls. It was hard work, and having to do it chained to someone else only made it harder.
The boy he was chained to wasn’t any larger than Sartes was, and looked far thinner. Sartes didn’t know his name yet, because the guards punished anyone who talked too much. They probably thought they were plotting revolt, Sartes thought. Looking at some of the men around them, maybe they had a point.
The tar pits were a place where some of the worst people in Delos got sent, and it showed. There were fights over food, and simply over who was toughest, although none of them lasted long. Whenever guards were watching, the men kept their heads down. Those who didn’t quickly found themselves beaten or thrown into the tar.
The boy who was currently chained to Sartes didn’t seem to fit in with so many of the rest of them. He was stick thin and spindly, looking as though he might break under the effort of hauling tar from the pits. His skin was filthy with it, and covered in burns from where the tar had touched it.
A plume of gas drifted off the pit. Sartes managed to hold his breath, but his companion wasn’t so lucky. He started to hack and cough, and Sartes felt the jerk on the chain as he stumbled before he saw him start to fall.
Sartes didn’t have to think. He dropped his bucket, lunging forward and hoping that he would be quick enough. He felt his fingers close around the other boy’s arm, so thin that Sartes’s fingers fit all the way around it like a second shackle.
The boy tumbled toward the tar and Sartes hauled him back from it. Sartes could feel the heat of it there, and almost recoiled as he felt his skin burning. Instead, he kept his grip on the other boy, not letting him go until he’d pulled him safely back to solid ground.
The boy coughed and sputtered, but seemed to be trying to form words.
“It’s okay,” Sartes assured him. “You’re okay. Don’t try to speak.”
“Thank you,” he said. “Help… me… up. The guards – ”
“What’s going on here?” a guard bellowed, punctuating it with a blow of the lash that made Sartes cry out. “Why are you lazing about here?”
“It was the fumes, sir,” Sartes said. “They just overcame him for a moment.”
That earned him another blow. Sartes wished that he had a weapon then. Something he could use to fight back, but there was nothing other than his bucket, and there were far too many guards for that. Of course, Ceres would probably have found a way to fight them all with it, and that thought brought a smile to him.
“When I want you to speak, I’ll tell you,” the soldier said. He kicked the boy Sartes had saved. “Up, you. You can’t work, you’re no use. You’re no use, you can go into the tar like all the rest.”
“He can stand,” Sartes said, and quickly helped the other boy to do just that. “Look, he’s fine. It was just the fumes.”
This time, he didn’t mind the soldier hitting him, because at least it meant he wasn’t hitting the other boy.
“Get back to work then, both of you. You’ve already wasted too much time.”
They went back to collecting the tar, and Sartes did his best to collect as much as he could, because the other boy clearly wasn’t strong enough to do much yet.
“I’m Sartes,” he whispered over, keeping a watch for the guards.
“Bryant,” the other boy whispered back, although he looked nervous as he did it. Sartes heard him coughing again. “Thank you, you saved my life. If I can ever pay you back, I will.”
He fell silent as the guards passed by again.
“The fumes are bad,” Sartes said, as much to keep him talking as anything.
“They eat your lungs,” Bryant replied. “Even some of the guards die.”
He said it as though it was normal, but Sartes couldn’t see anything normal about it.
Sartes looked at the other boy. “You don’t look much like a criminal.”
He could see the look of pain that crossed the other boy’s face. “My family… Prince Lucious came to our farm and burned it. He killed my parents. He took my sister away. He sent me here for no reason.”
It was far too familiar a story to Sartes. Lucious was evil. He took any excuse to cause misery. He tore families apart just because he could.
“So why not get justice?” Sartes suggested. He kept scooping tar out from the pit, making sure that no guard would come close.
The other boy looked at him as if he were mad. “How am I meant to do that? I’m just one person.”
“The rebellion is far more than one person,” Sartes pointed out.
“As if they’d care about what happens to me,” Bryant countered. “They don’t even know we’re here.”
“Then we’ll have to go to them,” Sartes whispered back.
Sartes saw panic cross the other boy’s features.
“You can’t. If you even talk about escape, the guards will hang us above the tar and lower us into it a little at a time. I’ve seen it. They’ll kill us.”
“And what will happen if we stay here?” Sartes demanded. “If you’d been chained to one of the others today, what would have happened?”
Bryant shook his head. “But there are the tar pits, and the guards, and I’m sure there are traps. The other prisoners won’t help, either.”
“But you’re thinking about it now, aren’t you?” Sartes said. “Yes, there will be risks, but a risk is better than dying for certain.”
“How are we even supposed to do it?” Bryant asked. “They keep us in cages at night, and chain us together all day.”
Sartes had an answer for that, at least. “Then we escape together. We find the right moment. Trust me, I know about getting out of bad situations.”
He didn’t say that this would be worse than anything he’d dealt with before, or let his new friend know just how bad the odds were. He didn’t need to scare Bryant any more than he was already, but they did need to go.
If they stayed any longer, he knew, neither one of them would survive.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Thanos felt as tense as an animal about to leap as he walked between the trio of prisoners, back in the direction of the fortress that dominated the island. With every step, he found himself looking for an escape route, yet on open ground, with the bows his captors held, there was none.
“Might as well be sensible,” Elsius said behind him. “I won’t say that your fate will be any better if you go along with us, but you’ll last longer. There’s nowhere to run on the island except to the Abandoned, and I’ll hunt you down long before that.”