Prisoners of the Drakes

"Something will turn up."

Affe clung to hope like mud to boots, but then a stick appeared and shoved her aside.

The stick came in the form of four drakes tramping down the path into their pit. Gabel scrambled to his feet. Affe slowly rose to hers. Ries looked around muzzily, still not entirely conscious. Alter didn't stir.

Two of the drakes grabbed Gabel roughly, while one pushed Affe aside. The fourth wiped a sticky cloth across Gabel's lips. He spat, but some of the morutsen dissolved in his mouth anyway. Affe guessed they would come at her next, but they didn't. The two held Gabel, and the one who pushed her prodded Ries, who didn't do much more than settle a little deeper down. The cloth bearer wiped his mouth roughly. Absently she noted that Ries was larger than the biggest of them.

Then the two looked at Alter, and said something to each other. Finally, the cloth bearer turned away and walked out of the pit. The other one grabbed Alter and slung his limp body over its shoulder. And the two who held Gabel started dragging him roughly up the ramp.

"No!" Affe shouted. "You can't take him!"

They didn't stop, and she didn't have the strength yet to chase after them. Gabel stared back at her, eyes strangely calm. They passed through the gate, and their guard sealed her and Ries into the pit.

She looked around her, feeling cold and alone. Then she went over and squatted near Ries.

"Are you all right?" she asked him.

He mumbled something.

"What did you say?"

"I can't use my magic," he said, staring vaguely across the pit. "I thought ... the drakes have come after mar towns, but not wint towns. Our magic is different, you know. And we look so different. If they know..." He paused and took a deep breath. "If they know morutsen works on my people, then they have conquered my people."

Affe didn't know much about the wint tribes, just that some remained in isolated parts. The mar grew steadily, and maybe still were. Removing the mede and wint populations certainly was a focus of the Mardux.

"They may have found just a few," she began, but he shook his head, interrupting her.

"No, they found all of us. It's how our magic works. There's strength in numbers, so we are always together. Or very close. If they found a small group, they found the rest. If they didn't defeat us, we would have defeated them. There must be no more wints. I may be the last."

She couldn't say anything to that, and he lapsed back into his hazy silence. Hours passed, and Gabel didn't return. The guard drakes did, wiping Ries' mouth again and ignoring Affe. She tried following them up to the gate, but they pushed her off the ledge and she fell — luckily not breaking anything.

Two days passed like this. Ries wallowed in his despair. Affe passed from worried and anxious to irritated and angry to just plain tired. Every few hours, drakes came to wipe Ries' lips. Every few hours, Affe heard their snarling, rip throat language. And late in the second day, she realized that a few of the words, repeated every time, she thought she understood. Hope rose and faded in her like heat lightning across the south, when the humidity was thickest and the rains wouldn't come. What good would knowing how to say "stay" do her?

Finally, the sound of the gate unlocking roused her from sleep, and Gabel came walking down, followed by two guards. At first, she thought they were bringing him back. Then she saw how they gave him some deference.

"Gabel?" she said, stupidly.

"Affe," he said, his face strained and tight. He looked as though he hadn't had any sleep in the days since he was taken. "I've come to take you to the questioners."

"Questioners." She was so shocked, she couldn't even form it as a question.

He nodded, and looked at Ries. "Has Ries said anything?"

Affe looked at Ries, fitfully sleeping. She decided something then, wondering why this situation was as it was. Gabel is walking free, with guards to bring me. What is going on?

"No," she said. "Nothing."

He looked her square in the eye for a long time, then nodded. Beckoning her to follow, he turned and went up the ramp. The guards grabbed her as she tried to walk past them, and she shook them, trying to free herself, but they wouldn't let go.

"Make them let me go!" she shouted at Gabel.

"I can't," he said, without pausing. "They don't understand what we're saying."

She quit struggling then, and let them march her up the ramp.

At the top, outside the pit, they were on the edge of a broad, emptied field, dry and littered with rocks and several more pits. Guards watched carefully over more than half the pits. But what caught her attention the most was the town.

Dozens of buildings, about the size of the mar houses in Mucker's Folly, were interspersed among the rocks and stumps of trees used to make the buildings. Farther away, a few tower-like structures rose from what she guessed was the center of the town. And all about her, in various stages of activity, were drakes. Most were of the sort that held her, but a few different ones gave her curious looks as they passed by.

"This town is their second largest," Gabel said as he led her toward the center of it. "This is where they keep their prisoners."

"Or turncoats," she said bitterly, voicing her opinion.

"Don't judge yet, Affe," he said quietly. Then, louder, "There are almost a thousand drakes in the town, and of that, a hundred or so are warriors. There are probably two hundred prisoners. The pits are where prisoners are kept until they are questioned. There are bunkhouses on the far side of town for the more useful people. Not everyone is killed."

"I can see," she said, but her mind started questioning everything again. Especially when she saw other mar wandering around the town, never far from the wary eyes of a drake, but moving about purposefully with tasks of their own.

Gabel nodded, missing her sarcasm. "I'm staying up there. If you prove you are worthwhile to them, the drakes may keep you alive to."

"To do what? To be a slave?"

His back stiffened, but he didn't turn to face her. They reached an official looking building. "Be careful what you say," he instructed her, finally turning to meet her eyes. She came to a halt rather than walk through him. "You could be very useful if you survive."

The guards prodded him with their hands. They were impatient. He led her inside, her mind swimming.

Useful to whom? she thought, then her guards dropped her off in a room where a drake sat behind a desk.

"What is your name?" it said.

This is too crazy, she thought, giving her name in compliance. Drakes speaking my language?

It asked her about her history, and Marrishland, and Domus Palus, and the government. It glossed quickly over magic, but was interested in the magocrats and mundanes and social differences. Its questioning was almost entirely objective, though a few things seemed to surprise it. Affe didn't know if she was being useful enough for it, because it never wrote anything down ... Ha! Writing! Why not? They seem to have law and order.

Finally the questions stopped, when her voice was hoarse and her body sagging. She realized she hadn't eaten anything since the drakes had captured her.

"You will be moved to the bunkhouses. You will comply with all the rules there. You will come to answer more questions when you are asked. If your answers are to our liking, we will feed you."

If any questions had existed in her mind as to how they kept their prisoners in the bunkhouses, they were answered now. No food. Everyone was starving to death. The tightness in Gabel's cheeks. He probably had only had water and morutsen for as long as she had.

What are the drakes doing with their prisoners?

The two guards led her outside, where Gabel waited. The guards said something to Gabel, who nodded. Then, surprisingly, the guards left.

"Bunkhouse. Good job," he said, holding her arm and leading her away.

"What is going on here?" Affe said. "Why do they keep people alive?"

"As far as I can tell, we're prisoners of war," he said. "They're trying to figure out everything they can about us. They know about our magic, and Ries' magic. They know about our social structure. They know about our resourcefulness." He paused. "There's a few things we don't think they know."

"We? Who are we?"

"The ... movement," he said, looking around him carefully. "You don't think, Affe, that the couple hundred mar in the bunkhouses are sitting there waiting to starve to death, do you?"

She almost stopped walking. "No, I didn't, but ..."

Gabel smiled. "Well done. We almost have things figured out around here. But first, you need to learn the rules. We have to work within them. It's the only way everyone gets enough food."

The rules were fairly straightforward. No one could do anything unless it was assigned to them by a drake. Nothing was sanctioned, not communication or gathering or touching or anything. You could ask permission, but, Gabel said, only a handful of drakes could speak their tongue.

"And only two of us have made any effort to learn theirs," he went on. "You get three cups of water a day, and food is kind of a reward system. But it's never enough," he said sadly. "One of the women died yesterday. She hadn't moved for a week."

"There's no way out then? No way for everyone to team up?"

He looked at her, surprised. "Actually, they can't enforce everything. They're less squeamish about death than mar are, but we think some of them have pity for us prisoners. More importantly, I've been in contact with a different tribe." He didn't expound, but Affe saw a bit of madness in his expression. "So we do talk, and I've been teaching some people some magic, and we leave symbols for each other. Not writing, but everyone understands them. You'll pick them up quickly."

"Gabel ... why were you at Mucker's Folly?" Affe had to ask now. They were at a bunkhouse, and they stood at the door to a room where it seemed fifty women slept.

"I told you. I was running from the Mardux's long reach."

"But you didn't need to stop and fight. Your plan to save the town would have destroyed it anyway. I think you wanted to be captured."

He stared at her, then mumbled, "Find a place in there. I'll come back for you tonight, and take you to one of the meetings. I'm not the leader, but I'm a rising star because of my magic."

Gabel left her then, and Affe stared after his back.

He hadn't denied it, she thought. He didn't say this wasn't his plan all along. Maybe he knew there would be prisoners. But he could not have known how they were cared for.

She went into the room, where no one greeted her with words. More than two dozen women sat or lay amid the blankets on the floor. They stared at her with hungry eyes. Most seemed about in her condition — starved for two or three days. But a few, the ones lying deepest in the blankets, looked much farther gone. Starved for a week or more.

How fast are the drakes conquering us?

She sat down away from the larger crowd and held her knees close to her chest. Somehow, in that position, she fell asleep. Just as she nodded off, she remembered Gabel saying he had been teaching some people magic. How?

Affe woke to someone shaking her. Gabel stared down at her.

"Don't say anything, Affe," he said so quietly she almost didn't think she heard him. "Just follow me."

They didn't go far, just to the far end of the hall and a narrow staircase that led to the men's bunkroom, then up a ladder to a steaming hot ventilation space just below the roof. The floor was paper thin, but broad beams crisscrossed it. A group of men and women hunched in the tight darkness, mostly marking the beams they sat on, one person whispering hoarsely.

"...Two more weeks, maybe. Have to stash more food. Two hundred of us, fifty more, we'll make it." He paused as he saw Gabel approach in the back and motioned the magocrat forward. Affe stayed back where she was.

"You talk to them?" More scratching. Affe realized that the people who were farther back were marking the wood with what they heard, so everyone could know what was happening without people shouting.

Gabel nodded. "They will provide food."

Who is he talking about? But the idea of food was a good one. She had decided that if they had enough energy, the prisoners could take over the barracks easily.

The planning was mostly about timing. No one said what they would do; Affe guessed all that was mostly worked out. Two weeks seemed to be the final solution. Then they would revolt. Affe stared at them all, at this emaciated crowd of prisoners, survivors from their towns. She wanted to know their stories and why they were here. But Gabel led her back down the ladder and stairs to the women's bunk.

"You wanted to get captured," she said softly to him as he turned to go.

He looked around, but she had already checked that no drake was in sight. They keep very poor guard... but most of us are too weak to do anything.

"You wanted to get captured, Gabel," she repeated, voicing her suspicions. "You knew the drakes kept prisoners, for intelligence purposes. But Shilling and Kopie and Knut and Alter are dead, their town destroyed because of you."

"Strange that you suddenly care," he said, the heat rising briefly.

"I wouldn't sacrifice so much just to reach my goal," she said. "Why, Gabel?"

"Not now, Affe," he said. "Maybe later. I probably won't see you for a while."

Until the revolt, she thought, and suddenly she made a decision.

"As soon as I can, I'm escaping."

He shook his head. "We could use you here."

"I can't fight this battle," she said. "I was sent to find out how close the drakes were to Domus Palus. It's more important that I get the information back to the Mardux than that I help your little revolt."

"Shhhh," he said. "Don't say it out loud." He paused. "If you must go, go, but don't jeopardize us."

She nodded, then went into her bunkroom and tried to sleep.

Copyright 2005-2007 Eric Zawadzki and Matthew Schick. All Rights Reserved.
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