Dark Towers: A Gothic Fairytale

Chapter 2.

Captain Derek’s rationality won him over all too quickly. There was only one solution.

He had to get this over and done with, the quicker and better. The boy was sinking fast from his injury and it would be a swift mercy for them both. He couldn’t give himself time to reignite those dim beacons of tenderness that were already glowing incriminatingly, deep within him – that would be the most fatal blow of all.

‘Come on,’ he whispered, slowly levering himself to his feet, heaving up the prince’s limp form. ‘It’s time to go.’

‘Very well.’

Nigel’s voice was surprisingly steady for one who leant heavily against the Captain, who guided him towards the door and the top of the winding staircase. He still clasped his injured arm to his chest, his blood-stained hand tucked inside what remained of his jacket.

The descent seemed even longer than the climb and neither man said a word. Derek found his arm slipping around Nigel’s waist as he stumbled on the stairs, skimming lightly over his hip bone and abdomen, bare flesh exposed beneath his shredded shirt. The prince tensed at the contact, but never once looked up, as if he were concentrating very hard on the simple task of putting one foot in front of the other.

Derek, however, found himself glancing out of the arrow slits again, compelled to check that there was still a world beyond the tragic vignette in which he was involuntarily embroiled.

The city was still there, dank and decaying. It was starting to get dark, and he now discerned the lambent glow of flames: the funeral pyres of a hundred desecrated dwellings. The crisp, smell of ice in the air was dampened by the acrid odour of smoke. It was still snowing, but he thought maybe the flurrying flakes were a little larger and more purposeful than they had been on his climb. They would soon subdue the smouldering fires, even if they could not remove the stain of death.

At length, they reached the bottom of the staircase. Derek released Nigel for a moment, leaning him up against the wall, and heaved the heavy, iron-studded door open. The tower being on one corner of the Keep, the exit led into the main courtyard of the conquered castle. It was only a short walk, barely ten yards, across to the entrance to the dungeon.

A strange pang made him wish it was further. Derek paused a moment before turning back to gather up his captive.

He saw the blow coming. But it was too late even for him to react.

Nigel swung the book with a strength Derek would have scarce thought him capable of, the whole weight of his body flung behind the blow. It caught the captain on the side of his head, sending him tottering backwards, momentarily stunned. But it was the follow up strike that had him doubled up in agony. With a tremendous force, Nigel brought his knee up between the Captain’s legs, scrunching through the chain-mail as if it was diaphanous silk.

Nigel cried out at the strain, then turned and sprinted off across the courtyard, his footing surprisingly assured as he traversed the slippery, wet cobbles. Derek – just for a moment – stared after him in wordless wonder.

He had been tricked! Or had he?

No. He had let his guard down. He knew, as well as he knew how to kill, that there was nothing on earth more dangerous than a desperate, condemned man.

The courtyard was nigh deserted, but there were a couple of guards on the gate, preventing free passage of the main drawbridge. By the time Derek shouted ‘stop him!’ Nigel had nearly reached it. Nevertheless, the prince paused just a moment, casting a hasty glance at a fine, black stallion tethered by the gate – the Captain’s own.

Dashing over, he tugged its reigns hopefully and began to fumble with its moorings. From the far-side of the yard, Derek whistled. The horse whinnied and reared its front legs. Its lethal hooves narrowly missed Nigel’s head. The boy backed away, shouted a curse, and fled for the gate.

The guards were alert now, their swords drawn. They blocked his way. However, Nigel recognised them: they were not men of the conquering forces. They were his father’s servants, who had switched allegiances.

‘Traitors,’ he thought. ‘But maybe a lifetime’s faith is not destroyed over night…’

Out of the corner of his eye, Nigel spied an axe – chipped and old, used only for chopping wood. He hauled it up, straining with his single arm to hold it aloft.

‘Let me pass,’ he yelled, knowing they recognised him. ‘I am your King now, and if you stop me, the spirits of your ancestors shall blind you before this day is out!’

The men looked alarmed, and he kept running towards them: ‘Best not give them too much time to consider it!’ he thought.

The men raised their swords and Nigel flinched, screwing his eyes shut. But suddenly the cold, stinging cobbles beneath his bare feet was replaced with the roughness of damp wood. He opened his eyes.

He was on the drawbridge! They’d let him pass!

Ahead of him was a deserted, slush-covered track that led to the heart of the city. He knew just where to go, a place where they’d let him in and hide him forever.

He dropped the exe with a clang. All he had to do was keep going…faster.

‘Agh!’ Nigel stopped dead, doubling over as his arm throbbed with a renewed fervour and his head began to swim. He willed his feet forward but they would not obey, and did little more than shuffle.

‘Got to keep going!’ he urged himself, the snow and wind driving treacherously against him. But he could already hear the pounding of hooves on the drawbridge. An assured hand grabbed him by the back of his collar, even as he crumpled to his knees. Nigel saw a flash of a very angry but startlingly handsome face as the world swerved a dissonant angle. Then he was lying over the back of the back-stallion, the front of a saddle digging into his ribs.

‘Let me go!’

Nigel put all his remaining strength into thrusting back the elbow of his good arm. He hit home, but he knew not where. The hand holding him down foundered a little, then reiterated its pressure, knocking the wind from his lungs. Nigel found himself pressed into the sweaty shiny coat of the powerful animal.

At that moment, Derek felt nothing but a burgeoning fury. Nigel was still straining against him, and a sharp swat on the captive’s backside only made him writhe more. A tougher clip on the back of his head, however, finally subdued him. The Captain turned the horse and urged it into a fast trot back over the drawbridge.

‘You will be dealt with,’ he muttered to the guards, before turning his attention back to the prisoner.

‘And you said you’d come quietly!’ he growled, shaking Nigel roughly by the back of the neck. ‘Why make it hard on yourself?’

‘I…I said I wanted to die with dignity…’ replied Nigel, his voice distant and smothered. ‘But…I never said I wouldn’t try to escape…and…you gave me a chance…I…I’m no warrior, but I had to try…’

Derek was silent a moment. ‘Fair enough’, he thought. ‘I respect that.’

Yet all he said was: ‘It wasn’t much of a chance. And you won’t get another one.’

He pulled the horse to a halt back in the courtyard, and barked a command that somebody should secure it. He then dismounted and pulled Nigel down from the front of the horse. It was snowing ever heavier now, and he noticed his breath formed lingering clouds. It was freezing. Yet his next act was to rip off Nigel’s jacket.

He ignored Nigel’s yell of pain, as he shook the garment and threw it to the floor.

‘Got anything else hidden that I need to know about? Or should I strip off all your clothes to be sure?’

Nigel hugged himself, his bleeding arm now hooked around his stomach. His teeth were chattering as he answered. ‘No…there’s nothing…I swear it.’

‘Good,’ said Derek, but he yanked both of Nigel’s arms behind all the same and proceeded to bind them together with a piece of leather than he tore off the horses harness.

‘Please…don’t do that!’ Derek heard Nigel’s breath hitch - as if he needed to be told how much this was hurting him. ‘It’s not necessary…I’ll come quietly…like I said! Nnnng…I promise…’

Derek merely guided him across the court-yard, his hand enclosed firmly around his upper arm, and pushed him through the low, heavy door that led down to the dungeon. He then slammed the door behind them with a deadening thud.

It was silent on the other side. The conquerors had taken few prisoners; it was always easier just to kill. The air was frigid, as it had been in the courtyard. Derek watched the unsteady trail of Nigel’s breath as he steered him down the steep staircase in front of him until they reached a long corridor. It was lined with a series of heavily barred doors. Taking down a chunky bunch of keys from the wall, Derek settled upon the first cell that a key would fit.

He opened the door and lit a wall-lamp with a torch from outside. He then turned to see that Nigel, who he’d left standing flat against a bare patch of wall, had slumped down onto his haunches his head bowed forwards. His body was shaking slightly, a tell-tale sign of tears.

The Captain fought his compassion with all he’d got. He pulled Nigel up by his uninjured arm, even as the boy tried unsuccessfully to wipe away the incriminating dampness with his shoulder.

‘Why did you do it?’ asked Derek, hoarseness disguising the lump in his own throat. ‘The city is over-run with troops, and all the gates are all guarded. Where did you think you could go?’

Nigel suddenly looked the Captain straight on, his eyes gleaming with an unvarnished anger. ‘The library! I was going to the library! They would have hidden me there, and you’d have never found me. It’s like a maze, and it goes of forever, there are so many secret places…and I wanted to read all the books - well, as many as possible - before I turned twenty-one!’

‘I see,’ replied the Captain coolly. ‘And what made you think there was still a library to go to?’

Nigel’s brow furrowed questioningly: ‘There is…isn’t there?’

‘No. You saw the smoke in the city, did you not? My men piled the books on the street and burned them, before they battered down the walls. There are no books left to read, my friend.’

‘My friend?’ Nigel spat out the words and wrenched his arm away. He made no attempt to run. ‘How…how could you? What of the librarians, the scholars…they were my friends…and they weren’t born of some Godforsaken regal lineage! What of them?’

‘If they tried to defend the building, they would have died.’

Nigel stared at Derek breathlessly, as the faces of his companions flashed before his vision. He knew they wouldn’t have stood by and watched their life’s work turned to ashes. Their death sentences had been as sure as his was.

‘You’re a barbarian,’ he snarled, straightening indignantly. ‘Well, what are you waiting for? For Christ’s sake, you’ve killed my family, my friends…destroyed my home, my dreams. Just…just…in the name of God, do it!’

‘I will.’

Derek pushed Nigel into the cell. It was an empty stone box, its grey walls spattered with patches of damp, green lichen. Its only occupants were the shadows haunting the chains which hung ominously from the walls.

But the Captain’s mind was awhirl with the resonance of his own words: ‘My friend.’

He had not referred to anyone as his friend for years; terms of endearment had long since deserted his stark vocabulary. Yet first the caress, and now he had called this prisoner his friend – and despite the boy’s brazen rebuff, the words had meant something to him, however indefinable. They’d brought back memories he’d long discarded, recollections of one he’d loved…

Derek was hauled back to the present, however, with the sudden, sharp discomfort in his shin. Nigel twisted his whole frame energetically, slipping from his hands. He had seen the Captain’s eyes glaze, if only for an instant, he jammed Derek as hard as he could with his bare foot. He was already out of the door, swinging it shut behind him.

The Captain wedged his boot into the bottom of the door at the last instant, kicking it wide open. Nigel hadn’t made it far, and Derek dived for him, his arms scooping around his legs. The catch sent them both crashing to the ground, the Captain on top.

This time, he didn’t give an inch, tearing apart the binding on Nigel’s wrists with an angry flourish. He pulled him up by the seat of his pants and half-carried and half-dragged him back into the cell.

‘This is not dignified!’ hollered Derek, forcing up Nigel’s good arm and fastening it into shackles above his head, even as he continued to kick and struggle.

‘Why the hell does it matter?’ replied Nigel, trying to sound vicious but barely suppressing a whimper. The tears were now streaming freely down his face. ‘It’s just you and me…and…and…I don’t want to die…Sweet Jesus!’

Nigel gasped as Derek pulled his injured arm up and shackled it too. Then his eyes rolled up, turning completely white for a second, before his head drooped forward.

A trickle of relief caused Derek to mumble a prayer of his own. Nigel had fainted – it would be easier now. Just as long as he was quick.

Derek took a sharp dagger from his belt and, firmly grasping Nigel’s hair with his other hand, pulled his head back, exposing the throat. He lifted the dagger towards the ashen skin, noting the exact location of the faint, quivering pulse of the prince’s life-blood.

‘Do it, man,’ he urged himself. Still, the dagger hovered several inches from the kill as the distant voice of madness whispered: ‘murder, cold-blooded and cowardly, darker than Satan himself.’

As he hesitated, the Captain felt Nigel stir, his hair tautening in his captor’s hand as he shifted slightly. His eyelids flickered but didn’t open.

‘Do it man!’ Derek desperately tried to force his own hand with reasoning. ‘Don’t let him be conscious…’

Derek lightly placed the edged of the blade onto Nigel’s throat, but it skimmed not breaking the skin. The captain froze as his victim winced at the coldness of the metal, licked his lips agitatedly and muttered two words: ‘My friend…’

Derek screamed, a sickening roar of anguish, and threw the blade to the floor with a clatter. Nigel’s eyes flew open even as his breath caught in his throat.

‘Wha…what are you doing?’

Derek was crouched on the floor. Now he was the one with his arms wrapped around himself, convulsed with dry sobs. But only for a moment, and then he heaved a groan of sweet torment, and rose to his feet.

Nigel’s expression was still etched with terror, and he pressed himself into the wall as Derek returned. Nevertheless, the Captain’s only action was to unlock the chains from about the prisoner’s wrists. Nigel had little option but to fall forward into his embrace.

‘I’m getting you out of here,’ breathed Derek, pulling Nigel close. The prince was shivering and the only ounce of warmth from his body, came from the fresh, patch of blood on his arm.

‘Why…why would you do that?’ murmured Nigel, but somehow he knew the answer.

It was given to him simply: ‘Because I have no choice, my friend.’