Chapter 168: Nobody makes it outta here

Cal knelt in the mud where the boot had put him and tried to reach out to the spiritual world past his skin.

All he felt was… nothing. The bodies breathing around him in the dark were little more than their physical components, with no aura he could reach. For months the world had been a kaleidoscope of pressure and flavor and texture from dozens, if not hundreds of yards out in every direction. Its presence was so ubiquitous that he'd taken it for granted. All the more jarring then, now, in its absence. His appreciation of the spiritual world ended at the inside of his own hide, as though somebody had sewn him into a canvas he couldn't escape.

He turned his wrists over. The cuffs were dull grey metal and hinged, matching the pair between his ankles. The surface smooth all the way around, blank to his eyes and senses.

I don't feel anything from this metal, but what is restricting my perception? Is it this? Or something to do with this holding pen, like runic containment?

He sat back against a crossbeam and made himself take inventory of what was left. Sound, mostly, in the dark. Although most of the audible spectrum was still overrun with noise from the direction of the pit. Vision was also operating like normal, although he felt blind with only his eyes to see.

Stamina still answered instantly through tender channels due to a bit of untreated erosion. He rolled a current up out of the diffuse saturation in his legs, through his core, out through the shoulders, and the loop closed as fast and hot as it ever had, while he clenched a fist that would have cracked stone. Whatever the suppression was, it hadn't reduced the use of his body.

Mana next. He unlocked the font below his navel and pulled, and the cool current came up his channels the way it always did, and he pushed it toward his fingertips, out, into the air.

Or at least he tried to. It stopped at his skin.

It wasn't even like he'd encountered a wall, either. More like the energy met the boundary of where it was allowed to exist, and moving beyond that it simply ceased to be. He tried a control rune and the Mana refused to cross into open air to be built. He tried [Mana Sense], reaching for the currents that saturated every cubic foot of the Virethane, yet touched nothing.

It's fine. I'm fine. Everything is fine. Yup, nothing to freak out about, Cal. At least I can still marshal my power, even if I can't project it.

Which told him something about the metal of his bindings, which he was afraid to test. A cage that left a prisoner's body at full strength had to hold that body by main force. There was a good chance these shackles were incredibly hard to break. That, or the shackles were the suppression, and breaking the chains might not even solve his problems if he couldn't get the actual restraints off his body. He might force mobility only to still be debilitated.

Sitting with that a while, he listened to the man with the wrong ribs breathe laboriously.

Then he tried the last door, because he needed to know all of his options.

Inside his own spirit this time, he built a control rune. It formed in the channel of his index finger, and it formed beautifully. In open air he had to anchor a rune against the world, but in here there was no wind to disrupt his work. The rune stayed where he put it and didn't waver. When he narrowed his Intent and pressed it smaller, it complied. Half the size. A quarter. Smaller than he had ever managed before, and steady at every step.

Cal stared into the dark and just breathed for several seconds, contemplating. There was still hope. He still had options, even if they were desperate.

Not tonight. I'm two nights short of sleep and well into the third, and there's a version of this where that desperation ends with me bleeding out in a slave pen with nobody bothering to look over. Tonight, I put it on the shelf.

He thought about the void ring that was somewhere behind his ribs, and it was one more small comfort in the midst of the depressing turn of events.

A day's wait, maybe two? What I wouldn't do for some coffee and oatmeal for breakfast.

He put his back against the crossbeam, tipped his head against wood, and fell asleep almost immediately.

Cal counted them twice as he pretended to stretch the stiffness out of his legs. Over thirty men were held with him in the grey morning. A handful lay against the far stakes without moving except to breathe, with eyes open and faces slack, one of them even having a food bowl by his knee that he hadn't touched. Two more were fresh, and the reality of their situation still had not quite sunk in. They sat with their spines too straight and their attention snapping to every boot that passed the gate.

The rest occupied the middle. Men who had learned where to sit for warmth with the chill spring air, who ate fast and without looking up and flinched at particular sounds while ignoring others. A half-elf with an ear missing tracked the guards' rotation without appearing to look at it. Two humans played some counting game with pebbles and didn't speak.

Not one full-blooded Mycari among them.

Near the canvas end, an older human sat with a teen of maybe fifteen. The man broke his rationed flatbread and held half of it out until the young man took it. The teen was shaking—the fresh-catch shakes, the body finally admitting what had happened to it—and the man put a broad palm between his shoulder blades and rested it there, saying something too soft to carry. He had a face that had been hit a great many times and a way of sitting up straight in a place engineered to bend people forward that Cal found noble.

He held on the moment of kindness longer than was polite, then let go and moved on down the line.

His attention snagged on a man near the gate. Rangy, with sun-faded brown hair cropped rough and grey-green eyes that roved over the compound and never settled on one place too long. The man had chosen a spot with a view of both the gate and the intake station beyond. When he stood to make room for the water detail, he came up in a smooth motion without using his arms and tested the ground with the outside of his boot before he shifted his stance onto it, before sitting back down.

Cal knew that habit. He'd developed it himself over months of traversing rotten ground across the forests of the Virethane.

The man caught him looking and didn't shy away. "You. You're the runner, aren't you?"

"The runner, huh? I ran, sure, if that makes me the runner. Almost made it, too."

"Bah, nobody makes it outta here. But you got to the cart gate by the sound of it. That's damn close."

"Yeah, it was, thank you very much. If only I hadn't been assigned to guide that team of bastards…" Cal grumbled as he shifted down the beam until they were within speaking distance, no longer having to raise their voices.

The man did a double take.

"A guide? Like a dungeon guide?" At Cal's nod he continued. "Which hall?"

"The one in Deadfall Village."

"Huh," the man said after a long pause.

Cal looked at him a little more closely and felt a nudge from his memory. A winter afternoon at the Adventurer's Hall with snow drifting down outside and Felicity behind the counter with a book of promissory notes open before her. This rangy man had collected a fee at the counter. There had been two words on the parchment in front of Felicity that Cal had never bothered to read, but could now from the image alone.

"You're Gawain, aren't you?"

The man jerked back in surprise and looked at Cal more seriously. "Been a while since I heard anybody say that out loud. You got my slot, then?"

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Cal nodded.

"How'd they get you?"

"It was a standard booking through the guild, best I could tell. Five Mycari and a run down to the dungeon core and back, and then a very friendly man offered to save me a day's walk with a portal back to the village." Heat crept up Cal's neck as he said it. "I… said thank you, and walked through it myself…"

Gawain guffawed. "No way! They took me just like that, too! Difference is they had to put steel under my jaw and tie me up before they could get me through their magic door." He rubbed at a mostly healed cut on his neck, before grinning back at Cal. "Still can't believe you just walked through a stranger's portal."

"Yeah… it wasn't my finest moment. I figured that I had a relative amount of safety, what with being in front of the Ordo cabin and the delve being well documented."

"Ha! Those Ordo scum stood and watched me get hog-tied like it was a show, jeering as I struggled. They deserve a short drop and a sudden stop, they do."

"Aye, I couldn't agree more. Makes me wonder if it was the same group?" Cal proceeded to describe the five Mycari that he'd vowed to avenge himself against.

"Only the two powerful ones, Ondrel and that Leylith woman. The other three were different and I haven't seen 'em since." Gawain sighed and tipped his head toward the noise beyond the huts. "'If it ain't broke, don't fix it,' as it's said. They always need more bodies to feed the pits, and it seems their little kidnapping racket is just one of many ways they do it. There was no way you'd have escaped, not with them two. Better alive than dead, ay?"

Cal let a breath out and could only nod his head in agreement. It didn't help much. "How long you been here?"

"Since the thaw, if you can believe that."

Holy mackerel, he's survived over two months in this pen? How?

"And no one ever came?"

Gawain looked at the gate. "Didn't expect 'em to. Where would they even come from, anyway? I get the sense that this camp is far away from any real civilization."

Cal considered that for a moment and had an unsettling thought. He recalled the memory of the bandit network on the map he'd pulled from Gasto's tent and ultimately handed over to Commander Cardea. Every marking on that map had been strung along the trade routes and main arteries that surrounded Mirathra. All but one. The main one, that was deep in the wilds of the Virethane to the southwest of Deadfall, which was already considered the frontier.

If that was their location… then no one was coming for them for a long time. Not unless that Lieutenant Edvin actually got around to snuffing the camps out, and even then—this one wouldn't be high on the priority list due to its distance.

Turning back to the man, Cal realized more than ever that he needed to focus on survival, and that he couldn't depend on anyone to save him but himself.

"Can you tell me about the rules of this place?"

"Sure, but listen once, because I don't repeat myself and neither do them guards."

Cal could only smile in response to that. Oh, if you only knew…

Gawain ignored Cal's smile and shifted his back against a stake, turning to keep his view of the gate open. "Fights run all day and half the night. It's not even really an event here… it's more like the weather. Just a constant, background… thing. When yer name gets called you go to the side of the pit, and they take the restraints off you. You get back yer power and get to fight whole."

Ahhh, so it is something about this metal. Which makes me think… yeah. It has to be nen'ar*, or null-lead. I remember reading about this in one of the syl'thik's books. The metal's natural properties restrain spiritual capabilities externally, and the effectiveness was based on quality. Supposedly, you can overpower it with enough spiritual muscle if it's not pure enough, or backed by runic amplification.*

Cal tuned back in to what Gawain was saying. "You win, you eat. Winners get bread and meat and a place under the canvas. You lose and live, you slide by on thinner rations and worse ground, getting called out more often because they'd rather spend you than feed you."

"And the ones who keep losing?"

"Stop being a problem." Gawain nodded at a shape lying against the stakes twenty feet off under a sack cloth, one booted foot showing. "Like that one. He died from his wounds yesterday. They'll get to him… at some point."

Cal looked at the foot and then away, shivering. "So, what's your record? Gotta be pretty good if you've been here over two months."

"I win more than I lose, sure, but my ration has still gone down over time. I don't know why it's taking so long to earn a brand and get out…"

Shaking his head at that logic, Cal thanked the man and bid him farewell, moving further away to rest. He spent the remainder of the morning doing the only work available to him, which was thinking.

The savage logic of the pit was unsurprising, and even elegant in the way of things designed by people who would treat other sapients with such cruelty. Fight and be made whole. Sit in the mud and be shackled and sealed. Do that enough times and a man would start wanting the pit the way a drunk wants the door of a tavern, because it was the only place he got to be himself.

Spending us on sport is only the half of it. They're teaching us to look forward to being slaves. You can already see the effects of it working in Gawain.

Outside the pen, the long-term stock hauled water and split wood and scraped hides at hours when nobody should be doing any of it. They had palm-sized runic constructs burned into the skin above their eyes, yet none wore the nen'ar, because they clearly didn't need it.

These cuffs stopped his magic at his skin.

Whatever the brand did, it had to reach further.

So, the real question is what these people have that can put a hand inside a man's spirit, and how long I've got before somebody tries to turn it on me.

Which was how, sitting in mud with nothing but bleak questions and no answers, Cal turned to contingencies.

For the first time since learning the [Portal] Spell he built all one hundred and seven runes inside himself. They filled his channels from fingertip to wrist to elbow in a grid of hair-fine symbols that was the most controlled and finely wrought piece of spellwork he had ever produced.

He was one brush of will from the scrying stage. That portion should engage ahead of the trigger, and then he could look through at a point far away from any Mycari in this camp. The idea was so tempting. To be able to simply stand up and walk two steps to the corner where nobody sat, then be somewhere else while the guard at the gate was still turning his head in confusion.

Cal held the structure tightly and didn't fire it. Dared not to.

The best-case scenario was that opening the portal would cost him a wrist. The worst-case scenario… he didn't want to think about. Holding it was safe, yet that was the terrible part. His command inside his own spirit was total; the spellwork would keep its shape and obey him to the letter. The only thing standing between him and the far side of the Virethane was Cal deciding to do it. But casting the Spell could prove disastrous.

He sat in the mud with freedom laid out in his forearm and counted to sixty, honestly afraid, and then let the structure disperse rune by rune until his arm was only an arm again.

Not yet. Not while there's any other road at all.

During the afternoon, a broad-shouldered human teen with a bruised mouth got to his feet when the water detail came back. He was one of the two fresh catches. He told the guard at the gate he wanted a bowl and a bandage and wanted them now, being loud about it. Somebody in the middle of the pen said don't without lifting his head, but it was already too late.

Three guards came in. They took their time, which was the worst of it, and they didn't use anything but boots and a switch, and when the young man stopped making noise they hauled him up under the arms and out through the gate at a walk. Twenty minutes later the pit noise came up early and cut off short.

Cal took it all in, and the promise of vengeance he'd made stayed banked at a slow burn inside him. Five names, and a very long memory.

The dead man under the sack cloth was still there when night came, and so were his boots.

Cal had been… building… toward the necessary chore since noon, and the way of it turned out to be nothing like the careful thing he'd planned. There was no privacy in the pens. Men ate where they sat and slept where they ate and relieved themselves against the stakes on the downhill side, in the open, mere feet from whoever happened to be nearby. Luckily, nobody watched, and that was the whole of it.

So, he squatted in the dark at the low corner of the pen with the pit roaring yet again, and he did the necessary thing with his fingers, and nobody in the world cared enough to turn their head. His bowels cramped. The metal came out of his own filth slick and warm and entirely undamaged, because void rings were made to survive rather worse things than this. Cal cleaned it with mud and his shirt hem as best he could, and tried not to think about how disgusted Evelynn would be.

Then he crossed to the sack cloth covering, crouched, and worked a bootlace out of the footwear of a man whose face he'd never seen. The leg was stiff. The lace came free with minimal effort.

He threaded the ring discreetly, knotted it twice, dropped it under his shirt, and the metal rested against his breastbone.

Every weapon he owned was in there. His spear, the shortsword, the bow, the daggers and knife. So were his coin and papers and salves, his whole inventory of potions and elixirs, and the essence stones that would put his channels right as rain. All of it resting on his skin and none of it reachable, because the nen'ar had sealed his Mana.

Boots came up the avenue at a brisk walk and stopped at the gate. Cal looked over and saw two guards with a runelamp and a strip of slate.

"The new one," the taller said. "The runner."

Cal got his feet under him and stood, which made his chains clank, and shuffled forward into the light as only a few men watched on.

The guard glanced at the slate, then past Cal into the dark of the pen. He said something low to his partner. The other man shook his head, and the two of them went back and forth for a moment, almost bored about it. A name miscopied, a count taken wrong somewhere up the line, and now a card in the ring needed two bodies instead of one and they had no time left to go ask anybody about it.

"Right." The taller one raised his voice into the pen without any particular feeling. "Gawain. You too."

Over by the gate and near the guard, Gawain stood up, and Cal watched his face while he did it. The man's countenance looked carved from stone.

Then the two of them shuffled out through the gate side by side, and the guards steered them toward the torch poles and the benches and the combat to come.