"This must be the floor we want," I said, easing shut the door I'd been peering through.
"Because of the screams?" Bryson said.
"Well, that too." There did seem to be a constant background of male voices variously moaning, begging for mercy, and also the occasional scream. I was pretty sure I'd heard, fairly nearby, the meaty slap of at least one whip on bare skin, accompanied by a baritone scream. "Also, I just saw two of their guards dragging one of our soldiers past the door."
"Dragging? Was he unconscious?"
"I meant, they were leading him."
"Be precise! Our lives could depend on making this look like what they're used to seeing." He glanced over his shoulder at his bound hands.
"Sorry. They were forcing him to walk under his own power. They weren't carrying him." A good thing, too, because I still doubted my ability to carry my huge comrade on my back if he decided we needed to emulate them to make our ruse convincing.
"Was he tied up the same way you have me?"
"Yeah. Hands bound behind his back. But they also took away his shirt, and he was barefoot. Maybe we should--"
"Don't even think about it," he said, stopping me with a glare.
"Yeah, you're right. That would take too long, and someone might come down the stairs and catch us in the middle. I'd have to cut you loose for a minute to get your shirt off, since it's not like your shirt will cut--"
"See, now you're thinking about it. What did I just tell you not to do?"
"I should at least untuck your shirt. You don't look quite disheveled enough." I imagined ripping the bottom of his shirt away, just enough to expose a little of his belly and find out if it was covered with hairs as fine as the ones below his throat I'd exposed earlier. A distracting thought, and also physically impossible, since the enchanted cloth of our uniforms couldn't be destroyed.
"Back off, buddy!" For a guy who was tied up, he was amazingly good at threatening me with his sheer physical bulk.
"Well, you're in charge." Despite appearances. "I wouldn't want to be punished for insubordination when we get out of this."
"If we get out of this. You'd probably get us both killed. You know how ticklish I am. One touch in the wrong place and I'd give us away by laughing. I don't think the real guards here take their prisoners into the stairwell and tickle them. Anyway, I'd never report you for something like that. But you might wish I had. You might prefer that to the personal payback." He advanced on me, backing me into the curving wall of the landing. "Picture yourself stretched out spread-eagle on your bunk. Shirt gone. Boots gone. All our comrades leering down at you. Any of your friends who try to help you are being held with their arms pinned behind their backs by my friends."
"Your friends do outnumber my friends," I said in a small voice, picturing it.
"Outnumber, outweigh, and outclass. And outstrip, if they put up a struggle. So they're forced to watch as I crouch down beside your shirtless body." He was pressed so close to me, hands still bound behind his back, that my breath stirred the fine hairs I'd exposed on his chest. His pleasantly musky smell filled my nostrils as completely as his bulk filled my visual field. "You know that lotion our intelligence experts dab their fingers in when they're searching for tiny catches in lockets carried by captured couriers? It makes their fingertips incredibly sensitive. Well, I know where I can borrow a whole bottle of it. What do you think will happen when I slather your torso with it, from navel to nipples?"
I groaned softly into his chest hair.
"I'll taunt you for a few minutes while it takes effect, watching you struggle, trying to escape, but there's nowhere for you to go. Then you'll notice I've got your helmet."
I swallowed hard. Our helmets have a brush of feathers at the top, their texture ranging from stiff and bristly in the center to soft and wispy along the edges. They're enchanted to repel dust and grease and moisture, so the wispy part would retain its texture no matter how long he used it on my sweaty, lotion-covered chest.
"You'll watch helplessly, every nerve on your body sensitized, as I take your own helmet---"
"I get the picture!" I interrupted. "We'll do this your way, of course."
"Good." He backed off. I adjusted my stolen uniform, a little surprised to find everything in place. Even though his hands were bound behind his back, the picture he'd painted me was so vivid that I couldn't shake the impression that Bryson had somehow drawn the zipper on the shirt down to navel level as he spoke.
He turned his back on me, facing the door that led out to the bustling dungeon level of the tower, and allowed me take his beefy shoulder in one hand and the doorknob in the other. I yanked it open and shoved Bryson theatrically out of the stairwell, but it was wasted; no one was paying any attention to us. Walking along the corridor, we passed not one but three open doors into interrogation rooms.
The closest held one the men whose screams we'd heard, with a burly guard wielding a whip behind him. The broad-shouldered prisoner was half-starved, judging by his prominent ribs. Not one of ours; what was left of his clothing looked like what the local subjects wore.
In the second open room, a smooth-chested man wearing slate-blue pants -- the lower half of a uniform just like the one I'd worn until Bryson had made me take it off, and matching the one Bryson was still wearing -- was moaning in pain as he was stretched on a rack. Well, at least our cover story was believable: they did make prisoners of guardsmen like us. I didn't recognize the poor bastard, so he'd probably been in the city guard and not the palace guard.
In the third room, a naked man was bound to a chair, facing the door, and a man in a black tunic with his back to us was questioning him in a quiet and mocking tone, holding the exhausted man's unshaven chin up with his hand. No way to tell whether he was one of ours, but he was definitely not the man we'd come here to rescue; he was much lighter skinned than the royal family, and as I passed I got a good look at his face and verified that it was unfamiliar to me.
"Hey, could you try to look a little more beaten?" I whispered.
"I told you you should have given me a black eye."
"No, I mean psychologically beaten. You know, dejected. You're strolling down the hall like you own the place."
"I'm just walking like I normally do."
"Exactly! Try, um, slumping your shoulders and bowing your head. And sort of trudge along."
He wasn't very good at feigning meekness or dejection, but he seemed to be doing his best.
A few minutes later a guard passed us carrying the limp naked body of a man on his shoulders. A burlap bag had been pulled over his head. The guard gave me a friendly grin and said, "Another one for the garbage heap. At least this guy was a lightweight." He nodded at my "prisoner," adding, "It'll take two of us, at least, to carry that one out when they're done with him."
When the guard had passed, I whispered fearfully, "Do you think that was Humfry?"
"It's hard to tell without seeing his face. One naked man looks much like another. When you haven't seen him naked before, I mean. But much too pale, I think. Did you see how white his ass was? Not that I've seen the Prince's cousin's ass, of course! But I don't think his complexion is just a tan; the whole royal family is light brown."
"I just hope we're not risking our lives to rescue a man who's already dead," I grumbled.
"Risking our...! Hey, I'm the one who's tied up here, being led to the dungeon."
"Shh! Someone else is coming."
It was another guard carrying out a body with a bag over its face. The first body had been unmarked -- well, except for some half-healed lash marks -- but this one had tattoos on his back and arms.
"That wasn't one of ours," I whispered when it was safe. "Only the nomads to the north wear that kind of tattoo, right?"
"Right. Also, did you notice the cock ring? I've never seen one, but I've heard they all have them. It's part of their manhood initiation ritual."
Two more guards passed us, each lugging a hooded but otherwise naked body on his shoulders, and then, moments later, a pair working together to carry a hairy man almost as big as Bryson by his ankles and armpits. I shuddered; if Bryson hadn't been right in front of me, I'd have had no way of knowing it wasn't him. The dead man had a bag over his head like the others, and his body was not too different from how I'd always pictured Bryson's, except for the coarser body hair. His obvious strength hadn't saved him.
"They sure go through a lot of prisoners around here," said my faux prisoner, trying to make light of it.
"Either that, or today is trash day."
We passed by more scenes of torture, using just about every instrument I'd seen or heard of and some I hadn't, but we were passing a lot of closed doors as well. Any of them could have held the objective of our mission behind them. I tried to think of a pretext for opening one. When no one was looking, I tried one of the doors, but it didn't yield to pushing and didn't slide open like the broom closet's door had.
At one point we witnessed two guards dragging a semiconscious, groaning man, clad in nothing but tattered boxers, by his armpits, letting his bare heels drag on the smooth marble floor. They paused at one of the closed doors, where one touched his palm to it. It slid open, and they dragged him through. I hurried forward just in time to glance inside. I got a brief look at a long line of barred cells, with mens' hands grasping the bars from inside of some of the cells. I glimpsed bare skin in most of the cells, and then the door slid shut. It was locked when I discreetly tried it. We continued on our way. I didn't see any more doors being opened.
"Where are you taking this prisoner?" a voice suddenly demanded from behind me.
I whirled around guiltily to face a guardsman with the ornate helmet of an officer, and tried to imitate what passed for a salute here. Back home we called it the "rip my heart out of my chest and force me to eat it" salute, because it involved a clutching gesture in front of the chest and a bowed head. "To a holding cell, sir."
"I think not! He obviously hasn't been processed yet. What is he doing still clad in his uniform? Idiot!" He drew his dagger and poked Bryson in the back with the point. "How would you stop him if he tried to flee? You shouldn't even be transporting him alone. A man of this size requires at least three guards. Who trained you in prisoner handling?" He jerked his head, and the two burly guards flanking him stepped forward and each seized Bryson by the biceps. They looked almost big enough to have overpowered him, two against one, even if he hadn't been bound. Bryson stared at his feet, doing a passable job of pretending it made no difference to him who had custody of him, that he was screwed no matter what.
I stammered, "The truth is, sir, some buddies of mine were supposed to be transporting him, but they're smoking something in the urn room and asked me to take him the rest of the way." Concocting this story was surprisingly easy; in real life I really did have buddies who slacked off on their guard duties and asked me to cover for them in tasks I wasn't trained for. Apparently guardsmen were just as lazy all over, because the officer's disgusted, resigned grimace showed he found this entirely plausible.
"What are their names?"
"Please, sir, I wouldn't want to get them into trouble..." I'd never considered myself a good actor, but that's what I would have said if I'd been caught back home. And I didn't need to fake the edge of fear and pleading in my voice; after all, I really was being asked to hand a buddy over to him for punishment.
"Get out of my sight, before I have you flogged until you give me your friends' names -- so I can torture them in front of you."
"Yes, sir! Thank you, sir!" Now I did have to call upon my meager acting skills, trying to sound relieved, which was definitely not how I felt at that moment. I saluted again, thumping my chest while bowing. Then I backed hurriedly away, abandoning my brother-in-arms to the enemy. But what could I do? I was barely a match for any of them, certainly not all three at once, and there were plenty of witnesses close enough to come to their aid. Behind the officer's back, I threw Bryson a look that I hoped communicated both "Sorry!" and "Now what the hell do we do?"
(To be continued)
