Dark Resurrection

“Doc, no matter how bad it looks, this isn’t over yet,” Ryan said. “Don’t give up. Don’t let the others give up, either.”

As Doc was dragged away, he called out to Ryan. “I pray we meet again, my dear friend, if not in the here and now, then somewhere beyond this fucking vale of tears.”

“Remember the islander boy,” Ryan called to him. “Remember Garwood Reed.”

Something slammed into his left temple so hard that it made him see stars. He looked up at Fright Mask, who showed him a balled, metal-gauntleted fist. Ryan was grateful for the blow, which allowed him to focus his anger.

“Unchain me for a minute,” Ryan told his captor, “and I’ll widen that smile all the way to the back of your head.”

The governor-general didn’t understand the threat, and so ignored it. He gestured to the pirates, who pulled Ryan to his feet and hauled him off to one side.

Fright Mask had other, more pressing business to attend to. He snapped his gauntleted fingers twice in High Pile’s direction.

As the Matachìn commander took a small, dog-eared notebook from inside his armor, the priests started making rhythmic scraping sounds, steel on whetstones. They were touching up the edges on their ceremonial daggers.

High Pile walked over to the line of slaves. Pausing in front of the first man, who was naked to the waist, his back and shoulders blistered and peeling from the sun and the lash, the captain referred to a page in his little book and made a check mark with a tiny stub of a pencil. When he nodded, the crewmen unhooked the captive from those waiting behind him. Before the poor bastard could make a break for it, the pirates grabbed him under the armpits and rushed him toward Fright Mask and the waiting priests.

Though the slave screamed and fought, and tried to dig in his heels, it was to no avail. The Matachìn carried him bodily the last fifteen feet, then flung him to his knees in front of the men in robes. One of the pirates grabbed the prisoner from behind by a hank of hair and pulled his head back; another held his cuffed hands out of the way. A priest stepped forward and expertly dispatched him with a backhanded knife slash across the exposed throat. The slave made a gurgling sound as blood sheeted down his bare chest. After a moment the pirates let their victim slump onto his back. Kneeling, the priest plundered the still-heaving chest for its precious clod of muscle.

No sooner than the gruesome butcher job was done, a second slave was unhooked and bum-rushed to a nearly identical death.

As Ryan watched the next man in line dragged off to meet the point of a knife, he saw the priests were taking turns in the chilling duties, so as not to overtax themselves. All but the hairless spider, who was chanting in a nasal singsong and doing a little shuffle-foot dance behind them. High Pile made another check mark in his little book before consigning a fourth prisoner to the same fate. The courtyard echoed with shrill screams and the cheers of the red sash audience.

Were they going to sacrifice all the slaves? Ryan asked himself. His companions were still a good ways back in the file. For the first time, he saw the possibility that he might actually outlive them, spared from death for another day; and worse, that he would be forced to stand by and watch them all slaughtered.

That was not something he could accept.

He had tested his manacles so many times since their capture that he had worn away the skin of his wrists, but he tested them again, anyway.

Mind working in overdrive, he tried to see a way clear. If he could overwhelm the pair of pirates guarding him, then what? Chill the Matachìn with their own blasters, allowing the slaves to flee? Even if he managed to do that, the only way to get out from under the sights of the red sashes along the battlements was to make it inside the hard cover of the colonnades. But the prisoners were chained together. They’d have to all pass through the same archway, which meant instead of ten exits to cover, the red sashes would only have one. They could concentrate fire. It would be a turkey shoot.

Escape was impossible against these odds on this terrain, Ryan concluded.

As High Pile advanced down the line of the condemned, the piles of corpses and severed hearts grew. Realizing what was coming, the slaves struggled futilely with their bonds, weeping and begging their captors for mercy.

All but the companions.

Jak, Krysty, Mildred, Doc and J.B. were staring at Ryan. Their fixed, defiant expressions all said the same thing: we’re not going to check out like that. Not like chickens on the chopping block.

The one-eyed warrior nodded in agreement, then he looked away. If they couldn’t escape, they could do the next best thing. They could take out as many of the bastards as possible before they were cut down.

Ryan Cawdor withdrew deep into the core of his being, shutting out the grisly sights and sounds around him. He wasn’t preparing himself to die, he was preparing to fight and chill to his last ounce of strength. To expend it all, here, now. And when that strength was gone, death could nukin’ have him, ready or not. It took only a moment for him to make the attitude shift: it was like a gate swinging open, and when it was done, Ryan felt a sense of freedom and power.

The hairless spider was gathering dripping lumps of muscle in a wicker basket as High Pile stepped up to Jak, who was next in line for sacrifice. Ryan knew the pirates weren’t going to discount the albino because of his size or mutie appearance. Just the opposite. They’d already seen him in action with a commandeered machete. One of them put a submachine-gun muzzle to the back of Jak’s head before they unfastened his ankle chains from the others.

Ryan planned to make his play the moment the pirates started to rush Jak forward to his doom. When they pulled the albino youth to the side instead, he held back. One by one, High Pile ordered the companions released from the file and moved over to join Jak. They were then rechained together at the ankles. After J.B. was linked to the others, the next slave in line, to his surprise and dismay, got the standard dagger treatment.

The companions glanced at Ryan again, wanting the go signal.

He shook his head. It looked like they weren’t going to be slaughtered along with the rest. It appeared their captors had other plans for them, which changed everything as far as he was concerned.

A pirate approached High Pile with a heavy, blanket-wrapped bundle. The captain ordered the man to untie it and lay it out on the ground at Fright Mask’s boots. When the bundle was opened, Ryan saw it held his scoped Steyr longblaster, J.B.’s scattergun and the rest of their weapons.

Trophies of conquest.

Or mebbe objects of ridicule.

Fright Mask got a big laugh over the LeMat. After inspecting it closely, he held Doc’s black-powder blaster by the barrels and swung its butt like a hammer head into his palm—as if pounding nails was all it was good for. He tossed the antique pistol back onto the blanket, which the pirate rolled up and retied.

High Pile waved the blaster-bearer ahead of him, through a white stone archway toward the dock and sailing ship beyond. Surrounded by Matachìn, Krysty, Jak, Mildred, Doc and J.B. were then shoved in that direction. They looked back over their shoulders at Ryan one last time, still awaiting his signal for them to act.

He shook his head. A final emphatic no.

It was also a goodbye.

The companions disappeared from sight.

Ryan had no clue where they were being taken or why. But whatever fate held in store for the others, the odds had to be better than what they faced here. If they still had a chance to survive, they had to leave him behind and take it.

The sacrificial chilling of the galley slaves continued as his pirate escort spun him the opposite way and forced him to walk under the red brick colonnade. They followed a dimly lit passage that led through the fort’s exterior wall, and out the door of a cylindrical guardpost.

In front of Ryan was a floodlit stone bridge, wider and more ornate than the first he’d crossed, and twice as long. This one was painted pale yellow and decorated with stout pairs of pillars at both ends. It led to a separate island, which was completely covered by a ravelin half as large as the courtyard they’d just left. The three-story structure was shaped like a triangle, or an arrowhead, pointing away from the bridge. Above the arched entryway were more crenelated battlements. There were only two windows that Ryan could see. The rest was smooth, featureless stone.

There was no doubt in Ryan’s mind that what lay at the far end of the bridge was the epicenter of the bad juju he’d sensed earlier.

A death camp for the ages.

As they mounted the bridge, Ryan considered and rejected his options. Even though it was way easier for one man to slip through a crack than six, the pirates had him cold—at least for the moment. Without a diversion, he’d never get the jump on them, never get his hands on a blaster, never get righteous payback. And trying to swim away chained hand and foot, assuming he could dive over the bridge wall before they caught him, was suicide.

The pirates marched him through the prison entrance and into a stone-walled anteroom. A half dozen red-sashed guards awaited his arrival. Two of them immediately took up long wooden poles, which had metal hoops attached to one end.

While the Matachìn pinioned his arms and two red sashes aimed double barrels at his chest, the poles were extended, front and rear, and the hoops slipped over his head and down past his chin. The red sashes then pulled on straps at the ends of the poles, drawing the steel bands so tight around his throat that he could hardly breathe.

When the Matachìn released his arms, the men holding the poles were in total control of him. The rods were so long, he couldn’t reach them with fists or feet. The leverage they offered made it easy for his captors to drive him to his knees, if they wished. And if that didn’t tame him, they could tighten the nooses even more and choke him into unconsciousness.

With a pole-bearing red sash in front and one behind, Ryan was simultaneously pushed and pulled forward, through a floor-to-ceiling iron gate. He entered a labyrinth of stone, and stifling heat and humidity. The walls and floors were warped and worn. There were standing puddles of unidentifiable fluid everywhere.

To his left were rows of passages, presumably the cell blocks, stretching off into the dark. From that direction he heard moaning.

When they passed by one of the cramped cells, Ryan saw it had no bed. It had no water. No toilet. No window to let in air or natural light. It reeked of urine and rotting flesh. A human form lay huddled and hidden under a pile of rags on the damp stone floor. There were rats inside the cell. They were merrily burrowing under the rags, feeding on the dead or the nearly dead prisoner. When Ryan looked farther down the passage, in the faint light he saw rats scurrying in bands of a dozen or more, darting back and forth across the corridor, between the cells.

At that moment he knew that few if any had ever returned from this awful place.

It wasn’t just a prison.

It was a tomb.

They continued on until they reached the very heart of the darkness, the place that was the hottest, the rankest, the most oppressive, the core of the man-made hellhole. With double barrels pointed at his head, Ryan was uncollared and booted into an already occupied cell. The iron-barred gate clanged shut behind him. Their work done, the red sashes turned away and left him to get acquainted with his cell mate.