Garin paces the length of the cell, a trail of clanging echoes following him as he drags his iron cudgel across the bars. The creature sits in the central darkness of its prison, huddled in its filth. Garin pauses at the end of the cell, turns, and paces back the other way, letting the cudgel knock against each gnarled column again.
Steps echo down the winding stairs.
‘Tormenting it again, Garin?’ says Carvus. The flesh merchant is accompanied by a retinue of clerks and two rougher types adorned in his invented livery.
Garin’s eyes widen with panic. ‘I thought- as you asked me lor-’
‘Good man,’ Carvus claps the gaoler on the arm with a meaty hand. ‘You have to dig out the rage in them you see?’ The flesh merchant walks up to the bars and peers into the darkness. ‘It’s all there already. But it needs coaxing, like a dog with a bloody cut of meat. That’s how you get the wolf back out of it. We don’t need pups, Garin. We need wolves.’
Clutching his cudgel, the gaoler nods along with everything Carvus says. The clerks scribble on reams of parchment and nod and poke at one another in hushed tones, running figures around in their conversation while their master speaks.
‘And this one? Wretched like the rest of them. Useless. Hopeless. But I have a good feeling about this one. Doesn’t speak a word. Doesn’t gnash at the bars or scream at the moon beyond its window. Just sits there. Watching. Waiting. It’s the silent ones that are the very worst, Garin. The very worst. That’s the kind of fury we’re after. Pressured, like the ale barrel filled to its brim. Ready to burst. That’s what the arenas want.’
Carvus turns, a grin on his maw. ‘Bring it out, Garin. We have clients.’
Garin, sweating, fumbles with the lock. Carvus, his clerks, and the heavies watch. When the door to the cell is open, Garin bends down and begins to pull at the chain on the floor. The links rise into the air and go taut.
Garin strains with the resistance. Then, all of a sudden, the chain slackens. Bursting from the shadows, an emaciated figure pounces on Garin. The gaoler screams. The two bodies thrash on the floor, Garin pinned below his skeletal prisoner.
‘Enough,’ says Carvus. One of his brutes kicks the creature in the ribs. The other one hits it around the back of the head and knocks it off Garin. Then the two big men kick the wretched thing into submission. After a minute of sustained violence, the dungeon falls silent.
Carvus peers over Garin, who is softly weeping, his mouth opening and closing, searching for air. The creature has put both of the gaoler’s eyes out, and now only bloody pits remain.
The two heavies have shackled the unconscious thing, which is covered in blood over its layers of matted hair and fetid filth.
Carvus clicks at one of his clerks. ‘Get the stock up to the client. And find me a new gaoler. Preferably one with some sense.’ They part before him like a tide as he makes his way back up the winding stairs, the heavies and the almost-human thing dangled between them following close behind.
Paddy Dobson
17th June 2021