The Dog's Hour

Hura was a small town in the loveliest and most scenic eastern reach of a big bog. Amidst the three lanes of thatched and daubed shacks there were only two stone buildings - the church, and the local garrison outpost - and the closest thing to "quality" was the priest of that church, who was the third son of the never-seen-in-a-hen's-age marquis who held the fief. It rained, misted, fogged, or hailed every three days in four, and on the fourth fortunate day a watery sun would peer indifferently through the overhang of channeling mosses and olive-colored foliage. Cold even in summer, here in late autumn the weather consisted only of an unbroken overcast and the bitter clinging chill of a swamp slumping into hibernation. The local inn had two rooms, a 10 o'clock curfew, charged a ridiculous amount for board, and oversalted the bread so guests would order more drink. The only beings to ever feast in its halls were the bedbugs.

In other words, it was shit, and like all shit burgs the locals defended its proprieties zealously. The laws in Hura were pretty strict - none of your southern magic, if you please, and none of that stuff that comes from the west, like those clever boxes that open themselves up and sing, and none of that immoral conduct you'd find in the capital like dancing or whoring. (The town tramp did a steady business despite but as the chief of the garrison got for free, this was to be expected. Besides, wasn't she married? And five children. A decent woman.)

Hura had one other guesthouse just as fine as the inn, and this one also had two rooms, and fewer bedbugs, seeing as there were no beds. Unlike the inn, it was packed full. Of course we speak of the the jail in the cold stone foundation beneath the garrison outpost. The two cells with their iron bars and filthy straw scattered upon dirt faced each other across a narrow hallway, and every hour of the day, and every two hours at night, the jailer on duty would walk the hall with a slow, gloomy pace intended to suggest the heavy burden of duty, but which more often came off like unambitious shuffling.

As he came down the stairs on his outbound route, he would lift his torch and look to the right, to see the cell where the two men were kept, and then to the left, where there was a woman. Then he would proceed to the end of the hall, purposelessly check the two bales of straw and pitcher of water there on a dirty wooden stool, turn around, and pace back. Men on the right, woman on the left. Any one of these individuals would have been a standout prisoner, but three at once was liable to make a man nervous and jumpy. To wit:

One was the kind of fancy boy who called irresistibly to mind the term "gentry." Pretty as a girl and rich as a lord, to go by his purse, he'd been unaccountably caught burgling from the mayor's home. Why a rich boy like that went and stole anything, the garrison chief couldn't imagine, but he shook his head sadly for the trash of the capital. And how upset the mayor's daughter had been!

The other boy, well - short as a boy. Nobody liked the look of him. Cold eyes and a sneer like a wolf, the only thing meaner than his face was his temper, and he couldn't even be gracious enough to take a little good-natured ribbing from farm boys regarding his height. Touchy little dwarf and his weird equipment. Should have expected a little teasing, and what's wrong with that? It was all just fun and games til one of the boys had been beaten unconscious and the midget, unharmed, was rounding on the other...

As for the woman, if you could even call her a woman, she was one of those southern death elves. Just seeing her slinking around the town was evil enough. It put everyone on edge, even the chickens. No surprise to hear she'd hexed a goat so it wouldn't give milk anymore. Until she lifted that hex, she was gonna stay right there in jail where she couldn't cause more trouble. The priest had put a holy mark on each side of the cell door right in front of her, so she'd know she couldn't escape.

The sun was setting. It had been twenty minutes since the last jailer plod. "Dinner" would be on its way soon: thin turnip soup and a cup of water.

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Depending on the perspective, Levi made for either an ideal cellmate or an extremely dull one. Some men appreciated silence, after all, and he'd not spoken a word since being deposited. He took his insubstantial meals without complaint, and otherwise kept to his side of the cell — though there was nothing that physically marked one half from the other, Levi's sneer and unsavory aura projected its own invisible boundary.

Despite the lack of socialization, Levi was intrigued by the company in a vague sort of way. In a backwater shithole like this, each of them would have stuck out even more than he had. He'd only gotten a few quick glimpses of the woman held in the cell across across the hall, but those had been enough to confirm that she was likely a more alien thing most of the louse-ridden locals would encounter in any given lifetime.

Levi stood towards the front of the cell, near the corner where there was at least a small flow of air. He rolled his shoulders and felt his nose wrinkle. Fuck did he hate the smell of this place. Every time he might have gotten used to it there seemed to be another niggling stench that he hadn't noticed before. Mold. Shit. Dead things. Molding dead things covered in shit. It was enough to drive a man mad, and that was before taking into account the gripping, clammy chill.

Between the three of them, pretty boy looked the most important — too important to spend any good chunk of time rotting away in this dung pit. Levi was already tired of playing good prisoner, and if he wanted to get his ass out of here, then adding a cohort was a good place to start. He gave the boy a level glance, then spoke.

"Help me get my hands on that limp dick with the keys, and I could snap his neck before he has a chance to squeal."

Regardless of the speaker's low flat voice his words carried across the gap between the cells.

She was right by the bars, anyway, reclining with her back against the wall and her legs comfortably outstretched. Every time the guard passed she would lift her pale head and stare at him and slowly smile. Each of the guards had his own reactions to this; the general consensus was that they'd rather she wasn't there. She didn't appear to sleep. Or maybe she slept with her eyes open?

When the guards weren't there, she would get up and pace, or be consumed for an hour at a time upon some search of every corner of the cell, or hold perfectly still like a dead man. She never showed the least interest in her fellow jailmates, and never, so far as anyone in that building knew, spoke. At Levi's words she rolled her head against the stone wall and stared into the gloomy cave of the other cell for the first time.

Two men, humans, one with a bright flame obscured in his chest, the other whose line of life surfaced from darkness and descended back into it past her knowledge. The speaker, she judged, meant what he said. Whether he was capable of it she couldn't say. A grey voice told her yes, he had done, he had seen.... Would he open this cell too? The answer to that question was opaque, a muttering nothing. The grey voice hoped for a killing and had nothing more to offer.

The cover of his violence would be useful, she thought. More than that could not be told. She stood up and beat her fingers lightly over a spiderweb that hung between the bars.

The situation was desperate indeed: he was almost at the point of breaking, that is to say -- hungry enough to accept the miserable vegetable refuse that passed for a meal in this place. Or, perhaps, for a particularly undignified attempt at torture.

A thug and a witch: such were his assessments of his fellow jail mates. Unlike either of them, he had chosen to camp out towards the back wall, in the dark dampness; from there he watched, carefully, since there was nothing else to occupy his time. Even then, neither of them gave much entertainment: the thug was small and morose, with an air of violence that led Cain to keep his distance; the witch (what else could she be, given the mild hysteria and sweaty fretting of the town's superstitious?) strange in a way that made gooseflesh rise at the back of his neck.

Watching and thinking was how he had spent his progressively more miserable hours. Uncertain schemes and escape plans swirled and solidified in the back of his head, only to be discarded. Nothing stuck. He was in the middle of a particularly convoluted strategy when the thug spoke, and so he had been mildly off guard when he'd looked up, meeting the calm gaze directed at him.

It appeared to be a serious offer.

Seriously, then, was how he detached himself from the wall and stepped into the meager light, and seriously he asked, "I suppose you have a plan, then?"

A movement from the far side of the hall caught his eye: the pale witch had moved -- perhaps coincidentally, or perhaps to the same summons as Cain had. Regardless, his lips twitched into a smile and he inclined his head, lightly, in her direction.

"Madam."

Levi caught the woman's movements in his peripheral vision, but he held his gaze on the boy long enough to notice — for the first time, fully, now that he stood in the light — the distinctive golden glint in his eyes. It made him look all the more out of place.

But Levi didn't stare. After the boy's reply, he turned towards the bars and examined them with what could have been disinterest. Briefly, he looked through them and at the woman — or, yes, the witch. Levi was largely ignorant of magic, but he knew the general meaning of the marks the village priest had left on her cell door. Her visage stirred a slight fluttering in his gut; for Levi, it was a peculiar feeling.

He wondered if she would speak, though the thought and its subsequent trail was an excuse to stall as much as anything. The cell bars were filthy, but he wanted to test the space between them. He rolled up one sleeve and slid an arm through. His forearm and elbow weren't too wide, but his bicep was. Still, it was enough — or it could be, depending on the proximity of limp dick.

He wouldn't come close enough without some kind of prompting, although the narrow passage was to their advantage.

"Maybe she wants in," Levi said. He slid out his other arm and crossed his wrists past the bars. "He'll be scared of her. Getting him to shit his pants won't help, but with enough of a jump…" Levi made a grabbing motion with both hands, then slipped his arms back inside.

"What do you think?"

Summoned by the vibration, a fat brown spider crept down the web to investigate. Varaszidien the witch let it find her fingers.

She watched the theatrics across the way: the dark fool and the murderous fool. Her look of appraisal was identical to her look of contempt. They were not so stupid as the provincials. A smell of promising deaths rose from them, like soil after a rain. At Cain's greeting she smiled the same slow, too-wide smile that she smiled for the guards.

When the little one started talking in his cooperative manner she thought of spilled blood and filiped her fingers, and the spider, caught, could do nothing as it was crushed. She began to roll it, legs and all, into a sticky, uneven, pill-shaped mass. It sent up a strange sound in the air like someone walking on hair.

When she flicked it through the bars it seemed for a moment that she'd thrown it at Levi, and maybe she had, but it fell well-short - onto the corridor floor, not far from where he stood. Beneath the dust and straw there was a momentary faint red glow.

The witch's ministrations were of a horrifyingly fascinating quality; his eyes kept drifting her way, even as he was watching the thug present his plan. He, too, was odd: Cain would not have pegged this morose, dark fellow for a sociable man, but he was both surprisingly talkative and unexpectedly competent in his explanation. His arms, without their sleeves, looked more muscular than they had within; Cain wondered if the same was true for the rest of him.

Neither of them appeared to have particular reservations about cold-blooded murder.

"And you cannot remove him without killing?" A difficult task, perhaps. He was watching them both as he asked. "I do not believe they are keen on keeping us--" He glanced, meaningfully, at the sigils by the witch's cage. They had all seen the watchmen's discomfort at her sight. "--or pursuing us. With a charge of murder, however..."

It would complicate things; even in the cities, the murder of a lawman was a troublesome prospect -- he could only imagine the sort of rage it would spark in a town like this. Still, "complicated" was perhaps not the worst prospect on his plate.

He had seen the whipping post in town, and he had no intention of ending up there, one way or another.

Levi had a fine view of the witch's movements, and likewise had difficulty looking away. His chin tilted — twitched, almost — as the dead spider, squished and molded to deformity, arced out from her cell. He followed its path and kept a steady eye until the glow dimmed. If she wouldn't speak, then he had no choice but to take this as her contribution.

His attention returned to the boy — who, he had to concede, made a good point. As much as he'd like to get back at his captors, the resulting attention and ire would be more trouble than it was worth. It could all be avoided easily enough. Simply knocking the man unconscious would serve.

Levi gave the boy a small shrug, indicating unabashedly that a nonlethal method hadn't occurred to him.

"I can," he said. "Once we're out, we'll still need to slip the garrison."

"You can. Good." He nodded, satisfied (and taking note, silently, to be careful of this fellow for whom a killing blow seemed to be the default, rather than an escalation.)

Next, they would need a lure. He eyed his cell companion with a critical ye, then glanced along the bars to their cage, as it were. Th front of the cells was comparatively well-lit, which did not serve in their favour. Even the quality of the lighting, however, was questionable in this dank hole. After a moment, he gave a tight little smile and reached up to the side of his own face.

"Where do you want him?" he asked the man, his fingers working something free in the half-shadows cast by his tousled dark hair.

And with that said, there was a sound of a bolt unlatching at the door at the top of the stairs. Dinnertime.

The guard who clanked down the stone steps wore a full breastplate and a sour expression. A fat man he was, with his belly shored up by the armor, and the sunken, red-rimmed eyes of the devoted alcoholic. His wake was scented with a high waft of ale. He held a tray out in front of him and on it were three bowls, three mugs, and a heel of stale bread - a gift to bestow upon the noble-looking man, who might be good for something more than stinking up the cellar.

He muttered to himself as he clanked down the hall and walked all the way past the witch's cell before turning, setting down the tray, and placing her particulars on the ground such that all she would be able to see of him (and hex, you know, like they do,) were his hands. Why this only mattered now and not when he was walking past, he would be unable to say.

Next, the thug and the little prince.

He had retreated into the back of the cell when he'd heard the door open, sinking back onto a pile of straw (and not being quite able to hide his shudder at the things that may have lived there). When the man approached, he would see the young noble looking particularly weak and forlorn, and so pale that his face and thin fingers nearly shone in the sparse light.

"My good man," he started, eyeing the tray with a tortured smile he did not have to fake. "Surely it would be a bad show if your prisoners succumbed to starvation before their due."

He paused for a moment to observe the man with his piggish little eyes and vile smell. He had not failed to observe the lack of bread bestowed unto the witch. A good sign, perhaps.

"Tell me," he ventured forth, leaning forward, "how can I persuade you to lighten these conditions?"

Rather inelegant in approach, but he suspected too much finesse may have confounded this fellow anyway.

The guard farted as he stood and sloshed his way over towards the fragile, spun-glass fancy lad at the grating. He was a very stupid man but an experienced one, and he was not averse to playing with his charges. Nor did his stupidity guard him from concupiscence. His piggy eyes glittered.

"Oh aye?" He grunted. "Wasting away, are ye?"

Balancing the tray on one hand, he shoved the bread through the bars.

"Thass for you, your lordshipness. An' what do ye have for me?"

The ale stench, mingled with hints of sulfur and minimal washing, wafted from him with nearly palpable heft. He was paying no attention at all to the thug.

The smile did not vanish, although it turned demonstrably cold; he wondered, idly, if it was too late to gesture to his accomplice that he had changed his mind about not killing this filthy little troll. He stood now, and any trace of supplication slipped off him with the movement. He had long perfected the practice of looking down his nose at people despite being, in many a case, of lesser height; a useful skill at a time such as this.

The bread did not warrant so much as a glance.

"Bring me wine," he demanded instead, "and you may have this."

He threw it at the guard's feet -- or rather, about a foot and a half's length from his feet, where it landed in the dirty straw, on Cain's side of the bars. Even so, it glittered in the dim light: an ear stud with a sizeable gemstone, set in gold.

The guard would have to kneel to grasp it, at the very least; that was as far as Cain's efforts to bring him to vulnerability would go. The rest would be up to his companions.

Levi had hardly moved since the appearance of the corpulent (and equally charming) guard. Letting the pretty boy talk turned out to be the right choice — 'my good man' would not have been the first words out of Levi's mouth. He detested flattery and cared little for pleasantries, so perhaps he was lucky to have a cohort willing to entertain this hog-man.

Even if the exchange was brief. Levi had been tempted to make it briefer still by swooping over to grab the guard's fat wrist as soon as he shoved the bread in, but the timing hadn't felt right. And it was good that he waited, since he fully expected the boy's little treasure to get the swine's attention.

Levi contemplated his options as he slid closer to the guard, moving at a quiet and inconspicuous drift. If he got on his knees and started groping through the bars like the idiot drunk he appeared to be, then he'd be better off tossing them the keys and taking a nap on the floor.

And if he didn't, well… Levi would move anyway. The guard looked to be standing close enough to the bars already, and was likely slow in every relevant sense of the word. Easy prey. Levi wondered what kind of sound his skull would make once he slammed it against the bars.

"....Eh? What's that then?..." Sayeth the guard, bending goutily from the waist to follow the shiny object. Experienced he was, but also stupid, and greedy. It never occurred to him that the thug and the princeling might collude.

Indeed the only twist in the plan was that the guard's thick skull made no sound at all when it slammed against the bars. Likewise, immediately prior, when the guard - checked and choked - attempted to shout for help, his throat swelled fruitlessly. His shouts were silent.

This was the witch's cantrip. And she hung across the corridor, watching the struggle with a wide smile upon her strange face. The spell would not hold long, but, provided Levi was quick (and so he seemed,) it would hold long enough.

Our heroes might at this point wonder: where are the keys?

Where indeed. The keys were a vital element that Levi was just now considering; without the effect of the witch's magic, it could've been a more damning oversight. As things stood, Levi clearly hadn't given the guard's skull hard enough of a slam. Maybe he'd held back too much — plus the angles and the girth of the man had made the maneuver somewhat tricky.

Once more, then. With a low grunt, Levi set his feet and tugged sharply, swinging the guard's head back again so that it smashed against one of the grimy irons bars. It felt like a more satisfying blow, but the resulting silence of the collision offered no hint.

Now expecting less of a struggle, Levi held one arm around the guard's neck, keeping him pinned and upright, then used his free hand to search the fat man for something that would make a jingle-jangle. The belt was an obvious starting place. If the keys weren't there, then he'd move on to patting down his pockets. Even with urgency, each movement was crisp and deliberate.

As the struggle died down, Cain stepped out from the shadowy back of the cell to collect his earring with a gloved hand. He did not put it back in his ear, but rather tucked the glittering thing inside his jacket. He was keeping at a distance from the pair by the bars: his comrade-in-escape seemed to have practice with this sort of exercise, and besides, the gurad's stench was bad enough where he was standing.

He had assumed the guard would be in the position of a key ring -- was that not a guard's prerogative? But the more of their precious seconds ticked by, absent a cheerful jingle, the more his mouth thinned in irritation. How stupid to have just assumed -- how unlike himself...

He stepped up to the bars, brisk, to glance down to either side of the hallway. No sign of any other personnel; not yet. He zeroed in on the lock next: a large, heavy thing -- crude in both appearance and function, he was sure.

Without turning, he demanded:

"What does he have on him?"

Foolish action or not, the guard was now theirs; Cain was fond of the belief that there was no such thing as a useless conquest. He only hoped it would prove true here and now.

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The Dog's Hour

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sneaks in a quick reply while someone's back is turned

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still alive yep

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this took forever and i'm sorry