Chapter Eleven: A Brave Captain
Pain is a distant sensation to the silver claws; it is a warning, a sensory experience to highlight injury and threat. It is something of which they are aware, but it does not hinder them in any way, it enhances them. So when Captain Asgoth awoke he felt pain, his body was telling him he was hurt. In truth, he had a hundred hurts and when The Gentle Death had collapsed around him he'd expected his own swift demise. But it had not occurred, he'd found his feet, he'd found his will and he'd staggered from the wreck. Find the Lair, bring down the mountain, eliminate the threat. Asgoth had recited his mission over and over in his head as he'd staggered through broken hawk eggs and broken rocks towards the enemy.
Asgoth had murmured his mission even while he was unconscious and now he was awake it was at the forefront of his mind, along with the pain. Despite his grogginess it did not take long to identify its cause. When he lifted his left arm and noticed that half of it was missing, then he knew where his pain originated. A silver claw without the claw. They'd taken from the elbow joint to the tips of his razor sharp fingers. It was a clean cut and there was no blood to be had, just an emptiness, a hollow socket of darkness.
There was no way of telling how long he'd been out, a few seconds, minutes or days he had no idea. Long enough to carry him down into this dark hole. The cell was made from natural rock which had been hollowed out and fitted with a thick iron door. There were no windows and what air the room held was still and silent, outside his cell the world might have ceased to be for all that Asgoth could see or hear of it.
Despite a few impressive dents it was obvious that the door was not going to give way under brute force. He'd half lifted his left arm to slash the door to pieces with his claw before he'd glanced at the stump, remembered and felt the pain come back.
There was a small opening along the back wall of the cell which formed what could have been a bed for a smaller being but was barely adequate as a bench for the Captain. He sat upon it and wondered how long it might be before the dogs returned to finish the job. He was not waiting long.
The sound of a wheel turning heralded their arrival. After a few moments of metal screeching on metal the door swung open silently. There stood a stooped jackal, its fur mostly turned to grey with the odd patch of original black. The darkness of his eyes had not faded with age, their pitch was as black as the moonless night and colder than the crypt. He seemed to be alone and Asgoth was not one for missing opportunities, he ran towards the tiny jackal with his one gauntlet clenched into a fist.
He got to within a few feet of the dog when it raised its hand and Asgoth felt himself thrown backwards through the air to slam into the cave wall. More pain now. The dog walked into the room not at all intimidated by the silver claw without a claw.
“We had to take the arm I'm afraid”, it said, “the claw would not come off of its own accord and we could not allow you to retain it”, its voice a gravelly whisper.
“Who are you?” asked Asgoth, getting slowly to his feet and feeling very aware of the dents in the armour on his back.
“I am Rostrom.”
“You are the leader here?” asked Asgoth, readying himself for another charge. The dog was almost close enough to reach out and grab.
Rostrom smiled at his question, revealing long aged fangs. “Yes, there is no King Corul here, just Rostrom, just the talented jackals. Please don't try again, some of my colleagues suggested taking your other limbs to render you unable to threaten them. My caution stayed their blades, please don't make me admit my mistake and allow them to come in here.”
The silver claws are not trained to accept defeat, the concept of backing down is not something with which they are familiar, however Asgoth decided to refrain from attacking again. Without his claw he could still stand a chance of getting free in order to launch a more efficient and deadly strike at the enemy, with no arms or legs he was scrap metal and would rot and rust at the bottom of a hole for the rest of his days.
“What do you want with me?” Captain Asgoth asked.
“Nothing and everything”, replied the jackal, studying him intently, “do you feel happiness? Remorse? Do you feel at all?” Asgoth did not respond. “Some within our pack were surprised that you did not shed dream-blood when we took the arm, they had even prepared bandages and swabs. I was not surprised. I am older than most, I have met plenty of silver claws to know that beneath the armour and the claw there is little else, no flesh, no bone. But there must be a mind, a consciousness, so I am curious, do you feel anything I wonder?”
“Your questions are meaningless to me. I feel loyalty to the King and the Geddon family, beyond this there is nothing, nor does there need to be.”
“Why?” asked Rostrom.
“Why what?” responded Asgoth. The Captain was well aware of the trickery and the deceitful ways of the jackals, their mindset was an alien concept to the silver claws, to most dreams.
“Why do you feel loyalty to the King?” asked Rostrom, his voice barely a whisper.
“We have been guardians of the King since the elder days, since Fenn pushed back the Dream Sea, since he gave life to the dreams and helped make all of us what we are.”
“I could ask my question again”, said Rostrom.
“And you would receive the same answer.”
“But you have not answered, you have told me why you are loyal to Fenn Geddon, long-dead Fenn. You have not told me why you are so fiercely loyal to a lesser dream, a mere descendant of no consequence who rules only through fear of the weapon, forged by his greatest grandsire, the Hammer of Fenn.”
“King Corul is much loved by the dreams over whom he holds power”, said Asgoth.
The jackal laughed openly in genuine amusement. “King Corul has not even the slightest inkling of the feelings of the dreams of Avalen. He has not left the Palace of Fenngaard in years. Under his rule there is stagnation, he has failed to continue to grow the dream of the first Fenn and he has extinguished the line of the first son of Fenn, the true heirs to the dream who knew what was required to carry forward his father's early vision.”
This time Asgoth laughed, an empty harsh sound. “You speak of Arma, the mad dream, the consort of nightmares.”
“The history books call them nightmares to placate the masses. They were not nightmares which came forth from the Dream Sea to aid him, they were true dreams, brave and noble, destroyed because they dared to suggest a free dream was better than one whose existence was dictated by the occupant of the Nested Throne.”
“Save your breath”, said Asgoth, whose patience to debate good and evil with a dog was at an end, “this argument serves neither of us. You were wrong at the start when you chose to back the usurper and you are wrong now in defending his name, kill me and have done with it.”
“Kill you?” said Rostrom with a twitch of his snout, “we did not go to the trouble of so neatly removing your arm in order to simply kill you.”
“Then what is our purpose here?” said Asgoth.
“If I have your word that you will not use violence or try to escape then you may accompany me from this cell into the Lair and I will show you.”
Asgoth did not trust the jackal one ounce. Though he had a limited emotional spectrum the silver claw could feel a steady anger streaming through him at the loss of his claw. The anger, like the claw, was a background sensation, a stream of information more than a chemical reaction that would cause only loss of control or discipline, but it was there and Asgoth would be patient until he found an opportunity to use it.
“You have my word”, said the captain to the jackal.
“Very good”, said Rostrom, turning and leaving the cell. Asgoth followed him, stooping to get through the door. The Lair was in stark contrast to the Palaces of the first pillar. Where Fenngaard was smooth seamless architecture which could give the impression of having been carved out of one gigantic piece of rock, the Lair was jagged, twisting and seemingly random in its layout. Fenngaard was wide
open spaces and light, the Lair was small, twisting and dark.
They walked for some time, first up but then back down. Here and there Captain Asgoth could see groups of jackals engaged in the day-to-day activities of the Lair. All stopped as he moved passed them, staring at him with those cunning eyes full of hate and deceit. The Lair was labyrinthine and went on for miles, just on this route Asgoth saw thousands of jackals. Their underestimation of the strength of the enemy was significant indeed; they'd been breeding an army down here for years, not even an army, a nation it seemed.
Finally they reached a large chamber which felt like it was deep under the mountain. In it was a round stone table, the table was hollow in the middle and within it was a model of Avalen carved in black rock. The model was twenty feet across and showed the dream-lands in remarkable detail. The Dreamstone Wall was built so that it merged into the edge of the table, the battlements of the Octaris guarding the edge.
A number of other jackals were seated on high-backed stone chairs around the circle. No fire burned here and the breath from the jackals gathered in clouds before floating up to be lost in the dark heights of the chamber. Those present all wore heavy hoods, all Asgoth could see were the snouts.
“Be seated, Captain”, said Rostrom.
Captain Asgoth looked suspiciously around the room, though there seemed no overt threat he was uneasy. This Rostrom was being altogether too accommodating. Captain Asgoth sat down on an empty stone chair that was barely wide enough for him to balance on. Rostrom sat opposite.
“Why am I here?” demanded the silver claw.
“As I stated before good Captain, flesh and bone you do not have, but there is a mind in there and it is the mind we are interested in.” Even as Rostrom said the words Asgoth felt an odd sensation. Like an out-of-body experience, the closest thing he could liken it to was his birth, the day when he woke up in his armour and growing accustomed wearing it. His good hand reached up onto the stone table and rested on it, the fingertips touching a strip of metal which went in a circle all around the table. He was vaguely aware of the jackals in the room putting their hands on the table to touch the same length of metal.
Asgoth felt drowsy, heavy and slow, as if time were quicksand. He tried to remove his hand from the table, but it was not his hand any more. There was panic now, panic in addition to the pain and the anger. Again it registered and again it had no outward effect; just another sensation to be compartmentalised, dealt with at a later date. His vision blurred and his mind wondered and waned in its independence until Asgoth was not certain who Asgoth was any more...