An Aimless War - Chapter 1: Chapter 1

It was Lothian Dusk when the two guards appeared at the door of my cell.
I could tell because the sunlight had just stopped streaming in through my little barred window. Sometime during the last year I had taken to watching the window, as if it would help me keep track of time. In the beginning I had kept a tally, scratching lines into the stone wall for every day that passed. Then I started to miss days, or count days twice, and I stopped tallying. Every day was the same.
Guards always arrived around Lothian Dusk to toss a battered plate or bowl of food in my direction. Half of it usually spilled onto the dirty floor, but I had never been a picky eater and I didn't care about dignity, so I always scooped up as much as I could. And all things considered, regularly having two meals a day wasn't all that bad. Being locked in a solitary cell wasn't that bad. The prison was cold and dirty but I was used to that.
At the beginning, my fear had been nearly overwhelming. Then that had dissipated, and after days of trying to think of a way out, followed by days of prayers to every god and goddess I thought could help, then days of trying to find any little thing to keep myself busy, boredom had settled in. Every day was the same.
Which was why, when the guards didn't slide an old bowl across the floor towards me, I was momentarily intrigued by the change. I sat up and turned to face them as they stepped into the cell. Then all at once I understood what was happening. There was only one reason they would be coming into the cell.
The fear came back. Overwhelming, freezing my racing thoughts. I drew back, huddling against the wall like it could somehow protect me. I wanted to stay in the cell. Being bored wasn't that bad. I liked the cell.
One of the guards easily yanked me to my feet by grabbing my right wrist. I'd broken that wrist before all of this, and absently I was happy to realize that his rough manhandling didn't hurt any more than it should have. Maybe it had healed properly. I watched blankly as he slipped a key into my heavy manacles. When they fell to the floor with a loud clang, I could have moved. A year ago I would have. Instead I watched him snap new, lighter manacles around my wrists.
They led me out of the cell and down a long corridor. We passed other prisoners, mostly men or boys, safe in their cells. Some of them, probably the newer ones, called out prayers for me. I heard them, but I didn't hear them. I couldn't think. I couldn't make my thoughts come together.
When we finally reached the end of the hallway, the guard leading me tugged me to a sudden stop. For a second my mind cleared. Then a filthy hood was pulled over my head and I felt the string cinch lightly around my neck to keep it in place.
When the hood was pulled off of my head the first thing I saw was the sky—the bright red of a sunset glowing around the Cliffs of Loth. Then I saw the crowd, and the wooden platform I was standing on. The trapdoor at my feet and the rope dangling in front of my eyes. Then I heard the crowd, as my senses almost came back to me one at a time.
We were in the upper city marketplace. There were still stalls set up, selling food or clothing or jewellery, as if nothing interesting was happening. Plenty of people had turned their attention to the gallows. Not far off, another wooden platform raised above the crowd. The king and his daughters sat there, looking as bored as they might have in a meeting room.
I wasn't the only person who was about to die. There were three other people standing on the platform, two men and a woman. I wondered if I looked as disheveled and scared as they did.
Someone started talking, but I didn't really listen. A guard had stepped up to our line. One by one, he slipped nooses over the other prisoners' heads. When he got to me, I closed my eyes. There was no fighting him. There was nothing to do but pray that Siour would take my soul in his chariot and Volava would welcome me into her underworld kingdom. Maybe my mother would be waiting with her.
The rope tightened around my neck. It was rough.
One of the trapdoors on my right opened and I flinched. The woman beside me was sobbing. A second door opened. A third. She stopped sobbing.
I knew that sometimes hangings didn't work if a person was too light. If that happened to me, would someone in the crowd pull on my legs to help me die? Or would they all just watch me squirm?
I heard the executioner reading a list of crimes. Crimes I couldn't deny. None of them were the reason for the rope around my neck. I was losing my life because I had saved the king's.
"Stop."
A voice cut over the executioner, clear and authoritative. There were mumbles in the crowd. My eyes flew open and confirmed what my ears had heard.
Blue. A bright blue cloak wove through the crowd. Tannix stepped up onto the gallows.
Tannix. Lord Tandrix. Lord Tandrix of West Draulin.
Everything went dark.
I blinked, and the stone ceiling above me slowly came into focus. The wall beside me was covered in scratch marks. Most of them were tally marks. I stretched to run my fingers lightly over four letters I had scraped into the wall.
Finn.
Tannix had shown me how to write my name. It was one of the only things I knew how to write.
With a groan, I forced myself to sit up and rubbed my eyes. It had been awhile since I had last dreamed about Tannix. In the beginning he appeared in my dreams almost every night. Usually he was rescuing me, unlocking the cell door or the heavy manacles. As time passed and the fear had turned to boredom my dreams had changed. Mostly because boredom gave my thoughts a chance to wander, and they usually wandered back to Tannix.
He had kissed me, before arresting me. Sometimes I almost thought I had imagined it. But it had happened. He had grabbed my tunic, the same one I was still wearing, and pulled me closer. He had kissed me in the rain, and I had kissed him back. Then, before I even had a chance to wrap my head around what had happened and what it had meant, I was dragged away from him.
A year was a long time to think about a single kiss, so during the day I let my imagination take things further. At night, my dreams continued the fantasy.
I looked at the tally marks on the wall, and counted them. One hundred and twenty-seven. Approximately one hundred and twenty-seven days had passed before I had given up counting. I had no idea how close I was to my execution. I had no idea how much time was left for Tannix to rescue me. He was going to, I knew that. I never doubted it.
The dream had felt so real, the terror so exhausting, that I lay back down on my thin mattress. I stared at my crudely carved name and drifted back to sleep.
A key rattling in my door woke me up again. I expected the usual bowl of food, but when that didn't happen I sat up warily. One of my usual guards pushed open the door and stepped into my cell. A second guard was holding a flickering torch.
"All right, get up," the first guard said gruffly, as he walked across to me. He flipped through his ring of keys until he found the one that fit into my manacles. He didn't wait for me to listen, but grabbed my arm and pulled me up. When he unlocked the manacles, he tossed them onto the mattress, which muffled the heavy thud of them hitting the ground. Then, instead of new manacles, he wrapped a rope around my bruised and battered wrists.
He eyed me as he worked. "Hard to believe you'd try to kill the king. Barely more than a boy. What are you? Fourteen? Fifteen?"
I thought I was closer to seventeen, but I had always looked a little younger than I actually was. I shrugged.
The guard scoffed, but didn't keep trying to talk to me. He started to lead me down the hallway. I was confused more than scared. My window had been dark, and they weren't going to hang me at night. Instead of taking me to what I thought was the door out of the prison, the guards took me up a set of stairs, and down another hallway, finally stopping in front of a wooden door.
The rope was untied, and I was shoved into the room. I heard the click of a lock before I turned around to actually look at the new room. It was small, and empty except for a wooden tub of water in the middle of it. The only window was covered in bars.
For a moment I stood frozen by the door, trying to make sense of what was happening. Maybe they wanted me clean for the hanging. Maybe someone was going to come interrogate me. I walked closer to the tub and tentatively dipped a finger into the water. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't too cold. It looked clean and there was even a bar of soap precariously balancing on the edge of the tub.
Whatever the reason, I decided I might as well enjoy one more thing before I died. I deserved that much. I carefully pulled off my dirty clothing and left it in a heap on the floor. The water felt amazing as I cautiously lowered myself into the tub.
I washed myself off as slowly as I thought the guards would tolerate, dragging out this one last nice moment. The soap stung the raw skin around my wrists, but I forced myself to gently clean every bit of dirt off of them. I even scrubbed soap through my hair and did my best to comb it out with my fingers. It was longer than I liked to have it, and for the first time in my life I actually wished I had something to tie it back with.
"All right," the door swung open quite suddenly. "That's long enough. Get dressed." The guard tossed a set of miraculously clean clothes on the floor. He crossed his arms, making it very clear that he wasn't planning on giving me any privacy.
Outside, the sky was starting to get lighter. I tried to ignore it, tried to ignore what daylight implied. As the guard watched, I climbed out of the tub and quickly put on the clothing he had brought in. There were no new boots, so I slipped my old ones back on. As soon as I was finished, he grabbed my arms and wrapped the rope around them again.
Once again, the pair led me through the hallways of the prison. To keep certain thoughts at bay, I tried to map out our route in my head. I made myself focus on the turns we took and doorways we passed through. Still, when a bright courtyard opened up in front of us my resolve started to crumble.
The courtyard was empty. Maybe the king had insisted on a private execution.
The fear came back, slowing my thoughts again, just like it had in my dream. I instinctively glanced around the courtyard and instantly regretted it when my unfocused eyes landed on the king.
No, the king never wore blue.
Tannix.