An Unlikely Union
Brief Overview: The Trojan War still rages. The Greeks have not yet breached Troy's protective walls but have caused havoc all over Troy's provinces. The leader of the Trojan army, the great Prince Hector, was not killed during his duel with Achillies but defeated and taken prisoner.
This is the first chapter, I have already written a few more which will follow soon. Am new to this, so tell me what you think.
1. The Prisoner
Sofia stirred from her restless sleep as she heard angry male voices. They punctured her patchy dreams like animal claws ripping through flesh. The mechanical clunk and rattle of the heavy cell door being unlocked then slowly swung open made her sit bolt upright, her blue eyes wide with fear.
This was it.
They had come for her.
She blinked hard; her sore eyes were no longer used to brash lamplight, only the odd shaft of sunlight or soft blue glow of the moon, celestially permeating the small barred ventilation window. Not that there was much ventilation in the small cell she had called her home for almost a week ... at least she thought it was a week .... The days and nights both blurred into one under intolerable dread. Her eyes almost couldn't see for a moment - they were dry, and the effort her pupils were making to dilate in the alien lamplight made her feel like she was being stung by hornets. One of her sockets was also bruised ... a blow to the face, courtesy of the back hand of a guard. She held her hands up to her face, like a child would believing that if the threat could not been seen, it had disappeared. She touched the swelling around her brow with her finger tips, embarrassed at her grubby appearance but at the same time shielding herself from any more blows that she had learnt to expect.
Sofia drew her limbs up to her body like a spider threatened by a jabbing finger as she watched through the gaps in her fingers three silhouetted figures enter the cell. Their footsteps shuffled on the filthy stone floor, the dirt grinding against the flagstones. She kept deadly still. A low murmuring filled the stale air which she soon realised was herself, praying to the gods to be spared.
But nobody approached the small wooden bench Sofia sat on. Perhaps her stillness and the dark had convinced them the cell was vacant. But she had no time to ponder this as she watched the figures, three men, two roughly clasping the third in between them like a landlord and his son throwing a drunken fool out of his inn. Two guards with another prisoner. The guards' smooth armour glinted as fire reflects on marble. The prisoner's head hung resembling an apple ready to drop from a tree and his thick legs no longer supported his well-built frame, his feet trailing on the floor.
"Throw him in here, we'll play some more with him later!" one guard chuckled to the other with evil glee as they let go of their grip on the prisoner's arms, tossing him on to the hard, cold floor.
The dull thud of his body mingled with the chinking of the guards armour made Sofia shiver. She let out an involuntary shuddered gasp in relief, finding it difficult to draw breath back into her tight chest as the guards bolted the door behind them, laughing like demons of the underworld. The prisoner did not move or make a sound.
Stunned, not only by the events that had just transpired but by the fact that the gods had allowed her to survive another night, she remained as still as the moon outside. The steadfast moonlight gave the damp walls of the cell an eerie glow and in the silence she resembled a roe deer, small and vulnerable, startled by a strange noise. The man on the floor was equally as motionless. And he didn't appear to be breathing.
Gingerly placing her dirt-streaked feet on the floor she listened again. She feared to approach but curiosity and sympathy got the better of her. Quietly, carefully she padded over to the sprawled figure, senses heightened as if she was expecting something. Attack? Revulsion? Compassion? She wasn't sure what exactly. That week had been a strange passage into unknown emotions.
The man lay on his front and had been stripped naked. His broad back was peppered with lesions and burns where he had been repeatedly whipped and tortured with what must have been a red-hot poker. Closing her eyes momentarily and sighing, she tried not to imagine what other unspeakable acts - designed to take away his dignity - had been committed against this man. She placed her small palm onto his right shoulder, the skin burning hot and covered in sheen of sweat. Kneeling there, her palm still in place, all her fear had been forgotten as inquisitiveness took over. Papa had always said that her wolf cub-like bravery would get her into trouble....
With one hand on his shoulder and the other cradling a mass of his wavy dark mane, she hauled his limp head and shoulders onto her lap. Sticky tendrils of his hair, aided by dried blood and sweat, clung to his face. His eyes were closed but his brow was furrowed, in anger, in pain. The masculine features were distorted - his nose had suffered a fresh break and blood was forming a little rivulet from one nostril. The right cheek was grey-blue swollen and his bottom lip was split like a pomegranate cut with a blunt knife. Sofia felt for his pulse – the veins in his neck were bulging but she could only feel the faintest of heart beats. Alive ... only just - but he still drew no breath.
Sofia was no physician, so she could only guess why he didn't breathe. But all the guessing in the world would not help this man – time was of the essence and the longer he couldn't draw breath, the less chance there was of reviving him. Panicking a little, she grasped his shoulders, shaking him firmly. His head lolled from side to side, a gurgling sound emitting from his throat
And then she remembered – a sudden epiphany from the gods. Where they watching right now, pitying them both? A boy in her village, one summer whilst playing in the fields, suffered a strange fit. Whilst his body was convulsing on the grass, he swallowed his own tongue, blocking his airway. The boy survived due to the quick thinking of a nearby herdsman who had seen the whole horrible scene whilst he was tending his goats. Alerted by the boy's playmate's cries, He dropped his crook at the gate of the goat pen and ran across the field almost faster than Apollo himself could run. The herdsman apparently knew what to do as he was used to aiding newly-born kids to breathe.
Without thinking any longer, Sofia pulled the man closer but with difficulty – his unconsciousness made him heavy like an unwieldy slab of lumber. Her lungs filled with the strong odour of his skin – musky and strangely metallic. Copying what she had seen the herdsman do that summer's eve years ago, she slipped two fingers into his mouth. This was an easier task than moving his body; his jaw was loose and pliable as if it was made of dough. His pale lips were dry and cracked and crusts of blood and saliva had formed on the whiskers in the corners of his mouth. She could feel immediately, triumphantly that his tongue had indeed slipped backwards and her fingers gently drew it forward. A short gush of blood immediately followed, soiling her already filthy robe. Sofia watched amazed, his face slowly coming to life. He feebly coughed, spluttered and screwed up his eyes, the dark eyebrows forced down to meet the creases in his eyelids.
As his head resided in her lap she was suddenly highly aware of her inappropriate closeness to this stranger. They made a strange sight on the cell floor, the beggar nursemaid and the wounded soldier. She hastily gathered up what clean straw she could find around her and made him a crude makeshift pillow. It had taken what little strength she had left to revive him; there was no way she would be able to move this hulk of a man to convalesce on the bench with her tiny frame. She poured a little of her precious water into his groaning lips - it was terribly murky but unclean water was the least of their worries. With the sensation of wetness on his lips, he opened his eyes. He was looking right at her but did not seem to actually see. Delirious with pain and exhaustion, the corneas were so dark brown they were almost black but the eyes themselves were cloudy reminding Sofia of milky opal stones. His robeless body was trembling, shivering or reacting to the sheer effort of being alive – perhaps both. She covered his modesty with her tatty cloak, shielding her own eyes from the indecency of a naked man, a sight she had never witnessed before.
The guards didn't return that night. They were either expecting him to die or waiting for him to heal, fit enough to feel pain once more. Sofia guessed it was the latter.
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