Chapter 8

It took James some time to reach the encampment and at least once, he had to rest during the evening, in the evening when it was too dark to travel, he made himself a fire and sat and watched it. His basic training allowed him to craft a small lean to that he could sleep comfortably while his horse remained tied to a tree.

The morning came with bird songs, he got up at the first sign, went and relieved his bladder and kicked dirt on his fire. He drank some water and then as the sun was rising, hopped back on his mare and headed out.

Eventually James started seeing signs of civilization and scouted the area out, the encampment, turned out to be much larger than he thought.

Obviously the first thing he needed to do was find high ground and sought out a small hill nearby. He would’ve killed for a telescope or binoculars to see through and oddly, wondered if he could fashion such a device in this reality. They certainly knew how to make glass, and polishing it should be easy enough.

Too bad James didn’t do great in optics on school.

He saw the palisade and it seemed stronger with each step James took. Pointy sticks making up a wall, traps here and there, guards patrolling the outskirts, and even more guards stationed at the entrance. At least it had no door.

James decided it was best to climb a tree to see further into the encampment, that at this point looked more like a town. He jumped down from horseback and looked around. The lush forest offered many trees, but James wanted the tallest of them. He made up his mind to climb a young cedar, the tallest tree he saw around him.

He began the ascent with care, getting hold of sturdy branches and securing his footholds with a tug before trusting them. He was doing progress rather slowly, up the tree. Minutes passed. His meticulous way of climbing was from the other world: he was used to climbing broader trees with more branches, not these savage lush things. He was getting tired, and fast. On top of that, his equipment weighed him further down. By the time he reached the 20 meters tall canopy, he was tired to the bone. He sat on a branch and contemplated the forest. Green everywhere, blending with the horizon, and the sun was starting to hammer down on him. A warm breeze moved the leaves, giving him a vertigo sensation. With no more to it, he began scouting the nearby encampment.

The palisade was tall, but not nearly as tall as this tree. He saw inside tents upon tents, with soldiers everywhere and guards on every entrance. This was an enormous camp, big enough to house an army. And the tents were nothing like those of the royal camp; these were brutalist and spartan-looking, hinting their true purpose: barracks.

No lord was to be found. The pavilion on the centre of the camp was dull and grey, surely a command post more than a mobile palace. James’ eyes felt weary, but he had to keep noting details. Numbers. He began counting soldiers by groups, to have a rough estimate on their host’ size. 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 200, 300 ... there was no end to them. Next he sought heraldry, the true purpose of his visit. As he thought, no proud banner was flying on the encampment. No flag was to be seen, and the soldiers wore different colours, not like some uniform. They looked more like mercenaries or a ‘volunteer’ army than other thing.

A wind gust moved his branch. James held to it instinctively, clenching his fingers around it. The wind passed on and left James feeling vulnerable. He looked down... 20 meters were certainly a long way down.

He wanted badly to be on the other world and use some harness and rappel to descend, and surely these kingdoms had some form of climbing technology, but he had brought none. He got up here on his strength alone, and on strength alone he would get down. “Okay, let’s do this...” he said to himself, subconsciously trying to cheer up.

James sought after the secure footholds he used to come up. They seemed to be further apart while descending, forcing him to adopt all sorts of weird and painful poses. But he was coming down. Slowly, but he was progressing. Another gust of wind threatened to take him down again, but his tight grip held. He reached for the next foothold, when suddenly the branch gave and the strongest sense of vertigo he ever experienced struck him.

He yelled as he fell the world rushing upwards towards him, and for a solid second he experienced flight first hand. His fall was finally ended with a crunch. James felt something broke, but he was so disoriented he didn’t knew exactly where. He didn’t feel much pain, but again, it could be adrenaline. He began to slip into unconsciousness.

After what felt like a couple of seconds of sleep, he woke up in a dark tent, with the moon poking its light through a crack. He was tied to a chair.

“He’s awake” a voice called.

“Go tell the boss!” another one answered.

Some minutes passed. James used that time to self-diagnose; after some introspection he deduced he was not hurt. “Weird. I swear I felt something break...”

“Something did break, lad.” A deep voice interrupted his train of thought. “You attacked one of my men, but you’re so stupid you fainted with the force.”

“Me? I didn’t attack any one ... I fell on your man, I’m sorry, but I didn’t want to attack him!”

“Sure you didn’t. He died, boy. You fell over him and broke his bones and his fucking ribs pierced his lungs. Now, we are not short of time. We can leave you here with no food and no water until you starve, we can beat the shit out of you, we can cut your fingers one by one, or you can talk. What will it be?”

“Sir you’ve got it wrong! I was just climbing a tree and I-”

“Climbing a tree? In the middle of the forest? What for, besides scouting out our camp?”

“ ... I was...”

“You were spying on us, kid.”

“No I wasn’t.”

“Yes you were.”

James sighed, “I wasn’t. I was just climbing a tree.”

“How many men did you count?”

James’ ego got the better of him and before he could think, his mouth opened and he gave the number. The man nodded and the two men behind him grinned.

“Now we can have some fun.”

“Not my idea of fun.”

“Can’t please everyone.”

James snorted, “I guess everyone needs a hobby, am I right?”

The group chuckled.

“Kid I like you, but I’ve got a boss to please and he won’t be happy if I don’t at least torture you a bit.”

“Okay, just not the face.”

“Why?”

“It’s the prettiest part.”

The man blinked, stared and then burst into laughter.

James was able to deduct some intelligence from that conversation, the boss, the person in charge was a man, so that at the very least, narrowed it down a bit...

James sighed.

“Let’s get this shit over with.”

The man chuckled and nodded.

James’ world was reduced to pain as he felt his own blood covering him. He felt thumps with each punch, and when they struck the chair down they began kicking him all over. He was thinking of using this in his favour, of standing up and running for it, of punching back, but no. He would not reach far, anyways. He just tried to cover his head with his arms and his belly with his legs, and take the beating.

“That’s about enough.” spoke the boss, bringing James some relief. ‘At least it’s over now... ‘

James thought.

“Bring me the knives.”

‘Knives?’

They tied him up again, now to a sturdier chair. The chair was stained all over, and James suspected it was all blood from past torture sessions. They lit up candles around him, to better see their victim. “Now, we don’t want you to bleed out just yet. This will be just the beginning, kid. Until you speak it all, at least.”

One of the other men entered the tent and produced a folded leather bundle.

“Now that you’re heated up, let’s begin...”

The boss took out a small blade, resembling more a surgeon’s scalpel than what would be rightfully called a knife, and ran it through James’ right leg. It felt hot, so hot it burned, even though the steel was cold. James couldn’t help but to scream in pain.

“This will only get worse and worse, kid. Now, who sent you?”

“Mgh ... Your mother”

“That’s right kid!”

He ran the knife through James’ chest, caring to not cut much muscle. James felt his blood pressure rising and then coming down. And this was just the smallest knife...

“How did you knew of our location?”

“Your mother told me.”

“Gentlemen, we got ourselves a jester! But he’s missing his jester hat ... Bring me the crown!” James’ mind raced through all the cruel devices the medieval era as famous for. This was the worst possible time to be tortured.

A man brought a contraption with a protruding iron ring, large enough to fit on the head, and they put it over James. They closed the straps around his chin and ears, and began cranking a lever. James’ fears became true as dozens of nails touched his scalp, threatening with crushing and piercing his skull.

“Don’t fret! You’ll only make it worse.” One of the men spoke, and laughed.

The boss pulled out a pair of tongs, each of them ending on a half circle. He put them over a fire. “Now is your last chance to get out without ugly scars, boy! We have some minutes until my claws heat up. Why did you come here?”

“Your mother told me to come”

“What a brave boy! I’ll let this one pass. I’m feeling generous. Tell me something, anything, and I’ll call this session off.”

“...”

“Nothing? Very well.”

The man took the tongs out of the fire, opened them, and told James to hold to a metal between them.

“It’s not hot as the claws, the bar is for you to clench. Remember your jester’s hat, if you move around the nails come down.”

And he started to close the tongs around James’ forearm. The red hot metal just grazed his skin and he bit his teeth hard, so hard he was afraid of breaking them. His forearm felt like nothing he could compare to.

The pain was too much. He lifted his head to hold a scream, but in doing so the nails perforated his scalp skin. Blood began obscuring his vision, but that didn’t worry him. The world became nothing more than his burning arm. He didn’t want to scream, for he was sure that if he did, he would bite right through his tongue. It was just too much to bear. Finally some unnamed deity showed mercy, and he fell unconscious.

James woke up in what seemed to be a cage, with iron bars and a hay-covered floor. He realized the cage was in the middle of the camp, and had no solid walls. His head hurt all over, and his left forearm skin was burnt to a crisp. He remembered one time, not so long ago, he suffered an even more gruesome damage, and used that memory to iron himself to sanity. The memory of having his internal organs liquefied helped him behave almost normally, even under this circumstance.

He realized he was not alone. On the other side of the cage, a woman clad in a robe was sitting.

James lifted up and grimaced, looking around and realizing fully where he was, if he was in the cage and she was too that meant she was an enemy of his enemy.

“Hi,” he tried to say to her, but it came out as a croak.

Her eyes fluttered open and looked at him.

“So you’re the idiot they captured?”

“Yes,” he croaked.

He sat up and sighed, his arm ached, his head ached but he checked his fingers. Nothing was missing.

“Well this is a fine mess,” she said with a scowl.

“I’m getting too old for this shit,” he wheezed. The woman snorted in amusement. “Are you friend or foe?”

“Neither really.”

“Spy?”

She looked at him, “Sort of.”

“A man on the inside.”

He grimaced and she nodded, “Feeding intelligence back to the Queen.”

“What happened?”

“Got caught.”

“You know what happens to spy’s right?”

“Hanged, drawn and quartered.”

He nodded and grimaced.

“Well looks like we’re allies at the moment,” he paused for a moment, something dawning on him and he uttered. “Subscribe to coincidence.”

She blinked and looked at him, “Excuse me?”

“Sorry something I remembered,” he shifted. “I don’t subscribe to coincidence. I believe that, no matter how random things might appear, there’s still a plan.”