Clock smiled at us, oblivious to what was troubling me. ‘See? Most of us can climb those easy enough: a few hours to the top, then it’s a straight road to the next mountain and just a day’s march to the first town in Avares. Those pulley systems can help get the injured up there.’
But that’s not what they’d been built for. Kest and Brasti had understood immediately, too: Avares had put in a highly effective system to move men and equipment back and forth across the mountains – across the only barrier that had impeded their attempts at invasion in the past – and Tristia knew nothing about it.
‘Ah, look, see?’ Clock said. ‘There’s a greeting party now.’
I saw big men with torches up ahead, handing out flasks and food to the weary travellers.
‘Remember what I said,’ Kest warned the old man.
‘Don’t you worry about me, son. I’ll keep my mouth shut. I don’t know why you’re here, Trattari, and I don’t imagine I’d like it if I did, but it’s my own life I’m concerned with, not whatever plans you have.’
I wasn’t sure if I believed him but in the end, it didn’t matter. By the time we reached the camp, twelve Avarean warriors were waiting for us. We’d already been betrayed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Art of Taking a Beating
There’s an art to taking a beating.
Lying there on the ground as brutes of men punch and kick you into oblivion might not seem as complex a skill as wielding a sword, but trust me, it is. I’m a master at it.
‘All right, gentlemen,’ I said, as the Avarean guards began circling us, ‘we surrender.’ The rough-looking men in thick woollen kilts and furs had axes of varying sizes strapped across their backs or hanging at their sides; their odd shape and slightly serrated edges made me think they were for breaking through ice as much as cutting off heads.
One of the guards stepped to within a foot of me. He had lustrous blond hair falling in waves over his massive shoulders to his equally massive chest. I wondered briefly how he could keep his hair so healthy and shiny in this environment, but decided it probably wasn’t the right time to ask. I decided to call him Princess.
‘Se–renn–dur?’ he said.
‘Surrender. Yes.’
Maybe he didn’t appreciate my correcting his pronunciation or (more likely) he had no idea what the word meant, but Princess delivered an impressive punch to my jaw. It was a solid hit – but it didn’t do much damage, as I’d seen it coming. It’s the ones you don’t see coming that do the most harm. I let the impact swing me around a bit and tumbled impressively to the ground.
‘Se-renn-dur,’ Princess repeated.
You might be wondering why I didn’t duck his first blow and follow up with some impressive feat of martial prowess – well, first, because there were twelve of them and three of us; second, because there were dozens more armed men all around, and third, we hadn’t completed the mission yet, and being captured was far more likely to get us to where we needed to be than climbing the mountains and then trying to navigate the freezing wastes of Avares by ourselves.
‘Whoof!’ I said dramatically as the man I dubbed Goatface, with curly black hair and a magnificent forked beard, delivered the first good kick to my belly, sending me rolling over onto my side, icy snow sneaking its way down my collar and cuffs. While I was down, I noted that Kest and Brasti were also on the ground, pursuing similar strategies to mine. Goatface laughed and repeated, ‘Se-renn-dur.’
The ground is a good place to be during a beating. It’s like having a massive shield protecting one side of your body. Granted, it’s not great for manoeuvrability, but if you try to move about too much, someone will invariably hold you so the others can continue the beating, and that can get painful.
My third man, Rosie, on account of his flaming red cheeks, tried a face-stomp. There’s always someone who goes for the face-stomp, and that’s the one thing you really must avoid. Rosie’s heavy-booted foot would have landed squarely on my right cheek, breaking my jaw and sending half my teeth flying across the frozen ground, had I not twisted out of the way. Of course, this earned me a nasty kick to the back from Princess, who I guess was starting to feel he was missing out on the fun.
In a situation like this, it’s helpful to determine the purpose of the beating. Committing an act of violence against another human being without intending to kill them requires either moral or pragmatic restraint – Avareans have never shown any discomfort when it comes to killing Tristians (or even each other, really) so morality was unlikely to keep them from hacking us to bits. And since our captors’ axes hadn’t yet made an appearance, there had to be some other reason for the beating.
If, say, your attackers wanted to rob you but would rather avoid a messy family vendetta, or maybe greater punishment from the law if they were caught, they’d go for a good old pummelling, rather than a stabbing or hacking. But Avareans love blood-feuds, because they add to their personal prestige, and given that the men duffing me up at that precise moment probably were the law, I doubted they were much worried about being charged with any crime.
Goatface lined up his foot with my stomach and brought it back in preparation for another good kicking. I curled up, getting my forearms low, ready to take most of the hit and avoid any more damage to my gut, then rolled onto my back and let out a big moan, so as to not offend him. I caught a glimpse of Kest, who was in middle of a ‘cow-hop’ – that’s when you’re on your hands and knees and your opponent tries to kick up into your stomach. The trick there is to push off on all fours so you come up in the air a few inches, thus allowing your aggressor to feel extremely powerful while ensuring they make barely any contact at all.
Kest caught my eye and let out a yelp that was louder than necessary, which I correctly interpreted as a warning, and sure enough, Rosie had come around and was gleefully intent on driving his foot down upon my face again – I don’t know why, but some people are just obsessed from birth with the desire to stomp another man’s skull in. Once again I rolled out of the way just in time and heard his boot thud into the ground just behind my head. If that had connected with my face, I wouldn’t have been much use for interrogation.
Eliciting information is another common reason for a beating. We were Greatcoats, so the three of us had plenty of information the Avareans might want – but since all they were doing was laughing and saying ‘se-renn-dur’ over and over again, that wasn’t the likely reason.