Swift

I am never without my hatred for these men but today it seems to be overwhelming my better judgment. I mean, I already know what will happen here, I’ve been with them long enough by now to know that I am only going to end up beaten, maimed, and or humiliated. There are four of them to contend with: Culpas is a huge man, middle-aged, his neck is as thick as my thigh. His assaults tend to be physical partly because he’s the one holding my chains all of the time and partly because he’s not very smart. Mateo is closer to my age but still my senior by more than ten years. He and I have gotten along the worst since my arrival. Even after nine years together I don’t turn my back on him if I can help it. Mateo is too close with Pelt for me to ever dismiss the latter as a threat though Pelt is not so clever. The pair were together prior to their recruitment and they have a ruthless style which involves one of them acting as though he will help the intended target escape before the other slaughters the misguided fool. The leader, the one who brought us all together and easily the man I hate down to the marrow of my bones, is Tain. He has the stature of a man who was once a physical specimen, now past his prime. I think that’s why he started this crew in the first place. He couldn’t bear the idea of being an old man, a man no one feared, of being replaced by some new assassin, so he compiled the best ones he could and put himself in charge of them all.

“Do you even have an excuse?” Tain roars at me. He paces back and forth in front of where I remain shackled, as always, to Culpas. I can hear Mateo snickering off to my left. He knows as well as I do that I’ve been caught doing it again. I keep my face emotionless. It’s not hard for me anymore. I don’t even remember what it’s like to feel anything besides the churning, bile-sour hatred.

“No, I have nothing.” I really mean what I say. There is no use lying to them. Tain pauses squared up with me. I can’t see but I hear my chains rattle in Culpas’ hands before my legs are unceremoniously pulled out from under me. Facedown in the sand, Tain sighs over me.

“You know, Swift, I thought by now we would have gotten beyond all this nonsense,” he laments sarcastically. “I just keep hoping you’ll straighten out at some point, but you just seem so determined to make me punish you. I’m starting to run out of ideas.” I can feel the hot sand falling gradually from my cheek. “You ran away, so we had to start chaining you up. You tried to run away again, using those chains as weapons, so we had to drag you back and practically blind you. We even put that brand on your neck for Pete’s sake. Now I come to find out that you are warning people about us? Wounding soldiers and telling them to play dead until we leave?” He tsks his tongue at me several times and resumes his pacing. After a few moments of silence I hear him slap his arms to his sides in feigned exasperation.

It is a common theme to have Tain put on a big show of my betrayals to the group. Our mutual dislike towards one another ensures it continues to be entertaining no matter how many times it happens. But Tain is about to introduce a new element to this that everyone is excited about except me.

“I really do find myself out of ideas on how to contain your…. Youthful exuberance and free-spirit, Swift. Mateo, Culpas, Pelt, do any of you have suggestions as to how we might finally convince Swift that he belongs with us?”

I try to deny the terror immediately gripping me at the thought of the three of them deciding my fate but there is no hiding it and it must show on my face. At the very least, Tain always kept in mind that I had to be able to perform and that all of my punishments had to be things I could work through. The rest of them? They were itching to have me killed off. Pelt was the first to chime in.

“He’s just as good with his left hand as his right, why don’t we just take one. I don’t see why he needs both anyway.” He pauses to put a bit more thought into it, then continues with relish. “We could just pull his fingers off, one by one.”

I push up onto my knees as I involuntarily clench my fingers into my palms. Culpas laughs behind me.

“I think we should burn his face off. He’s already mostly blind, he doesn’t need his nose for anything, and it won’t interrupt his work. He doesn’t think he’s a monster like the rest of us- make him look the part and maybe he’ll get the picture!” Another round of laughter, but I notice that Mateo’s voice is ominously missing. The prospects already presented are bad enough but I have a special pit of fear in my gut reserved for what Mateo might suggest. As it turns out, I’m right to.

Mateo saunters up to me with a walk- I have learned- means he has a particularly vicious idea. He runs his fingers across my blindfold but I don’t move out of his reach. There is no point by now.

“We’re all sick of hearing that stupid heavy accent of his. He doesn’t seem to speak up to us yet he’ll tell complete strangers- who are trying to kill us- how to get away. I don’t think he’s using his words wisely. I say we take them away.”

I can feel my heart pounding in my ears and I cannot displace the icy knot which has anchored my stomach somewhere past my knees. They can’t be serious. I’m the one who sets up so many deals, I have to negotiate prices. I find myself in the even more sickening position of relying on Tain to take this fate away from me.

“Cut out his tongue, Mateo? Is that what you’re getting at?” I have to assume Mateo nods because I can hear a low rumble of agreement ripple through the others. Despite my best efforts I have a visceral reaction to the news. I can’t stop shaking and I end up shaking so badly that my teeth start to rattle. All at once I can’t catch my breath. As if my life up until this point hasn’t been some kind of horrible nightmare, for some reason I can’t fathom this happening to me. Even as I hear Mateo carefully selecting one of his sinister throwing knives, I am struck by a memory from a time when I knew nothing about these men or their hellish world.

I can see my older brother, Talon, meticulously whittling at a block of wood. Talon had a sturdier build than I ever would, though other than that we were similar. We both sported black hair and though his eyes were brown where mine had been gray, we were olive skinned. Talon was a calming force in our small home. He loved to whittle small statues from the knotted, twisted bits of wood that the carpenter deemed worthless. Talon gathered the discarded scraps and made toys for me and our younger brother, as well as trinkets for our mother. I can hear his steady strokes against the gnarled grain. I could never figure out how he got it to cooperate with his hands when all I ever got from whittling were splinters.

I am snatched back to the reality of what is about to happen to me when I feel Mateo grab my face in his hand. I don’t even think about it, I just react. In an instant I’ve head butted Mateo squarely in the nose and I hear a snap which I am sure was not my skull. I know my next priority is Culpas because as long as he has my chains he can swing me wherever he wants to. I remind all of them why they gave me the name Swift as I sweep Culpas’ legs out from under him. But my last bid at escape is short-lived. Culpas does not lose his grip as I had hoped. He has learned from my previous attacks that he will always be a major concern and by the time he hits the sand, he has wrapped my chains around his massive forearm enough times that I have barely any leash left at all- and I still don’t have the use of my hands. As I move to engage Culpas again, Pelt and Tain are upon me.

“No! No! Let go of me! Let me go! I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!” I know the words are coming from me but I haven’t heard myself speak in anything above a low growl in so long I hardly recognize my own voice. It doesn’t sound like me and I can’t help noticing how much it sounds like the terrified voices of the people I’ve murdered. I find myself thrashing like a desperate, wild animal, fighting like I haven’t fought since I was just a boy. And I would have won if we’d all just been standing around, if I hadn’t been cuffed and shackled, they wouldn’t have stood a chance. Which I guess explains all the precautions. Tain struggles to hold me in a bear hug.