What Remains of Heroes by David Benem Page B

his straw-filled cot seemed an indulgence of comfort. He hummed an old traveler’s tune, gesturing with his bottle at the song’s lulls and crescendos.
    For the first moment in days his head wasn’t haunted by ghosts of regret. Thoughts of his “old life”—as he’d come to think of it—were suddenly less painful, and the dark void in his heart felt momentarily filled.
    Lannick thought of laughter. His children’s laughter. He thought of snatching his oldest boy and flinging him upward, of the boy’s wide grin as he did so. He thought of the chuckles of his infant twins as he pranced clumsily about before them, arms waving as he pretended to be some great sea serpent threatening them with tickles. Of his beautiful wife watching it all with an admonishing smirk on her face, telling him he was being silly.
    Lannick’s hand drifted to the locket about his neck and he smiled. This feeling was fleeting, he knew. Eventually the thoughts of his family would turn to the harrowing image of finding them murdered and mutilated, and his chest would tremble with heartache.
    But for this moment, he heard laughter.

    Three-quarters through the bottle of wine Lannick’s stomach lurched and groaned loudly. He’d subsisted on prison gruel for two full weeks, and reckoned his innards were not ready for the sudden digestion of rich cheese, roasted meat and potent wine. Another groan and an uncomfortable swell in his buttocks sent him rushing to the foul-smelling bucket in the room’s darkest corner. Just as he perched himself astride the bucket, his door rattled with knocking.
    My wine! His eyes darted to the foot of his cot, where sat the bottle in clear view of the door. He cursed his stupidity, knowing the wine would be seized as contraband and his arrangement with Horus would come to an abrupt end.
    “Prisoner!” said a gruff voice. Lannick couldn’t see through the door’s portal from this angle, but knew the guard was not Horus.
    “I’m, um, indisposed here,” Lannick said loudly, hoping to pull the guard’s attention to this side of the cell. “Could you grant me just a few moments? I’m worried this is going to be something most foul.”
    “Indisposed?” asked the faceless voice. “What kind of smart talk is that? This had better be no kind of trickery.”
    “No trickery, sir. It means I’m taking a crap.”
    “Oh. Right. Indisposed, of course. I’ll leave you to yourself then, for a short bit anyways.”
    “Thank you,” Lannick said, and he meant it. He would have enough time to finish his precious wine. He sighed and finished his task on the bucket.
    There came a shuffle from outside his door. “And prisoner?” said the guard. “You’ll be wanting to clean yourself up something nice. You have a visitor.”
    Fane . Alas, all good things must meet their end .

    The guard shackled Lannick’s hands and led him from his cell. Lannick’s eyes were wide as he walked, as much with curiosity as fear. It was his first real chance to take full account of his confinement. When he was thrown in his cell two weeks prior, his eyes had been swollen and crusted with blood so he hadn’t seen much of anything then.
    He realized he hadn’t missed much, as the brig had seemed a better place from the inside his cell than from without. Dark passageways, sputtering torches, and every manner of rank odor and agonized cry. It was frightening and disheartening, a place of torment and terror. A pained howl sounded from a cell beside him, a shriek that hardly seemed human. Lannick shivered and reckoned that if breaking the spirit was the place’s purpose, it was most certainly suited to accomplish it.
    The guards, too, lent a burden to the place. They were soldiers suffering from disabilities, lamed by combat or otherwise, doubtless deemed liabilities on the battlefield. The guard before him dragged his left foot as he walked, and had but two fingers on his right hand. The other guards they passed wore cruel stares, seeming