Helpless: Day 10

Word Count: 60,200

Summary of Events:

"The others" turned out to be nine men locked in a cell who were all accused of thievery. Some had done the act out of desperation to keep their family alive, others had done something more along the lines of Mikolaj, which had been embellished by their accusers. One man, who wore a dark green outfit that was visibly nicer than everyone else's clothes was the only man who'd taken what didn't belong to him without any desperation involved, and also rather annoyed everyone by cursing the guards and any other person outside the cell he could see, which led to the guards beating him severely. With the man unconscious from his beating, Mikolaj took the opportunity to look out the window, where he watched knights drilling until one of them missed his target while throwing his spear, causing it to soar into the cell through the window. The man in the green suit regained consciousness and took hold of the spear, threatening a guard with it before Mikolaj and his cellmates leapt into action to get control of the spear, which suddenly came free into Mikolaj's hold . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

Stumbling backwards, Mikolaj managed to keep his feet and feed the spear shaft behind him hand-over-hand until he could see the head, at which point he turned the spear upright so the head was pointing at the ceiling.

“Hey!” the man in green shouted.

A clamorous struggle of arms and legs ensued that looked to mostly be Mikolaj’s cellmates striving to keep the man in green away from the spear.

Taking advantage, Mikolaj turned around and went to the window, where he saw the targets had been reset so that he could see the rings painted onto their faces — not that he was sure why they’d been reset — and he took aim at one before throwing the spear with all his might.

“No!” the man in green shouted.

Mikolaj watched the spear sail through the air in a soft arc before making that solid contact with the target which Mikolaj had to admit felt satisfying — even if he had no idea why — especially when the projectile launched hit the centre mark, as the spear had.

“How many did you kill?” the man in green demanded, still struggling against the hold of several cellmates.

“None,” Mikolaj replied. “I will not be responsible for the shedding of my fellow man’s blood unless it is necessary to prevent the shedding of mine own, or of that which courses through those whom I love.”

“How dare you return a weapon of destruction to those bloodthirsty murderers!” the man cried.

“It belonged to them,” Mikolaj replied.

“They should not have any such weapons!” the man roared.

“Better them than you!” Mikolaj retorted.

“What?” the man demanded. “Are you a heathen? Do you delight in the dishonour of Bóg?”

“No,” Mikolaj replied.

“Then how could you dare give back to those heathens what they never should have had at the first?” the man demanded.

“I do not believe they are heathens any more than I am,” Mikolaj replied. “You are the heathen.”

Enraged, the man strove against the other men who were still restraining him, bellowing oaths and curses at Mikolaj, who flinched and took a step back, tears of hurt surging to his eyes more swiftly than he’d expected.

A swell of anger at his disposition to cry at the profane insults being hurled at him, and at the insults themselves, rose in Mikolaj suddenly and he surged at the man, seizing his shoulder in one hand and using the other to throw three powerful blows — or, as powerful as his undernourished frame could muster — at the face of the man in green.

Even if the blows were feeble — as they felt feeble even to Mikolaj — the fact that the man was so close to the bars of the door caused them to have a satisfactory effect, as far as Mikolaj was concerned, as the man’s head collided with the solid iron of the door’s bars, which caused him to collapse unconscious into the grasp of the men restraining him.