Helpless: Day 9

Word Count: 54,003

Summary of Events:

In pain from his beating, Mikolaj didn't want to get up from his bed, so he stared at the ceiling overhead, where he noticed that different textures combined to look like the face of a fox, which reminded him of a tale his father had told him in his boyhood; this inspired him to fight the pain, that he might be presentable whenever his audience with the Wódz Książę happened, as well as inspiring him to think of how he might be able to talk his way to freedom during that audience. To his surprise, that audience actually came far sooner than he'd expected it would, and he found himself having to try and correct the falsehoods not only that the knights had told the Wojewoda, but that the Wojewoda had added to the tale when telling it to the Wódz Książę and his closest aide, who did the bulk of the talking . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“I did not destroy the property of His Excellency, nor did I bait and trap his animal,” Mikolaj replied. “I did kill it, for it could not have been rescued alive, not even if a cohort of His Excellency or His Grace’s men were to have found him, without having claimed the more valuable lives of men.”

“How can you be so sure?” the man challenged.

“The dais whereupon you stand is no less than twice the size of the abandoned cellar wherein the great bull had fallen on his own, as best I can surmise,” Mikolaj replied. “He could barely turn around in it, and was severely agitated. Any man who would have dared enter the cellar would have been crushed, and even if he would’ve been able to be raised, he could well have still gored or trampled men trying to help him.”

“As best you can surmise?” the man asked. “What mean you by such a statement?”

“I have never known cattle to become entrapped in pits,” Mikolaj replied. “They’ve always seemed at least intelligent enough to avoid such things by their own senses in both daylight and darkness.”

“Yet you deny having baited the animal or driven it into the pit?” the man asked.

“I do,” Mikolaj replied.

“Considering you are the leader of a band of immature insurrectionists who have been accosting the Wojewoda of Małolasnaród’s herdsmen and terrorising his cattle, there is no reason why you should not take it upon yourself to steal one of his animals and render its carcass into meats for your family,” the man said.

“There is no such group in Swięty Daneków,” Mikolaj replied.

“That he should live in a village named after one of the Swięty is appalling, my lord,” Wojewoda Aureliusz said. “He is a dishonour to its namesake.”

“Swięty such as Danek himself know the truth, my lord,” Mikolaj said.

“Very truly they do,” the man said.

Mikolaj expected him to say something further, but silence fell over the room and Mikolaj looked toward the cold, rather expressionless face of Wódz Książę Sobiesław, which hadn’t moved or changed, seeming as if a statue, except that his eyes blinked on occasion.

A swell of desperation within Mikolaj urged him to beg for mercy, even if the knights still gripping his arms as if they meant on the Wódz Książę’s command to tear them from his body wouldn’t let him fall to his knees and beg appropriately.

Before he could even decide what he wanted to say, however, he noticed a subtle movement of the Wódz Książę’s mouth that made him hesitate.

“Put him with the others,” Wódz Książę Sobiesław said, his voice strong, clear, and authoritative; a fitting voice for a man of his standing.

With that simple order, the knights turned around and made for the exit of the grand hall. Outside of the hall Mikolaj let his shoulders sag and his chin drop. His efforts to gain the Wódz Książę’s favour and mercy had failed, and now he had no idea where he was going to end up, outside of ‘with the others’, whoever it was that they might happen to be.

Pronunciation:

Sobiesław: sawbeeehswahv