The Cage

The Cage

They'd gotten him while he slept, of course. He was too big, and his weapon was too fearsome, for him to have been taken any other way. The warrior awoke to the gentle rocking of his prison. He remembered... what? Drinking in the Hog's Breath tavern, yes. A smiling woman in a leather bra, keeping his flagon full. Drugged? Betrayed by the treacherous female?

Looking around, he saw that he was captive in a moving caravan. All around him were other, similar cages, each of the same thick bamboo lashed together in an open latticework, each pulled by a dusty yoked ox. Some contained animals; others, people like him: men, women and children, from near and far places. The caravan guards were slight, brown and silent as they rode among the prisoners on their fine teal donkeys.

The warrior had been stripped of everything save his loincloth; his captors had left him with that much dignity, at least. The bars of the cage were solid, the leather lashings fastened with some magick he could not comprehend. Muscles that had bent iron bars and shattered stone flexed and bulged, but the warrior could not budge the enchanted wood nor the solid leather. Two guards, a man and a woman, rode nearby and watched him dispassionately. The monkey in the neighboring cage screeched simian laughter.

There was, however, one thing that his captors had not realized. They were not the only ones with magick. The warrior's weapon had been presented to him by the ruler of a grateful kingdom. The king had offered him a choice: the hand of his beautiful daughter in marriage, or the specially enchanted blade reputed to have been forged in the heart of the Sun - six feet of cold sharp steel laced with powerful spells. It seemed that only the court wizard, an ugly old woman with warts, hadn't been surprised when he picked the latter.

The blade had a name, but the warrior didn't have much of a memory and had managed to forget it in the years and leagues between him and the kingdom, whose name he'd also forgotten. But what he did remember was that the sword, once bound to him, could only be removed permanently from him by his death (unlikely while the sword was in existence), the sword's destruction (supposedly impossible), or his gift of the weapon to another (even less likely). He concentrated, and the blade was in his hand, glowing blue in the checkered light.

Oh, how the warrior hacked at the bars of his hated cage! Oh, the shrieking the monkey put up, jumping up and down in his (or was it her?) cage, urging the warrior on! Oh, the crowd that gathered, the crowd of mounted guards, pointing and laughing as, at last, the sweat-soaked warrior collapsed from exhaustion, sword still in hand, blue glow fading as he fainted from the heat! Oh, the complete lack of any mark whatsoever on the bars of the enchanted prison-on-wheels!

One of the guards turned to her companion, an especially short man with a crooked nose, and remarked, "It is just as I told you, Krag.

"The pen is mightier than the sword."


Author's Note: "The Cage"