closed | nessum prison blues

[cozen]

WHO: Bastien, Byerly, Talin, Tav, Teren, and Vlast
WHAT: Prison break
WHEN: Mid-Harvestmere (October) 9:50
WHERE: Southern Tevinter. Not actually Nessum–the post title is a joke—but somewhere in the wilderness not too far from there.
NOTES: OOC post. General violence cw.

The trap is not immediately apparent. They're met by a man dressed as their contact, Georgios, was meant to be dressed. Maybe the clothes are a little too big on him—but the People of the Silent Plains have bigger things to worry about than careful tailoring. Maybe his manner is a little wary and skittish, but he's a freedom fighter on the outskirts of a war zone meeting a group of strangers, some of them wholly alien, to escort to the People's hiding place.

And maybe the plan was meant to go better than this. Maybe the Vints waiting at the end of the road with their grenades and telekinetic prison spells planned to mount a more organized attack, neat and swift, once everyone had been lured into long-parched desert ravine ahead.

But something gives it away first. "Georgios" grows a little too anxious on the approach; the wind catching his jacket and lifting it enough to show a flash of a bloodstain on the back of his shirt that's too dark and too maroon not to be from earlier this same day. A glimpse, if nothing else, of one of the people lying in wait ahead of them, something in their posture that twigs as too tense, not quite right for a lookout protecting a hide-out and only seeing an expected group of visitors on the approach. Regardless of what tips various members of the group off, it's enough forewarning for them refuse to be led quietly into the corral that's been set up for them.

Half a chase, half a fight. The grenades and dirty magic tricks still come out. So do more drastic measures: arrows, fire, the blunt sides of heavy swords. Threats to cut the throats of whomever's been caught first if whomever's still fighting doesn't lay down their weapon. One way or another, in the end, everyone's wrangled into a wagon, hands bound and heads covered with sacks to obscure their view of where they're being taken. No gags, though. There's no one out here to hear them.

Comments

[doneisdone]

It's common for Teren to look angry-- it might even be her default expression-- but there's something about being stripped down in this fashion: weapons gone, armor gone, bags, all the many, many pointy tricks she had up her sleeve being removed that has her all but radiating flame from where she sulks against the makeshift prison wall. Reduced to naught but a skinny old woman with a dark braid unwound from its bun and hanging over her shoulder, her homicidal gaze burns holes into whomever happens to be standing (or sleeping) watch.

She hasn't said a word since they arrived; her teeth are gritting too tightly, for one thing. For another, it would be too easy to let on that she thinks they should've kept fighting, should've let a throat be cut for the greater victory. The lot of them deserved to die for how easily they were overcome, how stupidly that transpired.
But dying like this? That's unacceptable. That's insulting.

[cozen]

Bastien hardly ever looks angry, and certainly not now. He looks defeated. When spoken to by the guards he tries to muster up good-humored, cooperative manners without meeting their eyes. Hours after they've been deposited in their cells, there's still blood crusted in his mustache and the crevices around his nose, and he's cradling the useless arm attached to his dislocated shoulder.

Then the guard on duty starts snoring, head tilted back against the wall behind her stool. Bastien watches her for a few seconds, searching for signs of faking, before lifting his arm and maneuvering it to return ball to socket as swiftly as if he'd practiced it in a mirror a dozen times before getting captured. He doesn't wince. And without moving from where he's seated he starts creeping his hand along the stones that make up the wall. Feeling the mortar for gaps, tapping a fingernail to test for hollow cavities he only has a hope of hearing with his good ear pressed against the wall. That means turning his head, which in turn means looking at Teren.

The smile he aims at her is much smaller and much sharper than the one he's dredged up to perform miserable compliance for the guards.

"That can't be good for your health," he murmurs—the rage. Seems stressful. Never mind if he's as tightly wound as anyone (or more so) underneath the act; hypocrisy is his right as an Orlesian.

[doneisdone]

"What is," Teren snaps back, but is distracted by Bastien's maneuver, her eyes narrowing as they shift from him to the guard. She's sore, bruised, in more pain than she lets on, but she takes this opportunity to creep over to the door of the cell and reach through, light fingers straining for the guard's belt. She can't even see it that well, is hoping to feel for keys or a pin or anything that can be used, only to be interrupted by the door from the hallway swinging open.

Viator steps through, catches sight of her before Teren snakes her hand back in-- "a volunteer?" he cheerfully remarks, the sound of his voice enough to rouse the guard, who stands to attention.
Teren slinks backward, bristling like a feral cat, preparing to fight as they approach the cell.

[cozen]

When the door opens, Bastien stops testing the wall behind him for loose bricks, his arms settling down into their previous defeated slump. The recently-dislocated shoulder looks useless again, handled gingerly as he squirms his way into standing with only his legs and his other arm.

"Come on," he says, without much force behind it. He's not being anyone forceful for them. He's being someone who believes they've been beaten, friendliness and gallantry half-crushed beneath the weight of that knowledge. "She's an old woman. Don't..."

[doneisdone]

A click of the tongue as Viator unlocks the cage, enters with a chiding look to Bastien.
"Sorry, grandmama," he offers, and actually seems to mean it a little bit as he reaches for the old woman's wrist: and he grips it successfully, only to be yanked toward her as Teren's other hand snakes out to punch him sharp-knuckled in the throat.

The guard is certainly awake now, racing in to tackle her down so Viator can make his stumbling, wheezing retreat.

[bouchonne]

Viator, it should be noted, stumbles back rather unwarily. He's close to the bars of Byerly's cell. It doesn't seem like the most dangerous mistake in the world, all things considered - after all, Byerly has seemed quite useless so far. And By takes advantage of that, thrusting his arm out through the gap in the bars and grabbing for Viator's ankles.

Viator trips, arms windmilling. He falls hard on his back, balding head smacking painfully into the stone behind him.

[cozen]

One, two seconds of sudden chaos, and through them Bastien's running an abstract, instinctive calculation: is this the moment? Are the odds of success here worth ruining the effort he's put so far into framing himself as someone none of them need to keep their guard up for? Is providing back-up for Teren's snarling lash-out worth cutting off any hope of surprising them later—maybe after he's finished methodologically wiggling all the bricks and has, say, someone's hidden fork? Or at least a brick—

Byerly's interference changes the math. Some of it. The odds of success, maybe. The apportionment of blame for the attempt, if it fails, and who might be punished for it, almost certainly.

Bastien moves without another instant of hesitation. Still some hedging; he's less coordinated than he could be, stumbling on his push away from the wall, making his collision with the guard who's launching toward Teren look more like a dumb rush of inexperienced heroics that happens to get lucky and crash them both into the bars.

[doneisdone]

All moments are The Moment if you have fun and believe in yourself, both of which Teren might do a little too much, but it's served her so far. Kind of.

Bastien takes the brunt of the guard's weight, allowing her to sidestep the attack with a glance to her cellmate that might, if one squints, be interpreted as grateful; Teren is quick and good with blades, but physically robust she is not. Perhaps she owes him one, and Byerly besides.

She doesn't linger on it, taking the granted opportunity to nick the guard's sword out of its scabbard from behind and slip it around in front of his throat, with a fistful of hair as she wrenches his head back. The blade presses against his jugular, but doesn't cut deeply, not yet.

She meets Bastien's eyes again, prompting. You're the talker. Tell him what to do.

[cozen]

Bastien looks back. He experiences a fraction of a second of rebelliousness—why is she looking at him like there's a plan? There is no plan. She might be ruining the fragments of a plan he'd been trying to prepare for by lying low and biding time, in fact, so—

"How many people are in this fortress?" he asks the guard, eyes only leaving Teren's face to land on his halfway through the question.

The guard sneers, "Seventy hundred," seemingly unfazed by the blade at his throat. But he's nineteen or twenty, at most. Natural for him to think he couldn't possibly die.

Bastien's gaze at him is flat an unimpressed; his focus is actually elsewhere in his field of vision now, where Viator is climbing back to his feet and kicking spitefully at the bars to Byerly's cell—or his hands, if that's still an option.

[doneisdone]

The blade presses deeper, enough to draw blood, and Teren shoots a glance over her shoulder at the sounds of Viator stirring. Nothing she can do about him, at the moment, not in this position.

"Answer him," she snarls in Mr Seventy Hundred's ear, giving a little tug on his hair.

[bouchonne]

Things are going a little less well over with Viator. Byerly had tried to make a grab for the dagger on Viator’s belt, but his arm had been just too short. That meant that he wasn’t quite able to snatch back his hand quickly enough, his bony elbow hitting the bars at the wrong angle. This means that Viator has managed to plant a heel on his wrist and is now grinding down quite cruelly.

By does his best to avoid crying out - a bit to avoid distracting the potential escapees from their current task, a bit to just not give the bastard the satisfaction. Consequently, all he gives is a muffled groan.

Viator, meanwhile, is shouting out the names of the nearest guards. The wound did not, unfortunately, scramble his brains enough to stop him from calling for help.

[cozen]

Even muffled–doubly so, with his hearing—the groan reverberates in Bastien's chest, and keeping his eyes steady on the young guardsman's face grows that much more difficult. But he does, jaw set and gaze steely long enough for the boy to decide they mean business.

"Twenty," he says. "Twenty four. I don't know."

It's a comforting, surmountable number. Or it would be, at another moment. Right now Viator's calls are summoning three pairs of heavy boots, their own calls in the corridor sure to bring more behind them.

So Bastien doesn't look pleased. He looks beaten, as he's been trying to look since the hood came off of his head, and gives his head a little shake, as if twenty-four is too many for him to dream of them escaping, before looking at Teren. "Let him go," he says.

They can take twenty-four men. But they can't take them right now, all at once, and if she kills the boy there's no telling what the retribution for it will be.

[doneisdone]

Teren does her own mental calculus, then steps back with a sneer: twenty-four isn't a terrible number, especially if they're all like this, but one or two at a time. In the dark. Not now, not all here, not without her arsenal of blades.
She just has the one now, the young guard's shortsword, heavy and ungainly to her arm-- she grips it anyway, allowing him to turn as she stares him down, grants him his life.

He stares back at her uneasily, like he isn't sure whether or not to ask her for it. Teren doesn't help.