CHAPTER 2
Isn't it so simple, to walk the road: one foot after another and so it goes...
Judges, sheriffs, executioners...Vagabonds! All the same ilk...men in cloaks and swords that think themselves the opposite strain from the lot because their cause is righteous and that it must be upheld! Aye I say, and I drink my last pitcher, that I will suffer no more, being found wanting by some invisible hand!
You are sleeping; your face smushed against some hard stone, soaked in liquid. Where are you now?
Ten thousand score of men! Aye they did sent them after me but they failed! None can match the 'Eastern Giant', the 'Nightcrawler', the 'Craven Toad'....aye that's what they call me...I will not give up fighting! Until the night takes all over I will not give up, nay I won't!
Some man? Contortionist by the looks of his face. Sour headed, talking to me in a nasally voice? 'Stinking Beetle' .... A bounty upon my head... Huh? No, you say, and the looks of him he agrees; he won't fight you? No...they want me alive...Alive...Living!
A shade...a ghost of a man...The same eagle-faced blonde eyed man, with the shining silver sword. He talks to you in curses and tongues...his face is like a skull in quicksilver pool...You're dead, man! All of them, dead! Rotting beneath the soil! Living? Why am I to live?
What have I done? To live but live clapped in chains? They want me clapped in chains...
You are face to face with a lousy, good for nothing Judge. He talks to you in tongues and curses....
A woman? 'Erynies'?
A five-fingered bone claws at the back of your head. A black dog follows your every thought; a snarling, mangy rotten thing. They bring you back and drown you so cruelly. But the water is viscous like shade and thick as fog.
A human, half obscured by darkness: a bulbuous shape that waves around as it talks. Rotten smell, scabby nose...water drenches you. Where am I?