[dplax]

*Rattle.*

The sudden sound causes the fearsome to fall back a pace or two, but soon enough they and their sticks come back and rattling the loose bar in its socket will no longer cause them to shy away from the caged animal.

They are only brave because they are outside and he is inside. Because they have sticks and he has only half-torn rags to cover his bruised body. Because there are two dozen of them and he is alone.

Crowds were always easy to control. Cow the strongest, the most vocal and the rest would shy away. The most vocal here are the women, bravely egging on their husbands from a dozen paces back. "Hit him!" one shouts, "In the privates!" another adds.

He moans and groans only because if he did not the men would just poke harder with their sharp sticks. One of these days, he would shove a stick up someone's...

He had tried that a week back, when they had camped in the middle of nowhere. He had snatched a stick from a boy of about ten and had smacked him hard in the ribs with it. It had been the only time that the guards had intervened in the mobs' favorite pastime.

He has so many plans for when he escaped from this cage. None of them goes farther than slaughtering all the guards and his pitiful torturers, but they are the only thoughts that filled his heart with joy these days. Imagining the stupid peasants and the cruel guards frozen in their own blood, expressions of horror still frozen on their faces. It is beautiful. He just needs to get out of the cage. He would do the rest with his bare hands if he needs to, but not even his bare hands can release him from his prison, however much he rattled at the only loose bar.

The constant poking does not bother him. It would die down when the women were hungry and dragged their sons off, the men soon stopping without their brave wives urging them on. And besides, it almost feels good in comparison to what awaits him at the end of the journey. He had been given a taste of it before leaving the prison that had served as his home for the last three years; a good long torture session, at the end of which he had been assured that he was being taken to much better equipped facilities.

"The fat bastard has two sixes," he shouts over the heads of the departing crowd after he spies the guard who had his back to him carefully hiding his dice from the other players. That sentence makes the fat guard accidentally step into the bowl of food that had been prepared for the prisoner. A pity, but he would have to stay without his food for the night. It had totally been worth it though.

*Rattle. Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.*

He will keep at it for the whole night if no one stops him.

*Rattle. Rattle. Rattle. Rattle.*

The bar was getting looser everyday, but as he shakes it with all his force it is not freedom he is thinking about, but about the sweet ringing monotone sound that it makes. The blunt end of the patrolling guard's spear into his stomach stops the rattling and the prisoner curls up on the floor of the cage.

He knows that he wouldn't sleep for more than fifteen minutes before a studded boot or the flat of a sword woke him. He is used to falling asleep in just a few seconds, giving himself to dreams of blood, murder and madness.