text: The air creaked and reeked of sweat and death. Fifteen of them where chained up against the inside wall of the barge, hands and feet bound, with collars holding their necks for good measure. Four of them were already dead, a few more not far behind. The strongest kept their silence and looked straight ahead, trying not to breathe too deeply. Jimenez was the third man along from the only door to the stinking, foetid room they were being kept in. Had he been able to move his arms, he could have touched the opposite wall with only a mild stretch. He *was* able to move his feet slightly, back and forth. It helped keep the pain alive, reminded him that his feet were still there. They’d chopped one of the men off at the knees a few days ago for crying; he was quiet soon after, bled out on the floor. His rotting feet, along with this blood and shit and tears were part of the mixed stench permeating the room. The barge hadn’t stopped for the sixteen, maybe seventeen days they’d been aboard. There were no windows, but a light permanently filtered through cracks in the door frame. It didn’t grow stronger or fade, so it wasn’t the sun. Jimenez had tried to keep track of time by listening for changes of the watch on deck. Sometimes it was muffled, weather depending. Sometimes he had heard it clear. Other times, he was sure he’d missed it, asleep or unconscious. He couldn’t remember why he’d what he’d did. He wasn’t sure if he was a murderer or not. Might have been self-defence. Might have been straight up evil. He didn't know anymore. He only knew he had to be quiet and keep looking straight ahead. Thirty days in the dark without a word, and he’d be free. Fourteen days to go. Maybe thirteen. Footsteps, something thumping along the corridor and then keys jangled outside the door. Time for water, and torture. The guards weren’t allowed to touch the prisoners as long as the prisoners kept silent, but there was nothing in the law to say the guards had to be silent themselves. “YOU FUCKING SCUM! WAKE UP! WAKE UP, YOU SCUM!” The screams of the Water Carrier were accompanied by his fist, banging on the outside of the door frame. The creaking of the barge was drowned out briefly, but the smell remained. Keys jangled again, then dull light invaded the room, quickly followed by more enthusiastic screaming. “You murderous fuckpigs! You evil wastes of skin! You wake up! You wake up! You wake up and you talk to me! You tell me your names and apologise for your fucking crimes and I will give you water! Water is freedom! Water is life! Silence is death for you bastards, so you tell me your fucking names!” The Water Carrier slithered into the room, doing his honest best not to touch any of the prisoners. He held the end of a hose in one calloused hand, the coils of it in his other. His lackey remained in the corridor, poised over the water barrel the hose was connected to, ready to pump. Jimenez opened his mouth, stayed silent. The Water Carrier was wrong; silence was life. He came into the room twice a day with the hose and the water. The prisoners were allowed to drink their fill each time, although they had had no food since the night before they were chained to the wall, one after the other. They would have no food unless they disembarked alive at the end of the journey. Thirteen, maybe fourteen days. The Water Carrier walked to the end of thin room, loosing the hose as he went and carrying on his demands to be spoken to. The last man in the row, the first to walk in, was still alive. He had his head up, mouth open, eyes shut. The Water Carrier raised the hose, nodded to his lackey, and water flowed into the prisoner’s mouth. The man swallowed, spat some up, while the Water Carrier continued to speak to him, softly. The prisoner moved his head around as best he could to wash some of the accumulated sweat and blood and grime off. Kept his eyes closed, then, when he had had enough, closed his mouth. The Water Carrier lowered the hose and turned back the way he came. Smiled. “Come on you fucking bastards! Speak! Speak! Hold your piece and I will hold the water! You will get nothing from me! SCUM!” The last word was spat into the face of the first dead man, number two in the row. The ship had barely made it out of port before he’d broken, yelled “I want out, this was a mistake, I want out!” It was always rumoured that the guards laid money down to be the First Executioner. That each one chose a prisoner, threw some gold into a pot, and whichever one picked the first prisoner to break pocketed the lot. Oh, and had the right to execute that prisoner in whichever way they saw fit. Whichever way it worked, a long dark streak of piss in a guard uniform had ghosted into the room and used a spoon to pry out the yelling prisoner’s eyes. He’d poured something, not much of something, but *something*, into the open sockets and set a light to them, a fucking stupid thing to do on a boat, river barge or not - it was a deep river and an old boat. Whatever the guard had used, the prisoner’s head lit up. His throat broke on the first scream, and his rasping cries continued for another few minutes, until the guard decided he’d had enough fun and ended it with a knife across the throat. The other fourteen of them had looked ahead, or kept their eyes shut. They didn’t say a word. A few of them pissed themselves from fear. Jimenez shat his last meal down his legs and onto the floor, clamped his teeth down on his lips and a whimper. Short, sharp breaths erupted from the remaining men as they struggled to control themselves. Breathing was fine, no matter how loudly; but they were prisoners and had no voice, symbolically. If they challenged that symbolism, spoke or gasped or cried out or mumbled or sang or made any noise from their throat, then they died. And justice prevailed. The Water Carrier reached the body of a man he’d been able to kill himself. Two days into the voyage, the prisoner had calmly said, as the Water Carrier raised the hose to his mouth, “My name is Alberto and I killed my three sons and their mother and I think I should die now.” The Water Carrier had dropped the hose, taken a leather glove studded with metal spikes and hooks from his robes, put it on, and then he had punched Alberto’s head against the wall of the barge until it broke, and then just punched harder. When the hose had come to Jimenez it still tasted of blood from Alberto. He’d drank his fill, and felt better for it. The Water Carrier looked almost fondly at Alberto’s corpse, a smile on his face like a child gazing in awe at a particularly impressive shit. “This man! This man is free! This man told me his name, and now he is free! You, bastards! You bastards are not free and if you do not tell me your name, I will not give you water! Speak your crimes to me! The hose came up, and water spilled down the face of the man to Jimenez’ left. Jimenez held his pose, mouth open, eyes watching the wall ahead. He could see the lackey, from the corner of his eye, pumping up and down at the barrel. Despite the Water Carrier’s words, they were duty and oath bound to ensure the prisoners were watered. Jimenez felt water on his face, in his mouth. He gulped some of it down, tried to spray some out and up, over his cheeks and chin, shaking his head and trying to spit some down his chest towards his aching feet. The Water Carrier leaned in close, never touching, but still speaking. “You evil fucking pig, I know what you did, I know what you *all* did and you’re all going to burn, you’re all going to burn slowly. There’s no freedom for you. Keep your fucking silence, the first thing I’ll do when you get off this boat is tie you to a fucking tree and ram a fire-heated sword blade into your fucking arsehole. Think that’ll hurt? Huh, think that’ll hurt? Best bit is, if I keep the sword there, the heat will cauterise your wound, you won’t bleed out for days. For fucking *days*. You keep your silence. They’ll be warming the coals now, you evil scum fuck.” Jimenez closed his mouth. The Water Carrier moved on. Jimenez leant his head back on the wall, licked his lips. He looked straight ahead, at the wall opposite. A man’s image hung there. The man he had killed. He looked the same as he had when Jimenez had last saw him: eyes bruised, jaw broken. A knife in his stomach. His eyes were open, hard and cold, staring at Jimenez, full of hate and anger. Jimenez knew that only he could see the dead man, just like he knew that the other men were seeing different images, of the people they’d killed. Some would be seeing their families, like Alberto had. Some would be seeing strangers, like he was. This was their punishment, their justice, their guilt trip. Thirty days in the dark to look at the people they’d murdered. To look them in the eyes and see what they’d done. To reflect, to repent. Or to break. The survivors, the hardest of them, would be freed at the end of the journey. They’d be fed and allowed to rest and then there’d be a place for them in the King’s Guard. Maybe they’d be above decks, one day, as another batch of murderers came down the river for a quiet sail. Fourteen days to go. Maybe thirteen.