Free Dark Resurrection by James Axler

attached to one end.
    While the Matachìn pinioned his arms and two red sashes aimed double barrels at his chest, the poles were extended, front and rear, and the hoops slipped over his head and down past his chin. The red sashes then pulled on straps at the ends of the poles, drawing the steel bands so tight around his throat that he could hardly breathe.
    When the Matachìn released his arms, the men holding the poles were in total control of him. The rods were so long, he couldn’t reach them with fists or feet. The leverage they offered made it easy for his captors to drive him to his knees, if they wished. And if that didn’t tame him, they could tighten the nooses even more and choke him into unconsciousness.
    With a pole-bearing red sash in front and one behind, Ryan was simultaneously pushed and pulled forward, through a floor-to-ceiling iron gate. He entered a labyrinth of stone, and stifling heat and humidity. The walls and floors were warped and worn. There were standing puddles of unidentifiable fluid everywhere.
    To his left were rows of passages, presumably the cellblocks, stretching off into the dark. From that direction he heard moaning.
    When they passed by one of the cramped cells, Ryan saw it had no bed. It had no water. No toilet. No window to let in air or natural light. It reeked of urine and rotting flesh. A human form lay huddled and hidden under a pile of rags on the damp stone floor. There were rats inside the cell. They were merrily burrowing under the rags, feeding on the dead or the nearly dead prisoner. When Ryan looked farther down the passage, in the faint light he saw rats scurrying in bands of a dozen or more, darting back and forth across the corridor, between the cells.
    At that moment he knew that few if any had ever returned from this awful place.
    It wasn’t just a prison.
    It was a tomb.
    They continued on until they reached the very heart of the darkness, the place that was the hottest, the rankest, the most oppressive, the core of the man-made hellhole. With double barrels pointed at his head, Ryan was uncollared and booted into an already occupied cell. The iron-barred gate clanged shut behind him. Their work done, the red sashes turned away and left him to get acquainted with his cell mate.
    The other prisoner squatted with his back pressed into a corner, his head lowered, his long black hair hanging down over his face. He appeared to be naked except for his chains. The weak light from the single overhead bulb threw him in deep shadow. As Ryan took in the bleak cell, he noticed the stalagmites on the floor, white beestings of calcite that had dripped from the ceiling. When he stepped closer, his fellow prisoner stirred and slowly raised his face to the light.
    For the second time in as many hours Ryan exclaimed, “What the fuck!”
    His words echoed in the gloom.
    Then a disembodied voice whispered in his ear, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”
    The words seemed to have come from behind him. Ryan whirled, but there was no one there, only the sweating limestone wall.
    When he turned back, the deadpan expression of his mirror image had transformed into a wide grin.

Chapter Six
    Doc Tanner wept as he was force-marched across the stone dock toward the waiting black schooner. He cried without making a sound, tears streaming freely down the seams in his weathered face. Even if he lived forever, he knew he would never see the likes of Ryan Cawdor again. He cried for his brave and noble friend, and for his own accursed helplessness under the circumstances. The unstoppable flow of tears also came from sheer exhaustion, from three weeks chained to an oar and from the all-out brawl they’d just lost in Veracruz.
    “We’ve got to do something,” Krysty declared to the others as the iron-hulled ship’s gangway was swung out and lowered to the dock. “We can’t let these evil bastards chill him.”
    “Not leave Ryan here,” Jak growled in assent.
    “And what, pray tell,