Conviction

DUNKIRK, LEGION

Autumn, 1E78

“You stand before the court accused of crimes of smuggling; how do you plead?” the judge did not conceal his arrogant pride as he sneered down upon Niko, a victorious grin spread across his narrow face.

“I knew nothing of the laws you speak of!” Niko shouted back desperately.

“Ignorance does not excuse violation of the law; you are sentenced to ten years imprisonment for possession of banned substances and five years for your charge of smuggling.” the judge made his ruling and Niko was taken away by the King’s men to the dungeons where he would carry out his sentence.

Niko shouted out as he was dragged away to no avail; no one answered his cries and pleas for help. The guards covered his mouth so as to stifle the shouts. He had been taken from the courtroom as quickly as he’d arrived, bound in chains only moments after being thrown before the judge to be sentenced. His shackles clinked and jingled as they scraped the floor whilst two imperial guards took him below to the next available cell in the royal dungeons. The cobblestone passage was cold and dank and Niko’s ragged body dragged along the bare floor with little resistance in the rough arms of the guards.

The hall was lit by braziers and torches along the walls, illuminating the passageways in a golden light, and the gleaming gold flag of Legion was draped all along the walls in the open spaces between torches. The flag of Legion was a black fleur-de-lis upon a bright gold background. The lily represented the three social classes of the people of Legion; those who worked, those who fought, and the aristocracy. Niko remembered his father telling him that, amongst many other things about the Kingdom of Legion, though it was rather useless information to him now in his current situation. The guards took him past the prison guard and into the underground cell-block where he was destined to spend the next fifteen years of his life.

He was thrown into the cell by his captors and they locked the prison door shut behind him. The room was entirely cobblestone; even his bed was a cobblestone cot that jutted out of the wall. Upon the bed there was a pillow and a single blanket to act as both a comforter and a heat source on the cold stone slab. The toilet came in the form of a tin bucket and that was the entirety of the contents of his room. There were no windows and the door was a simply a caged wall that connected solidly to the cobblestone walls on either side of the entrance. A pair of guards passed by every few minutes and Niko counted fifteen pairs of guards to each hourly rotation before he recognised the face of the first, thus Niko was able to calculate that it took roughly five minutes between each pair of guards on their hourly laps.

This information, just like his father’s, proved to be utterly useless and there was nothing that Niko could do with the knowledge there. He laid down on the bed and stared at the stone ceiling for what seemed like hours until he was interrupted from his trance by a guard bearing food. Niko wasn’t quite sure what to call it; it looked like no more than a scoop of the solidified fat and grease left over when cooking meats, and it smelt just as repulsive as it looked. The youth held back vomit as he walked the plate of slop over to his latrine and shovelled the wretched stuff into his waste bucket. For several days Niko refused to eat that nasty stuff until finally the guard beat him and forced him into submission, force-feeding him the meal under the restraint of three guards.

The weeks passed by for Niko in what seemed like a timeless eternity following his arrest and he began to wonder to himself whether he would ever see his father again. He would be thirty by the time his sentence was finally up and his father would probably be dead by then, or close to it. The average life expectancy for Aerbonean Men was the mid to late forties, though reaching the later thirties was still considered a respectable age in those days. Niko cried himself to sleep at night for the first few days of his imprisonment, wearing himself out emotionally to the point of exhaustion, however, after the first few nights his tear reserves had dried out.

He didn’t eat much when he did eat and he never fought back against the imperial guards as they beat him mercilessly with a look of cold hatred in their eyes. At night he was left alone with his thoughts and they were often depressing, pessimistic, and self-destructive. The young lad’s idealistic outlook on the world had been shattered prematurely and he was more cynical than even the most bitter of adults within the confines of those walls. So it was that Niko sat, waiting day by day for his freedom. He patiently waited for his rebirth back into the world outside, though he feared he would always be a prisoner trapped within the thoughts of his own mind.

The other prisoners were all mostly Ahglorian from what Niko could see of his fellow inmates; whether or not it was due to segregation or an overflow of Ahglorian prisoners there was no way of knowing. The prisoners were all very weak and frail. It was, without a doubt, due to the food and lack of exercise that caused the boy and his fellow countrymen to lose weight and muscle mass rather rapidly. Death by malnutrition was all too common within the Legion prisons in those days. It didn’t help that the guards tirelessly beat the prisoners for the slightest of infractions without mercy and sometimes even without cause.

Niko steadily lost track of time as the days turned into weeks in his underground cell where no outside light penetrated the cold stone walls. Eventually he gave up all hope of seeing his father agin, or of his father ever finding him. At first he felt bitter resentment towards himself for being so childish as to beg his father to allow him to travel on his own. He should have allowed his father to accompany him as Robin had insisted, but Niko had been eager to explore the world alone at his own leisure. He cursed himself and the day he’d ever left home, though over time even the negativity left him and he slowly became an empty shell.

Niko’s birthday passed him by without him even knowing it. He was only made aware of the fact by the coming chill of the winter’s night. It must have been mid to late Winter, though Niko only guessed due to the constant sounds of water dripping down from the ceiling of what he assumed to be the melting snow above. There was also the fact that the nights had grown icy cold in the underground network of stone passages and prison cells, and the guards all wore heavy fur coats of wolf, bear, and fox skin. None of this comforted Niko; he doubted his father would come for him at the onset of Winter.

He had heard no word from his father since he’d been imprisoned, he knew there was no way that Robin could possibly receive word of his son’s imprisonment. Niko could only hope that his father would come looking for him and somehow free him from the King’s dungeon, though hope had left him long ago. The lad wasn’t even recognisable anymore from how he looked before he left his home in Olenor. Where he had been of average height and build for an Ahglorian boy his age, he was now tall, lanky, and rather gaunt and bony. He looked absolutely haggardly and the youth was like a tiny withered old man; his skin had taken on a sickly pallor and he was wretched to behold.

Niko would have known, if he had been able to speak their native tongue, that the guards spoke amongst themselves that he was not much longer for the world. They laughed at, joked, and placed bets on the health and lives of their Ahglorian inmates. Although they were selfish and cold, the men of Legion were not barbarians like the Romans. The people of Rome watched their prisoners fight one another in gladiatorial arenas, sometimes even to the death. The Legionnaires had no interest in bloodshed however; they simply saw the opportunity to make some quick and easy money and took it. Over the course of time Niko conformed to the routine that was prison life and with the passing weeks he adjusted to it, as did the majority of those who lasted long in that most intolerable of hell-holes.

Niko's heart rose in excitement as a guard stopped before his cell suddenly one day, and lo- they were releasing the prisoners from their cells! The King had passed a new law, from what Niko was able to gather from the heavily accented guard that presently spoke to him in the universal language of the land. The imperial soldier spoke rather fast as men of that country were prone to doing, due to their own native speech, even as he unlocked the cast-iron cell door. The imperial soldier's words flowed fast and words blended into one another melodically; however, in the Common Tongue this made it difficult for people unused to their manner of speaking to catch the majority of what was said.

The law, declared at noon of that very day, stated that all of the prisoners fit for work were to undergo public service as a pittance to the State for housing them. In exchange, they would receive better food and more suitable furnishings in their cells. This was due mainly to the fact that citizens of the country had been long complaining of the quality of their prisons and the treatment of criminals- mainly amongst their own people, though it would be afforded at the expense of the free Ahglorian labour of their newfound slaves. Several uprisings had occurred in the outermost towns where occasionally the townsfolk would join the insurrectionists from the North. There were a lot of Ahglorian sympathisers outside of the industrial heart of the kingdom, though in the capitol the imperials were mainly only concerned with themselves and their money, or lack thereof. King Louis Delaunay IV had passed the law in hopes of quelling the rebellious townsfolk and weakening the support network of the Northern tribals.

Niko and the other prisoners worked tirelessly throughout the days, slept fitfully during the night, and they enjoyed every meal as if it were their last. Time passed by much quicker with something to take the constant dullness of imprisonment off of the minds of those still fit enough to work. As they laboured in the construction of public works and cleaned the streets of litter and refuse, the men regained some of their strength. The improved prison cuisine was also doing the tribals some good; they now received meagre portions of meat and cabbage for their meals. That seemed like fine dining to the men after the balls of slop they’d come to expect along with the beatings delivered daily by the prison guards.

The prisoners wore their regular prison attire during the work hours. It was no more than a simple scrap of sackcloth fashioned into a thong whose sole function was to hide their genitals from the eyes of the general public. They were under strict watch by the city guard and no talking was permitted between the prisoners as they went about their daily work. Although the threat of a beating loomed over the heads of any offenders brave enough to challenge the authority of their captors, many spoke between themselves in hushed voices. The imperial guard tasked with providing an overwatch for the criminals didn’t have the time or manpower to catch and punish each individual caught talking and so it was tolerated in minute doses.

Having gained the ability to communicate and interact with his fellow countrymen, however slight, Niko was able to learn more of his unfortunate situation. Far from encouraging, the newfound information disheartened him more than anything else. The majority of those with whom he spoke told him that if his father had indeed heard any word at all of Niko’s arrest, then he was probably dead or also in jail by now. They told the boy that his father had either been captured or killed at the border checkpoint. There was no way his father wouldn’t have found a way by now to make contact with the lad if he was still free and living.

Some of the prisoners told Niko of imperial executions; the Legion would sometimes arrest and convict Ahglorian-Legionaries and their sympathisers as traitors of the State and behead them at the market square in front of Dunkirk Castle. Niko had seen a couple of these incidents first-hand during his work hours in the city streets. There was always a judge present who read and convicted the men, and then the accused would finish the ceremony by placing his neck on the stone block of the guillotine upon being sentenced. The traitors’ heads were then lopped off by the massive blade that came crashing down at the drop of the rope that secured it in place, let loose by the hooded executioner who was dressed in all black.

The crimes usually involved insurrection or the inciting of a riot in one of the small East Legion farming towns. Most of the traitors were surprisingly Legionaries rebelling against the tyrannical rule of their king. When Niko questioned the Ahglorians chain-gangs about why the King was still king if his own people hated him, their only response was that it was because the rebels did not have the support of the majority. That was the most he could get out of his fellow convicts as they worked away under the whip of their cruel guard. The soldiers did not limit themselves to the oppression of their charges; they also protected the criminals from the general public as well.

Sometimes the townsfolk would shout abuse at the Ahglorian prisoners, blaming them for the rising taxes and all of Legion’s problems, and even go so far as to throw things at the prison crews. Niko fell flat on the ground to avoid a brick aimed at his head by one such individual; a drunk and disorderly Legion youth not much older than himself. An imperial guard lifted Niko back to his feet and shouted at him to get back to work. Two more soldiers abandoned their post and proceeded to chase the Legion boy. He only just barely escaped their wrath; they gave up pursuit after losing him in the bustling crowds.

“What are you looking at?” a guard snapped as he rammed the butt of his spear into Niko’s gut.

The boy gasped for breath as he clutched at his belly on the ground where he lay, choking in pain, curled up in the foetal position. He was dragged to his feet by the other nearby guards and his attacker came at him again with renewed aggression. The imperial soldier of the King swung his fist; the steel-plated gauntlet smashed into Niko’s face in an extravagant spray of blood. He stumbled again to his feet and returned to work to avoid a further beating. His face was pouting with blood and he thought his nose might be broken for the amount of pain that seemed to emanate from the injury.

“You want to keep talking? Say something else scum; I’ll shove my fist so far down your throat you’ll never swallow again! And what are you lousy lot of thieves and rapists looking at? Get back to work!” he shouted, addressing the other convicts who had stopped what they were doing in response to his brutal punishment of the Ahglorian youth.

What had captured Niko’s attention was actually a small protest going on just outside of Castle Dunkirk. Several citizens of Legion crowded the streets, shouting at the guards in their native language. Niko had turned to ask one of his fellows what they said, as most of the Ahglorians present in the jail were fluent in Legion, and that was when the guard took his opportunity to give the lad a good thrashing. Although his question remained unanswered, Niko thought to himself that he could think of several reason why the protesters would want to rebel against their king. He didn’t seem like a very compassionate king and he was often rather greedy; his treatment of the prisoners in his royal dungeons only made it all the more obvious.

His time spent in the capitol hadn’t been all bad however; he’d even made a friend. The seemingly endless weeks and weeks he’d spent in isolation and his lack of social interaction made him hunger for it. Even small conversations with his captors were more enjoyable than the infinite silence that surrounded him in his cell. So it was that Niko found himself a friend within the ranks of the Imperial Legion; a young man, no less, whose brother was deployed in the Ahglorian War.

“How old are you lad? What could you possibly have done to end up here?” the soldier questioned Niko during his shift. It was the first time a soldier had spoken kindly to him and without violence.

“What?” Niko was taken aback.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that you seem far too young to be a criminal; how did you end up in this place?” the guard spoke slower, mistaking Niko’s surprise for an inability to understand his accent.

“You seem young yourself, are you even old enough to be a soldier?” Niko replied cautiously as he continued to work, without the slightest hesitation, for fear of angering the man.

“That’s a fair point!” the Legionnaire held back his mirth to avoid drawing the attention of his peers.

The two spoke together for a while and Niko’s shift flew by. He told the soldier his tale of how he managed to end up there in the capitol. By the time he finished his story the sun was already beginning to set; the soldiers rounded up their charges to return them to the dungeons. His newfound friend nodded sympathetically and told the boy he was terribly sorry for his treatment at the hands of his fellows. They decided that they would probably have been good friends, had they met under any other circumstance. Every day after that, the two would find each other during the day and speak quietly between themselves of the world and the soldier kept Niko up to date on current events.

This was how Niko came to find out more of the insurrectionists and the King’s unjust war against his people. The boy also told Jean of his people and the way of life in the North. Jean was quite intrigued by the youth’s description of day to day life in Ahglor; he knew very little about cannabis and found it rather interesting. He asked Niko many questions and answered the lad’s own to the best of his ability. They grew close and Niko lost some of his resentment towards the people of Legion after gaining an understanding of how they viewed the Northerners themselves. It appalled them both to think how distorted the Kingdom’s public opinion of the Northerners truly was.