Perilous Jaunt Chapter 28
Chapter 28
Peter
We left Ansil and walked through the woods, staying on the opposite side of the road we had traveled on earlier. That being said, we also kept close to the road because, according to Dante, Osric's hideout was just up ahead. When we had stopped walking, the sun began to peek through the tree branches above us. Dante said it would be better to attack at night, so he suggested that we sleep during the rest of the day, especially since we were awake the entire night.
"Are you sure you know where Osric's hideout is?" I asked.
Dante, who sat to my right, continued to sharpen the left side of his sword with a hunk of quartz he had found. "Like I said, it's just up the road,"
"Have you ever been there?"
"No," the wolf answered and began to sharpen the right side of his sword.
"Then how do you know where it is?"
"There were directions on the wanted poster that Lant showed me, remember?"
"There were?" I asked, not able to recall.
"Yes," Dante confirmed. "It said Osric's hideout was off to the right of the road,"
"Oh," I said, guessing that he was telling the truth. "And what exactly are you going to do when we get there?"
"Kill everyone," Dante said, running the quartz up his sword.
"Well, yeah, I figured that. But, I mean, how? Do you have some kind of plan?"
"Of course," Dante said, not looking up from his sword. "I'm going to set the hideout on fire with the Devil's Nectar and shoot the Talth that don't burn to death, all except Osric, that is, if he manages to escape the fire,"
I began to feel a little uneasy. Why couldn't he just shoot Osric and be done with it? It would have been much simpler. "What are you gonna do to Osric?"
"Make him wish he never fucked with my friends,"
Again, uneasiness grew inside of me like a weed. Yet, I said nothing and looked down at my sword. I'll probably have to use it.
_ _ Dante sighed and stopped sharpening his sword. He then placed the weapon flat across his lap and set the quartz on the ground beside his thigh. For a moment, he was silent, only staring down at his sword. Then, he looked up at me after slowly raising his head. "My father use to beat me,"
The uneasiness that had taken place inside of me suddenly wilted and I became almost completely numb. "What?"
"Leonard Seril," Dante snarled. "He use to beat the living shit out of me when I was younger,"
I was at a loss for words, either because I was right about Dante being a prince like me or due to the fact that his father abused him.
"I always tried to make myself feel better and say that he could have hurt me a lot more," Dante said. "But it still hurt to have the man, who I worshipped as a boy, punch me in the face while he called me a faggot,"
I swallowed, trying to loosen my tightened throat. It didn't help very much. "He hates gay people?"
Dante shrugged. "I don't know,"
"What do you mean?"
The wolf began to draw circles in the dirt with his finger. "He had this illness. The Chief Apothecary said it was some rare affliction he had heard about. Before my father got it, he was a very compassionate man. He was the one who taught me to love literature. But, once he became ill, he was unable to sleep very much and would scream so loudly at night that the entire palace could hear him. He started loosing weight, even though he still ate the same amount of food at meals. His personality changed as well and he developed a temper once he discovered I liked men when I was seventeen,"
"How did he find out?" I asked, fearing to interrupt Dante.
Surprisingly, Dante didn't seem to mind my curiosity. Instead, he stopped sticking his finger in the dirt and put his hand back onto his lap. "One day, while I was strolling through Ernal's marketplace, I saw a painting of a fox...a male fox...laying on a couch with his legs stretching out towards the viewer. He was naked and the tip of his cock was sticking out of his sheath. His body was so slender and breathtaking that I bought it and didn't even bother haggling over the price.
"I went back to my room and hid the painting in my dresser until later that night. When I was going to bed, after the day was over, I took it out and started to touch myself while I looked at it. I kept going for a few minutes and almost finished, but then my door opened and my dad walked in. He saw me sitting on the edge of my bed and masturbating to the painting I held on my knees.
"I didn't have enough time to hide the painting, or even cover myself. He saw what I was doing and what the painting was of, so he just started yelling about how I was a fag. I tried to tell him I liked girls, too, but he kept on rambling about how much of a disappointment I was.
"When I did try to cover myself with the blankets on my bed, he grabbed my hand and punched me on the cheek. I was about to ask him why he had hit me, but he pushed me down on the bed and started punching me in the stomach.
"He hit me for a few minutes, which felt like months. As much as I begged him to stop, he didn't answer. I started to cry, but that only made him even angrier with me. 'Stop crying like a faggot, Caiden,' he screamed at me. 'Take it like a man, you piece of shit,'
"Eventually, he stopped. There were no words between us as he stepped away from the bed to stare at me, while I curled up in a ball on my sheets. No 'I'm sorry'. Nothing. He only took my painting and left me alone in my room.
"After that, every once in a while, he would come up to my room and just start beating me again. My mother never did anything to stop him, though. She walked in one time, while he was hitting me, and just stood there. I called out to her for help, but all she did was walk out without saying a word, as if she hadn't seen anything.
"Whenever I cried, he would hit me harder. He told me that only faggots cry. So, I stopped crying in front of him. I'd let it all out when he left, but, when he was hitting me, my eyes were as dry as stone. In fact, I kept myself from crying in front of the rest of our family because I was so paranoid that my dad would find out. The habit's remained with me, which is why I prefer not to cry in front of other people,"
"Like after you killed the priest?" I asked, interrupting Dante's story for a second time.
Dante blinked, as if I woke him from a vivid dream, and looked at me. His ears fell down in shame. "Yeah and..."
"Dante?" I said.
"Sometimes," Dante sighed, "I use to wish I could have been the son that he wanted. I wondered why I had this 'sickness' and prayed to God for answers, back when I still considered myself a Christian,"
"And? Did you just tell him to fuck off one day?"
"No," he answered, bitterly. "Two years after my dad started to hit me, I was reading the Divine Comedy and I thought to myself just how incredible it was for Dante to write such a great story, one that's survived for so long. He lost everything. His family, his friends and his home were taken from him. I couldn't help but compare my situation to his and, when I did, I realized that I could do anything. I had money and I never liked most of my Family, except for my brother, Aaron. So, really, nothing was holding me back. It was more than what Dante could say when he was on his own. And, that night, I left,"
I blinked and remained silent.
"Did your father ever have a problem with you being gay?" Dante asked.
"No," I said. "He told me to just keep it to myself. 'People don't like a king who sits on anything other than a throne' he always said. He also told me never to drink ale because 'it's not a proper drink',"
Dante snorted and laughed at the thought. "He's better than my dad ever was,"
"Was?" I asked him.
Dante scratched my neck. "He died a year ago. Queen Santel told me. I'm a little glad, to be honest,"
"He was sick, Dante," I reminded him. "Didn't you ever get the feeing that, deep down, he might have still loved you?"
Dante turned his head and looked off into the woods. "When he first caught me with that painting, I tried to find any sign of compassion or fatherly love in his face. But, do you know what I found instead?"
"What?" I asked.
"Shame,"
He sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. Then, he re-opened them and gazed at me with regret. "I'm sorry I hit you earlier. I... That was something my father would have done. I guess, in the end, I'm no better than him,"
How could he think something like that? Dante was open minded and patient, even when we first met. But, then I remembered those words I said to him after he had hit me. I don't know what your dad is like. But he can't be any worse than you.
_ _ "You're wrong," I told him.
His ears stood back up and awaited my explanation.
"You are better than your father ever was," I assured him. "You've taught me things I could never learn from all the fucking tutors in the world! Even when I pissed you off after we met for the first time, you always tried to teach me how to be a better person. Hell, you even saved me from being raped! Would your father have done that?"
"No," Dante admitted, "but-"
"But nothing!" I said. "Your father wouldn't even spit on me, just because I'm gay. So, fuck him! What he did doesn't define who you are and you're a better man than he was! You did the right thing by getting the hell out of there,"
The wolf blinked and gazed back down at his sword. "He wasn't all bad...before he got sick. Actually, he was the one who gave me my gun,"
"He did?" I asked, not believing that we were talking about the same person.
"Yeah," Dante said, grinning at my surprise. "Believe it or not. He gave one to all five of us, my brothers and I, a year before he changed. Our mother thought we would kill each other, but dad hired a marksmen to train us on how to use them properly,"
"You have brothers?"
Dante nodded. "I'm the youngest. Sid, the oldest, was twenty-seven. So, he would be thirty-one now. Tim is twenty-nine, John is twenty-seven and Aaron should be turning twenty-five in a month. Then, there's me, the twenty three year old,"
"And they never tried to save you from your dad?" I asked. "That's fucked up!"
"What do you expect?" Dante said. "Who would dare lay a hand on a king?"
"Still," I said, "they could have actually done something, for Christ's sake!"
"Aaron did," Dante said. "He always talked to me about how I was feeling and tended to my wounds after dad was finished with me,"
"Really? He helped patch you up?"
"Yes. He was training to be our Chief Apothecary. Aaron was also the one who helped me sneak out when I ran away. My map was a goodbye gift from him,"
"He sounds nice," I said.
"He was," Dante told me. "We always talked about books and argued over our favorite characters. Not only that, but we also talked to each other whenever we were feeling depressed or frustrated about something. I wondered for a long time if he was gay or not, but I never asked him, since it really wasn't any of my business,"
"Why are you telling me this?" I asked. "Not that I mind, but this is the first time you've ever talked about your family. Why now? What's changed?"
"There's a good chance," Dante said, as he looked back down at his sword, "that we won't survive attacking Osric tonight and I wanted to see if letting all that stuff of my chest would make me feel better,"
"And? Did it?"
"A little," Dante admitted.
"So, we're attacking tonight?" I asked.
"Yes," Dante said, picking up the hunk of quartz in his left hand. "The dark will help us surprise them,"
"Will I help?" I wondered, a little excited that I might be able to use my sword.
"You'll be hiding with my gun,"
My excitement died down and was replaced with confusion. "Why will I be holding your gun?"
"Because," Dante explained, "if I need help fighting Osric, on the off chance he doesn't burn to death, you can hop out and take him by surprise,"
"Oh," I muttered, still feeling a little disappointed.
"You should get some sleep," Dante suggested, as he picked up his sword and ran the quartz down the blade again. "If we do survive our attack, we'll spend the rest of the night running,"
"Okay," I said, too sleep deprived to argue. "See you in a while, Dante,"
"Sleep well, Peter," Dante said. "I'll wake you up when it's time to go,"
I was silent and lay down on my back. For a moment, I stared up at the tree branches above me, which held green leaves that glowed as sunlight slid in between them. Then, sleep found me and took me into its welcoming embrace.