"Am I hearing this right?" Snake asked as they drove down the highway, back to the fort and its factory. He had lowered his heavy metal enough to hear his son argue, but could still recognize the lyrics. The sun was high in the sky and his hangover was damn-near lethal. He'd packed the captive Martha in the truck cargo along with Needle.
"It's not that big a deal," Warcry insisted. He wondered which of those bastard highwaymen had told his father.
"Not a big deal? Not a big deal?" Snake demanded, blood rushing to his father and teeth clenching rigidly. His knuckles turned white at ten-and-two. Grey highway sank beneath their tires as they traversed miles in minutes. "That runt insulted our highwaymen - our highwaymen! - and you let him get away with it. Haven't I taught you anything? Slaves need to have respect beaten into them, otherwise they remain insolent. Shit, I am gonna tear the Canyon Crazies apart over this one."
Warcry placed a gentle hand on his muscular arm, though it did little to calm him down. "Listen. I was watching him the whole time. You know how fickle highwaymen can get after a battle. Especially after they're injured. If he'd acted all servile and obedient then they would never have cooperated, and a lot of them probably would have died. He did his job perfectly."
"That does not mean he gets to disrespect an Overdog," Snake said between gritted teeth. He spoke slowly, one word jaggedly slipping off the last, as he fought to control his temper. "When we get back to the palace, you will take care of this."
"What?" A small wave of panic surged inside Warcry's chest, accompanied by cool sweat on his brow. The last thing he wanted was to hurt the chained runt, and he knew exactly how slaves were punished.
"Don't worry, I'll help you," Snake said, calming himself down. "We'll make sure the flog is nice and fresh, no dried blood to fuck with the way it cracks. Besides, having a slave isn't all orders and servitude. You gotta keep the scum hurtin' otherwise they talk back to their superiors."
Warcry stared out the dusty windshield, too shocked to say anything. And yet, he should not have been shocked at all. In fact, he should have expected precisely this sort of reaction. Not only based on his father's all too predictable behavior, but by the fact that the world was poised to rip happiness away from the newly joyous. That was why a world at its cultural and technological zenith was utterly destroyed in atomic fire, in an instant. That was why warlords ripped babies from their mother's arms and sent them to live in chains. The wasteland was a harsh, cruel place and he should have known better than to expect anything kind out of it. The wasteland is pain and kindness is tentative.
"Just trust me," said Snake, when he saw the tired and baffled expression on his boy's face.
But Warcry could never truly trust him. He'd watched over the years as Snake descended from a lowly drug pusher to a heinous warlord. He'd seen all the pain and destruction wrought across the desert, and all the friends and allies who had to be pushed aside.
And the fortress they approached was the greatest testament to that sinister agenda. Smoke columns stained the sky above with the ink of industry. He'd seen the slaves toiling away in there, in the heat, in the smoke, their eyes burning as much as their skin and as much as the lead they melted down for bullets. And those bullets went into guns, the very same guns that put them on their knees and would inevitably bring in more slaves to replace the ones who broke down. And steel was crafted there as well, fashioned into chains and manacles to keep the slaves docile as they toiled in the flame-light darkness, and into armor for highwaymen and vehicles to go on murderous raids against other vile monsters.
It is not enough that lowly slaves toil away without mercy or reprieve. Warcry had seen highwaymen, loyal men and as mean as the rest of them, thrown into shackles for crimes as simple as flirting with another man's slave. They soon found themselves slaves as well. They had the hardest push into the dust and howled in rejection all the while. They were free men, they insisted, before they were pushed down to the dirt where they belonged.
Warcry remembered the wonder years when justice was tempered with mercy and juries decided guilt. He only saw these things transpire on television, but they still existed. He was not built for a world without such trappings of civilization.
He was able to forget all these things until his father did something like this. Then the things he learned in his readings and from his lessons came to the surface, and he was forced to recall the civilized world that preceded this one. It was easy to forget the violence when he was so surrounded by it, but moments like this jarred him and he was forced to examine the world the way an old rotting philosopher would.
He could see that this sort of violent mentality had helped his father do great things. He was on the cusp of forming the first empire the world had seen in years. But something was lost along the way and it made the world inhospitable to people like Warcry. It was not his asthma or his leg that made him feel this way, though these were obvious symptoms of the problem. The real reason was that he was a coward, a fact he only admitted to himself in private moments, and he was not daring enough to live in such a chaotic world, no matter the false order Snake imposed on it.
That was the guise of this punishment. As Needle was strung up, arms toward the ceiling, chains taught around his wrists, Snake lectured him on the nature of order. They were deep in the basement of the palace and all the other slaves had been vacated. It was once a wine cellar, though they drank the wine long ago. The walls still smelled of it, and it was still cold enough to keep wine. The walls were sheer stone and the only light came from a single electric light buzzing above. It scattered Needle's shadow across the wall where it intersected with Warcry's,
"This is about will," Snake said, cracking the nine-tailed flog in the air like how boxers punch the air to practice. "Order is about imposing your will on someone else. Making them obey. Becoming their god. You need to know this if you're going to rule."
Warcry took the flog in his hand and it somehow felt as heavy as a car tire. The tails cascaded down, black and severe, made of fine leather. He had to wear his leg-splint because flogging someone with a crutch was impossible. Oh, how he hated that rusty, splintering device. Too tight, pointy in all the wrong places, and some idiot tutor's idea of a gift. Still, it was better than trying to balance on one leg.
Needle didn't cry. He didn't say a word as the highwaymen dragged him into the dungeon, or when they strung him up. He didn't say a word when he saw Snake draw the flog. But when he saw him hand it to Warcry, he let out a shuddering gasp. The air slipped between his lips, cooled by the freezing cellar air.
