One of the chapters in a book I was writing, years ago.

Been thinking on it lately, this is just a short form, and not sure if it conveys the image, without having a feel for the characters it might sound different to people.

In the world it was in, many good hard working people were wrongly sent to prison, mostly by corruption by free will choice.

It is a long book with many scenes, But one of the characters, he broke into the prison because in the prison was the troops that had stood for what was right in a broken world.

The prison, long ago, used to be an old fort built to protect a dam that overlooked what in the past was full of much growth, but had become dried and barren by lack of care, the fort was originally to protect the irrigation and power plant the dam was for, but once corruption got some control they made it a prison camp.

People were sent to war, not to win anything just to fight till their conscious was broken, mostly they fought for nothing, to create despair, only thing that mattered was for them to fight until they were broken, the ones that would not fight for things that did not matter were sent to the prison camp.


The prison break out scene is really good, there was this one big guy with a hammer, and a little guy friend that held his pick, nobody else would because they feared if he missed. During the scenes where the guy broke in and organized the prisoners. They had been intentionally given not enough food so they would fight for it. He found a way to stretch the food so that there was enough to go around, and instead of fighting, they drilled like in the olden days, great story about that, but a long one. They reformed their squads and the old ways from a drill master that knew the ways back when the army use to fight along side with the elder people that had been sent away when corruption took over.

The guy with the hammer kept saying he was there to break stone, and that was it. And people had not liked him since he worked so hard at breaking stone, and they thought it made it harder for them, he would reply that he had to get stronger for his day, they never knew what that meant.


The break out is a great story, if you saw the compound layout it would be easier to explain, but basically since it used to be a fort, the armory was closest to the prison section in the mines, so was fairly easy to take the armory, but then they got stuck not being able to break the across the compound to the gates.

The big guy picked up his hammer, broke through each wall of the armory till he could charged the dam wall. Great part about the surprise when he just started breaking through the walls, while the rest were trying to plan the break out to the gates. When he reached the wall the first strike sent a crack like a lighting up the side of the dam, the sound reverberating like thunder. His friend, was there, and as they had with so many days mining and in the rock yard, each place of the chisel at just the right spot. Then the bad army still holding the walls started to throw spears and shoot arrows, he kept swinging his hammer even when being hit.

You really have to hear the whole story, this is just a short version, but the group that had been the toughest, and hardest on the chiseler and his friend, charged over to deflect the spears and arrows thrown at him. Really amazing thing since they had differences in many issues. And it was pretty dangerous, since he was breaking a dam after all.

Then the dam breaks and the river washes out the front walls and gates of the camp, leading to 25,000 of the best of the army wrongly held to be able to march on the...

well that is another part of the story.




Seriously, thought about the book years ago, although it matches things in society in many parts.