It took longer than I expected to get to the woodsman’s house, and the lighted windows hanging in the blackness were a warming, welcoming sight despite everything. My feet were cold and my hands were cold, and the damp of the forest night was even beginning to work its way under the cheap green shawl. The only one of us who was comfortably warm was the redhead; it was probably the first time all day she hadn’t been sweltering. The coach pulled up and stopped in front of the wide, two-storied house, the mercenaries dismounted, and
“Captain” Ralnor came to hand the “princess” out. With that done the other girls climbed out and I followed, all of us finding Fallan waiting to escort us inside. At that point it didn’t matter much one way or the other, so I did as the others did and went along quietly.
The inside of the woodsman’s large house was warm, but it was also the scene of throttled-down bedlam. Kids ran in all directions for goblets and pitchers of wine, for chairs with cushions, for hastily made snacks. Three older women stood at the big fireplace where they were cooking, but their eyes were shining when they glanced over their shoulders at the redhead. The grand announcement had obviously already been made, and I was glad I’d missed it. Even the woodsman himself, a shortish, stocky man with brown hair and eyes and rough, home-made clothes, seemed impressed, a depressing observation to my mood of the moment. Fallan’s men filed into the room behind us, closed the door, then stood around with arms folded, watching the excitement and eyeing the food and drink. Curious about how many men had been left outside I turned toward one of the front windows, but Fallan caught my arm before I was able to take the first step, and took me with him over to the woodsman.
“A good evening to you, Lieutenant,” the man greeted Fallan, raising his goblet to him. “Will you join us in a cup of my best ale?”
“With pleasure,” Fallan answered, responding to the woodsman’s gesture with a friendly nod. “First, however, I must attend to a matter too long unseen to. I have a girl to be punished, and would ask the use of your stables.”
“Why, certainly, Lieutenant,” the woodsman agreed with a chuckle while Ralnor, the redhead – and I – stared at Fallan in disbelief.
“My stable is yours, for however long you require its use. You will find it through there.”
The woodsman nodded toward a bolt-adorned door in the far wall to the right of the fireplace, and Fallan nodded again.
“My thanks, Woodsman,” he said, tightening his grip on my arm. “This matter will not take long, and then we may drink to one another’s fortune.”
The woodsman returned Fallan’s nod as the big mercenary pulled me away from him, heading us both toward the door that had been pointed out. I struggled against Fallan’s hold in the sort of lame way that had long since begun to be very frustrating, and got exactly as far as you would expect.
“You may not do this to me!” I hissed at Fallan, seriously wondering if I had the patience left to just stand there and let him do as he pleased. “I refuse to accept this! I will not accept it!”
“You will accept all I give and more,” Fallan muttered back, not even looking at me. “The time has come for a true understanding between us, one too long in the coming. I cannot keep you safe without your complete cooperation, and this I will have when we return from the stables. I am now able to see that this should have been done much the sooner, as Grigon recommended.”
Grigon? What the hell did Grigon have to do with this? I glanced at Fallan’s determined profile as I asked the question silently, immediately deciding that I’d ask it again aloud as soon as Fallan and I were alone. I couldn’t see Grigon telling Fallan to beat me, even if the Absari agent hadn’t been all that pleased with my obedience quotient. It didn’t make any sense, not any of it, but we were only three steps away from the door that would open on some answers and I could afford to wait that long. Fallan reached the door, pulled it open to reveal a large, dimly lit stable that was closed tight from the inside, and then – “Attack!” shouted one of the mercenaries near a front window, peering out at the darkness and what it held. We could all hear the sound of swords clashing now, the thud of arrows into the house, the cursing of men hard-pressed. Clero’s force had finally made it, and I couldn’t have been happier. If I let them see me, I might be able to lure them into the woods after me-and then take care of them one or two at a time. They were committed to me now, and that was what we’d been trying to accomplish. Bellna and her King’s escort would find nothing they couldn’t handle in their way, and I was all through with having to stand around being helpless. I took a half step back toward the front door, forgetting all about Fallan which turned out to be a mistake.
“That direction is not for you,” he growled, pulling me off balance by the hold he had on my arm and pushing hard enough to send me stumbling through the doorway. “That is the place for you, wench, and as you value your life you will remain there.”
I opened my mouth to tell him what to do with himself, but the bastard slammed the door in my face before I had a single word out.
Raving furious was a good description of what I felt then, and I moved fast to the door to shove on it – only to find that the bolt had been thrown.
“Cross-eyed, impotent son of a beslimed street stroller!” I snarled, pounding on the unmoving door. “Gelded crawler in and eater of offal!
Open this door, else I shall. . .”
I was so wild I was ready to break the door, which turned out to be my second mistake in as many minutes. Getting mad in a dangerous situation is as stupid and potentially fatal as walking blindfolded through racing ground traffic. All the shouting I was doing covered whatever noise they made coming up behind me, and my ranting was abruptly cut off by the presence of a wet cloth pressed fast to my nose and mouth. I suddenly knew they’d been hiding in the stable, waiting for the attack to start, waiting to do whatever they planned on doing. I tried to stop my breathing as I brought an elbow back hard into the ribs of whoever was holding that cloth, but before the blow landed his free arm had already brought a fist back into my middle with a goodly amount of force, causing me to gasp in two complete lungfuls of the flat, strangling vapors coming out of the cloth. The cloth-holder did some gasping himself as he let me go, but my head was already spinning too fast for me to take advantage of the freedom. I tried to move away from the door and farther into the stable, to find some place to hole up until my head cleared, but it was simply no use. Instead of walking I slipped down to the floor, stretched out on my left side and well along in floating away.
“The slut!” said a choked voice from somewhere above me, pain and anger clear in the words. “I will have the skin off her in strips for daring to strike me!”
“The Prince means to do other with her than have her life,” came another voice, a somehow familiar one with a chuckle in it. “She will regret having struck at the both of us, more so than if we were to take vengeance ourselves. Her life might have been taken easily enough at the inn.”
“Aye, and a good thing it was that the Prince had the foresight to place you at that inn,” said the first voice, grimly pleased. “Had you not been there, we might well have taken the wrong wench.”
“This one would be worth the taking in any event,” the second answered, and a booted foot came to push me flat on my back. The foot belonged to the house guard from the last inn, and through billowing clouds of dizziness I could see him grinning down at me. “Had she been unspoken for, I would have claimed her, to repay some part of the humiliation I was forced to accept in uncovering her true identity. Did they think me so foolish as to be unable to recognize Fallan, a long-time Captain of his Company? Was I to believe that this same Fallan would be concerned over the brief use of a mere serving wench? They are the fools, not I.”
“And double the fools for having sent her out here, alone, at the first outward sign of our attack,” agreed the first man. “It was clear they would be unable to reach the next inn at a reasonable time and would therefore stop here, yet I doubted when you insisted she would be sent into our hands in such a manner as this. Your words have now been proven correct, and we are now able to take her to those who wait.”
“As the Prince also anxiously awaits her preparation, we shall do that very thing,” the ex-house guard said with a grin, slowly going down to one knee. “It will, however, be considerably more difficult for her to awaken to her predicament; therefore-”
His words broke off as his arm moved through the clouds with the cloth he’d retrieved, and there was no avoiding it. Two more breaths and I was gone fishing.
I awoke to the awareness of a faint headache behind my eyes, a dulled pulse that was already beginning to fade away even as I became aware of it. I took a deep breath and my senses flowed out to a greater distance from my body, no longer wrapped up under a blanket of unconsciousness. I could hear the sounds of movement and life a short distance away, people going about their business. Closer up there was a clean, faintly perfumed smell, feminine without a doubt and somehow dainty and delicate. Whatever I lay on was hard and not very comfortable, rough and scratchy to my fingertips, somehow adding to the dryness in my mouth. My eyes blinked open to get a look at it and-Damn! I sat up so fast that my stomach twisted with nausea, and thick dizziness swirled my eyesight for a minute. I ignored it all and brought my right wrist up to get a closer look at the shackle closed around it, all at once remembering what had happened just before I’d gone beddy-bye. Fallan and I had both been suckered, but he was still back in the woodsman’s house, at worst feeling foolish, while I had more immediate problems.
Two of them were the two-inch wide metal cuffs closed around my wrists, another the foot-and-a-half length of chain holding those cuffs together, the fourth, fifth and sixth the same cuff and chain setup on my ankles. I twisted the right wrist cuff around to get a better view of the lock that kept it closed, and immediately felt a little better. The lock was simple and obvious, one I could have opened in no time as soon as I found a pick, so I wasn’t quite as securely chained up as those who had put me there wanted me to be.
Even so, I didn’t like the looks of the rig I had been closed into, a sentiment shakily echoed by the Bellna presence, who peeked nervously out from her favorite corner.
The torn blouse, green shawl and print skirt I had been wearing were all gone, replaced in part by a very short, poncho-like piece of sheer white material. The thing went over my head to hang down front and back, was completely open at the sides, and was slit wide enough and deeply enough in front to reach my waist and then some. Holding it tight to my body was a slender belt of chain, delicate-looking but locked on as securely as the wrist cuffs, two smallish rings and a short metal tongue attached to the front. The chain linking my wrists ran through the two rings, but the purpose of the slim metal tongue was a mystery, one I had no real interest in poking at. What I did want to poke at was a way out, but the place I sat in didn’t offer many options.
The room was clearly part of a tent, but floored as it was and as well staked down, even an outer wall would have probably been useless. I heard a tinkle of chain and looked at the girl who had turned in her sleep, a young girl, one of two others who were in the tent room with me. Four lamps, one on each wall, let me see around the room, but there wasn’t much to see; tan tent walls, a hard, scratchy mat of a floor, a series of carved wooden chests along the walls, three young, attractive females chained and half-dressed in translucent white. Not a hell of a lot to work with, and nothing at all to set the mind at ease. I hadn’t been brought wherever it was for my benefit, and I couldn’t afford to forget that “the Prince” was
“anxiously awaiting” my “preparation.” If it wasn’t Clero they’d been talking about I’d demote myself to cadet status, but nothing that drastic would be necessary. Clero was waiting for me, all right, and the best thing I could do would be to disappoint him.
I struggled to my feet with a light tinkling of chain which was answered by the movement of the second girl, stirring slightly as the first girl had. The first one was dark-haired and slender, the second chestnut-haired and smaller, neither one looking older than Bellna’s fifteen, the brunette possibly younger. Both girls moved a second time, fitfully, as though they were beginning to come out of the same unconsciousness that had held me, showing me it was more than time to move on. Or mince on. The chain stretched between my ankles was too short to allow a decent stride, which meant I had to flounce along almost on my toes. That, together with the length of the skimpy poncho a quarter of an inch less and it would no longer be able to be called a “covering” just have made me a sight to behold, but looking foolish wasn’t my major concern. With my ankles chained, the only kicks I’d be able to execute would be two-footed blasts, and I’d never be able to land upright after one of them. If I ran into anyone standing in my way, I’d have to sneak up on him and use the wrist chain as a strangle cord. One-handed. I felt like cursing but sighed instead, knowing it could have been a hell of a lot worse. The chains I wore could have been bolted to a wall, or there could have been watchdogs posted right inside the room. Knowing how lucky I was I turned away from the two sleeping girls toward the tan hanging covering the room entrance – just as it was pushed aside by the two men coming in.
The two men were far from small, both dark-haired and dark-eyed, dressed in black pants and boots and golden yellow shirts, typical heavies and looking the part.. Bellna squeaked inside my head and scooted back into her corner, leaving me all alone in the middle of the floor, caught in the act, so to speak. It wasn’t the first time I’d been caught like that, but Bellna’s fluster and my own idiot reflexes almost did me in. Automatically I started to go into standard attack-defense position, which was not meant to be taken when ankle-chained. Rather than looking dangerous and ready I managed to trip myself, which ended me up on the hard floor covering belly down, looking up at two faintly amused men.