Rated 16+ for some sexual content and nudity-ish. No nitpicks--honest opinions please!
I could hear the guard and Sergeant Kulpeper – or so they called him – arguing beyond the white flaps of the tent. They seemed very little concerned with the idea that I might be capable of hearing them, and so every word was plain as plain.
“Ye will leave her be! Y’think she likes it here, out in the wilderness with no un to talk to? ‘Er fam’ly’s a country away, an’ her betroth jus’ decided he doesn’t need her n’more. To top it all off, they’re goin’ to kill her tonight, fer somethin’ I don’t believe she did!” It was strange, that the sergeant was so kind to me. Never once had I done anything to earn his protection, his care, and yet he acted as though he were in my debt, not I in his. Even now, when I was naught but a worthless prisoner doomed to die, he attempted to make my final hours those deserving of a Grand Count’s daughter. Already I had grown to like his bristly grey mustache, the sparkle of his Jharriman-dark eyes.
“Did I ask what y’thought? ‘Tis awful borin’ ou’ ‘ere, an’ not a pritty gel in sight! I’m only lookin’ af’er m’best int’rests, Kulpeper,” snapped the guard, and I could sense his impatience.
“Gentleman, pah! I would feel ‘s though I were givin’ ye too much credit if I called ye a spineless beggar. Ye can’t, Hayes!”
“I’m not un’er your command, Kulpeper, an’ thank the gods fer that. She’s my charge, an’ I’ll do what I like. S’shove off, ye ol’ gnat.”
“Ye can’t—”
“I sed shove off!”
There was an angry grunt, and then the telltale sounds of a pair of boots tramping away. My heart plummeted down to the tips of my toes as the tent flap was thrown aside, and I scrambled backwards as someone came in.
“So, pritty one, what’s yer name?” he asked. In reply, I sealed my lips quite firmly and would have crossed my arms, had they not been tied behind my back. During the slow silence that followed, I studied him. He was a strange sort of man, compared to most Jharrimans, who were all dark of hair and skin. In truth, he was a rather lot more like an Ape’erafian, with those cool blue eyes and that honey-coloured hair. “Aww, c’mon, I on’y wanted a chat!”
I ought to have kept my silence, but his words, seemingly innocent, made me wish naught more than to have my hands ‘round his neck. I spat, “Really, then? By the words you spoke to Sergeant Kulpeper, I would have imagined different.”
He scowled at this, and sat down before me, as though putting across the point that he would do naught beyond stay and watch me with those cool eyes. “Tha’s what ‘e thinks, milady. But what’s it abou’ me that would bother ye so, any’ow?”
My eyes widened at the meaning behind his words, and it took me several moments to find a reply. “It’s not about bothering! I’m betrothed, if you’d forgotten.”
“Yea, an ye’re precious betroth wants ye dead. S’why not show yer contempt for ‘im in ev’ry way ye can before ye go?” he demanded, and his scorn for Duke Warrington quite stunned me.
In some horrible way, his question made good sense – but I was a roasted piglet if I was going to allow myself to see it. “Because! Because I…” The words froze on my lips, and my heart beat rather strangely for a moment. “Because I don’t wish to.” And it was not a bit a lie.
“Well tha’s jus’ silly. Why ever not?” He had somehow managed to come feet closer without my noticing movement in the first place. I did not at all like how close we sat.
“I shan’t bother myself with answering silly questions,” I snapped, “and if I’m not forced, I won’t.” Perhaps it failed to be the best way to phrase my refusal. He leant forward, eyes glittering, and brushed his lips ever so slightly across mine.
“Ye should,” he said, in the quietest whisper, “’cause I’ll be bored, otherwise. Ye don’t want me gettin’ bored, milady.”
I was certain I didn’t.
“You know,” I said, as a thought almost certainly Aimthaeric in origin came to mind, “I am a nobleman’s daughter.”
He frowned, rocking back on his heels. I suppressed a sigh of relief, continuing, “And you cannot even begin to imagine how my father would reward you if you rescued me from such a dishonorable death as this.”
A light seemed to kindle in his eyes, and he rose slowly. “Rewards?” he repeated.
“Oh, yes. Money, land, perhaps a title. Baron Hayes sounds perfectly lovely, does it not?
He licked his lips, growing suddenly anxious. The light in his eyes turned feverish, and he seemed to be silently arguing with himself.
“And o’ course,” he said suddenly, running a hand through his hair, “ye’d…tell him.”
The smallest of shivers shook me as I realized what he meant; I nodded wordlessly.
“Oh, damn it all, an’ everything seemed s’simple a momen’ ago!”
A victorious smile threatened my lips as I watched his agitated pacing around the small tent. I felt vividly as though Aimthaer were standing next to me, bouncing up and down and grinning fit to burst. A prayer, perhaps premature, began to form itself in my mind.
“Wait – how c’n I be sure I’ll e’er find m’way to Ape’erafer? An’ why, as an esteemed member of ‘Is Majesty’s army, would I want t’desert jus’ for a title an’ some land I migh’ never get?” My smile faded as he glared at me from across the tent. “Why, milady?”
“Because I—”
“I’ve had my fill of your because’s, thank ye very much. I’m stuck ou’ here ‘til the cap’n decides to exercute ye, with hardly any grub and no frien’s nor fire t’warm me. Howe’er,” he said, coming to sit before me once more, “I don’t inten’ to waste m’only resource.”
My hands were useless, tied tightly behind my back, and my feet were trapped beneath me. He leant forward, as he had before, and traced the side of my face with a cool finger.
“Mr. Hayes, I beg of you – let me alone,” I whispered, voice trembling.
“An’ what,” he asked, in an equally quiet tone, “could ye give me t’do such a silly thing as that?”
I sat for a moment, mind all a-stumble, his warm breath on my cheek terribly distracting. “Naught,” I finally said, and this quite clear on my lips. “Naught at all, Mr. Hayes.”
“Please, milady,” he said, and the smallest of smirks pulled at his thin lips, “I’m no mister.”
I do not pretend to understand how – but I remember no more.
***
The very first I recall was being cold – not horribly, icily cold, but rather as you might if someone had suddenly pulled away your bed-sheets, exposing you to the night air. I shivered, sighing slightly, and as my eyes slid slowly open, I heard a voice whisper beside me.
“Milady,” it said, tone soft and…almost surprised, as though I had done something it would never have imagined I could do.
I sat up, scrabbling desperately for answers to questions I wasn’t sure I had – what was this small, dark place? Why was I here and not at The Sovereign’s Crown, The Troll’s Eye, the Grand Duke’s mansion? At that moment, naught in my head made a bit of sense, and I could not find a way to change it.
“Dawn comes, milady. If ye tarry here much longer, ye shan’t have a chance t’escape at all,” murmured the voice. A warm hand found the small of my back, and it took me long moments to realize how very warm the hand felt – and that the only way I could know it was warm was if I had very little on.
“Oh, gods, where am I?” I cried, standing and wrapping my arms about myself. I could only just see the outline of someone sitting upon the ground, and yet the very shape of it sent warning bells ringing in my groggy mind. “And who are you?”
“Lieutenant Gordon Hayes, milady,” he said, and it was the Hayes that brought all back at last. Why had I chosen such a very inopportune time to faint as that? Why had the duke called for my execution in the first place?
And very worst of all, why was I wearing naught but my sheerest underclothes?
“I will go out,” he said calmly, “while you dress.”
I stood, numbed, as his foggy shape straightened and slipped out through the tent flap. What had he done? What had I done, that he had sounded so very surprised as I woke?
In a daze, I knelt down and cast around through the reeds lining the floor of the tent for my dress. For once the smallness and bareness of the space was to my advantage, for now it took less than a minute to find my clothes. I pulled the Troll’s Eye uniform on, and again the very size of it was to my advantage, as it meant that many less ties and things to do up.
As though he knew I was finished, Private Hayes reentered then, and began to speak very quickly, seeming to think we had little time left. “Milady,” he said, “we both know you are in grave danger. What you do not know, as of yet, is that I have decided to help you.”
A strange mixture of fear and relief filled my heart, and I could do naught but frown confusedly as he continued.
“Don’t ask why, fer I ‘aven’t th’time to explain the ‘arf o’ it. Y’must go; I’ve a horse saddled ou’side, a fast one. Can y’ride?”
I nodded wordlessly.
By the tone of his voice, he was quite relieved. “Very well, then you must depart immediately. Come, I will help you mount.” He took my hand and pulled me out into the cool night air, and it was only then, as such coldness as before pierced my skin, that I realized why I had woken so suddenly. I brushed away the thought quickly, knowing I must not be distracted, and not at all wishing to dwell on the matter.
Once I was astride the horse – her name, he informed me in a hurried whisper, was Derringale – Hayes took the reins and led us around the prisoner’s tent. We were but feet from the outskirts of the forest I had woken in what now seemed ages ago, and as I looked out across the, as Sergeant Kulpeper had described it, flat, tree-an’-shrubbery bereft plain, I noticed for the first time how very strange it was to have a desert-like stretch of ground so very near such a thick forest.
“They say ‘twas cursed.” I looked sharply down at him at this – it was startlingly as though he’d hear my thoughts. At my expression, Private Hayes gave the smallest of chuckles. “You were frownin’ funny, milady. I guessed. Any’oo, there ain’t much t’the story. The Jharriman god o’ luck, y’see, ‘as always been a good-tempered un. ‘E’s cheery, but…” Private Hayes’s face darkened, and he looked down at his hands, suddenly quiet.
“But,” I prompted, forgetting my own fear in a moment of his.
“But when he gets angry…it ain’t a bit a purty sight.”
As he said this, as the words sunk into my chilled skin, I imagined I saw a breeze ripple across the lifeless plain, a faint, faraway cry like that of a man in most horrible pain.
“He’s right, you know,” Wimbledon said, chuckling when I started at his voice.
“Where did…where…?” I stuttered, staring first at him, and then at Private Hayes, who was frozen mid-yawn as though time itself had stopped.
“Never mind that,” he said, “and it has, if you were wondering.”
“What has?” I murmured, eyes quite unable to believe what they were seeing. He chuckled again.
“Time, dear girl. Time has stopped. If you must know, I skipped ahead a bit and learnt that if you went on as you are, following silly Hayes’s instructions, you would have come to a terribly sticky sort of end. But you know how men are,” he added, rolling his eyes as if he weren’t one.
“Perhaps I do more than I imagine.”
“Oh, most certainly. However, that’s not the point. The point is that I can’t have that, and so I decided to step in, once again.”
“Yes, well,” I said, failing to keep some amount of bitterness from my voice, “we both know how very well your stepping in has helped me in the past.”
“Please, Mari, don’t distract me! I must tell you where I’m putting you, else you’ll be much beyond confused when you suddenly arrive there.” He gave me a meaningful, almost reproving look, and When he gets angry, it ain’t a purty sight helped to shut my mouth most firmly. “You are going back to The Sovereign’s Crown. The blue-green room you like so very much is the exact destination, and it will be the day after you disappeared that you will find yourself there.”
I nodded wordlessly, waiting for him to continue.
He patted my time-frozen horse, seeming to have forgotten he was giving very important instructions to a crucial pawn in his godly plan. I waited, waited, and finally, after what felt hours, he continued, and didn’t appear to remember he’d paused at all. “Whatever you do, never question the will of the gods, Mari. They pay you more attention than you may think, and…that isn’t, as you have learned rather painfully, always a particularly good thing. Lastly, and perhaps most important, you must not tell anyone where you have been.”
“Why—”
His eyes burnt strangely, and the smile left his face. In a low, rumbling, quite un-Wimbledon-like voice, he repeated, “Never question the will of the gods.”
I blushed, biting my lip. Had I always been so very tactless? “My—my humblest apologies, lord.”
At this, his eyes turned bright and blue once more, the broad grin rushed back to his face, and he said, “Well, I’m glad that’s settled. I do so hate to be serious – if this world were mine, it wouldn’t be allowed for a moment. Oh! We don’t have any more time to chat. Ytarroi is terribly angry with me for keeping her waiting s’very long. I must make it up to her before she loses her temper entirely. Toodle-oo and all that, dear Mariadelle.”
“Lord, who—” But I was stopped short as the scene wavered, flickered, and then disappeared entirely.
Alone, in the fathomless dark, I waited.
Sorry it's a long chapter. Didn't want to leave you lovely readers at that nasty Hayes cliffhanger. Have fun tearing it to leetle teeny bits!
