This is the continuation of Fleirzon 4-5... I hope you enjoy!
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Four: On Shared Wings
“I’ll untie you,” he said, taking her arm to make sure she wouldn’t fall as he worked the knots that restricted her arms.
She tried to climb away, but she slipped, a gut-wrenching fall rushing up into her face. A tearing pain in her arm stopped the descent.
“Why should I trust you?” she hissed as he hoisted her back onto the branch.
“Even if I wanted to kill you, I’m your only way out,” he murmured gently “even if you hate me.”
He looped the rope around her waist again, then tying it around his own body.
“But you won’t drop me—will you?” she asked, her voice edged in fear.
“Why would I carry you three hundred miles only to drop you? Do you know how heavy you are?” He smiled; a small show of sympathy.
Verdeyan laughed and turned her face to the wind as he leapt off the branch into the skies.
After two more hours, Gattlin began to tire rapidly.
“Use your wings!” he panted to her over the howl of wind.
“I can’t. You butchered me.” She hissed.
“You must. Or we will both fall.”
Reluctant, she positioned herself on his back and slowly opened her own wings. Pain wracked her entire body, and the air beat against her shorn feathers. But they bolstered the pair in the gale, providing a touch of lift. Thrill filled her veins, slicing past the agony of pain. She was flying again.
As they approached the settlement, Locher, an island of lights appeared in the sky.
A sentry sounded a horn and two guards with lanterns flew out to meet them in the starlit-twilight.
One of the guards gasped. A Raptein with two sets of wings?
As they drew nearer, he saw it was not one but two Fleirzon, a dark haired Raptein man and an orange haired girl whose wings looked bloody and hurt.
“A captive. Hone, a captive!” the younger guard exclaimed.
“You know the rules. It’s his. Though I’d love to have another slave to go confront that tribe….”
“What is the word of mouth today?” Gattlin called to them.
“There’s an acting troop in town, and the merchants have a new load of goods from the East. Nice captive. Might I have her, eh?” The younger guard shouted.
“I won’t let this one disturb you further, sir,” stated the older guard. “Good night, good luck with that swine you’ve got.”
“Brute!” Verdeyan screamed, her heart burning with anger.
The older guard dove towards the pair, a wooden club in his hand.
Gattlin wheeled, turning upright and pulling Verdeyan into his arms.
His broad arms shielded her.
“Leave her be! She is mine,” he bellowed, touching his fingers to the hilt of his knife.
As they landed Verdeyan growled “He thinks me no more than an animal!”
“Since you act as one, why shouldn’t you be treated so?” Gattlin said, and she lunged at him, trying to hit him. Gattlin grabbed her wrists and let her struggle until she broke free, falling to the floor.
“You won’t win,” he told her, his hazel eyes narrowing in anger.
He blinked several times, wrestling with his desire to punish her for the impudence. A cold gust of wind came over them, and Gattlin shivered, a bitter memory of his past wracking him. The phantom image of a man’s shadow flickered in his mind’s eye for a moment, then went out, like a candle in a torrent of rain.
He led her over a walkway and to the porch of a large thatch-roofed building.
“Sit here.” He said, motioning to a pile of straw on the porch of the building. It was partially shielded from the wind by a tarp that hung from the rafters.
Taking a stout leather cord from a hook on the wall, he tied each end around Verdeyan’s wrists, looping the body of the cord around a pillar that supported the roof. He locked each knot using a bone pin that took two hands work.
“It is of an unwritten law that captives remain outside inns,” he said.
Verdeyan stared up at him balefully.
“If you don’t behave, I’ll sell you to the scouting party that operates here. They’re traveling North inside a week to confront the Nimaechons, your sister tribe.”
Verdeyan spat at his feet. Her mother was half Nimaechon, marrying into her father’s Sleveten clan. “I’d never.” Her voice was calm, but coldly defiant.
“So be it. On the morrow, you shall fly to battle your sister people. Or more likely fall into the void below the trees because your wings will not sustain you. Thus, I suggest you sleep here.”
At this, she dipped her head, her bound wrists tense down to the tips of her fingers which were balled into fists.
Verdeyan scowled at the floorboards as Gattlin stepped through the doorway to the inn.
She silently cursed the arbitrary man who had taken her, fate for letting this happen, and herself for being so foolish to hope for an escape.
As the door to the to the inn snapped shut behind him, Gattlin sighed. Why was she so oppositional? He regretted having to be so harsh, but it was the truth. Escaped captives were forced into service for the Raptein’s scouts. Verdeyan would never survive a situation if it required flight. She’d fall into the endless chasm to whatever fate chose for her; most likely death.
Gattlin paid for a room and purchased food at the bar.
He returned to the porch with a sack of squirrel jerky and seed cakes in hand with a wooden canteen. He handed several strips of dried meat to Verdeyan, along with a seed cake and the canteen.
“Here, I know you are hungry as I,” he murmured, noticing how frail she looked with dark bruises on her arms, and dried blood caking her mutilated wings and scratches on her thin face.
Wordlessly, the captive tore into the food, gulping water from the cask.
As he turned away, her called to her “Good night.”
Gattlin heard her sputter in what he hoped surprise, choking on the water she’d been in the process of swallowing.
Five: Havoc On The Square
“Whatever is your desire to cause me suffering?” Verdeyan inquired of Gattlin the next morning as they stood by the rail on the edge of the platform, gazing into the sunrise.
“I don’t mean to cause you grief,” he replied coolly.
“Then why do you do this to, Gattlinain,” her voice was harsh, “for until you can justify that, you are no more than a thoughtless savage!”
With that, Verdeyan turned and fled across the catwalk to the market square.
Gattlin chased after her, dodging between passersby who had already been jostled once by the fleet-footed young woman. Many turned, startled, staring after the pair that ran madly through the mass of bodies.
Verdeyan ran across the market square, crashing into a fruit cart, not even looking back as she snatched one of the lumpy spheres and bit into it, eating as she fled. Gattlin was a great sprinter, but his pursuit was short-lived when a wiry male Raptein caught him by the shoulder, shouting “What does this woman look like? The floorboards? She’s my wife, and you almost ran her over!” Gattlin hastened to apologize, hoping to end the negotiations without a fight.
Aided by Gattlin’s delay, Verdeyan continued to run, kicking aside whatever came underfoot. The young Fleirzon heard a shout behind her and glanced back to see a man shaking his fist, shouting “You cheat! Gimmay my fruit!”
As she heard the man’s bellows, she collided with a firm wooden pillar, sprawling backwards from the impact. With the loud clink of bone bracelets, she crashed into a young woman behind her. The woman sat up moments later, groaning, “What was that?” “Oh. You’re a captive.”
“Yes, so what if I am? What difference does it make?” Verdeyan cut her off. The woman stared at her, taken aback, her eyes resting on the deep blue of Verdeyan’s pupils.
“She’s a thief if you asks me,” came the irate voice of the vender she’d stolen the fruit from.
The woman suddenly said “Who? What thief? I haven’t seen any such trash around here.”
“Her, there, by you on the street. She stole my pontash, little wretch she is.”
“You are insane. She’s my daughter. Be off before my husband comes. And besides, if she did steal a pontash, here’s a ball of twine in trade for that.”
The woman tossed the bundle of twine at him, her eyes forming disapproving slits as she threw it. Then she turned back to the delinquent and said with chagrin “Now, whatever, whoever you are, you are with me I suppose.” With that, the woman stood up offering a hand to Verdeyan. She took it, for she was yet dizzy from the impact.
The woman led Verdeyan, holding her shoulder to guide her through the milling mass of people. She led her over onto another bridge, and into a building
that sat in the middle of it. She ushered the girl into an alcove around the back of the structure. “Now, whom exactly are you, and what are you doing here in Raptein territory?” The woman’s eyes were narrowing again, as if with suspicion.
Verdeyan’s initial wave of relief had passed, and now she was more concerned with what the mysterious stranger would do to her than she was of what would happen should Gattlin find her.
“I was captured—”
“That much I could have guessed. But what is your name, why are you here, in Raptein territory, unescorted by your captor? You obviously don’t know, but most people here don’t take kindly to outsiders. Furthermore, runaway girls, such as you, are often, ah, taken, by men. You are lucky that it is I that you ran into, and not one of them.”
“I’m Verdeyan, not that it should mean much to you or anyone, considering how everyone thinks Slevetens animals, and it should be apparent that I escaped captivity. Until I met you.” Verdeyan rolled her eyes, glaring at her new captress.
“If you wish to be treated as so, I suppose I can gratify you. But I should think not, Verdeyan. Now come, in here. This is where I live.”
The woman led her through a door near where they stood. Inside, there was a room of rough hewn wooden panels and two plain beds. “Here. Sit. I’ll fix you some food. It was truly uneccesecarry, stealing from that man like you did.”
Verdeyan looked up at her balefully, but the woman didn’t flinch. A new captor. How wonderful, she thought dismally. Now what will I do? And what of that wretch, Gattlin?
Without knowing why she did so, Verdeyan, got up and began to chop greens alongside the woman.
“I thought you made it clear that you resented my existence,” said the woman said sharply.
“What do you expect, Raptein?” Verdeyan’s voice was bitter.
“Just what traits you are now displaying. Truly, I never did believe a Sleveten, as known as they are for acrobatics, would be so clumsy as to run into that pillar.”
Verdeyan sensed that the woman wanted to irritate her, but in spite of herself, she began to talk. “I was captured. I never meant to be here! Wouldn’t you know, or at least reason that? My family-who knows, could be dead. The brute came and snatched me from the sky, clipped my wings, carried me here. Made me sleep outside that wretched hotel. And…”
“And?”
“He was...strange. Stranger than anything I’ve ever seen. One minute, gentle, even kind; the next harsh and withdrawn. He scares me, like he’s a spider and I’m a fly in his web that he has captured and can torture to death.”
Suddenly, with mounting terror, she realized what she’d said. This woman was so discreet, yet intent that it seemed futile to resist her.
“Verdeyan?”
“Leave me be!”
“Verdeyan, you are better off here. Believe me. I won’t hurt you—”
“Why, that’s precisely what Gattlin said!” she snapped.
“Listen! Listen. You are a Sleveten, with red hair. On the street, you wouldn’t live to see tomorrow, so harsh are the street dwellers here. If you did, you’d be better off dead than alive, and would suffer less for it. Perhaps if you haven’t noticed, we Rapteins are not allies to your people, Verdeyan. It is of your best interest to stay here. I won’t let you back out. And if somehow this Gattlin finds you, you are going with him.”
“Why?”
“For the sake of life, why don’t you listen? It’s in your inter—”
“Why would I go with him, had I a choice?”
“Oh, but you are his by right. Maybe I’ve mislead you. I am against the needless killing of innocents, be whatever tribe they are from, but not against captives. That is part of justice, for when one is taken from one family, is it not just to for them to take back? I feel that it is.”
“Perhaps you do.”
“I’m Olsvei. My brother knows many young men, perhaps Gattlin.
I will ask him of this next time I see him. Which should be tomorrow morning.”
Verdeyan dropped the bone knife she held and sank down onto the nearest bed. It was bare but for a rough cloth thrown over the mattress of leaves.
These enemy Fleirzon seemed so convoluted. One moment bitter, the next open-minded. What could she expect from one moment to the next? Where would they take her?
Olsvei continued to cook, dropping the greens into a kettle of water that hung above a bone basin of hot coals. The scent of owl-marrow broth filled Verdeyan’s senses with hunger. The sour flesh of the pontash she’d stolen had only been enough to awaken the hunger that gnawed at her insides like the teeth of a maddened squirrel.
She hugged her knees to her chest, rocking like an introverted toddler during a thunderstorm. She was lost as a sparrow in the fog.
Olsvei tossed Verdeyan a glace, her amber eyes forming an arcane expression, as she poured the stew into two wooden bowls. She handed one to Verdeyan, who took it gingerly, as if the smooth wooden sides were the enamel of some sacred egg.
The broth was thin, with the fat from the marrow sparkling in the sunlight that came down in shafts from a skylight in the ceiling. The greens were tender, savory, between Verdeyan’s teeth. Before she could catch herself, she began to speak “If there is any left, if it does not insult you further, may I have more?”
Olsvei smiled and poured some of her own broth into Verdeyan’s bowl.
The captive girl nearly dropped the bowl, spilling some food on her shirt. An enigmatic stranger and enemy had just shared food with her.
Verdeyan drank the broth, trying not to let her shaking hands betray her emotions.
When the bowl was empty, she placed it on a trunk at the foot of the bed.
Olsvei sat inches from her on the same mattress. This woman treated her nearly as her own. As if she really meant the offhanded remark she’d made to the displeased vendor in the market square.
Verdeyan let her mind wander, shutting her eyes to hold in the streams of tears that already fell. She lay back on the bed, curled into a ball. Olsvei placed a hand on her shoulder, murmuring quietly “It shall be alright. I won’t let ill fate come of you.”
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Thanks for reading!
PS: rabid criticism is much appreciated.
-Voxina
