by Mind Guest
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.
Chapter 5
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 some-how 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 blin
ked 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 attackdefense
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.
"Where did you think to go, slave?" the one on the left asked, letting
his eyes move over me. "It was not expected that you would be awake as
yet."
"For what reason would I not be awake?" I countered, playing dumb as I
usually did. Special Agents were harder than normal to put out, and had
a faster snapback when wake-up time came. Survival is made up of edges
like that, but it hadn't been too helpful that time. "And I am not a
slave! I am free, and therefore should not be chained in such a manner!
I must be released immediately!"
I knew I was pushing it by making inane demands, but it was the sort of
thing an innocent like Bellna would have done, and these people should
have had some idea as to who I was supposed to be. I held my mental
breath as the two men stared down at me, and then the one who had
spoken a minute earlier laughed.
"It has never failed to amuse me to see wenches in chains declare
themselves free," he said, drawing another smile from the man beside
him. "Best you prepare yourself, wench, for you will soon learn better.
Also will you learn to respond quickly and completely to questions put
to you. Those who brought you here spoke of having given you twice the
vapors usually given a captured vessel, and yet are you awake before
those others. For what reason are you awake, and where did you think to
go?"
"I am awake from having awakened, and thought to take myself from this tasteless room! " I snapped, cursing his persistence as I began to get
to my feet. I didn't want him to think there was anything special about
me, but I wasn't getting much of what I wanted just then. He moved
forward a fast two steps to bend and get a fistful of my hair, then
knocked my head into the hard scratchy floor.
"A slave is not permitted to take such a tone with anyone at all, not
to speak of a free man, he said in a level voice after I had cried out
&
nbsp; at the double pain of the knock and the grip on my hair. "You will
remain on the floor, face down, until you have my permission to rise.
And I will recall this matter of early awakening, and will speak to our
records keeper of it. It is a thing your future master will need to
know."
He waited a few seconds to see if I would have anything else to say,
but with the damage already done, the effort wasn't worth it. Bellna
was sending waves of shivering disbelief through me, making my body
tremble with her fear, and I let it happen to cover the almost-snarl I
felt in my own right. Big, brave men who abused chained women were a
special love of mine, and all I wanted to do was get my hands on the
clown with or without being chained. But I wasn't likely to get my
hands on him, and even if I did it wasn't likely to do much good with
the second man there. Survival right then meant being a helpless,
frightened little girl, and that's what I'd have to be. We'd all
thought that Clero wanted Bellna's life, but we'd been wrong; if I'd
known he wanted her as a slave instead, I'd never have gotten involved.
I'm not what would be considered good slave material, not even under
the best of circumstances. Right then, with the main attack drawn away
from its legitimate target, all I wanted was out of there.
Once my hair was released, my new friend and his companion moved past
me, and moments later I heard groaning protests in female voices,
telling me that my two roommates were being roused. I continued to lie
face down where I'd been left, the chains and rings digging into me, my
nose on the scratchy surface of the flooring. The part of my mind that
was me rumbled uselessly with dark thoughts, and the part that was
Bellna sniffled and blubbered in fright. It was a good opportunity to
see if I could reach the Bellna presence to calm her, but after ten
minutes of trying I gave it up. Nothing seemed to reach the Bellna
presence but spiteful intentions, which could not be considered
communication of the reliable sort. If I started out with the idea of
doing some damage, I got either protest or silence, putting me in the
driver's seat; if I let things ride to see how they would go, Bellna's
feelings crowded mine aside. It looked as though I was too well
controlled and Bellna not controlled enough, and that would be an-other