Chapter Ten: The Great Escape

An hour or so later, we heard voices and keys clinking outside, and then Lord Kurzalvik strode in and I knew our plan was kaput. He was a beast of a man - literally, if you go by Earth standards. He was half-fae and half-taurin… taurin aren't quite minotaurs but aren't far from it. He was six and a half feet tall if he was an inch, bulky with muscle and with one eye so dark it was almost black and one eye milky blue. He strode up to me and smiled, towering over my seated form, gold and precious stones glistening in his mouth from the several jeweled teeth that had replaced ones lost in battle.

"Such a beauty," he chuckled. "The handmaiden to a princess, no less… tell me, my lady, do you find these quarters to your liking?"

I had to remind myself that I was supposed to be entranced. "No…"

"That's 'no, lord' or 'yes, lord'. Do you understand?"

"Yes… lord…"

He crouched down to look into my face. He gripped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and moved my face back and forth, his breath stinking in my face. "Thank the gods for alchemy. Your friend isn't so bad, either. I think I'll have you both at once… that way, the men can enjoy at least one of you tomorrow… though I just might take you as my personal thrall." He unlinked our chains from their ring with a special set of pliers, gripping them in a meaty fist. "Yes, I'll make you my own… after all the lieutenants have tried you once. Otherwise, I'd have a mutiny on my hands. They'll have to have you… they won't be able to help themselves."

That gave Kurzalvik pause. He dropped our chain and paced the room a few times, the huge bastard sword at his side jostling with each step. His hair was a fiery auburn that sprouted all the way down his bare back. His breathing came out in audible huffs, like a bull preparing to charge. Finally, he stopped back at my spot.

"Tell me, girl… have any of my men used you?"

Let me tell you, it took a lot of willpower to suppress the grin that my pretty lips wanted to make, but I suppressed it all right. Instead, I stared blankly ahead and said: "Yes…"

"Damn! Damn the fools…" Kurzalvik paced the room again. "Who was it? Tell me, girl! Who among my men violated you?"

"Bald… man…" I said.

Kurzalvik squared his shoulders and turned toward the door, his breath coming out in hot huffs. It was as good of a chance as we were likely to get. I grabbed the extra length of chain, which I'd tied into a two half-hitches knot, and used the warlord's own special pliers to link it to my own chain for some extra length, thanking Jesus and/or Gala for the princess's incredible dexterity. Then I undid the first unfused link I could see in my chain. That gave me about two more yards - it was enough extra to work with. Kurzalvik heard the clinking of chains and turned just in time to see me toss the chain loop around his beefy neck. Then I grabbed the other end, unfurled my wings, and flew it up through the loop securing the chandelier to the ceiling.

"Now!" I shouted. My wings buzzed as I flapped, sending dust and pillow stuffing swirling everywhere. Kurzalvik tugged back, nearly crashing me up into the chandelier. "Now, Becounia!"

That snapped her out of her shell-shock. She unfurled her own wings - not quite pureblood fae sized but pretty functional - and flew up, grabbing the chain a few feet from where I was and pulling. The two of us pulled with all our might, our combined body weight plus propulsion pulling just enough to lift the warlord from the floor through our improvised chandelier-loop-pully. I wrapped the end of the chain around one of the loops on the wall that they used to chain us into place and then folded my wings back up, catching my breath as I paced over to the dangling warlord.

He thrashed on the chain, thrashed and threatened to break it. His feet were only a two inches from the floor and any give would let him touch down… two inches and slowly creeping to one. I looked up and, to my horror, saw that one or two unfused chain links were slowly stretching out under his weight, and his beefy part-bull neck kept him from being fully suffocated by the chain noose. Wild fury flared in his eyes, and I knew that he'd be free in a few short seconds - free to kill or rape us, whichever he preferred. Probably one and then the other. Then I remembered the big bastard sword flailing by his side as he kicked. With a scream of fear and fury, I pulled it from its sheath. It was far heavier than anything I could effectively wield, but all I had to do was thrust, and thrust I did. I stuck the blade into his chest and pushed… it took a lot more push than I thought it would and I had to fold my wings back out and flap to get the extra thrust I needed to stick it all the way through.

Just as I did, the chain snapped and Kurzalvik dropped to the floor, gurgling as he struggled to take in air, limbs flailing. I pulled the sword out from his chest - that was harder than I'd expected, too - and a river of indigo blood flowed after it. If I haven't mentioned it yet, we fae have purple blood, and he was half-fae. I stuck the sword in again, this time in his belly and, as his flailing slowed and grew weaker, I straddled his chest. I bent forward, looking into his eyes, one dark and one cloudy blue, and smiled.

I leaned in next to one of his half-bull ears and whispered: "Is it as good as you thought it would be?" I hope he could still hear well enough to recognize the mocking tone, though I somehow doubt it. I watched as the life faded from his eyes, and my only regret was that it couldn't happen more slowly.

After we'd hoisted the bastard up, Becounia had watched the whole thing unfold, first with terror and then with something approaching reverential awe. When I padded back over to her, she bowed before me and refused to meet my gaze when I told her to get up.

"My lady… my lady… I didn't know," she whispered. "You are Gaia's daughter…"

"I'm not," I said. The truth is, I'm the son of Moira and Wilbur Born of Green Haven, Nebraska, or the daughter of Alathea and Fostolas, rulers of the fae realms. Take your pick. "We're still in the middle of the briar patch… I mean, we're still in danger, Becounia. We're going to take care of the guards outside…"

"We?"

I handed her a boot dagger I'd taken off of Kurzalvik and nodded. "I realize you're not a soldier, but I'm your commanding… princess. You'll do as I say or none of us is getting out of here alive," I said. And, when that didn't do much to quell her terror, I added: "I hereby bless this knife with the power of Gaia. Whosoever is stabbed in the neck by it will quickly succumb."

Admittedly, that's not much of a trick. Blessed blade or not, stab wounds to the neck tend to make folks quickly succumb, as that's a pretty important part of the body whether you're human, fae, or half-taurin. But that seemed to resolve Becounia's mettle, and I knew she'd be a good subordinate officer because she now trusted me more than she trusted anybody else in the world - and that was a big responsibility that I'd try to honor.

We tried keys in the lock as quietly as we could, getting it right on the third try. Then I had Becounia open the door as slowly and as quietly as she could. I peeked out from the widening crack in the door, soon spotting the jailor - the same bald bastard who'd groped me twice earlier that day. I guess he was working long hours - lucky me, not so lucky him. When the door was about fourteen inches open, the hinges creaked loud enough that he turned around to see what the noise was… that he hadn't checked out the series of loud thumps, clanks, and screams inside the room suggested that those happened on a fairly regular basis, which really got my blood boiling. The instant I registered the shock on his face, I cast propuls, the generic pushing spell.

The first time I'd cast that spell in a fight, it hadn't done much beyond saving my bacon for a few seconds, but I was a lot better at magic now. Maybe better than I fully realized. The guy wasn’t too much smaller than his boss had been, but the blast knocked him back like he'd been fired from a catapult. And, while he was still reeling from his impact against the stone wall, Becounia dashed forward and stabbed him twice in the neck, jabbing right through his carotid artery on the first go. She turned back to me and waved the bloody blade excitedly.

"It worked, princess!"

+++++

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We were very fortunate that dear, departed 'Lord' Kurzalvik, may he rot in hell, didn't have a very disciplined operation. He had just north a hundred souls in his fort, sixty or seventy of them fighting men, but only four were on the wall - two at the palisade and two at the portcullis. Now, I imagine night duty at an old fort in the middle of the wilderness isn't the most exciting place and the most noteworthy thing you're likely to spot on the average night is a curious grizzly bear checking out the place. But when you've got a captured princess worth more than your whole goddamn fort (even if you'd picked the wrong one as princess), you'd think more security would be in order.

Most of the men were feasting around a big fire pit with the women and several children of the camp, which meant their night vision was no good (unless there were any Oncarans in the group, who always have good night vision). As Becounia and I crept out from the harem, we encountered only one other guard. We dispatched him just as we had the jailor - with a push and a stab to the neck - and I claimed the glittering dagger at his side. Then we were out in the big commons at the middle of the fort with the fire pit twenty yards to our right.

"What now, my lady?" Becounia asked.

"Most of the women back there haven't got wings and they're still doped up, so we'll have to open the gate to get them out. I'm not leaving anybody behind to these bastards."

Opening the porticullis was a lot easier than I expected it to be. Becounia and I flew up into the night, our knives drawn, and dropped in on the guards. A slim fae woman with a knife isn't much challenge for a fighting man with leather armor and a bow and arrow. But when you drop down on them out of the sky, cut their throats, and then fly out of melee range to let the cut do its work, the advantage goes to you. The biggest risk was one of the men crying out or being hardy enough to get help before bleeding out, but neither of those things happened. The next biggest risk was that that rusty old portcullis would be ungodly loud.

Fortunately, it was extremely difficult for two fae women to crank the great gear of the gate, and so we only managed a few inches at a time, a single great chain link passing over the gears each time - clunk… clunk… clunk… rather than the clunkclunkclunk of two strong men working the wheel. It sounded almost exactly like a bullfrog calling out in the night, and I guess that's what the revelers around the fire pit opted to interpret it as. When the portcullis was about five feet up, we called it well enough and stuck the lock into the crank - anybody could fit under that.

"Okay… now you go back to the harem and order the others out through the gate - they'll follow your commands, so make sure you give them well. Once you reach the end of the main road, keep going in that direction until you find the fae road. If you hear anybody coming, hide…"

"My lady? Shouldn't you be the one to lead us?"

I shook my head. "I'll meet up with you if I can - I'm not leaving anybody behind. I'm getting Meliswe."

Becounia's brow furrowed with worry, but she nodded and took a deep breath. "You will succeed, my lady. We have Gaia on our side." She made the sign of the crossed circle with her finger.

I wished I had as much faith in our cause. I didn't think we necessarily had God or Gaia or Paul Bunyan on our side, but I knew I had to rescue Meliswe - when they found out that she wasn't the princess, as they certainly would once they tried to ransom her, I didn't care to think what would befall her. Harem service or worse. As I surveyed the fort's grounds, I tried to think of where a horrible warlord might stash a princess… my guess was at the top of the one intact tower. It was a pretty stupid place to keep a fae since we're fliers, but I'd already established that I wasn't dealing with the most brilliant tactical mind. Captive princesses go in towers.

I buzzed up to the tower and circled around, finding one barred window at the outward-facing side of the tower. I tried to get a foothold so I wouldn't have to keep beating my wings - if I haven't mentioned it, flying is hard work - and peered in.

"Meliswe! Meliswe!" I whispered. I squinted into the dark… it was too dim inside to see much of anything.

When her face popped out of the darkness, it gave me such a start that I almost tumbled down from the tower. I grabbed at the window bars and scrambled for a foothold. Fortunately, I wasn't very heavy. I brought my face back up to hers - Meliswe's expression was one of surprise, as if she couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. There were only about four inches between the bars, but I figured that might be enough to take a smooch… but I wasn't sure she'd want to kiss me. If she still felt as she had when we'd last seen one another, then presumably not.

"You… you've escaped?" she whispered. "Thank Gaia!"

I nodded. "We're all escaping. I have the keys and I'm coming up to get you… be ready to fly the hell out of here."

She shook her head. "No, you must escape. The union of the realms…"

"Be ready," I said, and I buzzed off (literally) before she could object again.

I dropped in on the guard at the base of the tower and found that he was the only man guarding the place. I stabbed him right in the neck, but he cried out, which attracted attention. As he gurgled and died, I fumbled my way through the keyring, finding the right one on my second attempt. Then I dashed into the tower and up the stairs, pulling the door shut behind me. Somebody tried to kick the door in less than a second later but, thank Gaia, it held firm.

It wasn't an especially tall tower - five stories in total and perhaps two stories of that above the fortress wall. I dashed past a treasure room and one or two unoccupied cells before reaching Meliswe's at the top of the stairs. As I cycled through the keys that I thought might work, I heard pounding on the door at the tower's base and the shouting of men. Then an alarm bell bonged out and I heard men further off shouting to close the gate followed by more shouting to open the gate further - Becounia and the women from the harem were fleeing off into the night.

"Keys! Find the fuckin keys!" A man at the tower's base shouted.

"I have the keys, idiot! I'm trying to find the right one… it's not like they're going anywhere."

"They're fae, shit-for-brains. They can fly."

This led to more pounding, cursing, and jiggling of keys. Up on my end of key testing, I finally found the right one to Meliswe's door. The moment the door unlocked, it swung open and Meliswe darted out, gripping me so hard it knocked the wind out of me and nearly sent us both tumbling down the stairs. She wept into my shoulder and I rubbed her back, whispering, "there, there." I could have stayed like that all night, but we only had about ten seconds before the men trying to get in succeeded and started tromping up to demonstrate their displeasure in person.

"They're coming up. We're going to have to fly out of here," I said.

Meliswe's eyes went wide. "The window is barred… I've tried to push it out with propuls, but it's much too sturdy."

Now… I'd gotten a lot better at magic since I used that spell during the second attempt on Laeanna's life, but I doubted my magical mojo was stronger than Meliswe's. I wasn't going to heroically blast the tower open so we could fly to freedom. Below us, the door banged open and shouting men tromped up the stairwell. I could hear them arguing - they were tripping over one another and slowing each other down as they all tried to sprint up toward us. Still… not much time.

"I'm… I'm sorry," Meliswe said, her eyes brimming with tears.

"I have an idea."

I grabbed the iron candle stand from the awning outside her tower room and dashed inside. It was a threadbare room with a little sleeping pallet, a bucket for bathroom duties, and a clay pitcher for water. Meliswe had been pretty limited in what materials she could use for magic, but the candle stand, a wrought-iron thing about four feet high, made all the difference. It was conductive metal, which meant it could be used for storm magic.

I touched the candle stand to the iron bars of the window, shaped my mana, and pushed with all my might… which was starting to be pretty significant, magically-speaking. The thunderclap shook the whole tower and set my teeth to chattering. And, even shielding my eyes, I was blinded for a second when the lightning tore down. The sound was deafening - my delicate fae ears rang for hours afterward - and the cracking of stone that followed was barely quieter. A huge chunk of tower wall fell away, revealing an expanse of beautiful night sky. Just then, the raiders reached the top of the tower, weapons drawn, ready to capture us.

Propuls! Meliswe cast the spell - it was an easy spell that didn't take any ingredients beyond a decent reserve of mana. Her attempt was strong enough to send the front three men tumbling back into the five or six behind them, which gave us the precious few seconds we needed. I leapt off the rocky ruins of the tower's south face, and Meliswe was right behind me, her wings buzzing, her fingertips reaching out toward mine, though we couldn't quite touch - not without bumping wings mid-flight. A single arrow zipped past us and then we were free.

We flew over a mile or more of wild forest, above the highest treetops, the cool night whipping through my hair. I kept my eyes mostly groundward, looking for any sign of Becounia or the other women, but I didn't see anything, and I might have missed a whole cavalry company clopping through beneath the thicker parts of the canopy. After a few minutes, my wingbeats grew erratic and I couldn't quite catch my breath - I'd been through a lot over the past hour and was beyond exhausted. Meliswe led us to a particularly large tree and helped me navigate through the canopy, finally, thankfully touching down forty feet above the forest floor, around a crown of boughs big enough to accommodate us for a while.

Meliswe pulled me tight and wouldn't let me go. "You saved me," she said.

"Of course I saved you," I said. "I love you. Even if you don't love me, even if you hate my guts, I love you."

"I didn't stop loving you." She cried into my shoulder - tears of relief and exhaustion. "I wanted to, but I couldn't. I… my lady, I don't want to leave your service."

I turned to face her, situating myself over the big bough like I was riding a horse. "You're not my handmaiden, Meliswe."

I knew that look - confusion and hurt. "But… my lady? You saved me…"

"I did. I saved Meliswe Juniper, who I love more than anybody else in this world - not Meliswe, handmaiden to Princess Laeanna. You don't have to tell Alathea that you're leaving my service, but I don't want you to be my maid… I want us to be equals." I bit my lip. "If you'll have me."

"I've died and gone to Elysheim," she whispered, and she pulled me into a kiss, her soft lips on mine, her emerald eyes reflecting the green moonlight and, if only for a moment, I forgot every trouble in the world and enjoyed her touch.