HOSTAGES
“Karigan, wake up!”
It took Mel shaking her to release her from the pain and terror. She blinked in the gray light of predawn and peered up at the three worried faces gazing down at her. Her side still throbbed with pain so she was not convinced she was actually awake. As the others watched, she threw off her blanket and pulled up her shirt just enough to see the wound.
There was no blood, it was not burning. There was a nasty scar of cauterized flesh over the old stab wound. Megan put her hand over her mouth. Karigan hastily pulled her shirt back over it.
“Um, nightmare, I guess,” she said.
“You guess?” Fergal asked.
She nodded.
“You are restless on the best of nights,” he said. He passed his hand over his eyes. “But your screaming just now nearly gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry.” She couldn’t help but notice that his hair was standing up on one side of his head.
“Truth of the matter,” he continued, “is that none of us are getting good sleep between Megan and her spiders and you and your nightmares.”
“You go up to the rafters next time,” Megan said indignantly.
“I don’t ask for these nightmares,” Karigan said.
“I know,” Fergal replied in a quiet, earnest voice, “but maybe if you talked about things and let us help you, they’d go away.”
Maybe if Mara or Estral were here, she’d talk to either one of them, but she did not want to pass her nightmares on to these relative youngsters. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you up.” She lay down on her side and curled into a fetal position, and pulled the blanket over her shoulder.
She heard the others moving to their sleeping spots. Mel lay back down beside her.
“What happened to her?” Megan whispered to Fergal just loud enough for everyone to hear.
“Go to sleep, Megan,” he replied.
“You know you can talk to me,” Mel told Karigan, “if you want. I’ll listen.”
When Karigan did not reply, she stretched out beneath her portion of the blanket. Karigan listened as the others quieted and their breaths became long and even. She did not sleep, but waited out the rest of the dawn awake against Nyssa’s return.
Groggy and still shaken later in the morning, Karigan attended to the chores her captors demanded of her. She stumbled taking the water buckets to the stream and cursed under her breath.
“Clumsy for a Black Shield, aren’t you,” her guard observed. “That’s what the insignia on your sleeve means, right? You are a Black Shield and Greenie.”
Karigan said nothing, but knelt by the pool to fill the buckets.
“You’re in pretty sad shape to be a Black Shield.”
She tried to ignore his goading, but he was not wrong. After she filled the second bucket, she splashed her face with cold water. It gave her some clarity, and she remained kneeling as the rings from her disturbance drifted away. The pool reflected the surrounding trees and a patch of sky in which birds flew. She frowned thinking one looked disproportionately large.
She looked up and saw that her guard was watching the sky. She followed his gaze to where crows cried as they harassed a huge raptor circling on air currents high above. The crows were tiny insects compared to the raptor, and it occurred to her that it was a great gray eagle. It was too far up for her to see it in any detail, but its size told the story. It flew off, the crows a disorganized gaggle behind it, darting in pursuit. Rare as gray eagles were, she supposed it was not so surprising to see one out this way, as the mountains were their domain.
“C’mon, hurry up,” the guard barked at her.
She picked up the two buckets and noticed that it didn’t hurt as much as it once had to carry them. Renn’s stretches were helping. She glanced up, but the eagle had not reappeared. If only it had been Softfeather who had helped her about five years ago in a battle against a monster out of Blackveil Forest, and that he was coming to her aid once again.
“Why hasn’t Renn come today?” Fergal muttered.
“Maybe because your wound has improved,” Karigan replied. It had, but she, too, wondered, and frankly worried about Renn when he did not make his usual appearance to check on Fergal. Maybe he was needed elsewhere. Or, maybe there was a much worse reason. She tried not to think the worst and what it could mean for Cade, or for the man himself with his calm and reassuring manner for whom she’d taken a genuine liking. She wouldn’t let anyone else apply the liniment to her back.
Meanwhile, Megan had taken to whining and sulking about their situation, the curls of her formerly lustrous hair hanging long and limp. The tension in the hut escalated as a restless Melry paced about, scuffing her heels on the dirt floor, and humming to herself as if to block out Megan’s incessant complaints, which in turn only served to increase Megan’s ire.
“Why don’t you sit down,” Megan told her.
“I don’t feel like it. Why don’t you stop bellyaching about everything?”
“Just because you’re the colonel’s daughter doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do.”
“Just because you’re a Green Rider doesn’t mean you get to tell me what to do,” Mel mimicked. “In fact, you’re a disgrace as a Green Rider. Do you know how special it is to be called? It’s all I ever wanted, and yet you’re the one who gets chosen, and all you ever do is whine, whine, whine. Look at Karigan and Fergal. Are they whining?”
Megan burst into tears.
“Enough,” Karigan told them. It was the boredom and uncertainty of their situation that was getting to them. The boredom she could diminish by teaching them swordfighting forms, but only for so long. There was not much she could do about their situation, for she was as uncertain as they. As Chief Rider and senior among them, she tried to put forward a calm and confident demeanor, but it was all a facade undermined by night terrors and self-doubt.
Megan sniffed and blotted her tears with a lacey, and rather soiled, handkerchief. “Well, you haven’t come up with any plans to get us out of here.”
“If you have any ideas, you are welcome to share them,” Karigan reminded her.
“Why did I have to get stuck here?” Megan said, launching into another refrain of a familiar lament. “I miss the shop and all the fine things, the ribbons and feathers, all my notions.”
A quizzical look crossed Fergal’s face. “What notions might those be?”
“The ones in the shop.”
“Your shop has . . . notions?”
Karigan chuckled, and Mel smiled.
“What?” he said.
“It’s a millinery shop,” Megan replied.
Karigan and Mel laughed at Fergal’s blank expression. Megan’s perturbed look only made it funnier.
“Why are you laughing?” he demanded. “What notions is she talking about?”
It was more than likely Fergal had never stepped into a millinery shop or bought sewing goods. And from what she knew of his past, there had probably been no one in his life who did those things, either. She sobered, and became aware of a commotion somewhere outside. She rose to her feet and moved to the boarded up window. She could not see much through the cracks, but there were people headed their way.
“Guards coming,” she warned the others.
Fergal and Megan stood, and they and Melry moved close to her. If something was about to happen, they would face it together despite any irritation among them. They waited while the door was unlocked and then thrown open, and blinked to accustom their eyes to the inrush of daylight. Someone was shoved inside. He stumbled, barely keeping to his feet. A Green Rider.
“Ty?” Karigan said.
He looked up, his face swollen and bruised and bloody. He had been beaten badly and he pressed his hand against his ribs. He seemed barely able to stand, but alert enough to know who he was seeing.
“Karigan?”
A guard clenched his hand around the back of Ty’s neck. “You taking this in, Greenie?” He forced him to look at each of the prisoners. “You know who they are?”
“Yes,” Ty said.
“Ty, what—?” Karigan began.
“No questions,” the guard snapped.
“They got me as I came down from the Eagle’s Pass,” Ty said hastily.
The guard cuffed him and he went down on his knee. A second guard menaced them with his crossbow so they would not try to help him. The first guard hauled him to his feet.
“You sure you got a good look at those faces?” the guard asked.
Ty nodded.
“Good, because we’ll start taking these prisoners apart one piece at a time if there is no response. Understand?”
“Yes.”
Megan whimpered, hid behind Fergal.
The guard jerked Ty around to push him out of the hut. The door was slammed shut and locked.
“Poor Ty,” Mel murmured.
“What was all that about?” Megan asked.
“Can’t you see?” Fergal said. “We’re hostages. They want something from the king, and they’re sending Ty with their demands. And if their demands are not met . . .”
“They’ll cut us up!” Megan buried her face in Fergal’s shoulder.
“Crying’s not going to help us any,” Fergal said, but he tolerated her hanging onto him.
“We at least have a clue as to where we are,” Karigan said, “thanks to Ty.”
“Below the Eagle’s Pass,” Mel said.
“Makes sense, doesn’t it,” Karigan mused. “Eagle’s Pass is the major east-west crossing through the mountains, and would of course be of interest to Second Empire. I wonder if they intend to take it? Or, maybe they already have.”
Fergal gave a low whistle. “That would be a big victory for them, blocking the eastern provinces from the west. But isn’t the keep supposed to be impossible to take?”
“I don’t think they’d be here if they didn’t have some plan to take it.”
“Then why would they send Ty on with intelligence about Second Empire’s position? Doesn’t make sense.”
“They must figure the king already knows. He must certainly have his scouts keeping an eye on them. And keep in mind the Raiders do not seem to be entirely in step with Second Empire and may not care.” She needed to think of some way to use that to their advantage.
“Will the king negotiate for our release?” Megan asked.
Karigan slowly shook her head. “It’s unlikely. The crown’s policy is not to negotiate with criminals who take hostages and demand some sort of ransom. At least, we’re not important enough for negotiations, unless one of you has high noble blood I don’t know about, or has been promoted to general.”
“They won’t try to rescue us either, will they?”
The others watched her expectantly. She shrugged. “If the opportunity arises, they might try. At least they’ll know where we are now.” Before they could grow more downcast, she said, “I think maybe it’s time to take a chance and get outside for a look around.”