Ruby & the Huntsman of Midnight

Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Ruby hardly knew what was happening and didn’t much care. She’d thought that the night she was captured had been the worst of her life, but last night had far exceeded it. She felt numb as the jailer opened her cell door and motioned for her to step out.

A part of her noticed that he was not dressed in the uniform of the others who had thrown her in here. He was dressed in suede and hard leather and carried a bow across his back, as if he was going out for a hunt.

Gran’s lessons were so ingrained in her that she automatically noted the knives he carried—two at his waist, one in his boot. She had to assume that a man with this many weapons carried more that she couldn’t see. Could she get one away from him?

He didn’t seem particularly cautious, but he kept a close eye on her as she walked by him. He was much bigger than her, and she was so exhausted that she could barely stand. Whatever he wanted with her, she couldn’t stop him.

“How did you do it?” asked the hunter.

“He attacked me.” Her lips were so dry that she could barely get the words out.

“How did you kill him?”

He pointed to the stairs at the far side of the dungeon. That was the way out. Would they send her back out into the hunt for sport? Would they hang her in public for defending herself against whatever it was that they’d thrown into her cell?

“My grandmother taught me to fight.” She shuffled down the aisle.

Ruby had been dreaming of her grandmother lately. It was strange yet comforting. In her dreams, Ruby continued her training with Gran, learning new moves and tactics that were useful in her real life. Of course, they must have been lessons that Gran had given her already that she was remembering through dreams, but they were remarkably useful.

“Ah, your grandmother was in the war.”

Ruby nodded, staring at the cells as they walked by. She almost stumbled when she saw the c*****e inside the cells.

Most of it was in the shadows, but she caught enough of the blood and gore to understand what had happened there. To understand that she was supposed to meet that same fate. It turned her stomach, but she’d already thrown up everything in it, so all it could do was heave.

She backed away from one cell, only to realize that she was getting too close to another.

“Are you frightened?” He sounded genuinely curious.

She looked sharply at him. “Why bother to torture? Why not just kill us outright and leave us some dignity?”

“Dignity?” He looked surprised. “The Dark King does not tolerate dignity in his kingdom. Don’t you know that by now?”

Was that an insult to the king? If so, that bordered on treason.

But Ruby was just a country girl, not schooled in the ways of the court. Her grandmother had told her to never trust anyone from the castle. Gran worked with nobles all the time, and she was careful not to let Ruby weave fanciful notions around them. Romantic notions would get a girl killed, she’d always said.

Ruby wanted to be strong. Needed to be strong to survive this. The problem was that she wasn’t all that strong. She was thirsty and hungry, and her legs trembled so much that she couldn’t believe she’d walked this far. Her hands shook too.

Her mind kept screaming about the events that happened last night. How she was sure she would die. How she knew that unless she did horrible things to survive, those same horrible things would be done to her.

Ruby stumbled. The hunter jerked forward as if to catch her, but then he stopped and let her fall or not as she would. It was a curious motion, as if he hadn’t quite made up his mind about what kind of a person he was.

She managed to stay on her feet. She kept her eyes straight ahead so that she wouldn’t see the horror show in the cells on either side of her. When she reached the bottom of the stairs, though, the last of her strength ran out.

The stairs seemed to go up forever.

At the top, there was a sliver of light. It was sunshine, she was sure of it. Just the thought of feeling the warmth of the sun renewed her strength. She thought she’d never see it again.

She managed a few steps, but each step became harder to climb.

“I will not catch you if you fall,” said the hunter.

She didn’t say anything to that. Her grandmother would have made a sharp retort, but Ruby wasn’t her grandmother.

She just climbed the next step. She kept expecting the hunter to shove her up the stairs, but he waited and let her go at her pace.

Then she stumbled and fell to her knees. The pain was sharp and shot all the way up to her head.

She tried to get up, knowing that they would either kick her down the steps and watch her tumble or, if she was lucky, drag her up by her hair. But she was more exhausted than she’d ever been. She’d fought all night to stay alive, and that had taken more than she had.

She couldn’t get up. Ruby would have cried then if not for the training of her grandmother. As a child, she’d rarely gotten any attention for crying. Gran had no time for silly things like that, so it had been trained out of Ruby at a young age.

The hunter called over his men. They looked like workers, while the hunter looked like a lord compared to them.

“Take her up and put her in a cage. Don’t hurt her.” He looked down at her with cautious eyes. “But don’t let her looks fool you. Give her an opening, and she’ll tear you to pieces like any of the other predators.”