The Freetown Bridge

Chapter Two: Arrival-2

“What do we have here Warrington?” said the sergeant looking up from his paperwork, his voice and eyes were both calculating and cruel. Saran felt her captor stand to attention before he spoke.

“Priestess of the Chalice, sir,” he said triumphantly.

“Well put her down, corporal,” said the sergeant, “let's see what she has to say for herself.”

Saran felt herself being lowered to the ground, and then her feet made contact with the stone and she was standing again under her own power. Immediately, she dropped to her knees, and the corporal lunged to stop her, but the sergeant waved him off. Interfering with a priestess of the Chalice whilst she was in prayer was widely recognised as a very foolhardy thing to do even for a Red Army Guard.

Saran reached inside her vestment, and clutched her tiny pendant. Her heart still racing, she prayed fast to the Goddess and then focused all her thoughts on to her physical form. The muttering of her prayer became the muttering of a spell, and then even as the guards watched her, hunched over and rocking on her knees, she disappeared.

Safely in the realm of her Goddess, Saran fled like a fox in the hunt. She could scarcely hear the cursing and yelling of the corporal and his sergeant as they dashed about trying to find their prisoner. She ran through the wall of the building, out into the night and towards the pale light, no longer worried about making a sound. She could not be seen or heard or even touched in the material plane for now. This was expediency itself, but she had hoped not to have to squander her magic on the journey, not entirely aware of what she was going to be facing when she arrived.

Iona was wet with dew when she awoke on the grass outside the barn. The fresh smell of early morning tantalised her, but her head pounded. Derek was nowhere to be seen. Gerard strolled out of the barn looking bright eyed and alert, much to Iona disgust. He handed her a tankard of what appeared to be fresh water and a chunk of journey bread so solid that Iona could have bounced it off the floor.

“Where's Derek?” she managed, taking the cup with a quivering hand. She looked up at the smug face of the wizard towering above her and tried to avoid attempting to bite the journey bread.

“He went down to the road to meet the provisioners. The cart should be here before lunch provided there has been no hitch. He said to tell you that they're on the table if you want a look, and that you would know what that means.”

“Thank you,” murmured Iona, still not sure she was actually awake, maybe she was dreaming.

“I'm going for a walk,” said Gerard haughtily, “There are supposed to be rare orchids in those woods.” Iona could only groan in response to this. He stopped and turned and looked at her with a superior sneer, “You do know that you were howling at the moon last night, don't you?” Iona just looked at him, groaned and then passed out again.

Tollie wiped the blade of his knife on the guard's shirt front. The guard wasn't going to have much use for it now anyway. The guard's suddenly unemployed horse, now tethered to a nearby tree, beat its hoof on the tree roots impatiently and shook its mane. Sylas rifled through the contents of the dead man's belt pouch and grunted at his findings.

“Typical, b****y typical, these soldiers never have anything interesting on them. Just papers and potions, not even any money,” he grumbled, picking through the mess of papers, looking for identity documents and filling his own pouch with the potion vials.

“I'll have to wear this uniform, it's far too big for you,” said Tollie, unbuckling the dead man's belt. Sylas didn't look up,

“No b****y wonder you made me wait for a biggun,” he muttered as he sniffed the contents of a small red bottle and pocketed it and grimaced.

“Looks like we're in luck though,” continued Tollie, panting from the strain of bodily handling a man probably three stone heavier than himself. “He's got his cuffs and rope with him.”

He held them up, two rough leather cuffs with rusty iron buckles and heavy loops attached to a long length of thick rope. The design was ingenious in that when the cuffs were secured on to the rope and the rope was pulled, they became tighter and even harder to escape from. It was standard issue kit for any Red Army patrol guard who might make a capture and then have to walk a hostage more than a few yards. The cuffs were invariably made with iron buckles because of the extra pain this caused to elves.

Sylas looked up this time, but didn't say anything; he just scowled at the grubby cuffs and went back to the documentation, clearly he and Tollie had different definitions of the phrase “we're in luck”.

A few minutes of concerted effort and Tollie was dressed in the tabard and gauntlets of a Red Army Patrol guard, Sylas was strapped into the cuffs and tied on to the back of the horse and the unfortunate guard had been booted until he rolled to the bottom of a nearby valley. Another two minutes, and 'Private Marcus Duvall, 21st Scouting Division' was back on his mount and heading for Freetown with a prisoner in tow.

An hour or so late, on the outskirts of Freetown, as the sun was setting, Private Marcus Duvall 21st Scouting Division tethered his horse to a great oak and released his prisoner.

“Next time, we murder a little one,” complained Sylas, rubbing his wrists. “Then you can walk miles behind a farting horse.”

“Whinge, whinge, whinge,” retorted Tollie, adjusting his trousers. “Ouch,” he said, and staggered backwards as a pebble hit him on the forehead. Sylas beamed vindictively and made a move towards the towering oak that they had stopped beside. Sylas was not much different from a human size squirrel, Tollie considered as he watched him shin up the giant trunk. He even had a worrying tendency to find valuable things and then bury them. This thought amused Tollie and he snorted.

He was not at the top of the tree long; in fact he shimmied down even faster than he had gone up.

“We need to get closer,” he said abruptly, his face devoid of expression.

“Couldn't you see anything?” said Tollie, preparing to mount his horse again.

“Oh, I could see all right,” said Sylas, still emotionless and clearly distracted trying to strap himself back into the cuffs. “That's why we have to get closer.”

Freemonte left the tavern, tucking the key carefully under both his doublet and vest. This was the last town on the Dwarven side of the border with Aberddu, and the last place they could sell the horses before they became a burden. They would be no good once they reached the meeting place, and they would only become a drain on supplies. It meant the remaining 20 miles of the journey would have to be done on foot but the weather was beautiful and it would give him a few hours alone with his wife.

He could still scarcely believe that such an incredible creature had consented to marry him. Her crystal blue eyes and soft golden curls were everything he had ever dreamed of. She was fiercely passionate and quick witted, easily a match for him intellectually. And above all that, she was clearly besotted with him, although he couldn't understand why.

She was the only daughter of the De Beaujolais', an Old Albion family of standing, brought up among the great and the good in the best circles of Albion society. Her father, like Freemonte, was a former Captain of the Queen's Guard, but unlike Freemonte, was highly thought of among military and aristocratic circles alike.

As a young soldier, Freemonte had idolised Captain Jacques De Beaujolais for both his skill as a swordsman and tactician and his fair minded humanity. It was an example that the young William had aspired to, in the days when he still thought that way. Times, and Freemonte, had changed but it still shocked him to think that this great man was now his father in law.

Freemonte's shock at his open acceptance into the De Beaujolais family was compounded by two things. The first being that he was nearly twice as old as Josephine. In fact he remembered her as a tiny girl of three or four visiting the parade grounds in a little Albion Blue shift dress and a white cardigan, her hair in neat little bunches. She had stood next to the gargantuan Staff Sergeant Ruddock, gazing up at him as he bellowed orders with fear and wonder in her eyes.

The second was that unlike Captain De Beaujolais, Freemonte had not retired from the service; he had been dismissed for alleged insubordination. There were few men of rank in the Guard, and in fact the rest of Albion, that were still prepared to freely associate with him for fear of what it may do to their social standing. It seemed that the good Captain was not so squeamish; he was a man of strong character who preferred to make his own judgements about men. This only led Freemonte to respect him even more making it very hard for him to address him as anything other than Captain De Beaujolais or Sir.

For her part, it seemed that ever since she was a little girl, Josephine had adored all the guardsmen and in particular, Freemonte had been shocked to learn, him. When she had come to Aberddu just after her sixteenth birthday, she had headed like many for the Adventurers Guild, only to find it populated by among many others a number of former Queen's Guard. A kind woman with long black hair whose name she could not remember had introduced her to the dashing Captain Freemonte, even though the introduction was unnecessary. He had taken her hand, kissed it and bowed deeply and she had been enchanted.

The paradise that Freemonte presently found himself in might well be short lived he realised. They had been married less than a month, barely back from their honeymoon tour of her relatives in Albion, when a messenger had arrived with a note that had lead them here.

Josephine was waiting in the town square, leaning against the horse trough. She smiled when she saw William, and her smile made his stomach flip. She did not move, but remained leaning on the trough, letting him walk towards her, her grin spreading wider and wider. When he was only about a foot from her, she pulled her hands from behind her back and flicked her fingers, spraying murky trough water across William's face and shirt. Then she darted off towards the town gate.

“Gotcha,” she yelled playfully over her shoulder, chuckling as she ran, the sun glinting from her hair. Freemonte stood there for a moment, unsure how to react and then he turned on his heels and raced after her. Although he caught up with her quickly, she dodged and feinted, eluding his grip. They were both starting to become short of breath mostly because they were laughing so much, completely unaware of the audience of bored townsfolk that they were attracting.

The chase took them all the way to the Northgate and out in the road, where Josephine stumbled, and Freemonte took his chance. Lunging forward he grabbed her pack, pulled her towards him and swept her up in his arms. He stood for a minute with her in his arms, her arms around his neck. They were silent, catching their breath. First to recover, Freemonte looked into Josephine's endless sparkling eyes and smiled.

“I love you and whatever happens I always will,” he said softly, and Josephine's smile faded slightly. Suddenly, her eyes were heavy and flat as though her spirit had somehow been stilled. Carefully, he put her back on her feet and she turned to him, her eyes searching his face.

“Do you mean that?” she said emphatically, “Do you really mean that?” She sounded almost panicked. He took her hands and squeezed them, unsure what else to do, clearly his young wife was terrified.

“Yes, of course I do,” he said quietly.

“I love you too,” she said intensely, her brow creased and her features tight, “and whatever becomes of us, you must remember that, please. I love you more than life itself.”

Freemonte looked on the earnest young face, and could find no words of comfort for her. He just enfolded her in his arms and felt her whole body droop against him. Her head in the crease of Freemonte's armpit, Josephine squeezed another tear from her eye.