Rescuing the Captive: The Ingenairii Series (44 page)

“
Alright! Go! The responsibility for the girl is all yours, and the blame for her loss is all yours,” the wagoneer cried in defeat. “Go fetch the girl; bring her to the captain,” he turned and told one of his workers.

Caitlen had lain chained in the bottom of a wagon, and had heard the whole story. The evening and the day had been a brutal nightmare, but with the story of an unstoppable fighter who called himself the Crown Protector, her spirits had revived. She knew that it had to be Alec, coming again to rescue her; she recollected him using that same title once in describing one of the strange chapters of his earlier life. She wondered if she had failed to notice him talking inside her head, encouraging or informing her of his progress.

She had been extraordinarily despondent all day, grief-stricken and horrified to the point of being almost catatonic. She had seen Alec carousing during the Spring Festival, enjoying intimate friendship with an entire squad of women, while he had ignored her, on top of having spurned her so many times before. It had spurred her to want to use Cressler to make Alec jealous – familiar and comfortable Cressler a noble family scion whom she had known at court most of her life.

Then Alec had come spying on her at the palace, and afterwards, though she and Cressler had dallied, she was mostly angry at Alec, for finding her, or maybe for not taking her away. That anger had been nothing compared to the horror shortly thereafter when Conglomerate guards had burst in on Cressler and she, interrupted their cuddling, and then brutally beheaded the man, right before her eyes. She had been dragged out by the common guards while still half undressed, and carried through the streets like a trophy. She had been tossed into the back of the wagon that had immediately set off to carry her away from the possibility of rescue.

The back of the wagon had been a continuation of the nightmare. The night was chilly, and she was chained down and constantly ogled by guards, who made lewd comments and filthy predictions about her fate. All day she had been rattled and bruised in the wagon, and only now for the first time in many, many hours, did she begin to feel the spark of life ready to animate her spirit.

She was hefted casually out of the wagon, and given a blanket as a wrap as she allowed herself to be draped on the back of the cavalryman’s saddle. Then, without another word, they were off, riding away from the convoy, rain falling on them and mud splashing up around them from the hooves of the horse. Caitlen, her hands still bound together, felt around on the saddle, until she found a knife, inside a sheath that was incorporated into the saddle. She had the weapon she needed. With or without Alec, she would find a way to escape her imprisonment. Her hands fumbled with the knife as the horse rose and fell roughly, but she managed to retain her hold on it. She raised it high above her head, then plunged it downward towards the back of Captain Ferguson’s neck.

That was the moment when Alec had risen up to slice his own knife across the throat of the cavalry officer. Even as he finished delivering his attack on the man, Caitlen’s blade had fallen upon him, driven as deeply as she could manage, so that it entered his back, glanced off his shoulder blade, and carried further into his flesh. He gave a scream of pain, then passed out as they tumbled off the horse and into the swampy dark road.

Caitlen screamed. In the darkness she couldn’t tell what had happened. She felt the unexpected impact of something striking her at the moment she had struck her blow, and then she had been hurdled to the ground, and fortunately had landed on the top of the pile of bodies. She lay atop the bodies, only partially aware of what had happened, in stunned confusion for several seconds.

At length she sat up; in the rainy dark she could see very little. The horse had disappeared in the gloom, and the knife had been knocked loose, so she struggled to flip over the body she was on so that she could use its knife to set herself free. And then she discovered that there was more than one body beneath her, that one of the bodies was Alec, and that he was unconscious and unresponsive.

She moaned in a mix of dismay that covered every element of pain and fear and regret. Her hands probed until she found a knife, and she cut the ropes off her wrists, then tried to chafe Alec to consciousness as she sat in the cold rain in the middle of the road. At length she gave up her unsuccessful effort, and decided to get off the road instead. She dragged the dead officer into a copse of nearby trees, and discovered two horses standing with their heads down in the rain. She also perceived a structure of some type beyond the trees. Caitlen went back out into the road and grabbed Alec, then began to lug his body across the ground and back to the building she had seen, which turned out to be an abandoned, decaying barn. She left Alec in a dry corner of the barn, then retrieved the horses and brought them in as well.

Caitlen took Alec into the driest corner of the structure, then held his hand, and spoke to him, pleading with him to awaken. She grew agitated by his unresponsiveness, and at last tried to project her words into his mind, as they had done in the past.

Alec, can you hear me?
she asked him.

Imelda?
came back a disoriented reply.

No, it is me, Caitlen
, she told him.

There was no further response from Alec’s mental voice for several seconds, then another voice, female, but very strong and calm, though seemingly from a great distance, spoke.
Keep him warm; he needs your warmth.

How? Who are you?
Caitlen asked
,
but there was no answer.

Caitlen considered the situation. She undressed Alec from the sopping wet clothes he wore, discovering for the first time the stab wound she had inflicted and noting how chilled his body felt, then she went to the horses and rummaged through their saddlebags, where she found a pair of dry blankets and a stale loaf of travel bread. She took the blankets back to Alec, and moved him on top of one, then lay the other over him.

What else can I do to warm you up? She asked as she held his hand again.

Put your body next to mine, skin-to-skin
, he groggily responded.

With a sigh she stood up and removed her own scant clothing, then got under the blanket, pressing her body against his entire length. She could feel his flesh greedily absorbing the heat from hers. He gave a slight moan in his throat, rolled towards her, and encircled her in his arms, then went still again.

She was going to be able to return to the safety of west Vincennes, thanks to Alec and his extraordinary abilities, she thought, and she gave thanks for the rescue he had carried out. And she would undoubtedly be severely criticized by him for not having bodyguards with her when she was captured.

No bodyguards would have done any good against the overwhelming number of Conglomerate soldiers who captured her anyway, soldiers who had violated a ceasefire. And in her mind, she wouldn’t have been in the palace with Cressler if Alec would have been her companion during the Spring Festival, or even if he simply hadn’t been cavorting so publicly with his harem of women. He had rejected her, and then flung it in her face, something that was evident for the whole city to see, and it had spurred her foolish reaction.

Yet here he was, the one who had come to rescue her when no one else could have, the one who had wreaked havoc on the Conglomerate forces, the one who had accidently taken her own knife stroke. He showed such dedication to her at times, he seemed to burn himself out at times for her, he showed tenderness and compassion to her at times, yet still he avoided professing whatever complex feelings he held. He had come back to Vincennes, and that seemed like such a hopeful sign. He had gone in search of a wife, and then returned to her.

She didn’t know what he had discovered, she realized. Other than the two times he had rescued her from the palace, she hadn’t seen him since his return. Disturbed by her own failure to learn about his quest, she stewed as she lay, until she fell into an uneasy sleep.

She awoke with a slight hint of dawn on the horizon, the skies cleared and the rain gone. Alec’s arms were around her, wrapping her intimately against him. His body felt warm against hers, which brought her relief. She wondered about the voice she had heard last night, the one that had told her to warm him; it was possible for someone other than Alec to project thoughts, but she had no idea who it was.

Alec stirred, and she gently squirmed out of his grasp, then went and put on the clothes she had. When she turned around, his eyes were open, and he was watching her. She jumped, startled to have been observed.

“
You’re a regular voyeur, aren’t you?” she said with more asperity than she felt. As soon as she said it, she regretted the cutting comment.

“
What happened last night? Where are we?” Alec seemed to ignore her verbal shot.

“
You came to rescue me last night, right when I was trying to stab the Conglomerate officer who had me. My knife,” she hesitated, “stabbed you instead.”

“
Where are we now?” Alec asked quietly.

“
I brought you into this old barn past the woods,” she replied.

“
You brought my horses in? Good,” Alec commented. “And you warmed me by sleeping with me? Good decision,” he told her.

“
You and the other voice said to,” Caitlen explained. “Who was she? Who was the other woman’s voice that I heard in my mind?”

Alec paused. “She’s someone I met,” he said at last.

“
That’s all you’re going to say about her? Someone who you can speak to mind-to-mind without even touching?” Caitlen wanted more of an answer.

“
She has secrets of her own, that I am not allowed to reveal,” Alec wearily explained.

“
So it wasn’t your wife?” the girl ventured a guess, hoping to learn something, anything.

Alec gave a deep sigh. “No,” he said a world in the weary tone of that one word.

“
I’m sorry Alec,” Caitlen said, moving over to sit down next to Alec. “Were things alright at home?”

He closed his eyes, and turned his head. “I saw a painting, a portrait of my wife. It was a beautiful picture of the night I proposed to her.” Alec opened his eyes. “But it is ancient; time has passed, and the painting is over two hundred years old. I was a stranger in my own land,” he told her. “I have no wife, or at least not the one I knew; I’m still missing decades of memories. Who knows what else I’ve done in that time though?”

He looked directly in her eyes, then sat up, wincing from the pain in his shoulder where he was stabbed. Caitlen was at a loss for what to say. He reached around behind himself and was silent for a minute, healing his wound.

“
Caitlen, there is something we have to do,” he had a different tone, as he tried to leave the painful story far away.

“
What Alec?” she asked, shaken by his revelation. She had seen the pain in his eyes.

“
If you are going to want to have trysts, and to ignore the basic rules of safety that are necessary for a ruler, to go out without guards, then we have to take extraordinary precautions to protect you,” he began. “Otherwise you are going to be the death of me. I can’t go on like this, having to fight unnecessary battles to keep you alive.”

“
I don’t go sneaking around with men!” she said vehemently. “That was a mistake, but it was just one time,” she said. “And you were the one who was so touchy-feely with a half dozen women in the middle of a public place, anyway,” she added, determined to bring that up. “You’re the one who comes and goes from one world to another at the drop of a hat.”

“
If you are going to place yourself in danger, I have to be able to know,” he ignored her response. “There is something we can do that I think will fix this problem.

“
I think I know a way that will allow you to project your thoughts into my mind without physical contact, the way I can do to you, the way Bernadina must have done last night,” Alec said. “If you had that power, you could tell me when you were being surrounded by Conglomerate forces, and I could get to you a lot quicker, which would make everything easier.

She held her tongue, and cast her eyes upon the ground, looking up at him once.

“
There once was a girl who was dying from poison,” Alec began a story. “And the poison was in her blood, in her organs, in her flesh – it was killing her. It had gone so far I couldn’t cure it all, so I made a cut in her arm, and then a cut in my arm, and I put the two together, so that my blood flowed in her body, and hers in mine.

Caitlen turned green at the thought. “My body absorbed the poison from her blood, and my blood cleansed her body. When she was saved, I severed the connection,” he pointed to a long thin scar on his arm, now visible in the growing light. “And one result was that she gained my healing power.

“
If I were to do that with you, and do a little more, I believe you would have the Spiritual powers I have, and the ability to project your thoughts to me. Then, whenever you needed help you could tell me,” Alec finished.

“
Alec, do you love me?” Caitlen asked in response, proud that her voice was even and her gaze steady as she asked him.

“
That’s not a fair question,” Alec replied, startled. “I know that my wife died many years ago, but I don’t know what I’ve done since then. You know how my memory has been restored in bits and pieces. For all I know, I may recollect more of my memory, and find out I have another wife that I’m married to now.”