Iliad
A fanfiction by Genesis Wolfe
A Note to the Reader: In case any of this story looks familiar to you, yes, this is basically a re-posting of this story. I've decided to take a new direction with it, and therefore, took it down, edited, revamped, and renamed it Iliad in order to follow the new theme it will be taking. So, with that little piece of trivia out of the way, I give you the story of a young woman named Robin Silver and how she became a pirate in name and reputation.
Chapter One: Behold a Lady
"No! Absolutely not!"
The bejeweled hand caught the tray's edge from underneath, sending it skyward before it and everything on it clattered to the floor with an impressive clang. The maid attempted in vain to catch one or two of the tray's former occupants, but merely ended up with a fork landing prongs-down onto her slippered foot. She clenched her teeth, silently cursing the delicate footwear, wishing for what had to be the thousandth time that her employer would give up her silly, irrational dislike of shoes worn on the carpeting. Robin's green eyes darted along said carpeting, at the broken china, scattered silver, and the ruined dinner that her hands had so recently been relieved of holding. She said nothing, but flickered her gaze back to that of the woman standing before her, face showing only the slightest bit of apology, and even that most likely being forced.
"I said I wanted medium rare!" Mrs. Lipton roared. When the maid said and did nothing, the aristocrat stamped her foot angrily, grinding a bit of potato into the rich cream carpeting. "What are you waiting for? Clean this up, you little wench."
The maid's lips tightened and her fists clenched, but she stiffly bent down and began picking up the shattered glass and scattered silverware.
"Am I seeing an attitude, Miss Silver?" Mrs. Lipton asked, her voice venomous with warning. Robin Silver shook her head, glancing up.
"No, Ma'am," she said. "O' course not."
"I should certainly hope not," Mrs. Lipton said, reaching for a fan and reclining on a velvet chaise. She began fanning her flushed skin, her powdered and graying blonde hair being blown slightly about by her ministrations. "You really should be nothing but grateful to me, taking you in after that awful man was finally hanged and raising you in a proper manner."
Proper, my arse, Robin thought. She was practically raised as a slave after her father was hanged. As Robin's anger simmered, her grip tightened on the glass until it punctured her skin. She didn't really quite feel it; she looked in surprise as a small stream of blood ran down her palm, spilling over her wrist and onto the floor. This, apparently, was not a good thing.
"Stupid girl!" Mrs. Lipton shrieked. "You're getting blood on the carpet!" A swift kick from a booted foot to the side. Robin hunched and grunted, biting her lip to stop herself from screaming at the tyrannical woman.
"Get out and tend to yourself," Mrs. Lipton sighed, her bellowing apparently tuckering her out. "Then get back here and clean up your mess."
Robin nodded and quickly left the room. Upon reaching the kitchen, she slammed the door closed and paced around the small counter island.
"Clean up my mess?" she ranted. "She threw the bloody thing on the floor! And the next time she insults my father, I'm goin' t-"
"You're going to what?"
Robin spun to see a handsome smile and a mop of unruly blonde hair. Her heart raced faster though she felt a bit less angry.
"I'm gonna tear out 'er spine and wear it as a belt," Robin finished, her words contradicting the saccharine sweetness that now inflected her voice and smile.
"Always the lady, aren't you, Robin?" Nicholas replied. "And definite points for imagery, well done."
"I try," Robin replied. The servant boy's smile faded as he caught a glance at her hand.
"Robin, what happened to your hand?"
"My hand?" she said, a slightly confused look on her face. She looked down to the stain of red on her skirt where her injured palm hovered. "My hand!"
Robin quickly held her hand over a basin, grabbing the ladle from a nearby bucket of water and dousing it over her hand to rinse some of the crimson away.
"What happened?" Nicholas asked, stepping closer to survey the damage.
"Broken glass," Robin replied curtly. "It realized that the slab o' beef that was inhabiting it wasn't to milady's liking and in an act of selfless suicide leapt off the tray onto the floor."
Nicholas glanced at her face. So gullible.
"I ain't serious, Nick," Robin said. "She slapped the damn thing out o' my hand. Meat cooked wrong or something o' the sort."
"Robin, darling, you could try harder, don't you think?"
Robin threw a glare at him that could scare the hooves off a devil. He laughed half-heartedly. "I was only joking."
Robin pointed an angry finger at him, shaking it. "You better have been," she said. She stretched her uninjured left arm up to a shelf above her, rifling through its contents until finding a bottle of rum. Uncorking it with her teeth, she bit her lip as she poured the warm liquid onto the cut, groaning a bit as it burned and cleaned the wound.
"They do make medicines for injuries like that, you know," Nicholas said.
"Aye," Robin said, shaking her head. "An' it costs thrice as much and works half as well." She moved to replace the bottle to its home on the shelf, and pausing, then raising it in a tribute to Nicholas before taking a good swig.
"Gah," Nicholas grunted. "How can you drink that awful stuff?"
Robin licked her lips as the liquid burned comfortingly down her throat. "Mrs. Lipton is how I can drink this 'awful stuff.'" She kissed the bottle and reached back to the shelf.
Before her hand set the bottle back down, a huge explosion sounded from the living room, and the whole house shook. The bottle of rum slipped through her fingers and smashed to the floor.
"Dammit!" she yelled. "The rum!"
"Forget the rum," Nicholas said, his face confused and shocked by her lack of attention to the current situation. "That's cannon fire!"
Robin's heart leapt. Cannon fire. The only reason to use cannon fire is if the harbor was being attacked. The only people who ever attacked the harbor was...
"Pirates!"
Robin immediately took off towards the site of the explosion. Upon entering the living room, it was apparently obvious that someone thought a new window would be positively smashing in the north wall. Said someone also thought that the best way of achieving their interior decorating revelation was with a cannonball, which was now imbedded in the south wall. Mrs. Lipton was nowhere to be seen, but her screams seemed to be moving away from them, upstairs to her quarters. Robin spun to Nicholas as he ran in behind her.
"Get everyone to safety," she said. "The maids, the cooks, everyone!"
Nicholas complied, and Robin glanced around, looking for something, anything. Her eyes fell on the decorative swords above the mantle of the fireplace. They were beautiful heirlooms, not meant for real use. Unfortunately, they had no business just sitting there and looking pretty.
Robin ripped one off the wall, the one that seemed the lightest and most manageable, and an antique dagger from the mantle itself. Tucking the dagger into the belt of her apron, she quickly made her way to the entrance of the house, pausing suddenly. Who was she going to fight? Her first instinct was to protect herself, and protect Nicholas, which would mean to fight off the pirates. But then…said pirates may be able to take her away from here, perhaps to Tortuga, to find some of her kin?
She raised the sword, gazing at the highly polished blade, as if searching for the answer to her situation. She sighed deeply, hazel eyes looking past the steel at the scene before her; the Lipton Manor sat north and above the rest of town, and she could see the beginning of the carnage that the pirates were wreaking upon the small English port. Smoke was rising from the waters from cannon fire, and she could hear screams from the market below.
It would have been the wise thing to hide.
But she wanted answers.
