Story: Of Knighthood and Marriage
Rating: Mid T
Pairing: Gunther/Jane, one-sided Jester/Jane, Rake/Pepper
Summary: Jane's mother has had enough of Jane's knighthood nonsense. Either Jane finds a husband soon, or she will pick a respectable one for Jane. Regardless of age.
A/N: Thank you for the reviews! I really appreciate them! :)
Disclaimer: I do not own any part of Jane and the Dragon, and am merely using the characters for my own entertainment.
Before she could even pull out her sword or move for that matter, an arm twisted painfully around her shoulders and neck, a dagger held by a beefy arm to her throat. She gagged and tried to lift her head up, but the grip was pretty constricting. Not tight enough to choke, but definitely tight enough to prevent movement, or inflict pain if need be.
A low chuckle floated into her ear, "Well, well, well. If it isn't Kippurnium's little knights. What an absolute pleasure it will be to rip you all limb from limb. Drop the sword little knight."
She dropped the scabbard and the sword onto the ground, her stomach clenching in horror at the thought of being unarmed with it. He laughed then, and to her horror, sounds of laughter followed behind him. She tried to count the number of voices. Ten, no twenty... maybe even thirty. There could have even been more for all she knew. But what she did know was that their little entourage of twelve knights would not stand a chance against these vagrants.
"Y-you know... the knights... have already... been warned... of your arrival." she rasped out, deliberately making her voice deeper in order to disguise her gender. She knew what could happen to her in a situation like this one if they discovered her true gender.
"Oh, I'm quite aware, young knight. Let them be warned. They will still all perish. We've got you surrounded on all four sides." He cackled again, before tightening his grip on her, "In fact, I have an idea. Why don't I just allow you to watch your allies perish in front of you?"
She couldn't gauge how far he would be willing to take this teasing, but she didn't have time to wait to see if he was going to make his threats serious and act upon them. But she couldn't figure out what to do. If she attacked her assailant, she most likely would be recaptured by another one or beaten. If she yelled out for help, she'd probably get killed. She could try to appeal to their sense of humanity, but she didn't doubt that these were men who didn't care about humane acts.
Dragon. If I can get to the whistle, I can call him.
She had left the whistle in her pouch on her horse. Last she had seen, the horse was grazing to the south of where their group stood, but in the dark like this, finding him would be quite difficult. Plus there was the whole problem of getting away from these bandits. She was stuck. She couldn't do anything. She supposed with her small size and speed, she could get him to release her and then rush to a horse, but she could easily get the wrong horse and then what would happen?
Growling internally, she chastised herself for letting herself get caught in the first place.
Maggots! I can't just sit here and do nothing!
She would go for it. If it ended in failure and her plan ended horribly, at least she would feel better knowing that she perished with honor by doing everything in her power to protect her group. Listening to the small chatter of the bandits, she tried to pinpoint where they were located so she could make a clean break to a horse to see if it was hers. Now the only problem was, how far away was her horse, and how long would she have to get to a new horse if she picked the wrong one? She had one shot to get away. Spotting a horse out of the corner of her eye, she finalized her plan.
Taking a deep breath, she leaned as far forward as she could before rearing back hard and smashing her head against his nose. Stars exploded in Jane's eyes, and she heard him bellow in pain. He let go of her immediately, and she ignored the pain on her throbbing head to get out of the way. Scrambling away quickly, she forwent grabbing her sword and moved as fast as she could to that horse. In the confusion, she had gotten a small head start while the ones nearby asked their leader what had happened.
She got to the horse and patted its side rapidly, trying to find a pouch, but the horse was already stripped of anything that had been on its back.
"Get him!"
"Bollucks!"
She found another horse in the distance and rushed as fast as she could to that one instead. There was a bandit in the way, but she had no trouble ducking and rolling out of his grasp when he grabbed for her, though with the motion, swirls dance in her vision and she stumbled. Nearly running the horse down, she hastily patted it down, ignoring its annoyed whinnying. It had also been stripped of everything on its back.
"Where the hell is that horse?"
And then someone yanked her arm harshly backwards and she cried out as pain shot through her shoulder and lower neck. She struggled to pull away, but the bandit had a death grip on her wrist. He was squeezing so tightly, she could barely feel her fingers. He was going to break her wrist. Spinning around in defiance, she kicked the bandit in the knee, satisfied with the sickening crunch and when he cried out and dropped down to check it.
Until another bandit came up and punched her so hard in the face, her vision swam, and she saw dragon dressed as a sheep. She stumbled backwards in shock and landed on her bottom.
"You've been a damn bad boy."
The bandit grabbed the lapel of her tunic and lifted her easily as she struggled against him, trying to free herself, despite the fact that each motion she made added to the blinding pain she felt in her head and shoulder. He held a dagger to her throat. "I think we'll just make you our first sacrifice."
She wanted to cry out for help or something, but her throat had closed up, and though she was extremely ashamed, a tear fell from her eyes, mostly from the anger of being helpless to do anything. She thought she was truly a goner when a sudden flash of metal slid between her and the bandit. She landed again on the ground and groaned when the landing shook her head up a bit. The bandit suddenly let out a bloodcurdling scream that ran through the entire field. If the bandits had been trying to be discreet, they definitely no longer had the element of surprise.
"Jane get up!" Gunther reached down and yanked Jane to her feet, though she stumbled when she felt dizzy and had to lean against him for support. Steadying her with one arm, he put a sword in her hand, "You need to fight Jane!"
She looked drowsily at the sword in her hand and realized she was seeing two. But he was right. She had to fight. She tried her best to hold the right position with the sword, but she knew she wouldn't be able to strike as properly with her left arm feeling so numb. She couldn't quite close her fist fully around the grip of the sword. When she tried to move her arm, the bone shifted painfully and she realized her shoulder was probably somewhat dislocated. At least it wasn't her lead arm though. That could have been bad.
Looking down, she realized there was a hand on her tunic. Just a hand. Knights were trained to deal with dead bodies and injuries and what not, but seeing the hand on her lapel, still gripping, the blood dripping all over her clothes was still quite frightening. Screaming, she flung the hand from her top and ripped the sword from the scabbard.
"Gunther..." It was a bit hard to form words, "I-I need to find Dragon's whistle."
He nodded, "I figured that's what you were looking for when I saw you." They stood back to back, surveying the area, as bandits began to advance upon them, their daggers or other weapons drawn. "I have your back. Find your horse. And don't worry about everyone else. They are probably fighting as we speak."
He was right. In the distance, Jane could hear shouts of pain and the unmistakable sound of metal clashing. Finding forming words difficult, Jane only hoped that Gunther could somewhat read her intentions. Taking a deep breath, she ran forward towards another horse, avoiding bandits or blocking their attacks if needed be. She was favoring her left arm, so it was hard to properly block. Each block would send her off balance, but she was glad that she wasn't fighting in the daylight. They would definitely see her weakness and would take advantage of that situation. One particular block almost sent her sprawling onto the ground and she had to veer far right just to stop from tumbling to the grass.
Finding a horse, she patted it down quickly, and found no pouch. A bandit suddenly jumped out of nowhere with a sword and attacked her recklessly, shouting profanities. Jane gasped and dodged at the last minute. He nicked a part of her left arm, but the sword sunk into the horse, which whinnied in pain before tumbling to the side and racing off into the night. The bandit, now without a sword tried to turn and run, but Jane hit him with the butt of the sword, knocking him unconscious. She thought she would get a chance to breathe for a second, but all of a sudden, her already swimming head was jolted roughly backwards by her hair, her neck being pulled unfavorably. Black spots appeared in her eyes, and she fought to remain conscious.
"Gunther!" she rasped out, hoping he had heard her.
He suddenly appeared next to her and stabbed the bandit, kicking him away from her. "I told you I had your back, Jane."
"My arse, Gunther! He had my hair in a vice grip!"
A cluster of bandits ran toward them, and they stopped their argument to focus on the battle, lest they get killed. Jane parried off against one particularly burly man. He was slow, much slower than Gunther or any other knight with whom she had trained. The fact that she was still able to see his attacks coming, despite her injuries and slight incohesiveness, proved they were not highly skilled fighters. His motions were sloppy, and he left wide openings every time he tried to hit her. She knew these men couldn't be trained soldiers from the way they fought. Their fighting techniques were all rough around the edges and not clean. Perhaps this crusade wasn't a lost cause. Gunther spun around and took down another enemy in front of her, clearing a path.
"Jane, go!"
She ran again, searching for a horse, desperately hoping that in all this turmoil, her steed might still be in the area. She approached the camp the knights had set up and ran across the grounds, not worrying about watching her back. She could hear Gunther's steady, heavy steps behind her, and his occasional grunts of effort when someone probably attacked him. She spotted Sir Wrenne having a particularly difficult time fighting three of the bandits. She could see he was only fighting on the defensive at this point. And there was no way he could get rid of them if he was only fighting on the defensive. Running sharply and quickly, she attacked one of them, slashing him down in one swing, though it left her arm throbbing. The bandit didn't even know what had happened as he fell. Surprised, Wrenne sent her a look, but it only lasted one second before he turned back around to take care of the other two. Running off again, through the dim light of the dying embers, she spotted her horse. Surprisingly undisturbed by the melee surrounding him, he was munching on some grass. She slid gratefully to the steed and wasted no time in reaching into the pouch and grabbing the whistle.
"Please, Dragon. Hurry."
She blew on it hard and then dropped it back into the pouch before standing up and looking around. It was a disaster. There were people fighting everywhere and bodies littering the ground. She hadn't yet spotted any of the Kippurnium armour on the ground, so she assumed they were all fine. Swerving, she spun around when she heard footsteps pounding behind her. Of course, now that she was in the light of the burning embers of the campfire, she wasn't as concealed as before and unfortunately, as a visible target, the bandits came after her.
She wanted to fight back, she really did, but with her arm injured like this and her barely being able to stand, fighting so many one on one would only lead to her perishing in battle. She prepared to defend herself to the best of her ability, as the bandits attacked her. She blocked and avoided as many strikes as possible, but it was becoming increasingly more difficult.
Are they getting faster?
When she tried to block off another bandit, her balance shot, she tripped and fell backwards, landing on her behind. She took in a haggard breath, her body weak and not listening to the alarms ringing in her head.
No Jane. You're getting slower.
Laughing, two bandits grabbed her and lifted her by both her arms. She bit her lip to stop from howling in pain at the feeling that traveled through her arm. The metallic taste of blood invaded her nostrils and mouth, and she realized her lip wasn't the only thing bleeding. Her arm was bleeding quite profusely as well. Perhaps that was why she had been feeling so dizzy: the rapid loss of blood. Head hanging, she dropped her sword and waited for the end. She couldn't believe this was how she would die. Eighteen short years of life and none of her efforts proved fruitful. Perhaps King Caradoc would honour her death by knighting her in name. She took a deep breath, readying herself for the probably lethal blow, but then the air suddenly began to swirl and some familiar wing flaps were heard. The wind picked up and dust and dirt began to fly up. Dragon landed heavily, shaking up the ground and sending most everyone off balance.
"Get your grubby hands off of Jane." He snorted angrily.
The bandits let go of her and began to retreat backwards, one of them shouting in fear.
Jane smiled in relief and sighed happily as her vision began to fade to black, "Dragon..." Her body no longer able to stand, the last thing she saw was the ground rising quickly to meet her.
"JANE!"
Short chapter just to alleviate the cliffhanger. It hasn't been very well revised yet, but I will take care of that in due time.
Chapter 4! I hope you enjoyed! :)
