Disclaimer: The Hetalia characters and their personifications belong to Hidekaz Himaruya. 日丸屋 秀和

What Not to do if You are a Knight by Gilbert Beilschmidt:

4.) Do not commandeer moving carriages with the intent to kidnap those inside.

5.) Strangling your love interest is considered 'unchivalrous'.


Molten Eyes and a Smile Made for War


The carriage set out on the dirt path, bumbling over rocks and divots as it went. Two Holsteiners trudged in front as the driver held fast to the reins.

The gray sky, heavy with advancing rain clouds, reflected the demeanor of the two girls hidden under the canvas roof inside.

Lovina looked out the right side of the carriage, watching her home pass by in the distance. She tried to press down the anxiousness that arose in her stomach and hold back the tears just behind her peridot eyes, but her brave facade seemed to be cracking amidst the persistent emotions that fought to show themselves.

She felt a hand rest itself comfortingly on her forearm.

There, smiling reassuringly against the gray background was Kitty. She sat at the opposite, left-side window. Lovina nodded silently, acknowledging the gesture, and quickly wiped her cheeks.

Lovina did not know much about her servant's origin, but she knew that Kit had to have been in a similar situation before: traded into slavery as a young girl, forced to leave behind home, family and future, with no say of her own whatsoever...

But both of them, different as they might have appeared on the surface, were enduring.

They were strong, they were loyal, and they were clever.

Lovina never feared the world... that is, until today. So she was glad that she had Kitty.

They trotted on at a decent pace in mutual silence, each girl taking comfort in the other's presence.

The horses tromped on loudly and rhythmically.

That's when it happened.

A rapid FFFFLLP! And an arrow sliced through the canvas siding of their covered chariot and embedded itself in the wooden frame.

The two women's eyes locked onto the arrow and then on each other. Immediately, the arrow was followed by another, and another.

Lovina screamed as Kitty wrapped her arms around her and pulled them both down low near the creaking floorboards.

The carriage driver let loose his whip upon the horses, then turned around, eyes wide with shock and confusion, desperately trying to seek out their attacker.

It began to rain.

Over the frantic shrieks of the girl behind him, the driver could hear the gallop of hooves, riding much faster than his own cart, advancing rapidly behind them. He turned forward again, raising the riding whip in his hand to strike down upon the beasts once more when- FFFFFSK! An arrow pierced his collar.

The driver dropped both the whip and the reins in favor of clutching his bleeding throat.

Kitty looked up in time to see the scrawny man tumble off of his seat and onto the road beneath the carriage - a hair's width away from being crushed by the wheel - and left in the dust as the horses continued to drive forward.

She dove for the reins, trying desperately to bring their speeding, jostling carriage under control.

In the same instant, during a pause between the barrage of arrows, Lovina bent her head out the window.

Behind their chariot was a hooded horseman, riding a malicious-looking black steed, advancing rapidly.

Dear God, it was all happening so fast. But they had been warned of this - of assassins and spies who would undoubtedly be lurking at every turn. Lovina cursed. They had been so careful! They were supposed to look like traveling civilians; something they did must have given them away.

But it did not matter now. It was already too late.

Lovina noticed the pile of supplies in the back of the carriage. An idea struck her and she began to loosen the ropes, allowing several barrels to roll out the backside of the carriage and onto the road in an attempt to either shake or slow the horseman.

And it did… nothing.

...

Except waste some perfectly good wine. Dammit.

In the distance ahead, through the veil of rain that now obscured her vision, Kitty could make out the black outline of the forest. That was where they were headed. Therein lay the fortress. That was sanctuary, concealment and safety! They just had to make it into the forest; she knew they could lose the assassin there amidst the maze-like foliage. She was sure of it.

"How many are there?" she asked over her shoulder to her mistress.

"I only see one!" Lovina cried. But no sooner did the words pass her lips than did a second figure, sitting behind the first rider on the stallion, lean out from behind his comrade. He clutched a bow and arrow in his hands, ready to let loose his deadly ammo once again upon the carriage. They advanced closer yet.

"TWO, TWO, I MEAN TWO!" She retreated again into the tent-like structure.

"What do you mean tw-" CRACK!

The carriage heaved and the horses whinnied; their already fast pace quickly became a sprint as the spooked animals tried to escape the danger they undoubtedly sensed.

Lovina, forgetting her terror momentarily to peer again out the window, saw the two hooded figures immeasurably close to the carriage now. Lovina could see the pouring rain droplets bounce off the nose of their terrifying obsidian beast as it ran alongside the back wheel. She saw that the arrow previously notched in the second rider's bow was now lodged near the back right axle of the wagon. Further, the bow was slung away and in its place the man clutched... Dear Lord, was that an AX? Who the hell carries an ax on them?

He swung it ferociously at the wooden wheel, jolting the carriage once more. Splinters of pine flew and the wagon moaned.

"They're breaking our wheel!" she cried to Kitty.

Kitty's mind raced. She glanced from the forest ahead, to the horses, to the seat, to Lovina. After a split-second pause, she commanded, "Take the reins."

"Wha-? But I don't know how to-"

"Just keep us on the path and DO NOT LET US STOP." Quickly, Kitty grabbed the riding whip and handed the reins off to Lovina. Then she began climbing atop the carriage's roof.

"What are you doing?" Lovina asked.

"They're not expecting us to fight back," was the reply.

Shakily at first, but then gaining her footing, Kitty stood erect on the roof of the moving wagon. Unseen by the two villains, she reached her arm back and CRACKED the whip down upon the unsuspecting riders. There was a shout and the attackers dropped back a bit.

Kitty couldn't help but let a smirk creep onto her face.

She continued to slash the riding whip at the men and at their horse. The riders struggled to keep up with the carriage while dodging the deadly leather strap.

Yes! she thought, we're gonna make it! We can drive them ba-

SLLLAM!

And suddenly, from behind her, an enormous sword chopped into the roof of the carriage.

From the other side, a second horse and a third rider appeared.

And he had just JUMPED on board the speeding wagon, weapon in hand.

Kitty felt the blood drain from her face. Here was this bloodthirsty, hooded warrior towering over her.

His cloak flapped in the racing wind but his black hood remained over his face, shadowing all but his piercing red eyes. He looked, in all honestly, like a demon.

A demon with molten eyes and a smile made for war.

She stood about two feet away, small, terrified, faded dress and curled locks also flapping wildly about. She clutched madly at her only weapon.

Kitty, struggling just to keep balance atop the runaway buggy, saw the warrior rip his blade out from where it was embedded in the wood and take a heavy, menacing step forward.


Meanwhile, down below on the opposite side, Kitty was too preoccupied to notice the other two riders also skillfully dive into the moving ride. Their unmanned horses dropped back behind the speeding carriage.

Below in the driver's seat, Lovina shrieked again as the two uninvited passengers climbed aboard.

One of the men grabbed her arms, the other taking the reins from her hands, replacing her position as the driver.

"Get away from me! Bastards! Let me go!"

"So sorry, mademoiselle. You will forgive our brutishness, non? I promise no harm will come to you if you simply do as we command."

"Bite me!" She thrashed, temper overtaking her previous state of terror.

"Ah. Oui. I can see you are going to be a delight to deal with. Perhaps this... " he took out a dagger, although he did not point it directly at her throat, "...will persuade you to be a bit morecooperative."


Up above, Kitty had heard her mistress shriek and turned her head back for an instant to see what had happened. At that moment, the figure in front of her barked an order. His voice was thick and raspy; it was German, but with a clear eastern edge to it.

"Drop you weapon, girl. No one needs to get hurt now." His voice was not kind or in any way did it indicate truth. It ominously reminded her of a cat tormenting a cornered mouse.

She barred her teeth and, without thinking, raised her whip.

A demonic smile creased his eyes. "So that's how it's going to be, huh, you little hure?"

He swung his sword, but she dove to the right, dodging the blow.

He swung again, this time managing to inflict a small cut on her arm. He was playing with her - batting at her like a cat as though she really was some defenseless field mouse that would serve as his next meal. "Aww, come now, fräulein," he taunted, "surely you can do better than that."

Angrily, she snapped her whip at his feet, causing him to falter slightly in his footing. Seizing the opportunity, she then snapped the whip at his head, intending to slash his face.

Kitty never knew if she had the capability to kill someone inside of her - even if it was in self-defense - but if she could strike his eyes or his mouth or his throat, anything that would cause him to put up his hands, then she may have the opportunity to knock him off the carriage.

But as the serpent-like weapon came down, the red-eyed assassin raised his arm defensively and the whip snapped almost harmlessly against his leather-cuffed wrist.

Before he could reach for the offending whip, she reared back and tried again.

Once more, the whip did not meet its intended mark of slashing the man's face, but when she tried to pull back, she felt it catch.

She looked to see the end of the riding whip wrapped around the handle of his sword-blade.

In a split second, before the man realized what was happening, she jerked the lasso as hard as she could, ripping the sword out of his grasp, sending it tumbling towards the opposite corner of the carriage roof - towards her.

Dropping her whip, she and the assassin dove for the weapon at the same instant. However, being the closer of the two, Kitty got to it first. She rolled cleanly to her feet in a defensive stance.

The man at her feet became wide-eyed, but only for moment. Slowly, he lifted himself up. His eyelids lowered and she saw the cocky smile return to his shadowed face. His sharp canine teeth gleamed beneath the shadow of his hood.

Kitty was enraged that every move she made seemed to amuse him. "Stay down!" she snarled.

His smile quickly evaporated. "Give me the sword," he commanded as though he was an officer giving orders to his troops.

Her eyes darted desperately through the air until they came to a rest on the blade.

She made a decision.

She hurled the weapon and sent it sailing over the edge of the speeding canvassed cart.

The hooded man's eyes practically bulged out of their sockets. Clearly, of all the actions he was intending her to make, that was not one of them.

Her triumphant smirk returned as she watched the sword hit the ground and be swept out of view in a cloud of dust.

She turned to him and the smile instantly faded.

The titian eyes below his hood now spoke of indescribable, unspeakable rage.

But she refused to let her fear show. She smiled again and said innocently,

"Oops."


"DON'T TOUCH ME YOU PERVERT-BASTARD-JERKFACE!"

Down below, Lovina struggled against the man now tying her hands behind her back with rope.

"Well maybe if you would just HOLD STILL-"

God, that French accent was driving her insane. No one should be allowed to speak German with a French accent. It grated on the ears. As far as she was concerned, it was a flat-out sin. She wanted nothing more than to punch the man in front of her square in his little cheese-sniffing nose.

But she knew she was in no position to take any shots at him just now. No, right now she was only struggling enough to make it difficult for him to tie her up.

And frankly, she was kind of enjoying it... in a scared-for-your-life kind of way.

"Didn't your mother ever teach you how to tie a simple knot, dumbass?!" she raved.

"Heheh~ ehy, having trouble back there, amigo?"

Was it just her, or were these guys extremely laid back for a team of assassins?

"Non, if you would just stop moving the carriage around so much I could-"

Just then, as the cart rolled over a small pothole, Lovina pretended to fall back and kicked the Frenchman in the face.

"Here," the driver couldn't suppress his laughter, "t-take the reins. Let me do it."

The Frenchman rubbed his jaw and grumbled in compliance, glaring at Lovina as he switched places with the Spaniard.

Lovina stuck up her chin and smiled back haughtily at him as though she had just won some tiny, yet very significant, battle.

The other man now approached her.

"May I?" he asked, gesturing to her half-bound hands behind her back.

She just stared at him. "...'May I'? 'MAY I'? That's it! What the f*** kinda' assassins are you?!"

She received no answer. The man simply turned her shoulders around and began to gently retie the tangled rope.

The rest of what the girl said was lost to the two horsemen, as she began grumbling rapidly and angrily in Italian.

But deep inside, anger was the last thing she was feeling at the moment, because when the Spaniard turned her around to see her hands, she once again faced the pile of supplies in the carriage's rear just behind her seat.

And what she saw gave her an idea.


Up above, Kitty saw the raging criminal in front of her ball his hands into fists and tremble with seething anger. Looking at all of the physical indicators he was now openly showing his opponent, his next move was predictable.

He raised one of his tight fists and swung it wildly at the girl's face.

She ducked.

Surprised by her quick reflexes, his brow lowered into a furrow and his jaw clenched as he jabbed two more times at her head.

Both times his fists flew by either ear as she dodged cleanly to the sides.

She herself seemed surprised at her impeccable reactions.

Internally, a wave of memories flooded her mind of back when she was a young girl, when she would fight with the boys and when she learned how to properly take an opponent in an open-handed brawl.

She stayed light on her feet, arms up defensively, cleanly dodging each blow and then... she jabbed.

Her knuckles made contact with the space between his nose and mouth, sending him stumbling backwards.

Her eyes went wide and her mouth fell agape. The warrior looked just as bewildered as she did.

Then, regaining hold of her emotions, Kitty knitted her brows and pressed her lips into a thin, tight, determined frown. She held up both fists, signifying she was prepared for his next onslaught.

The rain beat down hard upon them and stung both of their faces.

In the next instant, he charged at her. Before she could react, a powerful fist thrust itself against the side of her head and the world became off-center and muffled for a moment. Then, her head crashed unforgivingly onto the canvass roof. She was lying on her side on the tarp. As the world came back into focus, she saw her whip lying idly nearby and tried to reach out to grab it.

It was kicked savagely away from her and over the carriage's side.


Below in the carriage's cabin, Lovina was sitting on the wooden seat, facing forward.

She could see over the driver's head that they were still vigorously advancing westward towards the forest.

There was a rapid thudding sound as they crossed the bridge over the river that separated the woods from the farmlands and the village.

The road was suddenly bumpier, wetter. The rain fell harder and the world grew darker as they drew nearer the forbidden forest path.

Lovina could also hear the struggles coming from above her head.

Her poor servant, her most faithful- her only friend, was being ruthlessly beaten by some savage brute and it was all Lovina's fault!

The two men in front of her chatted seriously with each other, but paid absolutely no mind to the noise and crashes from the roof.

Lovina breathed deeply and decided to make her move.

She kicked off her shoe and uttered her most pitiful, helpless-little-girl-voiced "Oh!" that she could manage without gagging.

The green-eyed man, the Spaniard, turned his head quickly at the sound.

"Um, could you get that for me?" she asked innocently.

Below his hood, he smiled brightly and knelt down to retrieve the fallen footwear.

Meanwhile, Lovina had discretely slipped the bonds of rope that had secured her wrists (after previously convincing the green-eyed man that they were too tight).

She slowly reached an arm back into the pile of supplies behind her seat and felt her fingers close around the object she had spotted before.

The man with the jadeite eyes now knelt at her feet, slipping her shoe delicately back on her foot. His head was bent just in front of her knees, his eyes cast downward.

She was almost sorry she had to do it.

Almost.

In a nervous, adrenaline-fueled procession, Lovina grabbed the iron frying pan out from behind her and brought the blunt object down as hard as she possibly could upon the boy's skull.

CLANGGG it rang.

The boy hit the ground, out like a light. A smile graced his unconscious face, attesting to his perpetually happy-go-lucky demeanor.

She must have been in shock, because before she knew it the other man's hands were around her again (she hadn't even seen him get up!). She was desperately trying to fight him off, but her arms were useless.

She shrieked, raised her knee, and drove it directly into his... entrejambe.

The Frenchman released her for just a second, doubled over in pain as he cupped his hands over his sensitive area, and she mercilessly bashed his head with the iron skillet.

He, too, fell to the floor in a graceless heap.


The next thing Kitty knew, two gloved hands closed on her throat and drove her down onto the canvass roof.

Maddened, blood-red eyes bore down into her, and two thumbs pressed on her airway.

The man was strangling her!

She tried hopelessly to pry his muscular hands from her neck.

She sputtered and gasped for air but only cracking noises escaped her throat.

She tried to kick but he pressed his legs on top of hers.

He was on all fours crouching over her immobilized body. She then reached out her arms, trying to claw his face, trying to feel for a weapon, but all was to no avail.

She squeezed her eyes shut as the air slowly left her lungs. She would not let her killer have the satisfaction of watching the life leave her eyes.

The worst part of all of this was that the red-eyed demon knew he had bested her, and Kitty could sense the twisted smile present on his rain-and-blood-spattered face as he squeezed the life out of her.

Groping around blindly to her right, she felt her hand brush against something rough.

Then, her palm closed around a sharp, splintered piece of wood that was about the length and half the width of her hand, which had broken off the wagon's frame from where his sword cleaved into the balk.

She had two options:

In that moment, she could swing her arm up and drive the jagged steak into the side of the man's neck,

or...

She drove the chunk of wood down into the canvas by her knee, then dragged it up towards her shoulders along the length of her body.

There was a satisfying RRRRRRRRIP! as the wood chunk tore an enormous hole through the material-covered roof and, with the weight of both of their bodies pressing down atop it, they tumbled through the fresh tear and crashed into the base of the carriage down below.

They crumbled on top of each other.

Groaning slightly, Kitty tried to roll away, but like an instinctive reflex, the molten-eyed man had her pinned again.

Well. That was all for nothing then.

She was in a sitting position, pressed up against the back of the driver's seat, his hands once again around her neck.

Her own slender fingers pried helplessly against his great palms.

She was out of ideas, running out of oxygen. But this time she decided she would bravely face her killer.

If she had the life choked out of her, the last moments of her existence would be used to administer the most genuine death-stare this guy had ever seen. He would know that he may have overpowered her, but he had not broken her.

She opened her eyes, a fierce snarl on her face, and realized that his hood had fallen off in their crash from the roof.

Then, despite her airway being crushed, she managed a shocked gasp. Her eyebrows raised to the top of her forehead and her eyes went wide not with fear, but with utter surprise.

He must have seen this. It was not the expression he was anticipating. Contempt, fear, desperation, anger, but this face was one of... recognition?

His grip loosened ever so slightly as confusion twisted his own features.

His blood-red eyes looked into her emerald green, deeply analyzing her face.

He took in her rounded chin, her auburn hair, her large, vibrant eyes, and confusion changed too, to recognition.

For a moment, they stared at one another in awe-struck silence.

He released his grip. "Liz?"

CLANG!

A frying pan rang metallically on top of his skull. His expression changed to a derp-face and he fell to the side, revealing a terribly frightened Lovina behind him.


* Hure = German for 'whore'

* Fräulein = German for 'maiden'

* Mademoiselle = French for 'Miss' as in unmarried woman

* Entrejambe = French for 'crotch'


Historical Notes

* The description of the carriage is probably a bit exaggerated. Medieval carriages were a tad different than the fancy 19th-century carriages we think of on the streets of London. These carriages were typically a four-wheeled wagon type with a rounded top ('tilt') similar in appearance to the Conestoga Wagon (think Oregon Trail, Americans). They were made of wood and iron and were usually covered by plain leather if you were non-royalty. (Julian Munby, 'From Carriage to Coach: What Happened?', in Robert Bork and Andrea Kann [eds] The art, science, and technology of medieval travel [Ashgate, 2008], pp. 41-53)

* Holsteiner is a breed of horse originating in the Schleswig-Holstein region of northern Germany tracing back to the 13th century. (Chris Hector. "Journey Through Holstein". Horse Magazine)