Chapter 10
It started with a bang. And footsteps. Athos heard them stomping down the stairs and did his best to bite back a string of curses that would make a sailor proud and a comte blush – after all, there were ladies present. Nonetheless, he stopped trying to talk to a despondent, tormented d'Artagnan in favour of glancing outside. Yes, they would be having company soon, about a dozen men. None of them looked friendly. Time to go then. Not wasting another second, he unceremoniously knocked de Balzac unconscious. He knew that the three of them would not be able to transport both the comte and their brother and the choice between the men wasn't even close.
"Aramis." The command was enough, they knew what to do. Without further ado, Athos pulled up d'Artagnan and put his arm around his shoulders while the other musketeer carried himself and the pistol out into the corridor. The torches on the walls were burning low, casting the group into shadows as they made their escape.
Meanwhile, the guards had spread out, allowing them a small chance to slip by unnoticed. Athos could see it, the moment the foremost guard turned his head left and the other one went back to stare at his boots. Three steps and they'd be close enough. Determined, he stepped closer to inform Aramis of his strategy, but stopped short when he discovered something else. A female voice behind a cell door. And there was blood on her door.
"So much blood", Athos repeated under his breath. Sylvie, disconcerted by his ominous words, turned around and inquired what he was talking about. Yet it was Aramis who answered. "d'Artagnan hinted that his poisoner was a woman behind a bloody door. No pun intended."
"Then we better get in there", Sylvie said, understanding lighting up her face. She smiled when only a breath later Athos had picked the lock on the door and opened it to reveal indeed a woman. Messy blond hair, a bruise and a scowl on her face. Why was she gazing at them with suspicion instead of gratitude? Athos filed the question away for later, the sagging body next to him the more pressing concern.
"What did you give him?", he asked brusquely. The woman stepped back further into the cell with her hands raised as if to protect herself. "Nothing that would kill him. Remy made me. I swear!"
This admission of guilt prompted Aramis to enter with three long strides and lean in really close, his voice dangerously low. Although Athos could see that his friend felt pity for the woman, he did not let it show openly. Instead, he grasped her arm tight enough for it to hurt.
"Tell me exactly what you gave him that made him like this."
"Fly amantia. Blue halo. Jimson Weed."
"Madre de Dios. How could you!", Aramis cursed and shook her violently. "All three of them? How much?"
She swallowed, her scowl easing into what Athos would have called a pout if not for the circumstances. "He isn't dead, is he? I made sure it wasn't close to a lethal dose. However..."
"What? What else is there?", Aramis asked, obviously caught in a place between horror and fury. His hands were balled into fists, his regular sniper breathing uneven as the medic in him was probably screaming.
"Remy wanted the boy to be riding the high without a pause, because it made him easier to handle. I complied. He's been given those mushrooms non-stop for more than three days with less than an hour of withdrawal in-between. I brought the last dose only an hour and a half ago."
That's around the time d'Artagnan had made his escape, Athos realized. His fearless little brother had already known the clock was ticking when he'd started his quest. Still, he'd not given up and nearly gotten away, too. It also explained why d'Artagnan had fallen silent on the way back to the dungeon. The drugs must have hit his bloodstream by then. The hate blooming in his chest mixed with a growing apprehension for what d'Artagnan had endured, endured because he had been left by the men sworn to protect him. Regardless, Athos coolly held back Aramis who couldn't rein in his feelings any longer.
"I know brother, I know", he muttered quietly and sought the Spaniard's eyes. As soon as he saw control ease back in, he let go, his mind already attacking the problem of their way out with the new information. To his suprise, Sylvie took over and placed her slender hand on the medic's arm. "Aramis, please tell me what those drugs are. I've never heard of them before."
The musketeer huffed and raked a hand through his dishevelled hair. He was looking at d'Artagnan as he replied. "Blue Halos are sometimes called magic mushrooms, because they make you loose your sense of time and cause vivid hallucinations, sometimes paranoia. But they're not the problem, the effects last only a few hours. It's the mix... The Jimson Weed will confuse you, lower your emotional barriers and induce a state where you can no longer tell what is real and what is not. Combine that with fly amantia, which also alters your perception and causes your darker emotions to rise and you're guaranteed a trip to hell and back."
Sylvie gasped, her hands over her mouth. "That's beyond anything... Why would they ever...?"
"Because Remy wanted something, only the boy had it hidden in his stubborn mind. So he broke his mind. Your friend over there forgot to mention that you can give the person under the influence some incentive while his journey begins. And Remy made the best of that. I could hear the young man cry out."
"Enough", Athos interrupted with a raw voice. He motioned for them to return to the corridor, stepped outside and was promptly acquainted with a sword. His reflexes saved him as he ducked and at the same time kicked out the guard's feet from under him. They went down in a tangle of arms and legs and Athos used a trick Porthos had shown him a few weeks ago to press down on the opponent's neck and thereby render him unconscious. In the short moments of turmoil, Amantine had vanished into the gloom. Not that any of them really cared, as long as she stayed away, they were glad to be rid of her. Grasping Aramis' hand, Athos stood up and again lifted his little brother off of the floor.
"They probably heard that", Aramis surmised with a small smirk in his friend's direction. Sure enough, they were soon embroiled in a battle with more than half a dozen guards. Thankfully, those men were not as well trained as the ones in the ambush, but Athos wasn't certain that it would have made a difference. Aramis and, honestly, he himself fought with a conviction he'd seldom seen before. As he felled a man with a single well-aimed strike, Athos understood that it was because he had something, someone to fight for. Someone to protect. Someone to rescue. Someone dear to him.
Soon, the hallway was filled with moaning guards that were no longer blocking their exit. They even made it to the stables without any further mishaps, where they met up with Constance and Porthos. Constance had tried to take d'Artagnan from Athos, but the musketeer both saw the strategic disadvantage that would bring about and refused to let go. Constance didn't argue. Instead, they wrapped the boy into Porthos' cloak, mounted their steeds and carefully made for the edge of the estate.
In so going, they might even have made it past the searching guards if not for d'Artagnan. The boy had stirred in the saddle in front of Athos for a while, yet his awakening was ill-timed. His sudden shout of "Buttercup! Jump!" alarmed the guards, which were now in pursuit while Athos tried to keep his charge seated. d'Artagnan fought him all the way.
"You can't ever do things the easy way, can you?", Athos murmured, surprised when d'Artagnan answered cheekily.
"I don't have an attitude problem. You have a problem with my attitude, and that's not my problem, dad!" The half-formed relieved grin on Athos' cheeks froze. As the wind and the rain splattered his face and the older musketeer bent low over the neck of his horse, he cursed the comte over and over as his brain analysed what was to come. If Amantine's words were true and d'Artagnan's visions were influenced by what he saw, felt, and smelled, the rain and the cold would take them down a dark one-way street indeed.
Sure enough, they hadn't even reached the nearby forest when d'Artagnan's hallucinations took him back to the past.
"I couldn't stop them", he said, then jerked violently in Athos' arms, "Father! No, father!" Athos gripped him tighter, urging his horse to gallop alongside Aramis.
"We're not going to make it back to Paris", the medic said before Athos could make the same statement. So the swordsman simply nodded and lead them left, away from their home but hopefully towards another safe haven. Within minutes, the mansion of the Lady Lemaigre materialized from the unpleasant weather and the darkness of the night. They were dripping wet, but the doorman didn't bat an eye at their bedraggled appearance. On the contrary, he helpfully offered to call the stable boy and wake the mistress.
His steps had not faded when Aramis already seized the opportunity and began to examine his patient, sitting him down in the middle of the foyer. Like a puppet with its strings cut, d'Artagnan let it happen, at least until the Spaniard tried to take a look at his mangled hand. Then, the boy's eyes narrowed to slits.
"Aramis?"
"The one and only", the musketeer replied with a pleased expression, only to have the wind taken out of his sails by d'Artagnan's confused "But you left me to die. Days ago. Weeks ago? You and Porthos and Athos left me! I had to survive all on my own!"
"So you're hogging all the glory?", Aramis teased, although it sounded hollow in the huge room. d'Artagnan's brows knitted, either in anger or hurt, Athos couldn't tell. He did allow Aramis to unwind the bandage around his swollen fingers, but his voice was full of venom when he replied. "This isn't about glory. This is about the truth!"
"Oh, so you're hogging all the truth now", Aramis shot back, coming to a stop as he noticed that d'Artagnan didn't seem to hear him and continued his rant. "You abandoned me. To them. One for all, my ass! I did try to honor the other one, though."
"The other one?", Athos prompted quietly as the Gascon's tirade trailed off and his eyes slowly glazed over in pain while Aramis prodded and poked. The thumb and forefinger didn't seem to be damaged except for being a black bruise, but the other three had obviously been crushed and splinted thereafter. Athos winced nearly unnoticeably as Aramis frowned and quickly reset another link, which caused d'Artagnan's back to arch in agony. Constance excused herself, her face ashen.
"The... the vow", d'Artagnan croaked. "One for all. Tried... tried to protect the mission. The lady and... and her secrets. I didn't know her secrets. But Remy wanted to know. Remy asked... asked all the time. Athos!" Now, finally, his brother looked at him and saw him, but his anguish cut deeper and was more painful than any knive wound Athos had ever received.
"Athos, I don't know what... what I told him. Remy. I don't remember. I'm so... so sorry that I failed." The panic in his protégé's demeanor caused Athos to kneel down next to Aramis in order to cup d'Artagnan's face in his own calloused hands, forcing the younger man to meet his gaze.
"Listen to me, boy. You did not fail us. The mission was a success and you survived, that's what matters."
Without a warning, d'Artagnan's posture transformed, a manic energy flowing into him, his fingers curling into themselves and into claws. "No, no, get off, the thorns, they'll strangle you, get'em off, get them off, no..." Nails dragged into Athos' skin as he was scratched by the boy's attempt to undo something Athos could not see.
As fast as his astonishment would allow, Athos caught d'Artagnan's writsts, careful not to touch the left hand. While they struggled, Aramis scooting back in a concerned manner, Sylvie returned with the doorman and the Lady. "There is a guest room that will have anything we need", Sylvie announced tiredly. The lady elaborated, but the words washed by Athos and fell on deaf ears.
Aramis helped carry d'Artagnan through the entrance hall and over to the bed. Putting him on it proved a challenge, though. The boy cursed, fought and cursed some more and in the end, Porthos and Athos had to hold him down for Aramis to finish with the hand. With d'Artagnan lying on his stomach, his friends could see the lash marks from the whipping and the dirty bandage below. Afrter washing him and exposing the hideous, infected cut on his lower back, Aramis turned to the brandy on the small table next to the bed for disinfection.
"This is going to hurt. Ready?" Neither of them replied, so Aramis proceeded. D'Artagnan's hoarse screams filled the air until, thankfully, he surrendered to oblivion and fell limp. Nonetheless, he kept moving restlessly beneath their hands.
"If he keeps curling in on himself, he will damage his ribs, not to mention his hand if he tries to use it. In fact, any movement will hinder the healing process of the wounds, especially the one on his back", Aramis summed up, his expression grim and his hands bloody. Porthos groaned. "We're ain't able to hold him down forever."
"I know that."
"So what do you wanna do?", Porthos asked warily. Athos and Aramis exchanged a meaningful glance, in accordance with each other even though they didn't like their own plan of action. Silence spread, then Athos answered tonelessly. "Tie him to the bed."