Lots of stuff happens in this one. Lots of stuff. Basically none of it is good...

BIG OL' THANKS TO AREIACANANAID FOR GIVING ME THE IDEA AT THE END OF THIS CHAPTER!

Seriously.

Guys, go read her story "Letters".

I frickin loved it.

Just.

Just go read it. It's a masterpiece.

YEEEEEEEE

Since this is the second part of the 2-in-1 update, I have no other reviews to add here. But uh... YEH

Disclaimer: Not Flanagan. Same day, no other clever remark... sorry ;-;

Will had been left alone for the rest of the day and the following night, but not after his captor had taken his weapons. Not only did he have no clue where they were being held in the unlikely scenario that he managed to escape on his own, but he was being guarded - even further lowering the chances of his escape. So, rather than putting his effort mostly into escaping, he put it into figuring out what they planned to do with him. So far, he was liking it less and less. He got the distinct impression that the remainder of his captivity was going to be very painful. He grimaced. He could almost hear Halt's voice, trying to argue with him and Gilan about his going to Skandia ever again, paying no heed to the two-against-one factor. Funny how, even years after graduating and taking on his own apprentice, Halt's disapproving tone of voice still got to him.

Will slept on and off, trying to get as much rest as he could before the coming dawn. He needed his resolve to be at its peak if he wanted to resist the Skandian rebels' tactics. He was resistant to torture from years of training - he had to be - so he doubted it would be quite as easy as his captors thought that it would be to get him to speak up, but there was only so far training would take a person. Usually, that line was moved farther away the more well-rested a person was.

When dawn did come, he was already awake by the time the boy from the day before walked into the tent, wearing clothes more easily recognizable as Skandian. Along with this, he had a knife at his side, and a coil of rope on the other. Will smiled inwardly, though it was a grim smile. He had had plenty of experience with both forms of 'persuasion', from his apprenticeship and afterwards. He kept his outward expression absolutely straight, however, giving away no signs that the boy would likely not get far with this tactic of his.

"So. I'll ask you this, Treaty. I'll spare you the pain if you just tell me where Queen Cassandra is." He waited patiently, fully expecting for Will to offer up the information now that he had seen the weapons. When he did not respond, the boy got annoyed.

"No, you want to play it the hard way? Fine. I'm all for that, too."

He unhooked his rope from his belt and uncoiled it, the flying end of the whip lashing into Will's arm. He cried out in pain inwardly. He had forgotten how much that hurt, just a little bit. He did his best to keep his outward reaction neutral, not giving the boy any hints. He frowned, and lashed it at Will four more times. With each hit, Will simply grew a tiny bit more accustomed to the pain. He had experienced it plenty during his time as a slave in Skandia, after all, and his body seemed to recalibrate to it fairly easily. When Will continued to not react, the boy got more angry. He had clearly expected for Will to crack under the pain.

"Where is Queen Cassandra hiding?" He all but spat at Will, each word reinforced with a lash from his whip. Will refused to respond.

This went on for the rest of the morning, by the end of which Will was covered with partial cuts from the whip. The rope holding him had actually served to protect most of his body from the painful lashes, he reflected with amusement. Apparently, they hadn't quite thought that part of their torture plan through to completion. By the time the boy returned later in the day, however, they had figured it out, and so the ropes were cut free and his hands were re-tied around the post. Will just shrugged. He had become more used to the pain of the whip by now, and he regularly got cut by rocks on missions - he was less worried about those tactics. He was more worried about some of the other tactics they had been throwing back and forth the day before - ranging from near-starvation to near-suffocation, dunking, pushing him off tall structures. For the time being, though, they were keeping him locked up in the tent. He was fairly grateful for this, since they couldn't very well push him into a river or off of a house if he was tied against a post in a very much dry tent that was certainly on the ground. Besides, not knowing their precise location, he had no clue whether there was even a river in the vicinity. He hoped not.

He was left alone for the rest of the day, though, so he guessed that they planned on attempting to pull information out of him in the morning, when he was supposedly still half-asleep. Of course, he noted with a small amount of amusement, they seemed to think that Rangers didn't wake up quickly enough to defend themselves in the middle of the night if they were attacked at that time. For all they assumed about him, they got more than half of it wrong, resulting in him having an unknown upper hand in this ordeal.

They did seem to have figured out that Will was very resistant to torture about a week into their attempts. Now Will was left alone for weeks on end, getting fairly little to eat and drink. They clearly wanted to keep him alive until they got the information they needed, after which Will had no doubts that they would likely kill him. His only use was as a source of needed information about their intended target, he realized. After that… Will decided not to dwell on it. Nothing good would come of it, anyway. He only hoped that Maddie got here before they got any new ideas that he might not be so able to deflect.

One day, what appeared to be a scout rushed into the camp, clearly worried about something. The boy had stopped him.

"Scout, what's your report?"

"Harek, it's the Ranger."

The boy - Will now knew he was named Harek - cursed.

"Did he escape?"

"No, one of the other two. He's found the trail, but went back. I'm not sure why, but that means that-"

"Yes, yes, I get the drill. I'm waiting for Fenn to get back from whatever hare-brained idea he's gone off on this time. Honestly, that whole map business was a waste of time. The Rangers already knew we had it, so it lost the surprise."

A new voice joined the discussion.

"Let him, Harek. It's not like he's been gone in Araluen or who-knows-where-else for a month. You're effectively in charge, so you get to pick our course of action."

"It would be a bad idea for Fenn to come back here and realize we're gone, Skard."

"He still thinks we're at our last location."

Harek grunted in assent before yelling instructions to start packing up. Will braced himself when the Skandian in question stormed in, annoyance written on his face, into Will's tent.

"Somehow, you're behind this, aren't you, Treaty?"

Will didn't respond. That was becoming a regular habit as of late. Harek quickly untied his hands from the pole before re-tying them, free of the support, behind his back and shoving him forward roughly.

"We're moving," he said, and continued to alternate between pulling and pushing Will forward until they reached Harek's horse. Will knew that Skandians disliked riding, so the horse's presence still surprised him. He decided, however, that there were more important issues at hand than whether or not Harek rode regularly. Such as, what was Yuman doing in Araluen? And why for so long?

He didn't get much of a chance to think about it, though, as the group pulled off into the forest, making sure to stay off the path. Will watched behind them as the tell-tale signs of a large group leaving an area were left behind. Harek and Will were up at the front, either from the fact that Harek having a horse made him faster or the fact that he was, for the time being, the leader of the rebel group being unclear to Will. Still, looking back made it more than clear that Maddie would be able to track their progress. That was what he thought until he saw three or four men in the back rolling boulders over their escape path, and his heart sank.

Maddie probably wouldn't be getting to him for a while, he realized. They were hidden from the road and their escape path was blocked off from view. There was no possible way for Maddie to spot them, unless she was riding past right then. He glanced through the trees to the road whenever he could, and so far, no distinctive mottled green-grey cloak in sight. They traveled overnight, effectively making what Will judged to be a four-day trip with sleep into a two-day trip. They ate on the road for the most part, except for Will - they seemed determined to keep up their technique until the bitter end. Unless Will told them what they wanted to know, however, he knew they wouldn't actually let him die.

They finally stopped, in a hidden clearing far off the road. Will could hear sounds of running water, and guessed that there was either a small river or a stream nearby. While the rebel group set up their camp again, Will was left tied to a tree on the edge of the clearing, likely until they set up the tents and could move him without worrying whether he'd find a way to run off unnoticed and blow the whistle on their location. From what Will could tell, it took them around three hours to set up their camp again. After that, Will was dragged into the tent he had spent basically all of his time in and his hands were re-bound behind the pole.

After that startling change of events, things went back to normal for the most part. Around a week in, Harek returned to his initial methods, which proved as unsuccessful as the first time he tried. Will was determined to keep his mouth closed on matters of where Evanlyn was, which was driving Harek crazy. He had seemed to misjudge how long it would take for Will to crack, if ever. When he left each day, it seemed as though he were angrier than the last. He seemed to get an idea, though, at the end of the week. Will had been dozing and listening to the conversations outside of the tent, as usual. At first, they hadn't been talking about anything important, or that he hadn't already heard about. Then, one Skandian emitted a loud grunt of annoyance.

"I'm all out," he had complained to another.

"Relax, we should be getting a new shipment soon."

"How soon?"

"Probably in the next few days."

"I bet that's what Fenn's been up to in Araluen."

This caught Will's attention. He had been wondering about it since the conversation he had heard between Harek and Skard.

"Really? So, then, how's he gonna get it past the Oberjarl? Last time, he almost got caught."

"Look, he'll probably go around Hallasholm next time. Either by ship or by land. He's not risking going through there again with the stuff."

Will heard Harek join the conversation. He tilted his head to see through the gap between the flaps of the tent, and saw the Skandians he was listening in on. One was standing next to a wooden box, a frown on his face. The other had his back to Will, and Harek was right on the edge of where Will could see, opposite the crate.

"Guys, it's hard to come by in Araluen. I hear that the Rangers use it in minimal amounts for medical purposes, but that's about it there - a pain reliever." Will was starting to get a loose idea of what they were talking about, and he really, really didn't like the idea. "He might need to sneak around in the Ranger's spaces to find it, if that's indeed why he's in Araluen. He should have gotten the map and come back, if you ask me."

"Yes, but we would have run out and had no backup supply coming otherwise." Harek snorted.

"So? Is having a backup supply he has to sneak past the Oberjarl to get to us more important than breaking the alliance and taking over so we don't have to sneak around anymore? It's not like the old man has done anything to prevent our raids on the Araluen coast yet."

So that's where the issues he had heard about from the Ranger in Seacliff originated.

"He's not going to. If the best he can do is call upon a bunch of Rangers from Araluen to come here and find us, then he's probably not going to be able to get us to stop anyway."

"Still, I can't be losing slaves to a lack of warmweed," the original Skandian said, and the color drained from Will's face. His guess had been correct, and he didn't like that one bit. Of course the rebel Skandian group would still have slaves. Warmweed was a staple for the slave trade, since it kept them from independent thought. Their only thought was their next dose. Will had lived it, and had been hoping to never have to interact with it again outside of the Ranger medical kit. He sat back, and tried to get his reaction under control before Harek came in. Basing from the footsteps outside, that would be in a few minutes.

When Harek entered the tent, Will had gotten his face mostly under control, but from Harek's curious expression, not entirely.

"What's with you?" Harek asked. Will didn't respond, but his gaze did cut outside the tent flap unconsciously. Harek, to Will's detriment, interpreted this unconscious glance correctly. "Heard what we were talking about, huh? Guess I shouldn't be surprised." Will tried desperately to not let his face or body give away the amount of stress the topic brought up in him. This time, it was a losing battle.

Harek looked confused for a moment, then a small, devious smile crept across his face.

"Is the legendary Will Treaty scared of warmweed?"

Against his wishes, Will's face merely confirmed this fact. A plan started to form in Harek's mind, and Will knew from the slowly growing smirk on the Skandian's face that he wouldn't like it one bit.

This is also a longer one.

I'm just realizing this.

I'm seriously good at life, guys.

I actually thought this was two chapters, but nup, it's only one...

YEP

As you can see, I have a wonderful memory! (this is heavy sarcasm, guys.)

Right so I will try my best to stop leaving you guys on multi-week cliffies. I'm seriously sorry for updates... I have a valid reason for the 14-15th though. That reason is called "I was in Louisiana".

But not for this weekend, I'm just lazy. Don't kill meh ples ;-;

Till next time(whenever that may be)!