Carrenworth: The Vengeance: Chapter Fourteen: "Another Unexpected Return"
Capt. Henry Bordon, long thought dead, paced back and forth uneasily. He was in a precarious situation, in the belly of the beast, as his father the late James Bordon would have said. Still, when he considered the alternatives, starvation, damnation, and Tavington, Bordon found his current position something close to bliss.
He felt out of place. This house was too big and too well furnished. The servants dressed better than he ever had. The captain selected a cake from the tea tray one of the well-dressed servants had brought and nibbled on the edges a bit. He wasn't that hungry, and since they had been made more for decoration than actual ingestion the cakes weren't that tasty anyway.
There was window of impressive size set in the north wall. Bordon walked over and peered out. Several gardeners were going about their duties, pulling weeds, pruning innumerable rose bushes. It was nice, and he thought he could get used to it, as gaudy and wasteful as it seemed at first. It takes a certain kind of man to appreciate a house like this. It occurred to Bordon that Tavington was not one of those men. He liked money, he liked power, but he would not have put so much thought into the subtle artistry of the place. It was the way things were arranged that gave off that aura of majesty.
"Do you like it, dear Capt. Bordon?"
"It's very impressive, sir," Bordon admitted, turning his attention from the window to the red-haired aristocrat stretched across one of the room's many plush sofas.
"I would beg your pardon for entertaining you in military attire, but seeing as you are dressed similarly yourself I believe there is no need."
"What's wrong with it?" Bordon asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Nothing, I suppose, if one is used to it as you Green Dragoons seem to be. In most circles it is considered impolite, if not odd, to entertain guests while armed," he toyed a bit with the gold-plated hilt of his rapier.
Bordon had never been one to give much thought to things like etiquette, but he thought the golden dragoon had a point.
"Now, I understand you have a most unusual request to make. Very well then, make your request, though I must assure you that if it involves any demands from your master I will have no choice but to deny."
My master. The words stung Bordon's soul. They reminded him of how far past redemption he had wandered.
"It is about my former commander in a way," Bordon answered. "But it doesn't have anything to do with any demands of his. I am no longer a Green Dragoon, sir. I have renounced my ways, and Tavington. Everything I ever did in his service I look back on with such loathing that had I the courage I would take a knife and rip that pulsing mass of disgust from my being."
Victor smiled. He had always been the sort who enjoyed vivid imagery. "And I always thought of the Green Dragoons as a representation of the very embodiment of loyalty itself. You follow without questioning, and unless I am mistaken, Capt. Bordon, you have come here with the intention of pledging your loyalty to an order that is dedicated to the destruction of your former leader."
Bordon cleared his throat and poured some tea, which he drank in one gulp.
"Forgive me, sir. I don't like to discuss such things. I'm ashamed of what I was," he went back to the window and stared out for a while, studying the blue sky, searching the heavens for divine inspiration. "I stood by. I did nothing. He burnt down a church full of innocent people. He made Mr. Wilkins kill his neighbors! And I did nothing to stop him. I could have stopped him, but I didn't."
"Don't blame yourself, captain. He would have killed you if you had tried to stop him."
Bordon continued to stare out the window. Clouds were gathering. It was only a matter of time before the rain.
"Not if I'd killed him first."
* * *
One month later, Capt. Henry Bordon stood with his fellow dragoons in the midst of the bustling shipyards. He straightened the sleeves of his new uniform. The Golden Dragoons wore jackets similar to the Green Dragoons, only the trim was black and adorned with a considerable amount of gold brocade. The captain noticed that he was the only one carrying a saber instead of the traditional rapier of the order. Unlike Tavington, Victor had been understanding.
"Just keep your saber, my dear Bordon. You will be quite useless in a fight with an unfamiliar weapon and it takes years to learn to wield a rapier properly."
Bordon looked to his new commander. Gen. Lord Carrenworth was talking in his usual animated fashion with a man who appeared to be the captain of the ship they would be sailing on. The captain was accompanied by another man who wore thick glasses and kept interrupting with questions concerning the transportation goods and the distribution of cargo in the holds. Victor proved himself capable of carrying on both conversations simultaneously.
"Yes, we will be sailing this morning."
"Put those below with the other barrels containing foodstuffs."
"Yes, I have seen to the crewmen's payroll."
De Fleur, the other dragoon captain, dressed in full military uniform for the first time since Bordon had met him, stood dutifully behind, and a bit to the right of his master. Without powder on his hair he looked more like how one would imagine an assassin. His stringy black hair was quite long, and tied back in a simple ponytail, not braided.
"Is that man the captain?" Bordon inquired of a young dragoon named Pierson. He pointed toward the man who was presently engaged in questioning Gen. Lord Carrenworth concerning the crewmen's salaries.
"No, captain," Pierson replied without hesitation. "That's the first mate, Bertram. He's talking to the captain, though."
"I meant the captain of the ship," Bordon remarked, certain that the young dragoon had misunderstood him.
Pierson rolled his eyes. Bordon's ignorance was lamentable. "Gen. Lord Carrenworth is the captain of the Weeping Maiden. He was a privateer before he was a dragoon. The Weeping Maiden was his favorite ship. They say she's indestructible."
Bordon was impressed. He would have been surprised, but he had heard enough stories about Carrenworth that he wasn't. It made sense. The duke seemed the perfect type to go about seizing foreign ships for the fun of it.
Suddenly, Bordon caught something in the corner of his left eye, a slight flash of green. Risking a quick glance, what he saw nearly caused him to faint right there, in front of his new comrades in arms.
Gen. William Tavington, accompanied by sixty or so armed dragoons entered confidently onto the scene, the crowd swerving to avoid a potentially deadly collision. He looked a bit different than when Bordon had last seen him. He was thinner, and a bit paler, but there was a new aura of confidence surrounding him that, to be honest, frightened Bordon considerably. More disturbingly, however, was the man standing alongside the Grand High Green Dragoon, even without his wig, there was no mistaking Gen. O'Hara. With the air of a victorious conqueror, Tavington surveyed the shipyards.
"A lovely day to begin a voyage," Gen. O'Hara commented with a smile.
Bordon diverted his gaze, fixing it on Gen. Lord Carrenworth instead of Tavington, and fervently prayed that the green dragoon would not notice him.
"Could you hold that thought for moment, my dear Bertram?" Victor interrupted his first-mate who was still rambling about money.
He left Bertram under the watchful eyes of de Fleur and hurried over to where the green dragoons were congregated, his new boots making sharp tapping sounds on the wooden planking.
"You must be General William Lucifer Tavington," he said, bowing so low that a thick red curl managed to escape from his neat braid, and hang in its proper place between his eyes. "We meet at last!"
"You must be Carrenworth," Tavington said, unbending, his voice dripping with disdain.
Victor's ability to display every emotion from joy, to deceit, to fury surged to the surface. Carrenworth? Had that commoner, that peasant, dared to dispense with his title? Subconsciously, his hand grasped the hilt of his rapier.
Staring at the young nobleman who was fixing him with a furious glare, Tavington said the words without thinking.
"Before this is over, I'm going to kill you."
There was the metallic hiss of a weapon being drawn.
"Why wait, then?" Victor questioned. "Kill me now if you are so determined." He raised his blade so that the tip brushed gently against the green scarf Tavington wore around his neck.
There was a collective gasp from the assembled dragoons of both parties. O'Hara reached for his own sword. De Fleur slipped one of the poisoned knives secreted about his person into his hand.
"Very soon, Carrenworth," Tavington snapped, then turning to his second-in- command, "O'Hara."
The Green Dragoons turned as one and began making their way toward an awaiting ship.
"I won't stand for this!" Victor cried, pulling a golden throwing knife from his belt. With a graceful flick of the wrist, he sent it flying through the air, cutting the feathers neatly off the side of Tavington's helmet.
There was a flash of steal. Tavington's lips curled into an expression of fury nearly equal to that of Victor.
"So you can't wait to die?"
He rushed at the golden dragoon, drew his saber back, and swung it with enough force to slice Carrenworth's red-haired head clean off. Then came the impact. Burning pain surged through his left shoulder, he dropped the saber, and retreated backwards a few steps, staring in horror and shock at the knife that had seemingly materialized in his left shoulder.
"You should be thankful that was not one of dear de Fleur's knives," Victor hissed. "His are poisoned. You can keep that one. Consider it something of a souvenir, and as a taste of things to come." He sheathed his rapier. "I certainly hope your skills improve substantially before the occasion comes when we face one another again. Otherwise, I shall have no fun at all. Isn't that right, Captain Bordon?"
Bordon, who had been watching intently along with the others, could do nothing to disguise his identity now. He stared at Tavington, Tavington stared back, their gazes locked.
"Bordon?" Tavington whispered.
"Yes, Bordon, and if I may say so, you have lost a very talent officer, dear Tavington." Victor took another bow, this one more for the audience of dragoons. "Farewell Tavington, until that distant day in distant India. Until we meet again!"
Victor turned, confident that none of the green dragoons were willing to risk taking him out with a pistol shot in the middle of suck a large crowd. He was right. Their collective attentions were focused on their injured commander as O'Hara hurried forward to help.
"And now, my fellow dragoons," Victor said with another of his twisted, maniacal smiles, "to India!"
The majority of the Golden Dragoons applauded their leader's marvelous performance. Bordon, risking another glance at Tavington as he pulled the knife from his shoulder, was one of the few who didn't.
Capt. Henry Bordon, long thought dead, paced back and forth uneasily. He was in a precarious situation, in the belly of the beast, as his father the late James Bordon would have said. Still, when he considered the alternatives, starvation, damnation, and Tavington, Bordon found his current position something close to bliss.
He felt out of place. This house was too big and too well furnished. The servants dressed better than he ever had. The captain selected a cake from the tea tray one of the well-dressed servants had brought and nibbled on the edges a bit. He wasn't that hungry, and since they had been made more for decoration than actual ingestion the cakes weren't that tasty anyway.
There was window of impressive size set in the north wall. Bordon walked over and peered out. Several gardeners were going about their duties, pulling weeds, pruning innumerable rose bushes. It was nice, and he thought he could get used to it, as gaudy and wasteful as it seemed at first. It takes a certain kind of man to appreciate a house like this. It occurred to Bordon that Tavington was not one of those men. He liked money, he liked power, but he would not have put so much thought into the subtle artistry of the place. It was the way things were arranged that gave off that aura of majesty.
"Do you like it, dear Capt. Bordon?"
"It's very impressive, sir," Bordon admitted, turning his attention from the window to the red-haired aristocrat stretched across one of the room's many plush sofas.
"I would beg your pardon for entertaining you in military attire, but seeing as you are dressed similarly yourself I believe there is no need."
"What's wrong with it?" Bordon asked, genuinely puzzled.
"Nothing, I suppose, if one is used to it as you Green Dragoons seem to be. In most circles it is considered impolite, if not odd, to entertain guests while armed," he toyed a bit with the gold-plated hilt of his rapier.
Bordon had never been one to give much thought to things like etiquette, but he thought the golden dragoon had a point.
"Now, I understand you have a most unusual request to make. Very well then, make your request, though I must assure you that if it involves any demands from your master I will have no choice but to deny."
My master. The words stung Bordon's soul. They reminded him of how far past redemption he had wandered.
"It is about my former commander in a way," Bordon answered. "But it doesn't have anything to do with any demands of his. I am no longer a Green Dragoon, sir. I have renounced my ways, and Tavington. Everything I ever did in his service I look back on with such loathing that had I the courage I would take a knife and rip that pulsing mass of disgust from my being."
Victor smiled. He had always been the sort who enjoyed vivid imagery. "And I always thought of the Green Dragoons as a representation of the very embodiment of loyalty itself. You follow without questioning, and unless I am mistaken, Capt. Bordon, you have come here with the intention of pledging your loyalty to an order that is dedicated to the destruction of your former leader."
Bordon cleared his throat and poured some tea, which he drank in one gulp.
"Forgive me, sir. I don't like to discuss such things. I'm ashamed of what I was," he went back to the window and stared out for a while, studying the blue sky, searching the heavens for divine inspiration. "I stood by. I did nothing. He burnt down a church full of innocent people. He made Mr. Wilkins kill his neighbors! And I did nothing to stop him. I could have stopped him, but I didn't."
"Don't blame yourself, captain. He would have killed you if you had tried to stop him."
Bordon continued to stare out the window. Clouds were gathering. It was only a matter of time before the rain.
"Not if I'd killed him first."
* * *
One month later, Capt. Henry Bordon stood with his fellow dragoons in the midst of the bustling shipyards. He straightened the sleeves of his new uniform. The Golden Dragoons wore jackets similar to the Green Dragoons, only the trim was black and adorned with a considerable amount of gold brocade. The captain noticed that he was the only one carrying a saber instead of the traditional rapier of the order. Unlike Tavington, Victor had been understanding.
"Just keep your saber, my dear Bordon. You will be quite useless in a fight with an unfamiliar weapon and it takes years to learn to wield a rapier properly."
Bordon looked to his new commander. Gen. Lord Carrenworth was talking in his usual animated fashion with a man who appeared to be the captain of the ship they would be sailing on. The captain was accompanied by another man who wore thick glasses and kept interrupting with questions concerning the transportation goods and the distribution of cargo in the holds. Victor proved himself capable of carrying on both conversations simultaneously.
"Yes, we will be sailing this morning."
"Put those below with the other barrels containing foodstuffs."
"Yes, I have seen to the crewmen's payroll."
De Fleur, the other dragoon captain, dressed in full military uniform for the first time since Bordon had met him, stood dutifully behind, and a bit to the right of his master. Without powder on his hair he looked more like how one would imagine an assassin. His stringy black hair was quite long, and tied back in a simple ponytail, not braided.
"Is that man the captain?" Bordon inquired of a young dragoon named Pierson. He pointed toward the man who was presently engaged in questioning Gen. Lord Carrenworth concerning the crewmen's salaries.
"No, captain," Pierson replied without hesitation. "That's the first mate, Bertram. He's talking to the captain, though."
"I meant the captain of the ship," Bordon remarked, certain that the young dragoon had misunderstood him.
Pierson rolled his eyes. Bordon's ignorance was lamentable. "Gen. Lord Carrenworth is the captain of the Weeping Maiden. He was a privateer before he was a dragoon. The Weeping Maiden was his favorite ship. They say she's indestructible."
Bordon was impressed. He would have been surprised, but he had heard enough stories about Carrenworth that he wasn't. It made sense. The duke seemed the perfect type to go about seizing foreign ships for the fun of it.
Suddenly, Bordon caught something in the corner of his left eye, a slight flash of green. Risking a quick glance, what he saw nearly caused him to faint right there, in front of his new comrades in arms.
Gen. William Tavington, accompanied by sixty or so armed dragoons entered confidently onto the scene, the crowd swerving to avoid a potentially deadly collision. He looked a bit different than when Bordon had last seen him. He was thinner, and a bit paler, but there was a new aura of confidence surrounding him that, to be honest, frightened Bordon considerably. More disturbingly, however, was the man standing alongside the Grand High Green Dragoon, even without his wig, there was no mistaking Gen. O'Hara. With the air of a victorious conqueror, Tavington surveyed the shipyards.
"A lovely day to begin a voyage," Gen. O'Hara commented with a smile.
Bordon diverted his gaze, fixing it on Gen. Lord Carrenworth instead of Tavington, and fervently prayed that the green dragoon would not notice him.
"Could you hold that thought for moment, my dear Bertram?" Victor interrupted his first-mate who was still rambling about money.
He left Bertram under the watchful eyes of de Fleur and hurried over to where the green dragoons were congregated, his new boots making sharp tapping sounds on the wooden planking.
"You must be General William Lucifer Tavington," he said, bowing so low that a thick red curl managed to escape from his neat braid, and hang in its proper place between his eyes. "We meet at last!"
"You must be Carrenworth," Tavington said, unbending, his voice dripping with disdain.
Victor's ability to display every emotion from joy, to deceit, to fury surged to the surface. Carrenworth? Had that commoner, that peasant, dared to dispense with his title? Subconsciously, his hand grasped the hilt of his rapier.
Staring at the young nobleman who was fixing him with a furious glare, Tavington said the words without thinking.
"Before this is over, I'm going to kill you."
There was the metallic hiss of a weapon being drawn.
"Why wait, then?" Victor questioned. "Kill me now if you are so determined." He raised his blade so that the tip brushed gently against the green scarf Tavington wore around his neck.
There was a collective gasp from the assembled dragoons of both parties. O'Hara reached for his own sword. De Fleur slipped one of the poisoned knives secreted about his person into his hand.
"Very soon, Carrenworth," Tavington snapped, then turning to his second-in- command, "O'Hara."
The Green Dragoons turned as one and began making their way toward an awaiting ship.
"I won't stand for this!" Victor cried, pulling a golden throwing knife from his belt. With a graceful flick of the wrist, he sent it flying through the air, cutting the feathers neatly off the side of Tavington's helmet.
There was a flash of steal. Tavington's lips curled into an expression of fury nearly equal to that of Victor.
"So you can't wait to die?"
He rushed at the golden dragoon, drew his saber back, and swung it with enough force to slice Carrenworth's red-haired head clean off. Then came the impact. Burning pain surged through his left shoulder, he dropped the saber, and retreated backwards a few steps, staring in horror and shock at the knife that had seemingly materialized in his left shoulder.
"You should be thankful that was not one of dear de Fleur's knives," Victor hissed. "His are poisoned. You can keep that one. Consider it something of a souvenir, and as a taste of things to come." He sheathed his rapier. "I certainly hope your skills improve substantially before the occasion comes when we face one another again. Otherwise, I shall have no fun at all. Isn't that right, Captain Bordon?"
Bordon, who had been watching intently along with the others, could do nothing to disguise his identity now. He stared at Tavington, Tavington stared back, their gazes locked.
"Bordon?" Tavington whispered.
"Yes, Bordon, and if I may say so, you have lost a very talent officer, dear Tavington." Victor took another bow, this one more for the audience of dragoons. "Farewell Tavington, until that distant day in distant India. Until we meet again!"
Victor turned, confident that none of the green dragoons were willing to risk taking him out with a pistol shot in the middle of suck a large crowd. He was right. Their collective attentions were focused on their injured commander as O'Hara hurried forward to help.
"And now, my fellow dragoons," Victor said with another of his twisted, maniacal smiles, "to India!"
The majority of the Golden Dragoons applauded their leader's marvelous performance. Bordon, risking another glance at Tavington as he pulled the knife from his shoulder, was one of the few who didn't.