"Quiet! She's asleep and we want to keep her that way!"
Someone had bound her wrists. She barely constrained herself from trying to look who it was. Somehow, she figured that she would get a better idea of what was happening to her…
The men placed her in a wagon. She struggled with her bonds a bit, trying not to move too much. A pull here and a push there, that was all. Easy did it.
This was not her first time being captured, though she hoped it would be her last. Unless she was very mistaken, these men were bandits, judging from the sounds they made as rifled through her sack of belongings. Fortunately, she had nothing valuable in there. Also, they sounded like commoners, commoners whom hard luck and scarce food had pushed to outlawship.
"Do you think…" whispered someone nearby, "that she could be the one that they were looking for?
They? She did not like the sound of that. In fact, she thought she was getting a pretty good idea of who "they" were, and she did not like it, not one bit.
"Could be. She fits the description."
"We should take her to him anyways. There's a huge reward on her if she's the one."
She smiled to herself. Obviously, these bandits had no leader. Easier for her. But she had better make her escape before they got to "they".
Slowly, she inched her eyes open. She could not see anything. For a panicked second she thought that she had gone blind.
No you idiot, she thought to herself, it's a blindfold, of course! Sure enough, when she inched the piece of cloth down, a gleam of light shone through.
Now, her planned escape would be a lot harder. The bandits would surely see if she slipped her blindfold off. She increased her efforts on the rope binding her wrists, hoping no one noticed that she was wriggling slightly.
Luck was against her.
"I think our little prize has woken up," joked one of the bandits.
Something hit her head, and then all she knew was blackness.
********************************************************************************
She awoke again, and immediately wished she had not. Her head hurt badly, and the rest of her body throbbed. Light flooded her eyes, temporarily blinding her. At least I'm not blindfolded anymore, she thought.
Now for the ropes on her hands. Her heard a clicking sound, and realized with a wave of sickness that instead of rope, her hands were bound with hard iron manacles.
Someone was coming. Quickly, she pretended to still be knocked out.
A tall figure entered the tent. She knew of his height by the shadow that the late evening sun cast upon her. A sharp kick connected with her leg, making her jump.
"I knew you were faking," he said smugly, smiling coldly.
She gasped. She knew that voice.
"Recognition, Cara my dear?" The smile grew, if you could really call it one. Cara took a closer look at her captor. He was dressed completely in black, and from bitter experience, she knew that a shirt of chain mail hung beneath his leather tunic.
"The name is Caradhriel," she spat back. "Princess Caradhriel to you."
"Fiesty, like always… I had hoped that you had lost some of that unfortunate fault."
"Fools hope foolish dreams." This man was really scaring her, but she wouldn't let him see that.
"Aye. But I swear you'll warm up to me in time. You know, Sortiur has promised you to me after were all finished here." He sat back and smiled to watch the effect of his statement.
"A worthy servant you are," she spat.
"Oh, only when it benefits yours truly. Which it does, quite generously. I won't always be around to carry out his every command."
"What do you want!" she snapped.
"Too bring you back to Sortiur alive and kicking. Which you will, quite willingly, once you've heard my terms."
"Do I actually have a choice?"
"No, and that's the beauty of it. You don't get a choice. And I get to watch you suffer."
She glared at him.
"But you'll be wanting to know the terms," he said. "If you behave, you're left alone. If you don't you're passed around the men."
"What if I don't agree on them?" she asked, barely able to keep her voice from shaking.
"As I said before, you really don't have a choice. And if you'll excuse me, your majesty," he leered, "I have better things to do than to engage in idle chitchat with you." He turned to leave the tent.
She jumped at him, trying to get her manacles around his neck. He evaded her easily.
"Beautiful things, those are," he commented, nodding toward her chains. "Can't be picked, can't be broken, only can be unlocked by its key." He exited the tent, and turned around to jeer through the flap, "have fun, my lady."
As soon as he was out of hearing distance, she collapsed. She had been lucky last time, she would not escape again. Silently, she resigned herself to a life of misery.
She noticed that it had become dark, sometime between her musings of different escape plans. Someone brought her a bowl of gruel and a cup of water. She finished them in five seconds flat, and pushed them back into the surprised man's arms.
She was about to fall asleep, when…
"Angie, are you in there?"
A/N: Again, a cliffie…. Hopefully that chappie was better than the last one… Well don't just stare, press that beautiful blue button at the bottom of the page!
~to my reviewers~
PurpleSakura- yeah… I know… one of these days I might fix it… ;)
LadySabrina- I'm updating!
Miliko01- ok, ok, is this good enough for you?
Whitewolf- thank you!
Queerquail- of course summary is an art! You probably wouldn't be saying that if you saw the previous summary, though… *winces*