Chapter Eleven
"Elizabeth?" Giles said as they approached his house. She'd been quiet all the way, silent, thoughtful, looking sad. "Buffy?"
She looked up and offered a rather unconvincing smile.
"Are you alright?"
"I - I'm just tired," she said, and faked a yawn. "Long journey. I think I might just go to sleep for a while when we get in."
He nodded, not convinced, and made to open the door of his house.
It was locked.
Frowning, he knocked. "Miss McClay? Tara?"
No reply. Confused, Giles fished for his keys. He'd always told Tara to lock the door if she left the house, so she must have just popped out for something. Presumably Willow had gone too. It was strange to come home to an empty house.
Inside, he found the fireplaces empty - usually she prepared them in the afternoon, to keep the house warm as the sun set. There was a pile of vegetables in the kitchen, but none of them had been cooked. Her shoes and cloak were gone, as were Willow's.
"It's not like her to leave things this late," Anya said, frowning.
"She probably just went to get something for supper," Xander said.
"I'll go and look," Buffy offered, needing to be alone for a while. She could walk around the village for a while. No doubt Willow and Tara were just getting some meat or milk or something.
"You want company?" Xander offered, but looked quite relieved when she said no. None of them had missed the total absorption he and Anya had in each other. All the way back from Angel's they'd ridden very close together and talked and giggled for hours. Now Anya was sitting down prettily and sighing that her feet ached from all that riding. Buffy was about to say that surely her legs would ache more, when Xander offered to rub Anya's feet.
Buffy had no doubt he'd be moving up as soon as they were alone.
She left Giles to his study, Xander and Anya to their unsubtle courtship, and walked out into the cool air of the late afternoon. To go into town meant a left turn, but Buffy turned right, away from the village centre, and wandered along the empty road, between close buildings, smaller and shabbier as she walked on.
Should she have stayed? Should she have thought about Spike - his name was William, she reminded herself, but ever since she'd heard 'Spike', it had stuck. He wasn't much of a William anyway - and defied what he'd said about their relationship having no future?
So he'd been burned before. So what? It wasn't as if she was asking for a marriage proposal and lots of fat babies. She didn't really want babies. Not right now, anyway. She needed to know who she was, first.
But all her memories, pretty much every one she had, were tied up with Spike. Spike trying to rob Willow and Xander. Spike tied to a kitchen chair, glaring at her. Spike rushing towards her in the middle of the night, desperate for her touch. His mouth, his eyes, his body - oh God, his body...
His voice saying there was no one like her. "I wanted you even when you were throwing rocks at me." Telling her he could never refuse her anything. Well, he'd changed his mind pretty sharpish on that one.
Let him go, she told herself firmly. Let him sod off and be a lonesome highwayman. She could highwayman him into the ground. One day, she thought, one day I'll get that... that... that prat and I'll rob him blind. Everything he has.
Even his clothes.
Mmm.
She shook his head. "Don't need him," she said aloud. "Never did. Don't need anyone."
"Perdita?" came a voice from very low down, and she stopped, confused. She looked around. She was by a small, dark alley. No one in it. Puzzled, she walked a step or two further, then the voice came again. It was familiar. And besides, who still called her Perdita?
"Willow?"
"Down here," Willow said, and Buffy caught the movement of her pale hand behind the bars of a cellar window. She ran down the alley and crouched at the window, looking in to see Willow in a tiny, dark filthy cell. She was alone.
"What are you doing in there?" Buffy looked at the building. "Isn't this the town hall?"
Willow nodded, her face dirty and streaked with tears. "Oh Perdita, am I glad to see you! Oh - wait, the schoolteacher is looking for you-"
"He found me," Buffy interrupted. "What's going on? Why are you in a cell?"
Willow looked wretched. "They're going to burn us," she said.
"What? Who? Us?"
"Me and Tara. They say we're witches."
"Why?"
"We, uh, well, it doesn't matter. We're not," Willow added, more firmly.
"I believe you."
"They're going to burn us tonight. When it gets dark." Her voice caught on a sob. "I tried to get them to reason but they said we needed to be made an example of. They wouldn't even wait for Mr Giles to get back."
"Well, he's back now," Buffy said, and stood up, her mind whirring. "Wait there."
"What else am I supposed to do?" Willow asked plaintively, but Buffy was already gone.
Spike rode hard after Dawn, but she was smaller and lighter and her horse was more rested than his. She was always too far ahead of him. And he'd no idea where they were going. He'd started them out on the road home, but now she was doubling back... south, was it? It was getting late, the sun was falling in the sky. Falling to his right, which meant they were going south.
Maybe to her lawyer.
Maybe she was just trying to shake him off.
Bloody women!
He came to a crossroads laced with hoof patterns. There was no time to check them all for her tracks. Riding up to a peddlar selling trinkets, Spike demanded of him, "Did you see a young woman ride through here? Blue velvet, dark hair, chestnut horse?"
The peddlar looked at him calculatingly. "Maybe," he said slowly.
Damn stupid bloody man, looking for money. Spike had no time for that. He couldn't let Dawn just tear around on her own. What if something happened?
He got out his gun and aimed it at the man's greasy head. "I am William the Bloody," he said, "and I shoot people like you for fun. Tell me where she went or I'll blow your bloody head off and use your entrails for a breadcrumb trail."
The peddlar pointed. "That way. Five minutes ago."
Spike holstered the gun. "Isn't giving fun?"
"...so the townspeople threw them both in jail and they're going to burn them tonight," Buffy finished breathlessly. She'd already told Giles, who'd rushed off to the town hall to try and talk some sense into the captain of the militia, and now she was telling Xander and Anya.
"How awful," Anya said. "Although it is getting rather cold, so at least they'll be warm."
Buffy stared at her for a second or two, then snapped her attention back to Xander. "We have to do something."
"Agreed. Maybe we could make a distraction and sneak in and get them out."
Anya shook her head. "The town hall is a warren: it's a very old building and they've basically just added layers and layers to it as they needed. You need a map just to find the captain's office."
"Do you have a map?"
"I was speaking metaphorically. You'd never get in."
"Then maybe we could break open the cell window..." Xander said.
"Steel bars," Buffy said. "Set in stone."
"Get a horse to pull them out."
"The alley's tiny."
"Well, you think of something, then!"
"Maybe Mr Giles will-" Buffy broke off when she heard the front door slam. Giles stomped in, carrying all hell about him, and let off an impressive string of curse words.
"I take it the captain wouldn't be moved," Buffy said into the sudden silence.
"He says they must be destroyed as an example to the ungodly," Giles seethed.
"Ungodly? Look, maybe Will's not that devout, but she doesn't eat pork or anything-" Xander began.
"It's her Judaism that's part of the problem," Giles said. "Apparently they were overheard talking about it, and Willow was heard to say something about being burned before..."
"Yeah," Xander looked uneasy. "Once or twice."
"What?" Anya stared at him.
"Well, she does tend to unsettle people. She doesn't do it on purpose, but what with the hair and the lack of churchiness-"
"The hair?" Buffy said.
"Red hair is a sign of witchcraft," Anya explained, and when she got several sharp looks, added, "or so say uninformed, ignorant, idiotic, sheeplike peasants."
"We have to do something," Buffy said.
"They're already building the fire," Giles said in despair.
Buffy thought quickly, but the thought that immediately came to mind was that she needed help. "Right," she said. "Giles, you go back to the town hall and carry on arguing. Maybe you can get them to see sense. Xander, Anya, you try and sabotage the fire. Pour water on it or something. Delay it as much as you can. Hide the wood. Anything."
"And you?" Xander asked, reaching for his coat.
"I'm going to get help."
"From whom?" Giles said.
Buffy closed her eyes. She didn't really want to, but she knew she had to ask him. "Angel," she said. "He'll help me."
Spike rode into a ramshackle little village and was about to rampage straight through when he realised that there was two roads out of the place. Who'd have thought so many people came and went?
"Bollocks," he said, and slowed down. "Have you seen-?"
But he stopped abruptly when another horse came cannoning through the village. A bigger horse, not really used to being ridden, a farm horse probably, but it wasn't the animal that caught his attention. It was the rider, a small figure in men's clothes, long loose hair streaming out behind her.
Buffy.
Spike stopped and stared for a few seconds, awestruck. By God, she was beautiful. Flushed and strong and - about to ride into him.
He swung his horse away just in time, and she slowed and cantered back in a circle.
"Spike? What are you doing here?"
"Chasing Dawn."
"You know, I thought I saw her going the other way."
Spike's eyes narrowed. She'd been going to see Buffy. Silly bint. "What are you doing?"
"Going for help. I-" every cell in her body screamed for her to stay and talk with him - and then do a lot more - but she knew she had to keep going. Every second she lingered was a second that could kill Willow and Tara. She'd wasted enough time changing her clothes, but they were so much better to ride in.
"Help?" Instantly he was alert. "Are you in trouble?"
"No, Willow is."
He frowned. "Red? What's she got herself into?"
"The townspeople think she's a witch. They want to burn her. Also Giles said something about Sapphism that I didn't really get, but-"
She broke off when she say Spike's luscious mouth twitch.
"Are you laughing?"
She looked so angry, so beautiful, that he did laugh. "Sapphism," he said. "It's... You might call it..."
"Yes?"
Her eyes were glittering. He wanted to shag her right there, on top of her horse, in the middle of the village. "It's physical love between women."
Buffy's face twisted. "That's disgusting! How dare they accuse her of-"
Spike put his hand over her mouth before she got carried away. "Why don't we go and find out if it's true?" Please God, let it be true.
"It's not," Buffy said. "That's revolting and unnatural."
"Which is probably why they're going to burn her," Spike said. "When?"
"Tonight?" Buffy looked anxiously at the darkening sky. "They could be starting right now. God, I shouldn't have left, I should be back there-"
"Then we'll go back there."
"What about Dawn?"
Spike looked torn. He thought of his daughter, riding hell bent for leather to someone she'd met a grand total of once, and suddenly realised she'd be all right. She'd been all right for sixteen years so far. She'd manage without him for one more night. He could go and find her in the morning.
Buffy needed his help.
They rode back to Giles's village, and reined in just outside the square. It was dark in the shadows, but outside their little alley the streets were filled with flames from all the torches being carried by what looked like most of the villagers.
Willow and Tara were being tied back to back against a fat post set in the ground, bundles of wood thrown at their feet. A man in uniform was reading out charges against them.
"Just for the record, love," Spike whispered as he checked his pistol, "it's not revolting and unnatural."
"What?" Buffy was only half listening as she stared at the bailiff with the charge sheet. Most of what he was saying was preposterous.
"If they're in love, why not, you know, have fun with each other?"
She tore her eyes away and looked at him. "'Have fun'? They're two women, it's-"
"Not actually any different than a man and a woman. Why is it you're happy to shag around with me, who you hardly know, but you think two women pleasuring each other is wrong?"
Buffy didn't have an answer to that.
"Anyway, you can't be too disgusted, or you wouldn't be thinking of saving them."
Buffy frowned at him. "Why are you here?"
"Uh, to help you."
"You hardly know them at all."
Neither do you, Spike wanted to say, but the fact that you want to help them makes me want to, too.
"It was a slow night," he said, and handed her his gun. "You know how to use this?"
Buffy stared at the pistol. She didn't remember ever really using one, but she knew definitely that she'd done it before.
"I think I do."
"Of course. You're the Slayer."
Buffy looked at him and realised that she was hearing pride in his voice.
"Okay," she said. "Here's what we need to do."
"You have a plan?"
"We ride in there and cut them free and get them the hell out," Buffy said.
"Good plan."
"I'll get Tara, you get Willow."
"Willow's smaller. You take her."
Buffy glared at him. "I can manage Tara."
He saw the glint in her eyes, and grinned. And later, he thought, you're going to shag me rotten. "All right. You get the blonde, I'll get the redhead. We'll meet back at-" she'd been about to say Giles's, but that was a stupid idea, so she said, "the crossroads back the way we came. Right?"
"And then what?"
"I'll figure that out later," Buffy said. "Ready?"
They were suddenly aware it had gone very quiet. The bailiff had stopped reading.
There was an almighty crackle. They'd lit the fire.
"Ready," Spike said, and spurred his horse to an immediate gallop.
Buffy followed, quite suddenly afraid, and cantered out into the square. She glanced at the pyre and wished she'd come up with a better plan: the girls were tied in the middle of a stack of wood about fifteen foot deep. The flames hadn't reached them yet, but they were spreading quickly.
Right then there was another commotion, for Xander had just ridden out of the shadows on the other side of the square, carrying a yoke over his shoulders, filled with water which he threw at the girls. Buffy knew it probably wouldn't make much difference, but they might burn slower.
"It's been too well guarded," he yelled to Buffy. "I couldn't - wait, is that William the Bloody?"
Heads turned to where Spike was just drawing a sword in preparation for charging the pyre. He rolled his eyes in exasperation.
"Cheers," he muttered. Someone screamed. The men on horses who had been ringing the crowd all drew their swords.
"Catch him!" cried the captain.
What happened next was unclear to Buffy. She was halfway across the square on her way to rescuing Willow, so she figured she might as well carry on riding. She fired her pistol at the ropes tying the girls to the pole, and had it reloaded by the time the smoke cleared. She was impressed with herself: she hadn't even thought about what to do with the shot and powder. She'd just reloaded it.
And there were Willow and Tara, scrambling free. Buffy spared a wild glance to where she'd last seen Spike, far away on the other side of the crowd, a charge of militiamen converging on him, and then she looked back at Willow and Tara.
"Jump!"
She caught Willow and hauled her up onto the horse's back, but then she realised there was just not enough room for them all. Tara was looking anxiously at the flames which were starting to lick at her skirts, and Buffy jumped down from the horse, which rushed into the shadows, away from the loud flames, Willow hanging on for dear life.
When Tara thudded to the ground, her skirt on fire, Buffy stamped it out and grabbed Tara and hauled her away. The militia had started to realise there was something else going on and were coming over to see why there was no one screaming in agony at the flaming stake.
"Buffy!" someone yelled, an oddly familiar voice, and she saw Dawn on a horse in a side alley, along with Giles and Anya. Xander was riding over to them and he scooped Tara up without breaking his stride.
"Go," Buffy told him. "Get out of here."
"What about you?"
"I'll be fine. Xander, go! To Angel's. He'll take care of you. All of you."
"You can-"
"That's six people and three horses. You can't carry me and besides," she looked over at the heavy scrum of men surrounding Spike, "I need to get him out of here. We'll catch you up, I promise."
Xander nodded unhappily, but he got the others on the horses and led them out of the square. A couple of the militiamen on their horses started after the party, but Buffy twirled her sword in a way she'd never have expected she could manage, and cut two of them down, getting the second on the backstroke from the first.
He fell into the fire and rolled away with a scream, and Buffy watched the fire spread across the square with him. The third man reached for his gun and Buffy grabbed the bridle of one of the free horses and swung herself up onto his back, the shot echoing where she'd just been, making the horse dart away.
There were too many for her to cope with. Shots were ringing out from Spike's corner of the square, but she couldn't see clearly past the flames to know what was happening. Her horse, badly trained and skittish with fear, shied away from the tall flames of the massive pyre, and Buffy clung to the reins. The man with the gun was taking out his sword and coming for her, and Buffy glanced around for some escape. A couple of alleys, down which he'd no doubt chase her. A low roof.
The roof.
She dug her heels into the horse's sides and charged him straight at the militiaman, who looked startled, especially when Buffy punched him in the face and grabbed his gun. She rode on past him as he fell and grabbed the low roof as she cantered past it. The thatch was slippery but her grip held and she hauled herself up to the top, unseen by the crowd below. Most of the villagers had retreated at the sight of the spreading fire, and from up here she could see that there weren't as many men attacking Spike as she'd feared. A couple more had ridden off after Xander and the others, and she hoped to God at least one of the party was armed.
Well, Dawn would be. And even if she wasn't, she'd just need to glare at the militiamen and they'd drop dead, Buffy was pretty sure of it.
She crept along the top of the roof for a better vantage point. Several buildings were on fire now: the fallen man had knocked some of the badly-built pyre into a wooden-framed house and it was spreading all over, from thatch to thatch, along fences and through houses. People were screaming. Some of the horsemen retreated.
There were four left, and Spike was in the centre. Buffy thought fast. She loaded both her guns, took off her hat and pulled her shirt off. Spare shot and powder ready, she whistled, and when that didn't work, fired a shot into the sky.
All five men looked up at this shot from such an unexpected direction, and then they saw a beautiful woman on the roof, naked to the waist, hair whipping in the breeze from the flames, outlined in the moonlight.
They all stopped and stared at her.
Then one fell back on his horse as Buffy's gun shot him straight in the head.
Spike recovered first - he'd seen it before and was slightly more capable of thought processes in the vicinity of naked Buffy - and shot one of the men while swinging his sword around and slashing another. He daren't look up at Buffy in case she distracted him, but if he had, he'd have seen her reloading her to shoot at the fourth man. She did, but not before he'd already shot at Spike.
She watched him fall, blood spreading over his shirt, and for the first time since she'd taken her shirt off, she felt cold. All over. She wasn't aware of how she got to the ground, but suddenly she was running over to him, there were more people rushing into the unburnt side of the square, more men on horses, with guns, militia from the nest town probably, and Buffy knew she had to get Spike out of there. Through the flames, or through the militia.
She took a breath and grabbed his body and slung it up onto the nearest horse, swinging up behind him and digging her heels in. Thankfully this was a better trained horse, and although it balked when she turned it towards the fire, it ran on and they escaped through a narrow alley of flames, heading out of town in an unknown direction, out over fields, through woods, far from any normal roads, across country, the horse racing as fast as Buffy could make it.
Spike's body lolled back against her own, his shirt red with blood, and she wasn't even aware there were tears streaming down her face until she glanced behind, realised they hadn't been followed for the last ten miles, and slowed the horse down in a deep wood.
She slid from the saddle and pulled Spike down with her, wiping her eyes. She was dirty and ashy and bleeding and she didn't care, because he was hurt worse. A lot worse.
She hauled him into her lap and tried to make sense of where he'd been shot. He had a pulse but it wasn't terribly strong, and there was so much blood that in the darkness, she couldn't see where it was all coming from.
"Spike," she sniffed. "Don't you dare bloody die on me. I'll kill you if you do."
He stirred in her arms, and she yelled at him for a bit but he didn't wake up.
Buffy knew she had to move fast.
She got him back on the horse and rode through the wood until she found a path. Then she followed the path until she found a village. Then she pulled Spike's (thankfully unharmed) greatcoat over him, and shoved her hat low on her face and led the horse into the yard of the local inn. Spike lolled, but she held him up and gave a grin to the stableboy.
"Master's had a skinful," she said in what she hoped sounded like a boy's voice. "You got a room he can sleep it off in?"
The boy took them up to a small room, and in return for a penny, brought her a needle and thread, a kettle, and some whisky. Buffy lit the fire and put a lamp by the bed, and started tearing up the bedsheet to make some bandages, which she sterilised in the kettle. She boiled the needle and thread, slapped Spike to see if he was still unconscious, and then poured some whisky into the bulletwound, which was on his shoulder.
Then she started to sew.
It took her hours - or at least, it felt like it. She'd stopped crying now, more confident in her task, exhaustion taking over from emotion. It had been a long day: last night she'd been having glorious sex with Spike and now she was mopping up blood from what could very nearly have been a mortal wound. There was a cut on his head – a long gash made by a sword, and it needed stitching. Wincing, Buffy took the scissors that had come with the sewing kit and started to cut away his hair, apologizing silently to him.
Her eyes were closing by the time she'd finished digging out the bullet - there had been no exit wound, which was good news for his leather coat but not so good for his muscles - and sewing him up and cleaning the blood off them both. She rinsed out both their clothes and hung them by the banked fire, then she looked back at him lying there on the bed, bare chest rising and falling, right shoulder completely obscured by bandages, and he still looked beautiful to her.
She blew out the lamp and fell onto the bed, curled up by his good side and finally, finally closed her eyes and let sleep take her.
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