ALMOST HAD IT ALL
Chapter Seven: The Estate
AN: Random Fact – I was doing some more research on the Sarmatian people, and I came across this little bit of info: when their daughters were infants, the women of Sarmatia would apply a hot iron to the baby's right breast, stunting its growth, thereby giving the right shoulder and arm the muscle that would have formed there. The women of Sarmatia were trained fighters, so the extra arm strength came in handy!
All I have to say is: OUCH! That would suck! The Sarmatian women must have looked a little odd walking around with only one breast! No wonder Bors wasn't very complimentary of the women back home!
Anyway, I found that interesting and thought I would share it with y'all!
Also, I'm sorry it's taken me so long to update. Everything is fixed now (knocks on wood). Thanks for reviewing!
Left here alone
And unsure of what I feel
Unclear but I see
Just what I'm afraid of
I can't find my way anymore
And I
Cannot heal the wounds I've created
And I can't let go
Of what's killing me
Falling from this edge
I am lost to all I know, hey
I can't breathe anymore
Somehow I'm locked inside this cage
And I try
But I cannot fight to stay alive
Falling from this edge
I am lost to all I know
Time is only the answer see and
Lies the only
Reverie
I've tried
But I can't fight anymore
I'm falling from this edge
I am lost to all I know
Time is only the answer see and
Lies the only
Reverie
"Reverie" Megan McCauley
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470 A.D.
North of Hadrian's Wall…Bloody hell, is it cold.
That was the first thought that came to Aylin as she woke from her forced sleep.
Though she didn't open her eyes, she could tell that it would be another rainy day, just from feeling the air. Moving her pounding head to the side, she realized that it wasn't lying on the cold, snow ground, but on something warmer. And softer. Aylin cautiously opened one eye, then the other, confusion marring her face at the pair of legs and heavy booted feet that came out from under her head. Slowly turning her face around, her gaze landed on Tristan, who was methodically cleaning his nails with his dagger and watching her.
He pointed to his cloak wrapped about her and said quietly, "You were shivering in your sleep."
Aylin carefully removed her head from his lap and sat up, digging the heel of her palms into her eyes, trying to clear them. Aside from the throbbing of her skull, Aylin noticed that she didn't feel as anxious as she usually did.
Then it suddenly came back to her. She remembered searching through her pack; Tristan holding her powder, then refusing to return it; holding the sword to his throat—oh hell; collapsing, then seeing Arthur and the scout hovering over her--speaking, but she couldn't remember their distorted words.
Grimacing, Aylin placed her head in her hands. She stood up and remained still for a moment to rid her body of the vertigo that flooded her senses.
Tristan stood as well, gathering his things and walking to his dappled-gray, said, "I'm going to scout the path ahead. Will you be all right?"
She nodded and watched as he mounted and rode off.
Aylin looked around the camp. Gawain, Galahad, Lancelot and Dagonet still slept, since their watches had been the latest. Horton was curled into a tight ball, drooling on his hand. Bors was off somewhere. Arthur sat with his back to her on a rather large boulder at the tree line, cleaning his sword. When she thought of the things she said earlier to the man, she was shocked to feel guilt and regret.
"I seem to spend a lot of time feeling regret for my actions when I am around these men. I hope it doesn't become a habit!" She thought, slowly trudging through the snow toward the commander.
Arthur ceased his cleaning when she sat, but said nothing.
"The things I've said…were wrong. But they've been said and all I can do is offer my…apologies," she said after a sigh.
Arthur shifted to look at her with sympathetic eyes, which, under normal circumstances, would have sparked Aylin's temper, but she found that this didn't upset her.
"Aylin…I know that you have only known us for a short number of days and I understand that you haven't had many people to trust in your life, but I ask that you trust us. You have a problem that we can help you with. Just let us."
They both looked up sharply as Bors rode up with the fresh game he'd hunted for breakfast. The large knight dismounted, nodded to them and made his way to the fire pit of smoldering embers to cook the food, waking the others with his loud grunting and mumbling as he went.
Aylin looked to the ground, her hands clenched at her sides on the rock. "I do…"
Arthur returned his gaze to her profile and she turned her face to him.
"I do… Trust you."
Arthur smiled and clasped Aylin on the shoulder, then hopped off the rock and walked to the fire now burning in the pit.
Aylin watched from her perch as the men did this and that to prepare for their departure. With a sigh, she swiveled around to face the woods and slid off the boulder, sat on the ground on the opposite side of the camp, leaned her head back and closed her eyes. She took slow, even breaths so the cough wouldn't attack her body.
She thought back to when she'd awakened and the look in Tristan's eyes.
With a sigh, Aylin set her head up against the rock. "What have I gotten myself into?" she mused silently.
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Later in the morning, the ten riders came upon a villa-styled estate strangely out of place in the snowy valleys of Britain. Galloping up to the wall, Arthur hailed the men stationed above the gate, ordering them to open it. It didn't take long, once the men were assured of the knights' identities, for soon the gates opened and a short, dark-haired man wrapped in a Roman toga walked out, escorted by guards.
Aylin stiffened immediately when she recognized the fat Roman. She nonchalantly pulled the hood of her cloak over her head, hiding her face from prying eyes.
"It is a wonder you have come! Good Jesus! Arthur and his knights! You have fought the Woads? Vile creatures," Marius stated.
While Arthur explained their business, Aylin sat astride Artay toward the back of the group, glad that the pompous Italian couldn't see her. She searched the crowd of serfs and even the Honorius family, and worried when she didn't find whom she was looking for.
The next thing Aylin knew, Marius was retreating to his home, his wife, Fulcinia, and son, Alecto, the reason for such a perilous journey, in tow. She looked over to Arthur, who had dismounted his horse, sword in hand, and was now making his way to an elderly man strung up by rope in the serf village outside the wall.
Lancelot came up beside Aylin, listening to Arthur's conversation with one of the serfs.
"You don't seem surprised by this treatment," he said.
Without looking at him, Aylin pointed out, "Did you so quickly forget that I lived in Rome? It is difficult to be surprised by something one sees so often. I am surprised at how shocked Arthur is at this."
"Arthur isn't the man you think he is. He does not wish to be tied to the evils of the Romans."
"But he is still a Roman. That will never change."
With that said, she turned away from the display as Arthur freed the man from his bondage and surveyed the rest of the estate. Her gaze was inevitably drawn to a block structure latched to the wall. A myriad of emotions welled up inside her, but were pushed down, albeit not effortlessly.
Gawain rode over, looked at her face, then at the building.
"What is it?"
Aylin didn't answer, just stared ahead.
Gawain furrowed his brows.
"Aylin?"
Before Gawain could even form another question, Arthur too had noticed the building—and the men working quickly to seal it up—and was striding toward it purposefully.
"Move. Move!" He commanded the mercenaries ordering serfs to wall up the entrance.
After a brief study of the wall, Arthur asked Dagonet to break it down.
With a few heavy swings of his battle-ax, Dagonet soon had broken a hole large enough to see the door. Aylin was among the few knights that joined the commander down into the dark opening. Gawain gave her a confused look before taking hold of the torch handed him by Lancelot and walked inside.
The men continued joking and gambling, their voices rising over the screams and moans of those in pain.
Aylin sat in the corner, her hands chained above her head, causing her shoulders to jut out at unnatural angles. In all of her five years, she had never felt such pain. This wasfar worse than when she'd fallen in a race with Kavan and had skinned her knee. Her entire body ached: her wrists, chaffed from the shackles; her arms, tingling with cold and numbness from loss of circulation; her head, a side effect from the powder forced upon her; her thighs, bruised and swollen from men continually pounding themselves into her—not to mention the fact she felt like she'd been ripped in two.
"You there, girl! Perk up now! Machus, give her some more Morpheus. Not enough to completely subdue her. I heard this round of bidders prefers 'em feisty!" The man laughed hoarsely, and then went back to his gambling.
Aylin felt the powder being shoved down her throat, the shackles being removed, then was hauled to her feet and dragged out of the room onto the platform to be presented by the slave auctioneer.
Aylin shook herself out of memory as the chanted Latin of a monk reached her ears. When she walked past the protesting man, he tried looking up into her face under her hood before she shoved him into the wall behind him.
She felt no remorse for the man when Lancelot's sword sliced through his belly. From the looks of this chamber, he and all his comrades deserved worse.
Aylin and Dagonet searched the small round cells, while Arthur and Lancelot looked in the larger ones.
She pulled up the grate to a hole and stared at the boy that looked back at her fearfully. Aylin whispered reassuring words to him as she pulled his unhealthilythin body from the pit.
Arthur had rescued a young woman from her filthy cell and carried her out of the building. Aylin nodded to Dagonet, who also held a small boy in his arms, and followed the commander out, slowly setting the child on the ground outside.
Gently brushing hair from his face, Aylin looked into the boy's bright blue eyes. Her breath catching in her throat, she just stared at the boy's face. Disbelief flashed across her features and she involuntarily back away slightly. Gawain knelt next to the pair and gave the boy some water from the skin, glancing curiously at Aylin while doing so.
After a moment of trying to regain her composure, Aylin looked at the boy again and asked his name.
"Dominic," he said hoarsely after a few tries. The boy's small voice gained the attention of the others, who wondered what he might have to say.
Aylin swallowed. "Dominic, which one of them did this to you?" She asked, indicating his many and various sized bruises.
Dominic nervously looked about him, and then slowly pointed out one of the monks huddled with the others behind them.
Nodding, Aylin stood up. Gawain, his curiosity definitely peaked, stood as well. Aylin backed up, getting closer to the monks. Then suddenly, she pivoted around, unsheathing her dagger, and sliced the monk Dominic had pointed out from ear to ear. The man's fellow monks looked at Aylin, horrified, as they quickly inched away from her.
She turned around to be met with shocked and confused stares from all but Tristan, who nodded approvingly.
"We need to get the family ready for escort quickly, before we find ourselves surrounded," she stated simply, re-sheathing her dagger.
"What are you doing!" Shouted Marius Honorius at Aylin, running at her with wild eyes. "You cannot murder a man of God!"
Aylin shoved the man back when he reached to push her, pulled her hood back and retorted,
"Are you going to stop me, Marius?"
The Roman took a shocked step back, and kept going as Aylin took slow steps toward him. "You? I would have thought the church would have had you killed already?"
"Oh, I'm sure they'll get around to it eventually, but I'm going to rid this earth of your flesh before they do," she replied tauntingly, advancing on him until he backed into Arthur.
Maruis, feeling the need to shift attention from him, yelled at his wife and backhanded her. The ploy didn't work though, because Arthur punched the Roman lord in the face, and pinned him to the ground with Excalibur at his throat.
Aylincrouched down beside him and whispered, "Better watch who you talk to like that Maruis, otherwise you might get hurt."
With a sharp smack on his cheek, Aylin stood and watched while Arthur ordered the mercenaries to escort Honorius back to his carriage. She noticed that Dagonet was taking the boys to a wagon set up for the sick and wounded.
Looking down to Fulcinia, who was still kneeling beside the young woman, Aylin said in a hard voice,
"You told me you would keep him safe. That he would never be hurt like he would if he were with me. And where do I find him? In a dark prison covered with marks from 'holy men'!"
The roman woman looked down with ashamed eyes.
"I did the best I could," she said in a quiet whisper, "I am sorry."
Aylin's eyes softened, but she contained her emotions.
"Tell him you're sorry, make it up to him, not me."
Aylin placed her hand on Fulcinia's shoulder and said lowly,
"I know you did your best. Thank you."
Fulcinia watched as Aylin walked away from her, squeezing the hand of the young woad beside her.
Next Chapter: Confrontations on the Ice
FYI: I don't know how many of you have seen the previews for the new HBO series Rome, starring Ray Stevenson—aka Dagonet—but I just want to tell you that if you're interested, it's premiering on Sunday, August 28th. You'll have to check your TV guide for the time. I watched the "making of" and it looks like it will be an awesome series!