Chapter 7
Anya had honestly never expected to set foot in one of their villages again. She could feel how all heads were turning her way and how the muttering started.
She knew though that she was returning in shame. She had led an army against the invaders and as far as Anya knew, she was the only survivor, returning alive from a lost battle.
Anya had not seen Lexa in person since the day she had been sent from the capitol to a small village in Trikru territory. She could only hope now that Lexa would welcome her at all.
She was honestly nervous and she shuffled her feet awkwardly for a moment in front of the tent in which Lexa stayed, ignoring Gustus staring at her.
Anya finally cleared her throat, took a deep breath and swept into the tent, keeping her back straight and her expression blank. "Co…" she started the formal greeting, but was interrupted immediately.
Lexa had stood up abruptly from her chair and her expression was so clear to read for once that Anya was surprised to recognize clear relieve and honest joy at seeing her alive on the younger woman's features.
"You returned" Lexa exclaimed in a voice which was tinted with awe "and you did not return alone" she added, expression already starting to close off again. "What happened to you?" she questioned her general.
Anya inclined her head "The Mountain Men appeared just after our soldiers burned…" she had to close her eyes for a moment. She vividly remembered how she had instinctively jumped into the invaders' metal construction just moments before it closed. The screams of her dying comrades would remain with her forever, together with the stench of them burning. The horrors which followed inside of the Mountain were not comparable though and Anya had to pause her narration more than once.
Once Anya came to fleeing from the Mountain with Clarke's help, Lexa interrupted her.
"One of the invaders helped you escape?" she asked in clear confusion. In the meantime, there had been only bloodshed between her people and the Sky people and Lexa found the idea of one of the Sky people breaking one of her own people free to escape absurd.
Anya nodded her head in agreement, briefly telling Lexa more details about Clarke and how the girl had tried to speak to her before in order to have a cease fire between both their people.
Taylor did not even take the time to really take a look around the tent. Admittedly, there also wasn't very much to see about it. She sat down on the small stool immediately, ignoring how the tent flap was closed behind her. She did not have to ask to know that she was guarded in the tent now. She guessed that she ought to be grateful not to have been thrown into one of the holding cells which had been shown in the show. Or were they in a different village which did not contain such a cell?
Taylor shook her head, telling herself quickly that she needed to focus. Such details did not matter and she had no idea how much time she would be granted to write down what she knew, before the commander would agree to see her.
For all that she knew, Lexa may immediately decide upon her execution, thus, Taylor wanted to finish writing down everything she remembered before seeing the commander.
Thankfully she had been supplied with a kind of pencil and did not first have to figure out how to use the writing utensil.
Taylor began to scribble away in a fast pace. During her medical studies, she often had to take notes in a hurry and still had tried to keep them easy to decipher. She never had liked how many of her classmates already developed a weird shortened form of writing which only they understood.
Taylor had some difficulties sorting through what she remembered. She had begun with writing down bullet points, with only very vague ideas of when this would happen.
Once Taylor tried to make a timeline out of it, she paused. If they were not in the village yet in which Jaha and Kane would be held, then maybe the massacre Finn was going to do to Indra's village had not happened yet. She jumped up quickly, even before the thought had fully formed in her mind, knocking over the stool in her hurry and stumbling over her own feet.
Taylor literally fell face-first into the tent flap with a grunt, cursing her own clumsiness in her mind and struggling to get to her feet again. She did not even wish to know what the guard of her tent would be thinking right now.
The tent flap was pulled open just as Taylor had gotten back to her knees and she looked up with her grey eyes.
The boy who had opened the tent flap was only boring on adolescence and Taylor knew that he must be several years younger than her. His features were not perfectly guarded yet and he was laughing at her as even he must have recognized that the commotion could never have been an attempt at escape.
Taylor thinned her lips, trying not to react to him outright laughing at her, as she finally got to her feet. "I need to speak to your commander, right now" she informed him in a tone lazed with authority.
"The commander will summon you, if she wants to see you" the young warrior retorted, visibly straightening himself.
Taylor only noticed now that a sword was dangling from one side of his hips and he was clutching the pommel now, obviously ready to pull the sword on her any moment. She raised her hands in defeat, hoping to signal that she was unarmed. "Please, this is important and extremely urgent" she tried to explain, voice getting desperate "I need to speak to the commander NOW" when the young man still made no indication that he would move any time soon, Taylor sighed "then please just fetch Anya, she will understand".
"Please, I really need…" Taylor repeated her plea again. She did not know just how much time they had now to prevent Finn's massacre of 18 innocent people in Indra's village. The show had said several times that only elders and children had been killed in the massacre, making this an even more horrible crime.
"My order was to guard you and wait" the boy retorted, but his voice seemed to waver at least a little.
"Hey!" Taylor addressed him again with rising desperation when he begun turning his back on her "It's really important" she repeated.
"I need to follow the orders" he said with a clear tightening of his jaw.
Taylor huffed out a large breath, frustrated as she knew that with each second ticking by, their chances to reach Indra's village and save these innocents was decreasing. She recognized a lost fight though and turned around again.
Taylor now looked around the tent, seeking for weak points through which she may be able to slip through. The question was though if whoever caught her would just kill her or hopefully bring her to Anya or ideally Lexa.
Thankfully, only a very brief moment passed before Anya appeared at the entrance of the tent, clearing her throat to alert Taylor to her presence.
Taylor whirled around quickly, managing to catch a fold of the material which covered the ground with the tip of one of her feet. She let out a startled yelp and the momentum of turning around towards the entrance had Taylor falling directly into Anya's arms.
The general looked down at Taylor with a raised brow "And I had the slim hope that you'd have less problems walking on flat grounds".
Taylor blushed deeply as she tried to push away from Anya, she needed only a second to remember why she had wanted to speak so urgently with the commander.
"We need to leave now" she said urgently with despair in her tone "We can still stop the massacre".
