Author's note;

First off, a HUGE thank you to those who have been with this story since the beginning and are still patient enough to see it through to the end!

My apologies for these updates taking forever (literally forever) for me to grind out. I am doing my best to finish it, but between the initial swapping of devises, losing my place in the story etc. etc. my interest has waned slightly, though I have every intent of bringing this through to fruition. Hey, on the bright side, taking this extra time has opened up new characters and story points that I hadn't originally planned - and at least five chapters more than I had intended as well, but I'll let you be the judge of whether or not its been worth it. I, once again, will do my darnedest to update more regularly, but I will absolutely not promise to do so, because one never knows whether one may or may nor truly keep said promise. So anyway, hope you enjoy it - and I wish that this chapter was longer, but I have kept you all waiting long enough.

A Tale of Flynnigan Rider

Chapter 10

Darren didn't know how long he had been lying there unable to hear a thing, his head swimming so that it was difficult to move. Antoine hadn't moved either, and Darren could only think, from the look on the man's face, that the Master would be in a similar state of enrapture if every one of the children were being roasted alive in that blaze. He shuddered, not realizing for a moment that his body had done so in reply to pain.

His head hurt like it never had before, and no amount of closing his eyes was making that pain go away. His ears in particular - but that was why his entire head was throbbing in the first place. He rolled over onto his side and watched the house, waiting for Ryden to return with some word on Kay and Eugene. He hadn't been terribly long, but if the master were to wrench himself away from this spectical, would he wonder at the absence of the other boy? And…what was Antoine thinking? There was definitely something going on in the machinations of that demented mind of his. His thoughts went back to Kay and Eugene, and a cold feeling washed over him. They knew Antoinne well enough to know that he honestly did not care whether they lived or died, so long as nothing reflected poorly upon himself. He…he couldn't be thinking…could he? Would he go so far as to … be rid of them like this?

Antoine stared at the blaze, and a slow, cruel smile spread itself over his thin lips. This would do nicely. The blaze would not die down for some time now. He could send the children inside for their meal and then dispose of both Kay and Eugene while the rest of the little urchins enjoyed their leisurely dinner. No evidence that he had beaten one of his charges within an inch of his life, and no risk of confrontation from Kay. He glanced up at the sun. Well, now it was merely a few hours until supper, but he didn't care. They could get both meal rations at the same time. Surely that would make them happy enough to forget that two of their fellows were amiss. Speaking of their fellows being amiss, that Ryden lad had certainly been taking his own time in depositing the youngster with the girls. He despised young children more than the older ones. They clung to one and sniffled and cried. What use were they? It didn't take much deduction for him to realize that the little brat was clinging to the older one after having been scared half to death. It didn't matter to him anyway. With one more glance at Darren to satisfy the curiosity of whether he would or wouldn't stay in that spot, and Antoine was certain that he would, the Master turned around, stalking back to the orphan home in search of the scullery maids.

A scream tore his attention from his plans over to the river, and several seconds later, he saw Ryden racing out of the house and towards the rest of the children on the bank, and there was shouting. The master, with no sense of preservation other than for himself, still forced himself to run to them. Ryden was stripping out of his heavy shirt and jumping into the stream before the Master had come close, and the rest of the children stood side by side, clinging to one another in terror as they watched.

"What happened?" He demanded as he came close, huffing and puffing for being out of breath after the short jog.

"Abby fell in!" One of the little girls sobbed. "We can't see her any more!"

"Why did Ryden jump in? The girl is probably drowned already." Antoine drawled as he cast his eye over the water, noting Ryden bobbing above the waves to catch his breath, and also making note of how far down the river he had already been swept. "If she is not drowned, then she is washed away," Antoine shrugged. He halfheartedly beckoned Ryden to come in, but didn't even shout after him. After a few moments, though, Ryden's head slipped beneath the waves, causing another shrill scream to rise over the crowd of children. "Back to the house." Antoine said without emotion. "The older girls will see to patching your things, and then it is time for supper and for bed. We have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow." Some of the children stood staring at him with open mouths. The others, terrified by what had happened to Abby and Ryden whimpered and cried.

"C-come along," One of the boys who was a little younger than Ryden finally croaked out, himself not taken his eyes from the river where Ryden had gone down one last time.

"Bring Darren with you," Antoine muttered. "I have to go and see to supper." With that, the master turned on his heel and walked toward the house. The boy who had spoken, Sebastian by name, shuddered once again, not bothering to answer his compliance. They would have gone back for Darren whether they were ordered to or not.

"Joey and Joey, we need to grab the rest of the sheets and bring them in to Candi. The rest of you help them in, and help them to get our beds made. Ryan, Michael, help me with Darren. We should be able to get him in between the three of us."

"We'll get his bed made first," one of the two Josephs informed Sebastian. "Come on, guys, lets get to it," He addressed the rest of the group, with a slight tremor entering into his voice. The group was silent as they complied. Two of their number had just been caught up by the river and drowned, and unlike the master, none of them were truly unaffected by it. They were far too used to pretending indifference to avoid receiving a beating themselves. It was an act of self preservation. Sebastian nodded, and they all stole a final glance at the river before rushing to their own tasks.

Darren still couldn't hear anything, but out of the corner of his eye he had seen Antoine rush off and he forced his own gaze to fall in the direction in which the Master had run. What he saw robbed him of breath for a moment, and forced him to swallow hard. That was Abby in the river, or he was a king. The boy tried to force himself up to his feet, but nothing he did would make his head cease its swimming. He forced his limbs to obey him and inched forward, dimly aware that suddenly there was a crackling in his ears, and a rushing noise. Suddenly the air was pierced by a muffled scream, and Darren looked up in time to see Ryden slip under the waves. He didn't come up again. Darren bit his lip. It couldn't be. Ryden was a far better swimmer than any of them, and though the river was a bit rough, he himself had swum it only a few days before. There was no way that it could have overtaken his brother. He let his head drop to the ground, wearied by the exertion. How on earth had Antoine hit him so hard with just his hands?

He didn't know how much time had passed. It may have been minutes, it may have been hours, but after hearing some very muffled speech coming closer and closer to him, he felt himself being turned over and lifted to a sitting position.

"It's okay, Darren. We've got you," He heard Sebastian's voice as if the other boy had a blanket tied over his face, but at least he was hearing something again.

"What happened?" He moaned, uncomfortable with the thought that for some strange reason he lacked the ability to have sat up by himself.

"Abby fell into the river, and Ryden went in to save her. They…they're both gone, Darren," Sebastian explained. The older boy simply nodded. It was, then, as he had seen it. At least she had simply fallen in and not been pushed by Antoine, but he did not think that they were both gone, particularly not Ryden. He would have contested their words, but he did not have the strength to, and he did not want to let on to the master that Ryden was almost certainly not dead. He was sure that Antoine was more than pleased with having gotten rid of yet two more children so easily.

"Help me up," he murmured, intent on making it at least that far on his own feet.

"Darren. Are you su-"

"I'm sure."

"Alright," Sebastian shrugged as he and the other two boys hefted the older boy to his feet.

Darren's head was still spinning. He wondered yet again how Antoine could have hit him hard enough for his head to feel like this. It hardly seemed possible, and yet here he was, staggering to the house because of it. He wondered if he would be conscious - or alive - in the morning, and how Antoine was going to explain this one away. It did seem to be getting better, though. At least he could actually hear something now, even if it wasn't clearly. The boy lost in the river may even have known what had happened to him, though now there was no way for him to ask. Perhaps he and Abby would do better on their own. He believed that they had gotten to the shore. He had to believe it.

However, now they had a new problem. Ryden had gone in for recon, and whatever he had found out had been lost for the moment. Darren would not believe that his friend was dead, and he gazed around at the hushed and hurried orphans around him. Many of them were still carrying out their tasks as timidly as they would otherwise do, but he had never seen Sebastian or the two Joeys take the initiative on their own and doing what needed to be done, not like this, anyway. They were running the show in the first of the boys' room, helping the little boys with their beds - things that he, Eugene, and Ryden would normally do. He wondered how the girls were doing without Kay, though he had little doubt that the other girls were only too capable of picking up the slack. They'd had to for a while - and they were in general more productive than their male counterparts. He briefly saw Candi holding Christopher on one of the unmade beds in the older boys' room. Darren was only dimly aware that they were trying to set him down on a bed, and that the little boys were asking them questions and that he had no idea what they were saying to him. He heard noise, a lot of noise, much of it rather muffled, but none of the voices were quite loud or close enough. He swallowed hard and shook his head.

"Boys, one at a time," he said perhaps a little more loudly than absolutely necessary. The cacophony of white noise quieted almost suddenly and they all stared at him in surprise.

"Are you okay, Darren?" One finally asked with a wide eyed stare.

"Yes. Mostly, I think. Why?" Instead of replying, the boy reached forward, sliding his finger along his jaw and bringing it out for him to see, coated in slick red.

"Darren, you're bleeding."

Ryden burst out from the cold waves, shoving Abby onto the bank before him.

"Are you alright, Abby?" He demanded, panting and out of breath before he had even pulled himself onto the shore. It had taken him far longer than he liked to find the little girl, and it was lucky for them both that it was at its calmest right now. Abby was shivering on the grass, all rolled into a ball. She looked like she was terrified and freezing, and that hardly surprised the boy. He wasn't exactly a source of warmth himself, but he would be better than nothing. "Come here," he grunted as he picked her up and cradled her in his lap. He pushed his hair out of his eyes and studied the girl for a minute.

"Abby?"

"R-ryden?" She chattered. "H-how did you f-find me?"

"I just followed the river," he snorted, amused at his own joke. Abby was not amused.

"I thought that I was gonna die. I couldn't breath at all - how can you breath in that?"

"I don't breath in the water, strictly speaking," Ryden shrugged. "I'm just a strong swimmer. Always have been. I am also lucky that the river is not quite as wild as it looks," he decided against saying how very lucky she was to have snagged onto a jutting root that held her head just above the water. Just now he wasn't even sure that she remembered that between the terror and the rush and the cold.

"What… what are we going to do now?"

"Hmph. Well we're not going back to the master," he snorted.

"But what about the others?"

"We're not going to abandon them, either. First lets just get you warmed up, alright?" Abby nodded vigorously, a fan of that idea. They sat there silently for several minutes, the only sounds around them were the rushing of the stream and the birds tittering above them in the trees. Ryden was trying to think. He knew which way the river flowed, and he guessed that they must have gone no more than half a mile down stream - though it was very hard to judge when one had just been in the river rather than walking beside it. A trail of thoughts tugged at his memory. He had traveled with his father several times, and though he had never been in the capital city of Corona itself, the general direction had been pointed out to him several times.

"The king will be coming from that direction," he observed quietly, nodding vaguely toward the dark woods on the other side of the water. He slid her off of his lap and stood up first, helping her up a moment later. They were still both soaked, of course, but it was summer, and moving around would help to dry their clothes. "I want to follow them and see what happens," Ryden informed her, not totally sure himself whether he would stop at that - or if he would even be able to do that much. Chances were in their favor that they would see the king coming, but there was still the narrow chance that they could miss him. Abby nodded quietly. She wasn't quite so gung-ho about any of this, but she also wasn't about to go wandering into the woods alone. They all knew that there actually were wolves that lived there.

"Ryden?"

"Yeah?"

"Do… do you think that the king will save us? He's never come before, after all."

"I - I think that he will at least do something. My father always said that he was a good king, a kind and generous man."

"But Ryden, then how does he forget about us?"

"I tell you what, Abby. When we meet him, you can ask him that, alright?"

"You bet that I will!" Abby said with more gusto than Ryden had ever heard issue from her mouth. He wasn't so certain that she would actually ask his majesty a question like that, but who could tell? They weren't very likely to actually speak to the king, after all.

They walked on for quite a while before Ryden remembered - because of the gnawing and growling of his stomach - that they hadn't eaten a thing since breakfast.

"Abby, are you hungry?" He said at last.

"Yes!" She answered him enthusiastically almost before he had finished speaking.

"I'll have to see what I can find," he murmured as he gazed around the path. Fish was out of the question. Aside from the fact that they would be nearly impossible to catch, they had no way of cooking them. That left them to the mercy of the vegetation in the forest, and he was well aware that Abby was far from fond of vegetable - when they had them - but she would have to be happy with what he could find. A patch of mushrooms caught his eye, but he knew too little about them to risk taking any of them for food. Thankfully, his eyes eventually fell upon long green spears shooting out of the ground a few feet from their path.

"Well, Abby, you aren't going to like it," he apologized vaguely as he knelt down by the plants and started to break off an armload. Wild asparagus. Abby would have to be very hungry if she would even consider eating this.

"I think that I'm too hungry, Ryden. I'd eat a horse."

"Yeah, but a horse is meat. This is - well, its green," he said with a wink as he pulled her over to a tree who's roots stood tall out of the ground, like a bench. They settled down together, Abby glaring apprehensively at the handful of green stalks that Ryden was carrying and taking the thinnest one, closing her eyes as she bit down into it. Her eyes popped open a second later and she stared at Ryden.

"Ryden. This is really good!" She exclaimed.

"You're kidding me. You hate this stuff, Abby."

"Well then, I guess that I'm really starving. Come on, don't make me eat alone," she said, prodding him with another spear of asparagus. Ryden shrugged and started in on one. They were young and tender, and he was glad of it, because a woody stalk of asparagus would have been hard to choke down no matter how hungry they were.

"Ryden?" Abby ventured.

"Yeah?"

"Did…did you ever find Eugene? And Kay?"

"I found Eugene," the boy spoke slowly, "but ...Antoine took Kay somewhere. Eugene didn't know where she was."

"Oh. How is Eugene? Is he okay?"

"He's pretty ill, Abby. I don't think that the master planned to beat him as badly as he did, either, not with the king coming. But he was also just going to hide him from the king. He has Eugene tucked in a chest right now."

"No, Ryden! Why would someone do that?"

"Besides the master? I don't know, Abby. Let's finish eating, we have to find somewhere to sleep tonight, and then we should find a bridge and walk back to the orphanage."

"But you said -"

"We need to wait at the roadside for the king and his men."

"Ryden, is it going to work? Will the king believe us?"

"He had better believe us," Ryden grunted, stuffing the rest of a stalk into his mouth so that it was too full for him to say anything else. He wanted to think for a few minutes. Abby finally realized this and sank into silence as the chewed the long green stalk. It was true, she really did hate this, usually. She wasn't sure why it tasted so different today. Maybe because, in some ways, it was like her first taste of freedom, even if she wouldn't have known to put it into those words. Their mutual silence was again interrupted, but this time it was by a muttering voice from several feet off and the sound of someone pushing angrily through the underbrush. Abby looked at Ryden with a quizzical, worried glance at the sound while he stared hard in that general direction, searching for anything familiar or warning about the voice.

"That cursed child. Perhaps this will keep her busy if she insists upon painting my walls with food. Three days," the voice groused. Suddenly the bushes in front of them parted and Ryden quickly pulled Abby behind him. It was a woman. A tall, slender woman with cold, piercing eyes.

"Who are you?" She asked haughtily as if she owned the very woods themselves.

"No one," Ryden answered boldly but with a slight tremor.

"Oh, I can see that. Where are you from?"

"We're just walking through the woods. My sister and I are taking a rest," Ryden answered, swallowing sharply. He didn't know who this woman was, but his instinct was absolutely not to trust her. She had something the same look about her eyes that Antoine did; only darker, even less pleasant.

"I see. See that you don't get lost. There are wolves in these woods looking for easy meat," she smiled coldly at them. "And there are other dangers to those who are far too curious and go poking their noses about," With a shake of her grey-streaked curls, the woman straightened herself, turned away from them swinging her deep blue cape with a flourish, and walked past them deeper and deeper into the forest.

"Who was that?" Abby asked at last, dumbfounded by the woman's cold and casual manner. Ryden shook his head in matched consternation.

"Did you hear the way that she was talking? And it sounded like she was talking about her daughter in the same way that Antoine talks about us."

"I don't think you're right. I think she's a worse person than even Antoine," Abby shuddered. "How could a mommy talk like that about her little girl? Do they, Ryden?"

"No," Ryden shook his head, "I've never heard a mother talk like that about any of their children. It wasn't like she was annoyed, it was… it was more like she hates the little girl. Well whoever she is, I hope that we don't run in to her again. Are you ready to go?"

"Yeah," Abby nodded, getting to her feet.

"Did you eat enough?"

"I think so. I'm not hungry anymore," She shrugged. Ryden knew exactly how she felt. He couldn't personally remember whether or not he had been hungry before that woman had made her appearance, but he certainly wasn't now.

"Alright. We'd better hurry, I want to make it to the bridge before it gets dark, and find some place to sleep where we won't be bothered."

"Who would bother us?"

"Wolves. Or robbers. We can't be too careful out here, Abby."

"And where does the bridge lead?"

"Just to the other side of the river, once we find it. I payed very close attention to which shore we came out on. We only have to make it back in time to see the king, and only to meet the king, do you understand? I am not going to make you go back to that place again."

"I understand. Do you think that the king will finally take Antoine away?"

"I hope so, Abby."

"Ryden?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you sure you don't know where Kay went after the Master took her this morning? I haven't seen her all day long."

"I don't know, Abby. I couldn't find her."

Everything was dark around her. Nothing made sense. Kay didn't even know for certain whether it really was dark or if she was dreaming, but why would she be dreaming? She knew that the master had brought her here, but that was all that she knew. Why was she here at all? She had no way to tell what he had done to Eugene, if he had done anything to him, what he had done to him. No. no, she did know. Eugene had been beaten, whipped. She had wrapped up his cuts. Then where was he now? And where was she? She was uncomfortably warm and freezing cold all at once, and she couldn't see anything. The only thing that she did know is that it was almost here. Her time had suddenly come, and though she knew that she had nothing to fear, she was still afraid.

"Where are you, Eugene?" She asked the darkness sadly. It answered her nothing, and she was forced to cry into it, wishing that she was not still so alone.