Part the Second
Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit.
Sorrel has no idea what she's doing. She's halfway to delirious, kicking the horse into a high-stepping canter and crashing through the undergrowth. The animal (a thick-set little cob) stumbles over exposed roots and flares it's nostrils, does as it's told, though it's surprised by the little feet hammering into it's side.
The forested area goes on for far longer than she'd expected – it had been shorter coming through with Glenmore, though she comes to the terrifying realisation that the bridlepath they had pottered along was no longer visible on the floor. Instead she is riding over ferns and crunchy leaves, not following a track, just dodging between the trees. Her lips are thin, a mere pink streak across her face, her eyes grim. She pulls the cob up and looks at her surroundings with a dogged resignation.
What has come over her?
Knocking a man off his horse, stealing said horse and riding like a lunatic towards Colbridge when everything has changed. For all she knows she might have fallen to a different part of the mountain (though that seems unlikely, she was relatively unscathed, just bruised and scratched and hurting from a fall like the ones she was used to from slips and trips on the hunting field) and in her panic had started riding north, towards Scotland.
Mindlessly caressing the horses shoulder, she is deep in thought and unaware that the man she had so carelessly stolen it from might have had companions.
He was called Jols, and when he comes to his senses he finds he wants to punch himself.
Imagine, letting someone sneak up on him like that when he was supposed to be on guard, on the wrong side of Hadrian's wall! Now he would have to crawl back to the Knights like a dog with it's tail between it's legs and explain what he had done with his horse; though he feels he aught to embellish it a little... add some crazed, burly woad rather than the slip of a figure wearing strange, bright clothes and a stupid smile.
He remembers the high-pitched scream and crunches his brow – it had been, undeniably, a girlish scream.
A girl had knocked him from his horse, leaped astride it with an ease borne from years of hard riding, and galloped off into the darkening afternoon. They were shameful events, one he will remember for years to come with the slightest tinge of pink of his cheeks.
He bows his head and heads back towards the wall.
Unbeknownst to her, she has drifted east and back around on herself, heading towards a different path that would lead her further from whatever safety she might have found and towards infinite danger.
For a while she had sat in silence and thought. Thought about how no-one knew she was on the mountain, about how no-one would discover she had even left the house until one of the grooms found Glenmore tacked and riderless and the housemaid knocked tentatively at Sorrel's door, and received no reply.
Besides, she is not the type to sit idly by and await rescue.
She has a horse (albeit a dirty little cob, with muddy dreadlocks in it's mane and an ancient film set saddle) and she is resolute. She will find a way out.
The motley pair set off at a quiet, ambling walk, and she finds herself enjoying the peace of the woods; the crunch of fallen leaves under the horses hooves and the rustles and chirps of the wildlife that surrounds them. It comforts her now, perhaps, but she does not think ahead to when it will be dark and these sounds will turn from sweet and Disney-esque to ominous and terrifying.
In a flash of panic she realises she had abandoned her riding hat on the mountain – but she manages to console herself with the thought that she'd only be walking to a village, or a town, or a camp site, and beyond that there would be police officers and cars and safety.
Jols reaches the wall quickly (he had not been more than five minutes ride from it, in all eventuality) and is let through after one of the guards had recognised him with a knowing smirk and stiff shoulders.
"Not looking so brave now, squire, perhaps the fire in the pit of your belly has been tamed?", he is mocking, sardonic, but Jols knows that he is right.
This man has spent years honing his combat skills, and even he would not venture north of the wall without due cause. (Even with it there would be riotous discontent, hastily made excuses about how his heart fluttered irregularly and his failing eyesight.) There are only seven men who would, and even they are in a drunken discontent this night.
The squire is usually a passive man, but tonight he is thirsty for the blood of thieves and foreigners and he will inform them of the stranger before they set out come dawn.
(He comforts himself by thinking it is for their benefit only that he laments of his trials – a foreigner may be dangerous. Even one who has sunk to stealing a farm horse-come-charger from a lowly squire. Indeed, he thinks, a desperate foreigner is the most dangerous of all.)
Jols finds Arthur brooding in the stables, threading his fingers through his horses mane, tonguing his cheek.
"Arthur,", he greets him with a wicked nonchalance, twisting his fingers around his shirt and avoiding the commanders intense stare, "there was... a problem, this morning. Strange happenings to the north side of the wall,".
Arthur is intrigued, if not a little annoyed by the man's gesture of goodwill. If he had wanted a reconnaissance of the area, he would have sent Tristan, not the podgy little squire and his carthorse.
"Your horse was stolen, Jols?", his voice is unwavering in it's boredom.
Jols' adams apple bobs nervously in his throat and he wonders if he was really that obvious. He nods his head shortly.
"Then you'll take another,", the Commander says as if it's obvious.
"Stolen by a girl,", Jols adds, arching his eyebrows and pursing his lips, "a stranger, wearing garish clothing,".
"Then there is more for you to be ashamed of, Squire. Perhaps we will find this strange girl of yours when we ride tomorrow,", he raises his own brows and feels close to laugher (though it is entirely humourless), "perhaps you should tell Tristan of your misadventures, he would be the first to find her,".
The squire bows his head and mumbles assent.
Perhaps asking the scout to assist in locating the girl was not the worst of ideas – he steels himself and sets out to find the man in question.
Sorrel is, self-admittedly, the worlds worst camper. She squeals girlishly at mud between her toes and finds that things crawling on her skin sends her into half-delirious fits. Tonight she is glad of her long leather boots, but she wishes she had worn something warmer.
(Though she had never anticipated being out so long that the sun would set and she would still find herself outside.)
Night is rapidly closing in on her and she sits hunched over in the saddle.
Never before has there been such a sorry sight as Sorrel Christensen lost and wandering. There are dirty smudges on her face, a mix of both dirt and blood, and green stains on her light breeches from the fall into moss. Her hair is, thankfully, tied into a knot at the top of her head.
(She hopes with all her heart that the elastic in her hair-tie does not snap.)
She has no survival skills to speak of.
Fire is completely out of the question, so she tethers the horse to a fallen branch and curls up on the floor to sleep.
She wakes, aching and groaning, to the sound of hasty hoof beats. She sits upright abruptly, straining to hear. She stumbles to her feet, unties the horse, flicks the reins over it's head and mounts.
The thought that these riders might be enemies does not occur to her (why should it, she's living in the twenty-first century where her only fears are of failing exams and walking around London at night) and she takes the horse to the edge of the wood.
Eight riders, all dressed in a similar way to the man she'd stolen the cob off, ride past at speed, on finely-bred, warmblooded animals and her face splits into an ear-to-ear grin. They must be shooting a movie! She'll catch up, and she'll be surrounded by sympathetic actors, friends of her aunt, offering her cup upon cup of tea and she'll be sorted!
She kicks the little cob into a frenzied gallop, but the group is past and into their stride.
"Hey, hey!", she calls after them, her voice breaking in her desperation, but it is futile and she ceases her incessant chasing of the horse with her heels. It falls into a rocking horse canter and when they reach the top of the hill and she looks around the countryside in absolute silence.
Even Northumberland is not as desolate as this.
There are no roads. No fences. No buildings.
There is nothing.
Sorrel closes her eyes and screams.
The knights stop in a grassy dell and the skies threaten to open.
Arthur stares darkly into the fire that Jols had created, and doesn't notice Tristan's presence until the man is sitting quietly beside him, feeding scraps of meat to the hawk perched on his forearm. He looks at the scout with inquisitive eyes, almost not wanting to hear what he had to say.
"There is someone following us. Perhaps Jols' foreigner,".
Arthur grimaces; Jols would be pleased with himself, smug. He clears his throat and when he speaks he sounds tired: "Double back on us tomorrow... catch them from behind."
- End part two
I'm taking a horrible amount of artistic licenses here, it's disgraceful. I know half of it doesn't match up to the movie (which I, er, haven't seen since like 2007), forgive me?
I also am a terrible proof-reader of my own work so there's bound to be a whole ton of pathetic mistakes. And I also soo need to get to the point. XD How annoying am I? It's comiiing, I swear, just slowly!