Sorry for the wait, but real life and all of that.

CHAPTER THREE

Ben had heard the opening of the gate and the shouting coming from the men all the way at the rear of the fort. He and Swift we're going over new strategies, and trying very hard not to look at the empty space where Simmons used to stand. Swift looked up instantly, concerning creasing his features. He tapped his pipe then twirled his moustache.

"Finish up in here, lad, then come join me and see what all the fuss is."

Ben looked down at the table as soon as Swift left, assessing the drawings and lines of the map of the fort and the land surrounding it. Hollowmen weren't particularly intelligent, but the sheer numbers being thrown at them was quickly wearing the brigade down. It wasn't difficult to down the creatures either, and they had learnt early on that fire consumed them quickly, but it was just a matter of laying the right traps and utilising the men they had left properly in order to quell the numbers. The mortar worked well enough on them, but that couldn't be used constantly as they didn't have the quantity of shells needed for that sort bombardment.

He sighed and raked both hands through his hair. The weeks they had spent here had been so long that Ben didn't think he could remember what it was to be not damp, miserable, and so thoroughly tired. He drew on the final few lines and markings, and flicked over the model that represented the Hollowmen, sending it skittering across the table-top.

"We'll get you, you nasty bastards."

The fort had come alive in the minutes since the gate had been opened, the men muttering and nudging each other. There were two people stood by the Major, one hidden behind the other and the angle that Ben was coming from. But the other was none other than Sir Walter Beck, hero without the capital H, and soldier to the stars. Ben grinned, coming close enough to listen to the conversation.

"We came looking for you, Swifty. I have a proposition." Walter said, somewhat hurriedly, a strange expression on his face that Ben couldn't quite pin down. He took the open ended sentence as a chance to butt his head.

"A proposition. You came all this way to proposition us?" Swift, Walter and the third hidden person turned to look at them. Walter stepped back slightly, a grin over taking his face. "And here I was thinking that you were here to save us from the legions of the damned." Ben finished with a flourish, shaking his head and tutting. Swift sighed.

"Ben Finn! It's good to see you, lad." He shook Walter's outstretched hand, laughing jovially. Then he turned to glance at Walter's companion and his mind stuttered for a moment. Avo's grace, but she was a picture to look at. Tall, long-limbed, dark-haired and with sinfully dark eyes, Ben took a moment to think that he really had been out here alone in the middle of nowhere for far too long. She looked at him, an eyebrow raised and her chin tilted just so that his eyes went her lips, which were rosy and shapely and very lovely to look at and to wonder about. He smirked at her. He kept his eyes on hers when he next spoke, taking a jab at the old soldier, then neatly ducked under the swing of Walter's heavy hand. Ben laughed, holding his hand out to take hers, and caught the start of a smile on her wonderful lips as he bent to drop a kiss lightly on her knuckles.

Walter sighed indignantly as Ben introduced himself, pouring as much of his charm into the words as he possibly could. It was Swifty who told him to pack it in – though he was smiling as he said it - and so Ben reluctantly stepped back from this new beauty in the isolated fort. She didn't part with her own name, though. Swift assured them that the woman wasn't quite a lady, and Ben was puzzled by the pleased and amused laugh that she gave out at the Major's words. Walter, too, seemed to find it amusing in some sense. The woman then asked Swift to relate the details of the daily battles held here, her voice as firm and sure as her gaze was. Her inflection spoke of a good upbringing in an affluent household, as her voice was posh and plum and as smooth as silk. Major Swift nodded in acquiescence, leading them towards the freshly-dug graves of the three men they had lost the night prior. It was at the mention of Hollowmen that the woman's confidence seemed to scatter.

Ben heard her stop, and turned back to look at her, and her expression caught him so off guard that it was all he could do just to stare at her. Her whole face was a contortion of fear, her eyes wide and her nostrils flared. Her dark eyebrows were pulled together, and her mouth dropped open ever so slightly. It was her hands, though, that were clenched so tightly at her sides, which made Ben pause. Her knuckles were white with a tension that seemed to spread through her whole body. She caught his eyes and in an instant her own were forced closed and she took in a deep breath, moving forward to catch up with them.

"Small…"

Ben saw the look of overwhelming concern on Walter's face, and how it was echoed in lesser tones on Swift's face. He was sure that there must have been some sort of similar expression on his own, showing the sudden confusion and helplessness he felt at seeing a woman who had been so calm and strong-looking only a second before seemingly rocked to her core. He had seen soldiers react like that, so strongly and suddenly to something that could trigger the worst kinds of memories. He could only guess at how many night-terrors gripped the men of this fort, filling their dreams with shuffling bones and bare sockets filled with blue flame. And Avo only knew how many he himself had had.

She passed it over as a trip, and none of them were convinced in the slightest, but she waved away any concerns they may have voiced and Swift then led them to the grave site. Ben stepped back slightly to let the two old soldiers lead. The woman had regained all the calm she had had before, and stared at the three graves and their markers with a sorrow that moved Ben. It was a strange expression that took over her fair face – one of sadness, yes, but there was guilt lingering on her features that Ben couldn't quite explain. Walter was more visibly affected by it, sighing and rubbing his neck. He and Swift traded comments on the fairness of their assignment and how it had been the king who had specifically ordered them to Mourningwood. The woman's jaw clenched spasmically. She all but ordered Walter and Swift to the back room, then turned to him with such a commanding air that he nearly shrank away from her. She gave a demand to be shown around the fort, and Ben wasn't sure if he would've even been able to refuse. With a whistle a great big black and brown dog came loping over, a soldier's rations in his mouth. Ben stared at the woman, trying to work out what – or who – she was. She smiled back at him, soft but brilliant.

"But first, Captain - please tell me that you have a spare bath-tub."

Ben had stood gaping at her for a few moments, and it was only when her smirk unfolded fully on her face that he managed to pick his jaw off of the floor.

"Right you are then. The commons this way, Miss…?"

"Roslyn. Rhos."

He looked at her sharply, facts coming into his mind that he hadn't put together before. Walter, the way she spoke and held herself, the authority she held over Swifty.

"Avo, you're –"

"If you could keep that to yourself, Captain, I would be most obliged. Major Swift trusts you, and that means that I will trust you also, but where I am and what I can do is information I really don't want my brother to know."

She stuttered slightly on calling the king her brother, but nothing else on changed; neither her face nor posture gave a way the slight slip. Then she took a step forward, beseeching him with those darks eyes and her lovely lips parted. She was only a few hairs shorter than him, and he wasn't a small man. The proximity gave Ben a better view of her, the rest of her, though, was hidden under layers of clothes; breeches and shirts and undershirts. Immediately he scolded himself, and he heard Swift's voice in his head reminding him quite strictly that she was the princess, for Avo's sake, don't you dare imagine her naked. Ben gulped.

"What shall I call you then, 'cos 'Roslyn' is pretty well known, ma'am."

Rhos laughed when he called her 'ma'am', pressing the back of her knuckles to her lips in – quite frankly – an adorable reaction.

"That choice would be yours, Captain Finn – as long as it is neither 'Princess' nor 'Ma'am'."

The area of the fort that they'd sectioned of for washing was at the back of the bunk-room, which was the second of the three rooms with four walls and a ceiling. Ben grabbed the attention of the loitering soldiers with a wave of his hands and a quick yell. The men looked up in surprise, some being startled from naps and others from their games of cards. They looked between Roslyn and Ben, disbelief and confusion on their faces.

"All right, this room is now in use – and seeing as none of you louts are female in any sort of way, it means that you're clearing out."

They grumbled but got to their feet. Roslyn smiled at them, soft and very feminine. The few men that managed to make eye contact with her blushed and looked away abashedly as they scuttled from the room. Ben laughed as he led her to the back room. In it were several buckets full of water, as well as short three-legged stools and a collection of wash rags. Roslyn's eyes went to the large wooden tub that was overturned in the corner and was piled with a collection of bandages and other medical miscellanea. Ben shook his head.

"Sorry, princess, but we haven't got enough water to fill that. You'd be sitting in about an inch."

Roslyn flinched when he called her 'princess' but recovered quickly and threw him a grin. Ben wanted to punch himself in the face for his mistake.

"I can take care of the water, Captain Finn. But I might need help moving all of this," She waved her hand at the tubs contents and ignored his blunder. He had only time to shrug before Roslyn had his arms full of bandages and sewing kits and was pointing him back into the bunk-room, where he laid them all out on the nearest bunk. It took a few trips, and then between they managed to flip the heavy wooden tub. It was banded with iron, and took a great deal of heaving to even get it to budge. Eventually they got it to tip far enough over and they both took a quick step back as it fell to the floor and landed with a solid thump.

"Are you watching, Captain?" Roslyn asked him, her lips twisted in a sly smile. Carefully she took off her gloves, pulling at the fingers then the whole glove, sliding it them off of her hands. Immediately Benn could see the strange contraption she had on her hands. They looked like a fingerless gauntlets, and from what Ben could see they both travelled up and around her wrists as well. The things were dark black, and shone more like stone than metal. Roslyn turned her palms to face him, and in the middle of them Ben could see gems, each about the size of a button. Roslyn looked at it, and the colour flickered from a clear crystalline to a light and frosty blue in one palm, and a dark, burnt orange in the other. She looked at him and the smile turned into a happy grin. Roslyn was clearly revelling in his astonishment.

"My father could use his Will with barely any thought, but unfortunately I cannot channel it well at all without help from these." She explained.

Without warning, her arms snapped out towards the tub, palm down, and she began to glow softly and very faintly. From one hand came a fast stream of snow, thick and pure white. Ben stared the spectacle, wonder as his face as the tub quickly filled up to the brim. Concentration was heavy on Roslyn's face as the second gauntlet then let out a pillar of fire that blasted the surface of the snow and left a steaming bath full of water in a matter of seconds.

"Blimey. I've never seen a Will user before."

"There's probably an argument out there that says I'm not a proper Will user, but these allow me to use my limited abilities and so I don't rightly care that it's not purely my own power. Now, if you could, Captain Finn…"

"What? Oh. Oh. Right, I'll be…outside then. As in the fort, not the door. Just in case you thought, you know-"

"I know, Captain."

He left quickly, probably blushing to the roots of his hair. He had no idea where this sudden stuttering and stammering had come from. She'd been around barely ten minutes and he's acting like a twelve year old boy around his first crush. Pathetic, really. But it was probably just the fact that he had had only male company for the past few weeks, and Roslyn was undeniably female. He grimaces as the thought passes through his mind.

She's the sodding princess of Albion, Finn. You're far too lowly for her, so get your damn act together.