"Nemo me impune lacessit"
The title is in Latin and translates as: "No one provokes me with impunity" which means no one hurts me and mine and escapes without punishment. It is the motto of the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen's Bodyguard for Scotland.
"Where are you taking me?" the boy asked, struggling against the hold the scarred man had on him.
Dwight stopped and considered what to do. His immediate reaction had been to take the kid to the edge of the compound and toss him out to fend for himself. He was a complication and Dwight didn't need another one...not when they were so close...
How had everything gone to shit so fast? All they wanted was to find someplace safe. When they'd left home fleeing the dead ones, scorching the earth to clear the way, he'd thought they had it wired. Make it to the highway, take the rest of the gas in the truck and high tail it to the coast. Find a yacht and leave the fucking corpses behind on shore.
Ten miles down the road they'd been stopped by the Saviors.
Fuel was a hot commodity. The leader of the group that had found them, Wade, told them it could buy their way in to the safest place on the east coast, Negan's Sanctuary.
It had bought them eighteen months.
After that they had struggled to prove their worth. His previous career as a convenience store clerk and Sherry's as a Wal-Mart checker hadn't exactly given them Apocalypse ready skills. They had come this close to being tossed out when Sherry had decided to offer herself up to Negan as a wife.
They knew what it was like outside the walls. Dwight made regular forays out with different groups scavenging—that's how he'd found the crossbow that had become his signature weapon—and the numbers of the dead just kept increasing with every passing day. Sometimes it seemed like the whole world had died.
Negan had a talent for keeping people alive. Whatever he had been in the before world, he knew how to find the right people with the skills and talents he needed and how to motivate them to bend to his will. Like anyone who had set himself up in a position of power these days he had found a system that worked. Brutal but efficient, it was a market economy at its most base. Strict rules, brutally enforced kept it running smoothly—at least on the surface—yet as most dictators and despots always found, there was always a Resistance.
Dwight loved his wife. No matter what pledges or oaths she made to another, Sherry belonged to him. Seeing her with Negan sickened him until finally he couldn't take it anymore. He'd decided they'd take their chances out on the road and had arranged a secret meeting to tell her his plan. She had been so happy that he wanted to leave that he had let his guard down, let his feelings of longing for her take control. Their tryst had been discovered and they'd been brought to trial.
The physical agony of his punishment was nothing compared to watching his wife turn away from him and return to Negan's bed without a backward glance. He hadn't spoken to Sherry since that day.
He only stayed alive for the chance to put a bolt through the heart of the man who had taken everything from him. There was more than one of the Saviors who felt the same way he did.
"Let me go, you asshole!" Carl cursed, struggling harder.
"Shut the fuck up!" Dwight hissed, "I gotta think!"
"She's strong." Michonne said to Daryl who sat in the window seat of the home he shared with the woman he loved, with his family; his upper body turned so he could stare outside, waiting for the dark.
Daryl didn't respond.
Michonne came closer and sat on the arm of the chair closest to the window.
"Don't." Daryl monotoned.
A small movement in the shadows at his feet drew the swordswoman's eyes and she realized that Sam sat on the floor leaning against Daryl's legs. The boy turned his soulful eyes up to her, his mouth set in a firm downturn.
"Daryl." Michonne leaned forward, close enough to touch him, but she didn't. She sat quietly, waiting him out. She'd seen him like this before, unable to give voice to everything he was feeling.
Most people didn't understand that about Daryl; some knew that he had learned the value of silence as a child in his dangerous home and in the woods stalking game or walkers, but few knew that sometimes his quiet was because he had too much to say.
"Rick... he thinks he understands, but he doesn't." Michonne muttered, looking out the window as well, "I do. No one... no one ever gave a shit about you until her."
Daryl winced at that and Sam looked up at her questioningly.
"Rick doesn't know what it's like to come from a place so low you think that dying's too good for you; a place where the moments when it doesn't hurt feel so wrong you welcome the fist to the gut; where you're so alone you don't fear the dead anymore, you walk with them..." she looked down at Sam, "When I lost my son I blamed myself for not being there to protect him."
"You had a son?" Sam asked. He didn't know much about Michonne other than she was strong and she cared for Judith and Carl as if they were her own.
"I did." Michonne replied and Daryl shifted uneasily, still not looking at either of them.
"But he died? Like Sophia?" the boy wondered.
"Just like." Michonne nodded, but her eyes showed her puzzlement at how the boy would know about Carol's long gone daughter.
"It wasn't your fault." Sam said stoically, "That's just what happens now. The monsters come... dead ones and alive." he looked up at Daryl again with trust in his eyes, "Daryl kills the monsters."
Daryl reached out and brushed a quick clumsy pat onto the boy's head and then gave his shoulder a squeeze before releasing it and returning his hand to his bow.
Sam snuggled closer to Daryl's legs, this time leaning his forehead against the side of the man's knees and closing his eyes.
Claire stood in the doorway, listening. She'd promised Rick she'd try to talk to Daryl, but she knew there was no turning him from this course of action. He could no more go with them to Hilltop than the sun could refuse to set. Michonne had it exactly right: Carol was everything to Daryl. His life revolved around her now. No one could stop him from going to her. He had to do this. If Rick didn't understand that, then the two men were farther apart than ever.
"You okay?" Erin asked, noting the bruising on Rosita's upper arms and wrists and her swollen lower lip as the doctor cleaned the blood splatter off of her face and neck.
Sitting on one of the other beds in the small room, Tara had a protective arm around Enid, both of them also injured. The younger girl's blouse was ripped down the front and all three women looked shell shocked.
"He killed them." Rosita said, sharing a disbelieving look with Tara.
"What happened?" Erin asked, but she thought she already knew. She'd been called away from Carol's room in the middle of the night after some disturbance in another part of the complex. She'd been led past the dead, but not yet reanimated bodies of three men crucified on X shaped armatures, bloody wounds at the apex of their thighs, and she'd grimaced at what was stuffed in their mouths.
"They came in after lights out—said they were tired of him getting all the young pretty...ones..." Rosita said.
"Negan." Tara added. "They said he takes their women—wives, daughters, sisters—as his wives in return for protection. That's true?"
Erin nodded.
"The men tried to take Enid—we fought them but they had knives and guns—they tore at her clothes while they held us down, said we were next..." Rosita said, quietly furious tears coming at the memory. She had never wanted to feel that kind of helplessness again.
"And then the door burst open and he was just there, bigger than life and with that bat and he hit the one that had Enid pinned on the floor and the ones holding us let us go and tried to run, but the others grabbed them at the door." Tara continued.
"They're dead." Erin said, applying antiseptic to Rosita's cuts and scrapes.
"We know." Rosita said, swallowing hard.
The men had begged Negan for mercy, for a quick end, but he had lined them up in front of the women they had tried to rape and made a show of hacking off their genitals and shoving them in their screaming mouths. He'd told them they'd be hung like the pigs they were to bleed out and sent them away. Then he spoke gently to the three women, apologizing for the brutality of both his men and his own 'necessary' actions in punishing them. He'd sent for Erin and sat with them until she'd arrived.
"That's what going to happen to us." Enid said, sounding resigned, "One way or another."
"They won't abandon us." Rosita said, angry with the girl, "They won't."
"How do you know they didn't just kill everyone in Alexandria after they took us?" Enid asked. "That's the smart thing to do. Don't leave anyone alive to come after us."
"That's not how Negan thinks. He wants people to see how powerful he is, the people he requires 'tribute' from." Erin explained. "He took us to prove that point as much as for his own personal reasons."
"To be brood mares." Tara snorted in derision and then sobered, "Is Carol okay? The baby?"
"He's being...protective...fatherly... to her and the baby." Erin said evenly.
"And she's letting him?" Enid asked, aghast. "What about D—"
"What else would you expect her to do?" Erin said quickly, her glare warning the girl to watch her tongue. Her eyes went to the door, where she was sure someone was listening to everything they said.
Enid took a deep breath nodding to show she understood, but frowned with sadness.
"Carol knows this is a safe place to have her baby." Erin said carefully, "She'll make sure we're safe here too." She looked at them all meaningfully. They had no way of knowing if any help was coming. All they could do was hope that they could stay alive long enough to figure a way out of here.
If that meant Carol had to accept Negan treating her like some sort of Queen and letting him think of Daryl's son as his heir, they all knew she was capable of playing the part to the hilt.
"Hold up!" the shouted command stopped Daryl in his tracks. He raised his hands to show he had no weapons in them. Three of the men standing in the road in front of him trained their guns on the intruder.
From where they watched, in a copse of trees 200 yards back, Aaron, Morgan and Michonne held their breaths. Jesus had told them that the Saviors had roadblocks at all the possible ways into their compound, so that would be the best place for Daryl to encounter them.
"You know how to use that bow?" the man in the bed of the pick-up truck asked Daryl, gesturing at the crossbow on his back.
"Don't carry it around for show." Daryl growled, squinting into the sun at their backs.
"You don't sound like you're from around here." the man observed.
"Came up outa Georgia... on the road from there a month now...we was heading for D.C.—heard there was still some sorta safe place up there."Daryl said, keeping it as close to the truth as he could.
"You got people?" the man asked, looking more suspicious, scanning the trees on both side of the road behind Daryl.
"Naw. Just me...now..." Daryl said, his face bleak, hair in his eyes. His obviously injured state, he'd been limping as he approached, and his general down demeanor showed he was a beaten, desperate man.
"You lookin' for a place?" the man asked.
"You got a camp?" Daryl asked.
"Yeah—you got anything 'sides that bow to pay your way?" the man asked, pointing at the weapon as he looked Daryl over.
"Python with three bullets, two knives and a strong desire to put down as many undead fuckers as I can find." Daryl replied stoically, signaling that he was going to lower his hands so he could pull his duster open to reveal the other weapons and then pulled the long coat back behind his hips.
He had also employed a bit of theater into his look. Recalling how freaked out everyone at the farm had been about the souvenirs he'd taken from the walkers he'd killed searching for Sophia, on the gun belt for the Colt Daryl had hung a string of rotting ears from the kills he'd made after leaving Alexandria.
Wade nodded, telling him to do it and then looked impressed with the grisly trophies.
"Hey Wade, Boss can always use more muscle." one of the other men said, giving his vote to Daryl.
"Yeah, we are down a few after last night..." Wade agreed. Not that the stupid assholes going after those girls hadn't deserved what they got, but these periodic cullings of undesirable elements did cut into their numbers.
"You got a name?" Wade asked, motioning at Daryl.
"Call me Archer." Daryl said, raising his hands to hold the straps of his bow and the messenger bag crossing his chest.
"All right, Archer—I'm Wade n' that's Bernie n' Chet. Chet'll take you back to the camp to meet up with the Boss. You're not in until he says so, but I'll put in a good word for you."
"Awright." Daryl nodded, keeping the relief he felt from showing on his face.
"Word of advice?" Wade offered.
Daryl tilted his head questioningly.
"Might'a been awhile since you been around any pussy, but keep your eyes and hands to yerself around his wives. Boss don't share. We got other willin' women for that. If yer a queer, keep that shit to yourself when you talk to him, he don't approve, but we can hook you up later, got it?"
"Got it." Daryl's jaw tensed, worrying where Carol and the other women from Alexandria stood in such a fucked up place.
Wade motioned him forward and Daryl was taken to a Jeep by the man, Chet, and they drove off together, heading for the Savior's compound.
Back in the trees Aaron, Morgan and Michonne sighed.
Daryl's insane plan had taken its first step.
The DIXON name supposedly comes from DICKSON which has its origins in the Scottish Borders. I loved the idea that the Archer protecting his Queen is a long time tradition!
Thanks for reading!