Chapter Eight
Alexis
Liberty or death, what we so proudly hail
Once you provoke her, rattling of her tail
Never begins it, never, but once engaged...
Never surrenders, showing the fangs of rage
Metallica, "Don't Tread On Me"
Alexis Castle woke in a cage, still unsure how long she had been there. Several days to a week if she were to hazard a guess. Her recent memories tended to come in flashes when she closed her eyes.
She remembered the caravan attack, Allison shoving her into the back of the wagon before drawing her enchanted blade to enter the fray, then a lot of screaming and the silence that followed before a rough looking man dragged her from the wagon and everything went dark. The next thing she could recall clearly afterward was the inside of the cage in which she found herself, her world reduced to the small space surrounding it, though it didn't seem to be a permanent structure from the draft coming through the barred window.
She'd faded in and out periodically, which lead her to believe they wanted to keep her from getting her bearings. Unbeknownst to her captors, however, she'd managed to figure out which portion of her food they'd drugged to keep her docile during her more lucid moments and taken to tossing it into the bucket they'd provided for her to relieve herself in. Thus she was much more clear-headed than her captors believed. Her Grams had long ago taught her how to play the role her audience expected to see.
The man who'd taken her prisoner, (Maddox she'd thought she'd heard them call him when they thought her to be unconscious) was straightforward enough. He was obviously a mercenary, though quite loyal to his employer. It was the older man apparently holding Maddox's leash, Lockwood, that scared her to death. More than once he'd told Maddox that this would all be over soon, that maybe he'd give her to him as a plaything when this was over, an idea which made her skin crawl.
From the other snippets of conversations she'd overheard the last few days, her father and a party he'd recruited to help him rescue her were camped northwest of where she was being held, someplace they called "the old ruins." Alexis knew that her father was nearby with plans to come for her, information that her captors had wanted to keep from her ears. She knew that he would not be content to sit idle for long. He'd be coming soon, likely just before dark.
If she were prepared, she could be out of her cell when all hell broke loose.
One of the benefits of her chosen field of study in magical research was how to craft magical spell components, not just how and where to procure them. She'd been busily using the blunt spoon she'd pocketed to scrape filings from the bars of her cell when she thought nobody was looking. Soon, she would have enough metal filings, wood shavings and other cobbled together components to do some serious damage.
The man who brought her meals had been too busy looking down the bodice of her traveling clothes to notice neither that anything had been amiss in her tiny cell, nor that she was not as incapacitated as her captors believed. He clearly fancied himself a mage in his own right from the bag of crafting materials in his belt, not to mention her wand dangling from it.
Her grams had also taught her to be quite adept at picking pockets and Alexis figured if she could entice the man within arm's reach the next time he slid her evening meal under the bars, she would have everything she needed when her father made his move. If Maddox or Lockwood got in her way... so much the better, she'd teach them that she is not some helpless innocent, but a powerful mage in her own right, with a temper and a long memory. Even if it all went wrong, at least she'd go out swinging like Allison had, not trussed up to be gawked at like a piece of meat.
Castle, Beckett and the others spent the day preparing their weapons and reinforcing the keep's meager defenses.
Alexis was intelligent, resourceful and quick. 'Smarter than myself and Meredith combined' Castle mused to himself. He'd taught her everything he could before sending her to the circle. As long as she wasn't incapacitated somehow, he was certain she would find a way to be ready when the fireworks started. If not, he would carry her out if he had to. Once they'd secured her, they would bunker up in the broken tower, do their best to hold out until dawn and then make a break for New Amsterdam at first light.
'And if they've harmed a hair on her head,' Castle thought darkly to himself, 'I'll make them wish they'd never been born.'
Alexis had been his whole world since the day she was born. Though he was certainly not a knight in shining armor like he'd dreamed of becoming since the night Paladin Beckett had rescued him all those years ago, but he had been and always would be hers.
As each of them prepared their gear and weapons, Castle approached Beckett, clearly lost in thought. When she turned to face him, he withdrew a sheathed dagger from his belt and presented it to her.
"I want you to have this," Castle whispered.
"You know, Lord Castle," Kate quipped, trying to lighten the mood, "sometimes a girl just prefers jewelry."
"Lady Katherine," Castle replied without skipping a beat, but with little humor behind it, "was that a hint you just dropped?"
"Why yes, Lord Castle, I think it was." Kate clarified, but her attempt at humor did little to change the atmosphere as she drew the six inch straight dagger from its sheath and flipped and twirled it in her hand to gauge its balance, which was nearly perfect.
"This dagger is the companion weapon to Armageddon," Castle explained, patting the pommel of his sword, "I don't use a dagger much in combat, but if one of us becomes lost or separated, either of these weapons can be used to find the other, or they can be used to find me."
"Castle..." Kate began as she sheathed dagger, but he stopped her before she could thrust it back into his hands.
"This doesn't mean we're engaged or anything," Castle whispered, curling her fingers around the weapon as he pressed it to the breastplate of her armor, "but your family has come to enough grief because of mine. I won't be the cause of more."
He'd pressed his mother for details about the night he'd become lost in the woods and she'd told him that she had been the one to convince the caravan to take the shorter route down the old trade road back then. She'd oft told the story or sung songs of the dragon attack on Tralgar Village and jumped at the chance to see the place for herself. At the time she'd thought it would be a grand adventure, a chance to show her son a place of power and mystery, a decision, she'd agonized about for years since.
He'd wandered off from camp, gotten lost and stumbled into something dangerous he did not understand, setting off everything that followed after, now even Alexis was caught up in it. He couldn't let anyone else suffer for his family's sins, least of all the family of the man who'd saved him. He'd set this in motion when he'd wandered into the woods and now it was his responsibility to set it right, whatever the cost.
Tracking Alexis had not proved difficult. Between Kate's knowledge of the location of the ritual from her father's journals and his enchanted locket, they'd found the clearing quite readily. Only the Kobolds were nowhere to me seen. Instead, a campsite with a small number of human mercenaries greeted them. The emblem on their armor was unmistakable.
The Black Dragons were one of the most well known and highly respected mercenary companies in Faerun. Begun nearly fifty years ago by a mage named William Bracken, they had first made a name for themselves, rooting out and destroying Drow raiding parties in the dales. It was incomprehensible to him that they would be behind the kidnapping of his daughter and the deaths of fifty innocent people. If they truly were involved, then something had to be seriously wrong.
First things first, however, they would get his daughter back and figure out the political fallout later.
**Author's note** There will be more soon. I'd wanted Alexis' rescue to be in here too, but this was what I had ready in time for #CastleFanficMonday.