It was shortly after supper was prepared that Torsten and the others showed up, but they carried no loot with them. In fact, they appeared to be completely empty handed. Felix braced himself for the dark moods that would accompany their failure, but the bandit king surprised him by smiling as he walked past. Felix watched as he made his way to the dais and leapt onto it with a brilliant laugh.
“It’s done!” he announced to the gathering swell of bandits.
Felix crinkled his nose as a roar of happy yelling erupted through the camp. He leaned over to Dot. “Where is the fruit?”
Dot looked at him askance. “Don’t you worry. King took the haul where it needed to go.”
“Sold to the highest bidder, I suppose,” Felix said, shaking his head.
Dot let out a gusty laugh. “Spot on.”
A few minutes later, when Torsten had finished speaking to his people, he hopped down from the dais and cut a path through the bandits, stopping when he reached Felix’s shoulder. The day had worn well on his features, his eyes popping beneath the smudge of his charcoal, and the scruff of his chin finally full enough to be called a beard.
For a moment, as Torsten stood before him, Felix thought the man had a wish to speak with him, but after only a brief glance, he addressed Dot instead. “How many casks do we have?” he asked.
“Five,” answered Dot. “How many should I open?”
Torsten frowned, his thick brows furrowing as he calculated. “Two, I think.”
“Two?” asked Dot, sounding surprised.
“Two,” Torsten confirmed, his smirk swiftly returning. “It’s been a good day.” He slapped Dot on the back. “Let’s open those now, and then we’ll dine.”
Dot nodded and handed Felix his stirring spoon. “Don’t let it burn,” he warned, and then he was rushing away from the cook fire and heading for the supply tent.
Felix stood frozen with the spoon until he realized he was dripping broth all over the king’s boots, and then he shoved the spoon back into the cooking pot and began stirring hastily. He expected Torsten to walk away now that Dot was gone, but he remained, and he was staring. Felix coughed uncomfortably.
“Do you drink, Flautist?” Torsten asked, after a discomfiting dose of more staring.
Felix looked up at him uncertainly. “Sorry?”
“Do you like whiskey?” Torsten clarified.
Felix could feel his mouth gaping and made an effort to seal his lips together as he nodded. Only a small nod, for he did not partake often. “My home is near the Guardians’ Guild,” he revealed when Torsten kept looking at him expectantly. “I’ve indulged in a modest amount of guild-brewed whiskey.”
Torsten was smirking again. “Then you can have a cup tonight. We have guild-brew by the cask.”
“I never drink when I’m working,” Felix said quickly, face flushing. “And I’ve no wish to drink stolen goods. But thank you.” He forced himself to meet Torsten’s eyes, to be brave enough, just once, to look his captor in the eye and refuse him, because he didn’t know when next he would be able. But when he searched for eye contact, Torsten looked away.
“If you prefer to abstain, it’s no bother of mine,” he said gruffly. “Hurry up and eat before Dot brings out the casks. I’ll want music tonight, fit for celebrating.”
He left Felix and joined Jossy’s side instead, on the other side of the fire, and Felix tried to smooth the surprise from his face. Was it custom to offer one’s captive flautist a drink? He didn’t think so, and yet Torsten had. He’d even sounded disappointed when Felix refused. With a well-earned sigh, he shook his head and opted not to think about it. There were far more pressing matters at hand.
As the bandits commenced with their merriment, Felix was taken aback, but not in the way he’d predicted. In the stories, celebrations amongst thieves and outlaws consisted of wild dancing by fires, sexually assaulting helpless prisoners, and brawls fueled by too much drink. But the narrative unfolding around Felix as the night wore on was drastically different. Dot rolled out two casks of guild-brewed whiskey as directed, but they were relatively small, and after each bandit had enjoyed two rounds of the amber substance, they moved on to supping, their laughter filling the air. No prisoners other than himself were available to ravage, no one seemed to give a thought to ravaging him, and no one was stinking-drunk or starting brawls. In fact, everyone seemed to be on their best behavior.
As he played, he wandered around the circle of subdued revelry, mystified by the absence of debauchery. As he passed by Torsten, who was standing, he was stopped by a hand on his shoulder. “Do you not like the song?” Felix asked. “I can play something else.”
“Step up,” Torsten ordered. When Felix did nothing but stare at him in confusion, he sighed and extended his hand. “Step up to the dais,” he explained. “You’re used to a stage, yes?”
Felix glanced at the wooden dais behind Torsten and nodded. “Yes.”
“Up you go, then.” He took Felix’s hand, and helped him up. Felix scrambled a bit for his footing as he clambered onto the wooden stage, but once he was up, the bandits cheered for him, and it was all he could do not to bow.
He was readying himself for a new tune fit for a bandit stage, when Torsten stilled him with a firm hand around his ankle. Felix looked down at him, swallowing nervously. “What?”
“Take a break first, if you need one,” Torsten said.
Felix shook his foot out of Torsten’s hold and realigned his mouth with his flute. “I’m alright,” he insisted. He cast off the odd sensation in his stomach, tried to ignore the warm tingling left by the touch of Torsten’s hand, and promptly began to play.
Torsten watched him carefully for the first few verses before Jossy hollered for his attention, and then he walked off to join his friends. Felix continued to play, enjoying the false sense of security that his slightly elevated position granted. He could see the party of bandits all at once and no longer needed to keep looking over his shoulder for danger. He watched Torsten as he wove through his camp of followers, the leaping flame of the fire making the shadows of his black pelt more ominous than ever. The stalking, strong figure was hard to look away from, and Felix’s cheeks reddened in the darkness.
He was embarrassed. He was angry. And the longer he performed, the more embarrassed and angry he became. He was being put on display by the villain who had caused the death of his friend, yet he couldn’t keep his eyes off him. The hour was fast approaching when he would again be required to share the villain’s bed, basking in the heat that emanated from his warm, muscular body. The self-betrayal burned, made his eyes sting, and he could hardly bear the thought of any of this continuing for another night. The laughter ringing in his ears sounded mocking and cruel, and he yearned to stop it.
He blew his aggression into his flute, frantic for a way to escape. In the flickering firelight, he glared daggers at the bandit king, and Jossy and Selon and Harold and all the other fur-clad barbarians, with their charcoaled eyes and black bandanas and bows with arrows that had pierced Merric through his leg, and then, most probably, through his skull. He played and played, watching them, wishing they’d fall into a heavy slumber, like in the stories he had heard of sleeping giants and their clever captives who’d escaped on tiptoe.
Sleep, he thought desperately, his fingers dancing over the silver flute, up the carved vines. Close your eyes and sleep. Just sleep.
Selon fell over, and the other bandits laughed. Felix would have grinned if his mouth had been free, but he had to settle for watching with interest. When she didn’t get up right away, he assumed she was too drunk. When Dot made no move to help her, despite being very near where she lay, Felix thought he was just being lazy and unkind. But as the entire camp became quiet and still, his heart began to race. He kept playing as, one by one, the bandits slumped to the ground. He sought out Torsten’s face amidst the bevy of drowsy bandits, and found him just below, staring up at him with heavy eyes. He was seated by the fire, his back leaning agains
t a stump, and he was wearing his customary frown, though it was growing more and more lax with every note of Felix’s flute.
He continued to play, afraid to stop, meeting Torsten’s eyes until they finally closed. And then it was just Felix, standing on the dais, playing his flute to a horde of slumbering bandits. He quieted his tune, hesitant to stop completely, and jumped down from the wooden platform. He landed softly and kept his breathing even, his notes controlled. Ever so slowly, he crept around the ring of bandits, searching for signs of a joke, fully expecting someone to grab his leg as he passed and a roar of laughter to engulf him, teasing the little flautist who thought he could get away so easily. But no one grabbed him, no one opened their eyes, no one even moved, except for the telltale twitches of sleep, the random snore, and the methodical rise and fall of deep, unconscious breaths.
Completing his circle, he stopped to look again at Torsten, his hands sweating, afraid, but the bandit king did not stir. He was asleep. They were all asleep. He allowed his pace to quicken, a melody still playing softly on his flute. He tore his eyes from the camp and looked ahead at the tree line. The evergreens were thick and dusted with snow, the night beyond them dark and inviting, and Felix decided, with a burst of adrenaline, to run for it. He shoved his flute into his satchel and broke into a sprint. He bolted through the clothesline of hanging laundry, continued through the silent camp until he passed Torsten’s tent, and then he was out of the clearing and in the concealment of the woods.
***
As a flautist, Felix never needed to learn the basics of surviving in the wild. He knew how to duck projectiles when he was onstage and handle himself in a crowd of mean drunks. He knew how to make his voice carry in a noisy inn. He knew how to make a few coins stretch, how to keep his belly full when pay was meager. But he didn’t know how to navigate a forest at night. He was, indeed, shamefully inept with directions on the best and sunniest of days.
When the bandits brought him to their camp, he had been upside down on a horse, and in shock to boot. He thought he might still be in shock, but though he was now right side up, he still had no clue as to which direction the main road lay. And for the moment, that didn’t even matter. All that mattered was putting as much distance between himself and the bandits as he could. He was sure he’d reach the road eventually.
So he ran. He ran, and he thought about the flute in his satchel, bouncing around beneath his fur pelt. He thought of the queen’s smile when she’d handed it to him. She’d said it was an heirloom. Had she known more about it? Was there more to know? Or was Felix so deep in the horrors of his own story that he was imagining the extraordinary when it was nothing more than coincidence and luck? Yes, he had been wishing for the bandits to fall asleep as he’d played, but the flute couldn’t possibly be a catalyst for his wishes. It had been pure circumstance. They’d been drinking. Not very much, but all the same. It was thanks to a moment of chance and nothing more that Felix was currently stumbling through the dark, free of his captors. The instrument at his side was no more deserving of thanks than the bandit king. It was only a strange stroke of luck.
Though directionless, he felt as if his anxiety took him far, but there was no way to be certain. The woods were so dense he could hardly see the night sky, and when he did find clear gaps where the heavens were visible through the treetops, he could find no moon by which to gauge the time. But one thing was certain. The adrenaline was finally beginning to clear from his system, and now that it was clearing, other senses were making a rampant return.
He felt the cold first. His lungs burned with every sharp intake of winter air, and the tip of his nose was numb from exposure. He cupped his hands over his face and exhaled, trying to defrost. Had he not been so hasty to run, he might have enjoyed the foresight of nabbing more furs from Torsten’s crate, more baggy shirts, and a thicker pair of trousers, to help him sustain body heat in the frigid night. Not even running at a constant clip had done much to warm him. Rather, it had left his lungs feeling frozen and his lips chapped from ragged, heaving breaths.
The ache in his legs and feet he felt next. The slippers the queen had gifted him, though comfortable and soft, had little to no padding, and his feet could feel every sharp twig and unforgiving pebble on the forest floor as they jutted into his tender skin. His thighs burned from exertion.
But the cold and the pain were both expected consequences of an impromptu escape from a bandit camp, and neither bothered him nearly as much as the third thing he was noticing as his pace slowed and he became more aware of his surroundings. The third thing, the thing that was suddenly all too noticeable, was the howling.
He noticed it first as an echo, as something far away, but then, a few minutes later, he heard it again, much closer. Too close.
“Oh, Gods,” he whispered, forcing his aching limbs forward. He remembered the song he’d played for Torsten upon his arrival, which was, coincidentally, about a pack of wolves tracking down their prey, and he did not appreciate the irony. Another howl burst through the trees, extremely close now. “No, no, no.”
The leaves rustled at his back. He yelped and scampered forward. His blind run through the woods was rapidly feeling less adventurous and brave and more idiotic and suicidal. If he had to hold his arms out in front of him to avoid blinding himself on a pointy tree branch, how was he meant to outrun a pack of wolves? And he was wearing a fur pelt, too! What if it was wolf fur? They’d catch him wearing one of their own and show him no mercy!
He tried to pick up his speed and was assaulted by a root rudely sticking out of the earth, like it had been grown for the sole purpose of stifling his escape. He crashed to the snowy ground with a brutal thump, his ankle bending unnaturally as he fell. A cry of pain tore from his throat at the twisting of his foot, but he pulled himself back up with sheer force of will, just as another howl cut through the night, loud and hungry.
The snap of a branch breaking sounded a few yards away and Felix, struck with panic, stopped trying to run. He couldn’t outrun wolves, even if it was daytime and he was freshly rested. But what he could do was climb. Not well, of course. Felix couldn’t climb well on a good day, and on a dark night with a bad ankle, his attempt at climbing would be pathetic. But he didn’t want to be the prey taken down by a pack of wolves because he’d decided to run through the woods with no clue where he was going. He didn’t want to be the character in the song that made people roll their eyes and clap when he was finally eaten.
So he threw himself at the nearest tree, its trunk thick with limbs and sappy needles, and started to climb, a difficult task with only one functioning foot. He heard a rumble behind him that could only be the sound of a wolf’s hungry stomach, and he let out a sob, trying to hurry up the ladder of branches with a searing ankle and frozen fingers. He’d hardly won himself three feet of height when a brand of heat clenched around his waist and yanked.
He screamed, kicking out at the wolf with its jaw wrapped around his middle. His hands fastened tightly around the branches, scraping the smooth skin of his palms as he was wrenched back, but he couldn’t maintain his grip, not against the strength of the wolf trying to tear him down. After a final, fatal tug, his hands slipped free from their holds and he fell back into an eclipse of warmth.
He felt fur against his fingertips as he bucked wildly, trying to escape the grasp of the wolf before he was torn apart. It took an embarrassingly long time—at least ten seconds—before he realized that the wolf attacking him wasn’t actually a wolf, and that he wasn’t being attacked so much as he was being carried, bridal style.
Forcing himself to breathe and calm, he focused his eyes. Above him, all around him, was the bandit king. Better than a wolf. Worlds better than a wolf. He laughed, and it had the ring of hysteria to it. And then he heard another howl and his body jerked, his fingers digging into Torsten’s thick fur pelt. He felt the manic desire to try to climb the bandit to escape danger and ended up nestling closer against his chest and tucking his face into his neck for
warmth. Over the king’s shoulder, he could see sets of eyes glowing from the shadows.
“Wolves,” he whispered, certain that Torsten didn’t know they were in danger, that if he knew, he wouldn’t be strolling so casually.
But Torsten didn’t pick up his speed at the declaration of the obvious, and his arms didn’t tense where they held Felix steadily against his body. He did sigh, however, an exasperated sigh, and when Felix reluctantly unburied his face from the man’s neck, he saw anger evident in the grim line of his mouth and the deep furrow of his eyebrows. When another wolf howled and Felix flailed violently in his arms, Torsten tightened his hold.
“The wolves won’t hurt you, Flautist,” he said. “We’ve shared these woods for years.”
“They were chasing me!” Felix sputtered. He caught another flash of glowing eyes in the darkness and lowered his voice. “They’re still following us.”
“I was chasing you,” Torsten said. “The wolves were helping me catch you faster.”
“They were helping you?” That didn’t sound possible, but there they were, walking freely past several sets of glowing yellow eyes, and they weren’t being eaten—yet. His fingers fisted the black fur of Torsten’s pelt, his body overwhelmed with a sudden burst of energy now that he wasn’t fleeing for his life. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. Wolves were dangerous. They were supposed to hunt and feast on helpless flautists, not assist in search and rescue missions.
“You don’t have to understand it for it to be true,” Torsten quipped.
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