by Alisa Adams
In her panic, the two halves of herself cleaved together as the prominent commander moved in close. Her stomach claimed all of her fear, turning ice-cold and heavy in her gut. Her heart and eyes were fueled by her likely misplaced courage and rose to meet the man's stare, to at least witness the horror about to befall her.
The combination had her feeling both giddy and nauseous. Her heart was thumping wildly.
As a flaming torch was lifted to light her face, Aoide felt herself lean up against the tree. Bark bit into her back, and a searing heat lit up her skin. The fire startled her eyes and clouded her vision with sparks of white. The face that leaned in towards her was hard to see, but she was left with the impressions of sharp lines and angular strength.
After watching him for the last few days, Aoide's memory filled in the rest.
Her inner eye painted out the captain’s broad forehead and square-set face. The jaw flared just a little, sitting wider than his brow. His nose was bold and Greek, a straight and cutting blade down his face. His eyes were deeply set, making them dark and dangerous even when he wasn't frowning. The fact that he seemed to constantly hold an expression of dire severity only made the look worse. He was an intense man, with a hard stare that set her skin shivering. And she recalled, as she had watched him on their journeys, being thankful that he hadn't turned such intensity upon her.
Until now.
Swallowing, Aoide felt her lips part and her eyes bug as he drew in close. His stare seemed to caress her, to look upon each feature and line of her face with a speculative gaze.
As if to prove the state of her gender, the soldier that had been trying to touch her snatched out a hand. There was a spark of pain in her scalp, the ripping of several strands of hair, and suddenly her headscarf had been yanked from her head for the first time in days.
She cried out as her hair was caught and yielded under the man's grasp, and the commander barked an order she didn't catch. She blinked tears from her eyes as her hair tumbled about her face.
With her vision adjusting to the torchlight, Aoide was able to meet the commander's stare for the first time and was surprised; his eyes were kinder than she had expected.
As if fearing her insight, the man turned away. His shoulders were stiff, and his tone uncompromising.
"No one touches the prisoners," he ordered. With a swing of his arm, he sent the torch leaping through the air to join its brothers once more. Sparks and scattering embers had the men scurry about the edges of the fire. "I'll not have insubordination in my unit, Harris. Anyone seen making noise after sunfall will take ten lashes come morning."
Aoide felt herself wince. The men did the same.
Fear stole back into her heart. Clearly, she had been wrong.
There was no gentleness to this man; no kindness. He cared about only one thing: the rules. And she had broken them by being a part of the foolhardy group that attempted to rob him. As far as he was concerned, she was no more than a pig for slaughter as soon as they reached Scone.
Despite all evidence having told her of this man’s nature, ever since she had been thrown at his feet, Aoide felt a bizarre sense of disappointment sputter in her chest.
For a moment, she had thought she’d seen a different man behind those eyes.
4
Three days later, Aoide was chastising herself for being a fool. She should have known that the peace would not last, that her journey to Scone would not be the tranquil extension of her life as she had prayed.
Instead, the revelation of her sex turned every moment into a test of her nerves. Her reactions were keen, her impulses sharp. Her shoulders and neck ached with the tension of keeping an eye on those around her. She walked with a hunched look, drawing her shoulders in and allowing the large shirt about her torso to fall forwards. The garment’s bulging belly mostly hid the figure beneath, but her breasts and flat stomach were still outlined with every strong gust of wind. More than once, she caught the gaze of soldiers who had noticed the phenomenon.
Each time she caught the leering look of a man, Aoide felt herself shiver a little inside. It didn't matter that, over the years, she had become accustomed to such leers. She was subjected to them on numerous occasions growing up under the care of her mother and then in the company of the gypsy people she had roamed with, stealing for survival.
But being familiar with something did not necessarily mean you were comfortable with it. Aoide had never grown so used to such habits as to not have a quiver run through her belly every time a soldier volunteered a little too eagerly to tie her up. More often than not, his hands would linger on hers, stroking at her slender fingers and wrapping about her delicate wrists. Forbidden from assaulting the prisoners, it was as if they were seeking means of touching soft feminine flesh without strictly breaking the orders given by their giant of a master.
Not all of the men were scoundrels. Aoide's generous heart was forced to at least muster that truth. For every man that pawed at her where they could, there were soldiers that nodded to her, offered her bathroom breaks more often than her male cohorts, or offered her a small excuse for a cushion that she might sit on when she slept by her tree. It seemed that being female made the male of the species either lust for you or wish to take care of you. They wanted their women to be either submissive or weak.
Neither appealed to Aoide. Yet, the distinction had Aoide wondering which mindset the captain might fall into.
Despite having had no personal contact with the man since the night that her gender was discovered, Aoide had been unable to get the towering male out of her mind. Each day, forced to walk at the back of a group that he led from the front, she was reminded of his presence. He possessed such a looming impression, his presence so forceful in everything that he did that she wasn't surprised that her memories had difficulty shucking him from the forefront of her thoughts.
He was a hard man to ignore.
Instead, her mind had churned over his behavior since her capture and wondered about his intentions. She found herself staring at the back of his head over the course of each day, questions rushing through her head.
Would he truly see her handed over to the prison in Scone?
Would he fall to the notion that women were to be protected and treated with kindness as if they might break without gentle care?
Surely, if it were down to the soldier who had fetched her a cushion, she would not be handed to an institution that would take delight in her torment?
Should the revelation of her gender not offer her mercy as well as leering looks? Was that not a fair expectation?
Then again, perhaps the captain was a believer in the idea of women as tools; beings that could be used to slake a man's lust. In truth, Aoide had spent most of that first day, after he had ordered that no one touch her, fearing that he had been staking his claim. She had worried that, at some point, he would call the little thief to his tent and use her for the purpose the fairer sex was created for.
He hadn't.
His silence, however, had only offered the chance for someone else, and the appearance of him was what had Aoide calling herself a wool-headed idiot.
As the days had passed, Aoide had fallen into a state of hopeful optimism.
After their commander had made his instructions perfectly clear, banning his men from taking pleasure in their hostages, it had taken time for her to trust that it would make much of a difference. And yet it had. The little touches of her hands, the occasional sniff of her hair as they were fastening her to her nighttime tree with Jacky, Mickey, and Eric, was all the suffrage that she was forced to endure.
The man had brought his soldiers to heel and then some.
Her foolishness was in the way she had been lulled to believe that it would last.
On the night of day four, the men were rowdier than normal. The camp had been set up just three miles from a township to the south, and men had been ordered to fetch supplies. Along with bread, fruit, and cured meats, they had brought two barrels.
>
From the smell of the liquids issued excessively from inside the wood, one was mead and the other red wine.
It hadn't mattered to the men which they drank. They took up their places in line, mugs held steady and frequently offered, enjoying the rare luxury that the lieutenant had permitted. By midnight, the drinking had passed into the realm of hiccups and ruddy complexions, several of the men looking either sleepy or aggressive. A few hours more and the riotous chatter had become louder and angrier. So much so that the lieutenant attempted to quiet them down, the threat of whippings lost amongst the shouts of inebriated men too long away from home.
Aoide had watched the progression with a sense of foreboding.
At first, she had only been forced to suffer the yells of the men. The commands of their captain—long since retired to his tent—had kept them at bay. They had had to satisfy their desire for caresses with mere words.
"Hey, sweetheart, you want a drink?"
"Don't just stand there, pretty one, you can just come right over. There's a place for you here!"
Uproarious laughter was the response, given that she was bound and could clearly go nowhere. Aoide felt her jaw tight upon her teeth. Only drunkards ever thought their own comedy to be funny.
"Sweetie, we aren't allowed to touch you, so how about you just let us look?"
"Lift your shirt!"
"Lift your skirt!"
"She's not wearing a skirt, you—"
"We should make her one!"
"Who's got a cloak?"
The laughter and jeers continued as Aoide's face reddened in embarrassment.
The idea of being decked out in the traditional garb of her gender and then expected to perform for their sex-deprived and addled minds was nauseating. She tried looking over her shoulder and around the tree to the other boys, but they gave her nothing. No look of solidarity, no words of calming wisdom. They clearly had no intention of aligning themselves with her and were leaving her to deal with her humiliation alone.
The stench of heated breath had Aoide gasping and looking back around. Clearly, one of the soldiers had decided to risk the punishment for breaking orders. He leaned against the tree, his arm above her head, and his body crowding in close. She pressed back, her nose wrinkling under the smell of old mead on his breath, his unwashed body, and his dirty clothes. With every word he tried to whisper in her ear, her stomach turned.
"How about you play real nice to me girly, and I'll untie you for the night? Those legs must be sore after all that walking... I'll let you lie down for a bit."
She just bet he would. Lie down and perform which duties for him, exactly?
She wasn't about to cave, even if it had been a long time since she had been able to stretch out her arms and lay flat upon the ground. Even in sleep, she was bound to the tree and forced to snooze sitting upright.
"No, thank you," she told him, not sure what else to say. Anything blunter would be thought of as rude, and anything that wasn't clear might have been seen as an advance. She didn't know which she might fear worse—this man's interest or his ire.
Undeterred by her polite rejection, the drunken soldier leaned even closer. His breath was hot on her neck, tickling the long curling strands of her hair.
When she felt the hardening of his body against her thigh, Aoide became truly scared.
"Please..." She stumbled over her words, fear strangling them in her throat. She made the mistake of licking her dry lips, trying to summon her courage. His gaze was drawn down to them, his own mouth parting in anticipation.
"Please what, sweetheart?"
"No, please leave me alone. Your..." She tried to glance over his shoulder to see if others could hear her, but she could see nothing. There was only the darkness of the night and the all-encompassing presence of his shoulders. "Your commander said not to touch me."
There was a moment of hesitation in the man, where she thought she might have secured her safety, but her hopes were dashed when he smiled crookedly.
"You tell him anything of this, and I'll deny it," he decided, confident in his reputation that anything a thieving wayward tried to pin on him would slip away like water on oil. Despite the obvious fear that all the men held for their leader, he still reached out to wrap big fingers around her bound wrists.
He encouraged her around the fat trunk to the darker side of the tree.
"Move round here,” he growled. “I can't take you from the tree, and I don't want those rats for an audience."
So much for her being unbound.
Digging her heels into the earth, Aoide tried to move against the soldier. She tugged on her hands, bashed her elbow into the tree, and cried out as pain lanced up and down her arm. She tugged again all the same, and the soldier was forced to stop, growl, and readjust his grip. Aoide felt her rear pushing against the bark of the tree and then slide over it as she was yanked away. Her stomach churned with serious bile, now, her fear response up to its zenith.
He wasn't backing down.
This soldier was really going to take her. He was going to debase her, use her for his own lustful purposes, and then leave her discarded for the others.
She cried out again, but words weren't there. She hadn't the calm reason to be able to morph her terror into distinct sentences. She could only issue a sound of protest. She pulled on her hands, drawing them closer to her face, bent low over his knuckles, and, in a last effort to set herself free, bit hard into the back of his hand.
There was a howl of pain, a stamp upon one of her feet as he stumbled back, and then a resounding smack.
The pain that shot through her cheek was enough to have her fearing for her eye. Her lips burst into a sharp agony, and her nose felt as if it had been swatted from her face. The air was lost from her lungs, and she felt the back of her head crack against the tree.
She barely had time to look back at the soldier, eyes wide and rounded with fear, before he disappeared completely from view. Her hands were released.
Stumbling as she was suddenly freed, Aoide was confused at his sudden disappearance into the nighttime shadows. She blinked away the sparks that flecked her vision. Once she could see again, the site that she beheld caused equal parts relief and equal parts renewed terror.
The soldier had been pulled aside and thrown to the ground by a man that seemed twice his size. The captain was clearly no longer in his tent and had seen to the escalation of violence with a ruthlessness that left her mouth dry. With a simple foot to the groin, the officer extracted a scream of pain and the babbling apologies of a man lost in drink. A growling command saw the barrels taken away; another order had everyone falling into line and forced to carry out maneuvers in the wee hours of the morning.
It was only once his men had been duly seen to that the captain turned upon her.
God, if this was how he treated his men, just how would he punish her?
Able to meet his gaze but do little more, Aoide trembled from head to foot. Part of her wanted to curl away from him, to hide from the intensity of his stare and the violence of his nature. Another wanted to fall at his feet and thank him on bended knee. She'd kiss his boots if he asked.
When he reached forward for her hands, Aoide squeaked in a moment of nerves, but she didn't resist. There was, after all, no one to stop this man. If he decided to have her, fighting would only serve to see her eventual capitulation all the more painful.
She couldn’t fight this man as she had the other soldier. There was no one to save her, no reason to delay, no argument to be made.
She was surprised when the commander never touched her.
His fingers dealt quickly and effortlessly with the bindings around her wrists and then at her ankles. He was careful not to touch either her skin or her clothes and, instead, only pointed in the direction that he wanted her to move.
Taking a deep breath, Aoide stumbled forward and heeded his order, feeling her chest grow tight. The closer they got to the man's private quarters, a tent braced between large
boughs of the biggest trees nearby, the more fearful she became. But she managed to hold onto her bravery.
That courage carried her through until she was just a few steps away from the open flap of the tent. The soft glow of candlelight brightened the interior in warm hues that seemed to create a homey sense of nostalgia in her heart. With nostalgia came memories, and with memories came the reminder of life before she had been a prisoner—a simple body to be ordered about.
A life when she had decided her own fate. More or less.
In a flash of remembrance for her own identity, Aoide rebelled.
Like a skilled stablehand witnessing a stallion preparing to bolt, the lieutenant that the captain called Harris, appeared out of nowhere to secure her arms. Aoide had managed only half a step of escape before old Mister Scraggy-Beard had taken her into his embrace and held down upon her limbs. She struggled and kicked and threw back her elbows, then her fists. One flying strike up and over her head came into contact with something hard, and there was a satisfying crunch and grunt of pain.
The arms let her go!
And were immediately replaced with two large hands.
Swallowing, Aoide tried to spin around, but the grip on her arms turned to iron.
She could now see Harris backing away and clutching his nose. Scarlet was seeping between his fingers like crude oil in the darkness.
Aoide sucked in air to yell, not sure what she would say or who she was appealing to. Before the words could break up and out through her mouth, however, a deep tone of gravel filled her ears and sent a hot ripple running down her spine.
“Stay quiet and stay still. You’ll not be harmed.”
Did she trust him? Was this man who enacted violence and issued punishments without restriction or mercy deserving of trust?
Did she have a choice?
With the drunkard, she had had only one saving grace, one chance of protection: the fact that the captain had issued a hands-off warning. With the commander himself, she had no such hope. He called the shots, and he gave the orders.
