Six Rings and a Pendant

I laughed. "No way." She did not join in my laughter. "Is she?"

"Who cares?" She yawned. "We're well rid of her, that I know."

"Do you?" Made sense: Hilda's own daughter was probably in line to become Manda's new handmaid, in place of the vanished slave.

"I do. What Her Ladyship will want you to get," she went on, tugging once again at my scrotum, "is the jewelry that little slave stole."

"Ah." I nodded. This was undoubtedly true, and even though I already knew most of the answer, I knew she'd expect me to ask the logical question. "How much did she take?"

"Bracelets and rings, mostly. Some of Lord Berken's as well as Lady Manda's." She yawned. "That's what she'll want, is his stuff. She's feeling guilty, and she's desperate that he not find out she's been whoring it for any handy prick in his domain." She waggled my penis. "Like the rest of us already know."

"So?"

"So, I think that in addition to letting the girl stay away with her secrets? She'll kiss her own jewelry goodbye and call it a gift to the gods. Her forgiveness will be cheap at that price." She patted my chest. "Got to be going soon, Pewick."

"But you say His Lordship's things, she'll want back?"

"Or?" She looked sagely at me as she used a handful of hay to scour away my cum. "Mayhaps she'll tell him the girl left with his things, she sent you after them, and then she did her pillory because she'd not guarded her husband's possessions from a peasant. A slave, even." She paused, gathering her dress above her head. "Which is true, in a way." I nodded, smirking. "Why don't you just ask her yourself?" she wondered. "Why have me mention you to her? If you wanted to fuck me, all you had to do was ask..."

"And if I never come back, it would look like I'd planned it." I sighed. "This way, me leaving the castle wasn't my idea. So when I don't return?" I winked. "The Orcs got me, perhaps. Or my horse fell into a ditch. Whatever."

"Or you took up with a group of nuns, balling them senseless."

I joined her in a rueful laugh. "Do hurry," I urged her, scratching at my pubes, "for the slave-bitch is putting miles between us even now. Talk to the Lady tonight, then she'll ask me to leave tomorrow morning."

She let her dress fall, poking her head through the neckhole. "As you wish, soldier." She glanced fondly down at my prick, now slack across my upper thigh, and bent to give me a kiss. "I'll miss you."

"Only now that you've fucked me," I pointed out.

"Well, naturally."

* * *

And so it was that I left Lord Berken's castle in the grey dawn a few days before the Ides of November, headed east. And why east? That's where Nellie is from, Lady Manda had told me, up toward the Witch's Tit, though she's got quite a start on you, so that's where they saw me ride away. I'd begged the loan of a second horse, "so I could get the slave back quickly if I found her," and for what provisions Hilda and her friends had been able to hastily pack for me: bread and cheese, some bacon, and a small barrel of beer were slung about the other horse's placid hindquarters with a cheap saddle up front.

I'd need the saddle, I knew, before the day was out. Because despite what m'lady said, the slave did not have much of a headstart, nor had she gone toward the Tit. On the contrary. She'd have her skinny little legs astride that horse within hours.

I'd told her to wait at the Pillars, and that I'd be there within four days. The overgrown elven ditches there weren't useful as farmland, and the only reason anyone ever visited was because the deer liked to cross the river there. "So keep your head down and try not to resemble a deer," I'd told her the night she left.

"Fuck you," she'd muttered; she hadn't liked my plan, not least because she'd fled with no food, but we hadn't had time for anything more careful. A slave girl planning to flee her mistress after stealing her jewelry is, as a rule, in something of a hurry.

I rode my horse Dickhead out along the course of the fat, lazy River Whitelinen, letting plenty of locals see me ride into the sun before I urged the horses over the stream at the little village named for the river. Lady Manda had owned that village once, before she'd deeded it to the priests for her soul's salvation after lifting her skirts for a stableboy.

She did that sort of thing a lot.

I saw nobody as I walked the horses slowly south through the bright morning, through the Binly wood until I struck the broad marsh just east of the Pillars. With my shield and my leather cap bundled on the back of my horse, and with no spear in my hand, I was just another minor thug with a pair of animals, off on whatever simple local errand my lord commanded. Past the marsh, though, I climbed back up and trotted over the fields as the sun climbed high and my feet got wet.

I struck the river again just east of the fort, a line of trees running along my right hand now as the humps of the old walls and crumbled columns came into view. I imagined it as they'd seen it back then, the same lazy countryside, the same wheat, the same river rolling past, only now their gates had long collapsed and all their stones had been taken away to build our temples and castles.

I wondered whether our own homes would one day crumble away to nothingness. Probably. Who knew what the land would look like then? Probably the gods would return before that; any day now, the priests kept telling us.

I'd been to Pillars before, many times, at the start of the endless circuits south with Lord Berken. It was only about a mile from his castle, and I'd told Nellie to come there because nobody would expect her to be so close after so many days. Plus, it was big enough and unique enough that even a slave girl should be able to find it by night. I'd told her to wait at the southern edge of the big circle by the river, so I turned Dickhead that way as she surged up out of the final stream that led to the Whitelinen.

I halted just outside the old elven bank, the deserted fort before me, and listened as the sun rode toward noon. Birds. The drone of the flies down by the river. A vole, slithering past. The other horse, shifting her feet, and all of a sudden I felt haste wash over me like a sudden rainstorm. I cleared my throat. "Nellie!" I called, low but insistent. "Hey! Nellie! It's Pewick!"

Nothing. Nothing but the birds, the flies, and the voles.

I swung off Dickhead's back and left her to graze, stepping carefully over the low ground up toward the crumpled mounding at the edge of the elven ring. Nobody knew why they'd put a big circular pen in the middle of their fortress, but then they were the fucking elves. They'd done a lot of strange things. The long grassy bank curved out where a crumbling wooden palisade stood like broken teeth just past the mound. I slowed, scanning the fortress before me. "Nellie?"

"Pewick?" The voice came from off to the side, around the back of the big circle, down among the weedy stones where the bank stayed shadowed even in the noon sun. "Oh my God! You came!"

"I did," I nodded, climbing the bank and thinking of my seed splattered across Hilda's chest. "In more ways than one." I stood there atop the old earthwork and peered down to where the disheveled little slave stirred among the grass in the angle between the bank and the old wooden wall. "You okay?"

"I'm starving," she snapped bluntly. "I left with a loaf of bread, and that gave out yesterday." She picked herself up slowly, so slowly, a furtive rodent trying to avoid notice. It looked like she'd been asleep, but her dark eyes glimmered up at me now with a wild wariness that made me wonder how she'd been passing the last few days. "Can you help me up the bank? I thought you wouldn't show up."

"It took awhile to figure out a way to get Manda to send me away," I managed, grasping her thin wrist to haul her upright. Nellie had never been anything but slight, and now three days with no provender seemed to have left her a wraith. "Fuck, girl. We need to get something in your belly."

She stumbled up to me, trembling. "I was going to leave tonight," she confessed as she reached me, cuffing her hair out of her face. Her face was odd, a mix of exhaustion and elation and hope. "I thought you'd forgotten about me."

"No." I glanced quickly around. The view up here was almost two miles over the Whitelinen, but a lot less to the south, and I was not eager to be spotted. "You've not been seen by anyone?"

"Oh hell no." She sniffed, wiping her nose on the edge of her hood. "I swear, Pewick, I've just been lying down there the whole time." Her eyes found my horses. "Shit. Do you have beer? I made it to the river yesterday, but I wasn't sure about the water."

"Come." I took her arm, feeling her still her shivering as she drew close. "I brought some food. We'll get you plumped up, then we'll leave after sunset."

"Fuck that," she grated. Color had already drifted back into her wan face: the sneaky wench had always been fiery. "This place is spooky after dark." She slapped my chest. "Now that I've got a big strong paladin with me, I was thinking I could finally get a good night's rest."

"No," I explained with what I hoped sounded like firmness, "you won't. We're like a stone's throw from the castle we're escaping from, dolt. Everyone for miles around knows Lady Manda's slave escaped, and stole a bunch of her shit." Her flush deepened. "And that a paladin got sent to bring her back. We can't be seen riding away from Hallowhall." I shook my head. We'd had no time to make any plans like this, not as she'd fled, but I'd been thinking. "We travel at night until we get out of Whitelinen Dale. Or at least far, far down toward the Port."

She scowled. "How will we find the way?"

"We'll talk about it this afternoon." I waved toward my spare horse. "I need a shit. Can you stagger out there and feed yourself?"

"Grazing? Like a horse?"

"No, fool. The horse has bread and cheese on its back." I rolled my eyes. "Where have you been shitting?"

"Uh, north side of that big ring thing. I've scarcely been out past this berm since I got here." She started slowly down into the grass. "It's so weird to be doing anything but sitting alone in the shadows."

"Get used to it," I advised her sourly. "We're stuck with each other for awhile. And we're certainly not staying around here."

* * *

The sun fell slowly past the rotted elven timbers as I amused myself by picking bits off them. Beside me slept Nellie, quietly yet potently flatulent after I'd fed her: that first handful of bacon had gone through her like water through linen, sending her around to the north side of the old ring for what sounded like an unpleasant several minutes.

She'd settled down since, though, and now as the sun snaked down and the night-birds began their tentative songs to the endless chuckle of the River Whitelinen wrapping protectively around the old elven fort, I got to my feet and ventured over the bank to get my horses.

There were risks to traveling at night, nothing surer. Since everyone knew the night was the time of Abasis, of She Who Dwells Below, most people kept to their homes. Because those who did not were, de facto, demons. Simple. I pondered that as I pulled Dickhead to me in the twilight with the other horse loping behind. I'd been abroad by night myself, many times: that's the lot of the paladin, often.

But never by myself, far from home or fire or companion, wandering.

I found myself starting at the noises from the river-shadows as I saddled the horses, wondering whether they were squirrels heading for the water, or dark sprites haunting the night, and trying to pretend not to care about it either way. Above me the stars stared down like the shining hands of Egan, finding the sin of the world, leaving a little speck of regard for a single paladin who stared back, troubled.

These were the times I pondered sins. We're all sinners, of course, and my life had always been lived in a comforting string of confessions, expiations, and penances designed to resolve those sins. But it had been a busy week since Lady Manda's time in the pillory, and in that time I'd fornicated with Hilda, then failed to cum inside her. I'd lied to m'lady and then stolen her horse. I'd abandoned Wendy the blacksmith's daughter and the baby I'd given her, which I was pretty sure was a sin on top of another, and now I was preparing to ride out among Abasis' phantoms, the sprites of the fearsome, devilish night.

And why? So that I could help a slave escape her rightful mistress. After stealing a lot of jewelry from that mistress.

I sighed, nuzzling Dickhead, glancing up to where the moon rode fitfully over the trees. In a few days' time, no more than a week, Lord Berken would return. He'd find Hallowhall in uproar over his wife's transgressions, and then he'd find an absconded slave and a missing paladin. He was not an idiot.

We needed to get moving.

"Wake up," I muttered down at Nellie, digging my foot between her ribs. She responded with a groan from one end and a fart from the other. "Come on. Time to go."

"Go?" She sat up, blinking in the thin starlight, her blanket clanking a bit as she pushed it off her shoulders. "Go where?"

"Yeah, that's what we have to talk about." I frowned, then nudged at the blanket with my foot. I wasn't surprised this time to feel hardness through my shoes. "There?" I demanded, incredulous. "You're hiding the Lady's jewels there? In a blanket?"

"Most of them." She glared defiantly up. "I'm not letting them out of my sight. The most valuable pieces are... well." She sniffed and got to her feet. "Elsewhere."

"Elsewhere?"

She shrugged. "I'm hiding six rings and a pendant in my cunt."

"Jesus," I sighed, crossing myself for the swear. "How much did you steal?"

"Hilda didn't tell you?" She smirked in challenge. "She helped me, and I gave her one of the rings in payment. She's a fool; it'll be found, I'm sure, and she'll be put to death."

"Yeah," I shrugged. Of course Hilda stole: most servants did. "How much?"

She cocked her head. "Outside my vagina? Mostly rings." I nodded; rings were small and expensive. Good choice. "Two chains. Four bracelets. Set of brooches.."

I arched my eyebrow. That was a lot, though Manda had a lot more. "Impressive. All gold?"

"Some silver." She thought a moment. "It's almost enough shit that if I put it on, someone might mistake me for a Lord' wife..."

I'd thought about that. At some point, we'd encounter someone else. A story was something she and I were going to have to concoct tonight as we rode. I tugged at my mustache. "Only once we're very far from here," I pointed out. "Some of her jewels are well known."

"I only took one distinctive thing," she protested, "and that's the one I gave to Hilda. I'm not an idiot."

"Her Ladyship seems to think you're a sorceress."

A queer look came into her eye. "Maybe I am," she muttered.

"Be that as it may." I eyed her, shivering in the night. "And you're dressed like the slave you are. We'll need to think about how to get you better clad, if you're going to pose as a rich bitch." I started down the bank. "Piss now, if you have to. We're riding all night."

"I'm not," she said quietly as she followed me. I turned, not sure what he meant. "I'm not a slave. Not anymore." Her voice held an unmistakable note of pride, even triumph. "If nothing else, I'm no slave now."

"Huh." I wasn't sure quite how that worked, and I was even less sure she'd not get recaptured, but I needed to tell her something right away. "If any of Lord Berken's men find us over the next couple of days, you know what I'll tell them."

She nodded evenly in the starlight. "And when they ask why you're riding the wrong way?"

"Just so you know," I grated. I didn't want to think about what might happen if we were found, but she needed to know I'd throw her under the wagon to save my own skin. "I'm not leaving to help you. I'm leaving for my own reasons." She stood by the horse and looked silently back at me. "Come. We need to get going."

"I can't ride," she admitted at last, sulking.

"Of course you can't," I nodded, "for you're a slave. A house-servant. Thank me for picking the Lady's calmest horse for your stinky ass; she won't let you fall off." I laced my fingers and bent low beside the beast's leg. "Climb up and hang on. We won't be galloping, but I won't wait for you if you walk, either. You'll be fine." Sore, of course, but basically fine. "Climb up," I told her again.

Looking doubtfully down at me, she perched her shoe into my hands and I thrust her up easily over the back of the horse. I was straightening up when that same shoe, flailing frantically, caught my nose and drove me back. "What the fuck!" I hissed.

"Where's the... I can't find the things I'm supposed to put my feet into!" she wailed, a heaving shape high up over the horse's withers, so I wiped some blood off my upper lip and seized her leg, dragging it into the stirrup. "Thanks," she bleated.

"Try to relax," I snarled, blowing more blood out my nose, "and quit kicking me."

"Sorry."

"Whatever." I ducked under the horse to take care of her other foot, then patted the beast's neck. "Just... don't fall off. I'll try to teach you to mount tomorrow, if you have the wit."

She didn't answer, which was just as well: my kicked nose was making me angry. I might have said something rash. I hoisted myself up onto Dickhead's back, the high saddle a familiar embrace, and took up my reins. I reckoned Lady Manda's horse would follow mine.

The night waited around me, still and close with the river muttering behind me and ahead? Nothing but darkness and the demons, then a new life in the big city. I turned in my saddle. "We're not going further into the Marches, but where are we going?" It hadn't occurred to me until that very moment that, truly, I had no idea. I'd ridden south and east with His Lordship, almost all the way to Mistmere, and I knew there was nothing for us there. Windscour was out. "Did you want to come with me toward Galtin's Port?"

"I have no clue." She hesitated. "Port, eh? I've always wanted to see the sea, but a city..."

"Good enough. I'm going to try to get myself there." I knew in which direction lay Galtin's on the Wound, though I'd never been there. "West, and a little north, down the Dale." I glanced up at the stars, finding the Plough and then up, up, to the Ship-Star. "Okay, then." I kicked lightly at Dickhead's flanks, then rode away from the Ship and the Plough and into the night, trusting the horse's eyes more than my own.

Nellie would find the sea. Maybe I'd be with her, maybe not. But that was the future; the present, with its night full of fears, held its own worries. I swallowed and rode on.

* * *

We spent the next day dozing some few hundred paces past the road, having floundered into the River while splashing out of the big ford in the early dawn. Nellie was still complaining. "I think you just wanted to get me soaked because you're a brutal piece of shit," she seethed. She sat huddled wretchedly in the only blanket that had stayed dry, the rest of her clothes spread out in the thin sun.

"No," I sighed, enjoying the crisp air on my skin, "I wanted to get out of the Lower Stews, idiot-girl." I was naked, lying in the grass with goosebumps across my legs, but I was also overcome with relief at having gotten this far. I had no real sense of which lord ran which parts of the land, but I did know that the Whitelinen marked one of the old borders of the realm. Meaning, we had to be out of Lord Berken's writ. "You should be happy. We're much less likely to be caught now."

She frumped, looking pointedly away from my body. She'd seen it before, obviously: there is no privacy in a castle in the Stews, not among the servants, if there's even any among the rich. The priests told us not to worry, that we were all made in the gods' image anyway, and certainly Nellie had never been shy before. She only had the blanket over her because she was chilled. She needed to eat something more, something hot. "So you say," she muttered.