However he chose to punish her, Malchus wanted Aylee awake and aware. She had not only refused him, she had humbled him, and she had evaded his every other attempt to apprehend her. His lack of success had heightened his frustration, and his heightened frustration now gave way to an intense stream of urgency. Once he finished with her, Malchus would suffer no blemish on his satisfaction. Soon he would rise to a position of influence, and no other ambition required fulfillment. Still, if he had not found Aylee, no amount of success would have allowed him to forget his failure.

Peering around the gloomy interior, Malchus searched for something to revive the maid where she lay, wearing a man’s tunic and sprawled ungracefully on the dirt floor. Amongst the tools for care of the grounds, Malchus finally spied a small barrel, and, upon inspection found it to contain some sort of fermented drink. Even more effective than water, he imagined, and perhaps more humiliating. He grabbed a grease-stained towel off of a nearby bench and, soaking it in the ale, he wrung it out over her face.

Aylee felt herself wrenched out of a mindless slumber, and almost immediately, a stinging burn sizzled across her cheek. When she reached up to stop it, she found moisture, the cold moisture of some unknown substance and a hot moisture that, when she pulled her hand away and gazed through the dim light, resembled the scarlet black of blood. Her mind dully registered the source of the blood as one with the source of the sting.

After a moment of assessment, a hand materialized before her and tore her from the earth by the hair. She hung somewhat limply from the hand as from a hook, and she squinted through the darkness for the face that accompanied the hand. It appeared much closer than she expected, and she let out an inadvertent scream at the shock. Once she recognized the face, though, she regretted the scream immensely; she would never have given Malchus the satisfaction of seeing her fear, no matter how he made her suffer.

The scene she had experienced a few moments before came rushing back to her, and she instantly thought of Jess. For the past week, she had stood in judgment over him, sure that he had undertaken some campaign of infamy. Only an hour before her crash in the shed, she had found herself thrown violently into doubt, and now she would never know the truth.

When Malchus sensed her distraction, it piqued his ire to new levels. “Am I not interesting enough for you?” he hissed. “I can remedy that.” His hand flew and smacked against her injured cheek, not as hard as before lest he again knock her senseless, but hard enough to elicit a cry of pain from her lips. A new trickle of warmth seeped down her cheek, and tears sprung to her eyes.

Much more satisfying than her thoughtful ponderings, Malchus leered. Once she turned back to him, however, he derived no gratification from her expression. She seemed, not afraid, but – like her expression in the alley so many weeks before – totally defiant.

“You will submit to me!” he roared, wrenching her up to the level of his face before pressing his mouth against her ear to ensure she felt the heat of his words. “Wretched bitch that you are, you will succumb.” He sniffed along the line of her chin, like a ravenous animal poised to attack its prey.

“Though I may succumb through lack of strength, I will never submit!” she growled back at him. “You will kill me quicker than you intend because I will force you to protect yourself!”

He dropped her on the ground, and her legs collapsed beneath her. As she fell to the floor, he followed the motion with his own body so that he stood poised over her, seeking to intimidate her by his sheer size. For the first time in his acquaintance with her, he realized that she had no intention of ever submitting to him. He had honestly believed that she just needed the proper punishment, and she would realize her error in refusing him. He had believed that he could, as he always did, either charm or intimidate his way into what he wanted. Instead, he would literally have to force Aylee with a brutal hand to stop fighting him.

Rather than feint, as he had hoped, Aylee scrambled to her feet and grasped blindly about her for a weapon, and her hand fell on a decent option - a metal rake that would manage a painful blow if it landed.

With gathering fury, Malchus registered the truth of her words. She would not succumb. Even without a weapon, Aylee could manage quite a successful defense. He rubbed his cheek where she had struck it, gathering from the memory a powerful impetus to proceed. With the rake? He would need to use more force than he had planned.

Watching his hand rub at the phantom bruise, Aylee laughed, perhaps maniacally. “You remember, don't you? You know not to underestimate me, you pathetic dog! Are you so desperate for women that the one who rejected you is the only one you can pursue?”

Aylee stood nearly pressed against the wall, and once he managed to disarm her, she would find no option for retreat. For that reason, Aylee would not relinquish her weapon if she could in any way avoid it. She wanted to goad him, to encourage him to make a move on her. As long as she stood her ground, he would not take her. To her chagrin, though, Malchus grabbed his own weapon from his belt, a sword that barely caught a gleam of light flashing weakly through the cracks in the wooden walls. She had somehow missed the small fireshot which she now saw hitched to his side, and she realized that she needed to act quickly. If he did not draw the firearm immediately, she would take her advantage and knock him senseless before he could.

“I dare you, young maid, to imagine yourself capable of a duel.”

“Young maid?” Aylee exclaimed. “Do you think that my father waited on my much younger brothers to pass on his skills with a sword? Then, bring your best.” She lowered the rake in challenge, and he instantly brought his sword up in answer.

As if he were intent to knock her over, he swung the flat side of the sword toward the side of her head, a move she quickly parried with an upward thrust of the rake’s handle. Aylee registered with pleasure the shock on her attacker’s face, and she used the downward force to press his sword toward the ground and swing the metal end of the rake toward Malchus’s head. Though he ducked, the blow glanced against his temple, and stepping back to regroup, he bared his teeth – whether in fury or glee, Aylee could not surmise. His intensity increased, and he thrust the sword point-first toward her shoulder, apparently not an attempt to kill her, but to disable her. She feinted, avoiding the hit, but when she swung the rake toward his side, he manage to continue his sword’s motion and, gripping the rake’s handle in both hands along with his sword’s hilt, he yanked both the instrument and Aylee to within a few inches of his body, well within his arm’s reach.

His sudden arrest of her weapon froze her reactions, and before she could recover, Malchus twisted the rake in her hands. To avoid his swords blade, she released one hand from the handle. In the moment of disorientation, Malchus clasped her tunic in his hands, pulling her toward him with the strength of an ox. Using surprising speed, Aylee recoiled her free hand to the weapon and managed to place it as a barrier between them. She pushed with all her might, but she could not force him away. With a rapid motion, she lurch the rake sideways, taking aim at the face before her.

Malchus sensed the sudden movement and, dropping his sword lest he cut his own hand, he deflected Aylee’s blow to strike, flat side of the rake, against her own temple. The air huffed from her lungs, and with it, her strength. She felt herself go limp in his arms, though she did not lose consciousness.

“You chose to make this difficult, Aylee,” leveled Malchus, almost scolding in his tone. He pressed forward, pinning her between his unforgiving body and the rigid wall of the shed that stood at her back. “You will submit to me one way or another.” When he leaned in toward her, she twisted her face so that he could not kiss her lips.

“Never,” she hissed, and she sank her teeth into the arm that pressed against the wall only an inch from her face. Either she would come away with his flesh, or he would extract her teeth. She determined she would not let go. Unfortunately, Malchus held more intelligence than she had credited to him. Pressing her face into the crook of his arm, he squeezed so tightly that she could not find an inlet for her breath. Though she tried to hold out without air, her strength fled her and her lungs forced her teeth apart to replenish her supply.

+++++++++++++++

As Jameson sprinted toward the shed, a soldier scurried up to it, torch in hand, and lit a pile of hay that rested against the shed's side. Jameson did not know if the man stood unaware of his commander’s presence inside or if he simply did not care. Though he changed his trajectory to attack the man, Jameson found his attention divided, and the soldier quickly knocked away the sword that targeted him. Jameson cursed, wishing to scurry after his sword, but afraid to waste the moments it would require. Since the soldier seemed intent on escaping the fire rather than conquering his opponent, Jameson did not see the urgency in seeking the weapon, images of what lay behind the door of the shed drawing him to throw it open as quickly as possible. He swung around to the front of the shed, kicking with all his might against the latch that held it shut.

The voice that greeted his ears froze the blood in his veins, but only for an instant. His fear evaporated under the boiling fury that heated him from head to foot.

“And now,” Malchus oozed malevolently into the face of the nearly insensible woman in his grasp, “it’s time for me finally to claim you, Aylee Hembry. The fact that you have fought me will only make your surrender that much more satisfying.”

Though Malchus held a sinister-looking rake, Aylee showed little sign of injury, though she slumped against the wall as if in a daze. Malchus, on the other hand, bore a wound of some sort beneath his billowing buff-colored sleeve, and blood seeped slowly into the fabric. Before Jameson could decide his course, Malchus had completely covered Aylee with his own form as he pressed her against the wall. He grabbed her by the hair, wrenching her head back so that her mouth opened toward the timbers overhead. As she keened in terror, her attacker closed his mouth over hers, effectively silencing any objection.

Jameson flashed across the aged wood in such a blur that neither Aylee nor Malchus suspected his presence. When he grabbed Malchus in both hands, he lifted his opponent fully off the floor in a fit of rage, and Aylee instinctively twisted with all her might when she sensed her freedom. Somehow, between the shock of the attack and Aylee's unexpected motion, Malchus lost his grip on her and she lurched just far enough to avoid his clasping fingers. Malchus, recognizing that his moment had passed, determined to cause Aylee as much suffering as he could manage. He clutched at the hair that lay just within his grasp, and when his fingers found purchase, he flung his prey toward the ground, sending Aylee’s face hurdling toward the floor boards. If he could not have her, then neither could the noble.

For a moment, Aylee felt only gratitude for her liberation, but as she recognized her trajectory, she recoiled in self-preservation. Spinning violently, she managed to protect her face from an abrupt meeting with the floorboards. Unfortunately, the motion positioned her head in such a way that she struck the wooden handle of the rake, and though it did not knock her senseless, it stunned her into immobility. She felt her mind fade into a sort of shocked fog from which she could not climb.

Jameson watched in protracted time as she fell helplessly to the floor, barely managing to save her face from further injury. Intent on his victim, Malchus tugged against the hands that restrained him, ignoring Jameson as if he did not exist. When Aylee's head hit the floor and her eyes glazed over, all reason and self-restraint fled from Jameson's mind. Jameson could never recall exactly how he had thrown Aylee's attacker far enough for his head to smash into the beam on the other side of the room, but the crack resonated above the crackling of the fire, and Jameson felt confident enough of the man's insensibility to turn back to Aylee.

Though Aylee did not comprehend how long she lay there, when the arms finally lifted her from her prone condition, she felt certain she smelled the scent that belonged wholly to Jess. All fear forgotten, she relaxed completely – she would be fine. As Jameson stepped to the door, he tried to kick Malchus out of the way, but with Aylee's added weight, he instead found himself stumbling over the man's prone form. Before Jameson could step beyond the threshold, the roof gave way to flame and caved around him. Though he lurched forward, he could not know whether his arms, bearing Aylee, had successfully stretched past the fire before fumes and darkness descended upon him.