-Chapter Two-

They landed in water, the only thing that saved Karlene’s hands from being crushed beneath them, as they hit with Sid’s back first. Icy darkness closed over her head, and the last breath she managed to suck in was half seawater. Sid slipped free of the ring of her arms and began to swim upwards, hauling her up with him by her wrist bindings. She kicked, since she had no desire to drown, and propelled herself upwards. Her head broke the surface and she gasped, knowing her one chance at escape might be this moment of chaos. She heard two other bodies hit nearby, loud cries and splashes, mingled whoops of laughter and curses of dismay.

“You missed!” She heard Nix shout. Sid was laughing.

“You said ‘within sight of the fort,’” Sid replied. He gestured grandly, splashing Karlene at the same time. She was doing her best to drift away unnoticed. Sid had gestured to, she saw with faint surprise, an actual stone fort that sat on a cliff not far away, overlooking a rocky beach. Karlene glanced around and saw that behind them, further out to sea, was a small rocky island sporting a dense cluster of gnarled, stubborn trees. If she could get to it, she might be able to hide. She was a good swimmer. Perhaps not good enough to overcome the choppy ocean waves with tied hands, but good enough to try. She gave one small, unnoticeable kick beneath the water, propelling herself away.

Sid casually reached behind him, without looking, and grabbed her arm. He as much pulled himself to her as he pulled her to him, but the result was the same; she was caught before she’d even really had a chance to flee. She gave a wordless cry of frustration and tried to kick him, which in the water did little more than cause her leg to bump against his. He grinned at her, his exaltation overshadowing his earlier regret.

“Hate me all you want,” he said. “But thank you.”

She blinked at him, her eyes going comically wide. A thank you? For what, bleeding? Someone ought to tell him a person didn’t get much choice in the matter when you stuck them with a knife.

Before she could respond, Sid started swimming after his two companions with long, sure strokes. It was slow going, given that he was pulling her along and she was determinedly Not Helping. The salty, icy plunged had done a great deal to douse the fire of her terror, almost as much as the bizarre nature of this abduction. She was beginning to wonder if this was the most vivid, tangible dream of her life.

Sid eventually tired of her attempts to fight off his hold and slow their watery progress. He hooked one arm around her torso, under her arms, and tugged her along through the water on her back. If she struggled, her head went down for a spluttering mouth and noseful of burning salt water. She stopped struggling.

She’d wait til they got to the beach, she decided, her mind racing. They’d be exhausted from swimming, and she’d be rested. Well, more so than them.

When Sid finally hauled her onto the rocky shore, however, she realized that while she’d been floating on her back staring at the horizon, away from the beach, newcomers had gathered at the edge of the surf and were waiting to haul the swimmers onto dry land. Within moments she was surrounded at least a half-dozen smiling, laughing people. She opened her mouth to shout for help, but all that came out was a coughing splutter as a rogue wave filled her mouth.

A woman with drab coloring and arms like hams hauled her out of the frothing, icy surf.

“Please,” Karlene gasped. “Help me, these men-”

She stopped when she caught sight of the woman’s face, frowning at her as if she’d kicked her puppy. Karlene’s ears took in again the sounds of laughter, of greeting, and her heart plummeted; these people would not help her.

Never letting go of Karlene, even while she shouted greetings to the other swimmers, the frowning woman dragged her to a wagon where Karlene found herself simultaneous trussed up like a sausage in a soft, warm blanket and her hands filled with a cup of steaming liquid. Even having done nothing more than keep herself afloat, exhaustion pulled at her every sense like she was a car trying to run off a AA battery.

Madame Ham-Arms reached for Karlene’s still rope-bound wrists and swiftly replaced the soaked bindings with a genuine medieval shackle nailed to one of the wagon’s posts. Karlene blinked at dark band of metal, incredulous. Zip ties or handcuffs or duct tape she’d expected, but… Shackles?

“Drinnk,” the woman commanded, then her attention was pulled away from Karlene by a sharp bark of laughter. Madame Ham-Arms went back to embrace tall Sid, then swarthy Nix, then the behemoth she assumed was Rowe, the one who’d been holding her and whose nose she’d broken with the back of her now throbbing skull. There were two more men with them that she didn’t recognize, and a third seated on the wagon’s driver’s seat.

Feeling somehow like she was betraying herself, Karlene sipped at the drink without really tasting it. With some warmth inside her, she made herself blink through the exhaustion, enough to notice where she was and what was going on. That was important, she knew. When she was able to get free, she’d need to be able to tell police about who had taken her, as much as she could.

The wagon she sat on was hitched to a large shaggy horse. The two men and Ham-Arms were bundling all three of her kidnappers in as many blankets as could be wrapped around a person, chaffing arms and legs to return blood flow. They were all laughing, smiling, welcoming the trio back. They all wore rough clothing, the sort a high-end costume department could put together for a Tolkein project, tunics and jackets, skirts and bodices. Cloaks, thick boots. Light accents she couldn’t pinpoint. Only Rowe had visible scars of any note, and only the wagon driver had a tattoo, the edge of which was barely visible above the collar of his shirt.

As she examined them, Karlene realized that aside from Ham-Arms’ occassional glares, she was being ignored. Completely. And less than a hundred yards away, a dense forest waited for her, brimming with promise of concealment...

Karlene blinked at the trees, dredging up what memories she could of wildlife survival. Stay near the water. There was always, eventually, civilization near water. Bury herself in leaves and dirt at night for insulation. Some tree bark pulp could be eaten; stay away from mushrooms and berries unless she was one-hundred-and-ten percent sure she knew what it was.

She could make it, if she could get past Ham-Arms.

A faint burning sensation on her hand let her know she’d tipped her cup. Against her sea-frozen skin, the lukewarm broth felt almost scalding. She set the cup aside, head beginning to spin as she did so. She shook herself; she needed to focus.

Karlene looked back at the trees. She should run. She had the cup, to catch dew for water, and the blanket, and…

She had stood, she realized, but didn’t remember moving. And the ground was...wavering. That wasn’t right. She felt drunk, but there had been no alcohol in her cup, she knew that much. She peered at it, sitting innocently on the wagonbed’s planks. This couldn’t be simple exhaustion…

“I think you’ve had enough of that, now, my lamb,” said a rough female voice. Karlene looked over at Madame Ham-Arms, who’d left the circle of kidnappers and enablers and was now standing in front of Karlene, smiling with as much condescension as was possible to fit into an expression. “Give it here.”

Ham-Arms held out a hand for Karlene’s cup. She didn’t want to give it over, it was part of her escape plan! She found herself reaching out, picking up the cup with trembling fingers, and passing it quietly to Ham-Arms. She couldn’t not.

Through a fog of confusion, Karlene realized she’d been drugged.

That, more than anything else that had happened, fed the anger and fear inside her. The hot terror that had been temporarily quenched by her dip in the ocean flared hotter. She began to breathe harder, drawing in harsh, ragged gasps of air. The blanket around her suddenly felt tight, abrasive. She shrugged it off. Madame Ham-Arms put it back.

“Come, now,” said the woman again. “You leave that on, my lamb.” And just like that it was as if Karlene’s unwilling obedience was renewed. No matter how hard she tried, she could not quite follow through on any decision to rid herself of the blanket again. Her skin itched, and she scratched at herself. The knife prick at her wrist burned, and she clawed at it until her fingertips were red. It helped her remember herself, helped keep that flame of fear inside her alive.

The woman noticed Karlene’s clawing at her inner wrist and patted Karlene’s arm. “Now, stay here, won’t you? There’s a good lamb.” She made no move to stop Karlene from scarring herself.

Karlene, to her shame, stayed. Not just in the wagon, but precisely as she was; slumped against the wagon’s wall, all fight gone out of her. She only stirred when a large man came to the wagon, a man with a face her addled mind faintly recognized. Or at least, the smooshed mess of his broken nose tingled something like a memory…

The man let down the back end of the wagon to reach in, grab her by her face, and haul her close enough for him to plant his generous mouth over hers. The kiss was hard, but brief. Shock and the drug prevented her from doing anything more than squeaking wordlessly against his mouth, but then she knew him; it was Rowe. His broken nose was a flattened mess, but at least their swim had washed away the blood and spared her that grisly situation.

“That was for saving us,” he said, grinning. “You have my eternal thanks, dropling.” And he patted her in much the same way the woman had, climbed into the wagon with all his blankets, and promptly passed out beside her.

Sid, Nix, Ham-Arms, and the other two men came along shortly after, settling around Rowe’s prone mass with similar grunts of thanks in her direction. None of them -thankfully- tried to express their mysterious gratitude the way Rowe had.

Karlene spent the wagon ride back to the fort -because where else would they go?- in a daze. Her kidnappers slept on the way back, but despite the pull of her own exhaustion she stayed wide awake. She had to. She dug a thumbnail into the wound in her wrist until it bled again, banged her elbows on the wooden planks, anything to stay alert. She had to see, had to remember.

She studied the sleeping faces around her, kept track of how long it took to ride from the beach to the fort, noted the position of the sun and which direction they were going.

She also noted the lack of telephone poles, of cellphone towers. No planes buzzed overhead, and she didn’t see a single motorized vehicle. Not so much as a discarded candy wrapper or plastic grocery bag marred the forest they rode alongside. Wherever they were, it was pristine, free of any sign of civilization. Modern civilization, at least.

She couldn’t think about what that meant, not yet. Right now, everything she’d learned from being an NYPD detective’s daughter was hammering what little consciousness she had left. Stay calm, stay cooperative, memorize faces and voices and any sights or noises that might tell her more about where she was.

Eventually they finally rolled to a stop in what was, undeniably, a courtyard out of some medieval reenactor’s wet dream, complete with horses, horse handlers, people running to and fro with baskets and crates and other work-related armfuls. The wagon stopped near a massive set of stone steps that took up one entire side of the square courtyard, and her kidnappers all shuffled past her and down off the wagon, to disappear into the fort. Only Ham-Arms remained, and she pulled Karlene from the wagon with hard hands.

Karlene expected to be taken to some sort of dungeon, complete with racks and chains. And there were chains alright, and it was underground, but it was no dungeon. She was brought to, for lack of a better word, a kitchen. Although it was hardly recognizable as such, being the furthest thing possible from her mother’s clean and modern kitchen.

The floors and walls were huge slabs of dark stone, the roof a mess of wooden planks and support beams, all smeared and streaked with years’ worth of smoke and grease. The chains held up a huge wagon-wheel chandelier lit with dozens of fat candles, the wood and iron of it completely concealed beneath layers of melted wax.

A huge fireplace took up one entire wall, and Karlene saw multiple spits, empty, suspended over the coals being tended by a skeletal wraith of a girl. A long trestle table held baskets full of potatoes, onions, and turnips, all spotted and discolored. Bunches of herbs were tied with twine and suspended from a latticework that hung from the beams; both the beams and the herbs they were covered with dust and soot.

The whole place smelled of blood, smoke, and burnt bread.

There were other people in the kitchen aside from the fire-tending girl, but none of them looked up from their tasks, none of them smiled or laughed or greeted the Ham-Armed woman who called Karlene ‘lamb.’

From behind, Madame Ham-Arms steered Karlene towards another door on the far side of the kitchen, and opened it with one of many keys hung from a hempen cord around her neck. Karlene was shoved from behind, and she stumbled down the dozen or so steps before catching herself. She turned to glower up behind her. Some of her will was returning, and she used it to do something she knew her mother would have told her not to do; she spat up at the woman’s feet. The spittle hardly landed more than two or three steps up, and the Madame Ham-arms only cackled.

“What a feisty lamb! Behave yourself, now. Down there’s our food stores, all nicely sealed to keep vermin out. I count everything every morning, so if so much as a nibble is missing I’ll know. There’s rats down there now and again, and for every one you catch it’s an extra slice of rye at dinner for you. This’ll be where you’ll be useful in between trips.”

“Trips?” Karlene echoed, blinking up at the glowering woman. “Useful?” Then, “Wait, rats?”

“Don’t pretend to be daft, now. It’ll serve you no better than spitting.” Then she shut the cellar door, and in the heavy silence Karlene heard nothing but tumblers falling into place.

The utter solitude brought numbness, then panic, then numbness again. The burn of terror in her chest had finally burned itself down to mere embers. Karlene stood, blinking, until she realized the darkness was not absolute, that there was a faint sliver of illumination from beneath the door. The kitchen as a whole had been dim, however, so the light that came through was barely enough to reach a few steps down.

Karlene sat on the top step, and began to shiver. She wished she’d kept ahold of that blanket, which she’d ended up leaving in the wagon, but it was too late for wishes. She was shaking, and sweat had begun to bead on her brow and chest. She didn’t know enough to know if it was shock, or if she already had a fever, or if this was some after effect of whatever the woman had drugged her with to make her complacent.

What she did know was that she didn’t know where she was, how she’d gotten there, who had taken her or why, and her socks were soaked and freezing.

Despite that, she didn’t start with the embarrassing noises until she heard the faint squeaks and scratches from below.