CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
"Hyah!"
Lady Havenshire's voice carried across the moors; she raced atop Shadow's back as the horse bucked and brayed anxiously, leaping along the cobblestone paths, through dusty trails and along pathways coated in dead leaves and dying autumn colors. The pathways connecting Emerys to Berrewithe had never seemed so long, so painstakingly jagged and mazelike, as they did now - when she needed to make every second count. She needed to see his face again - to tell him he loved her, and that as a stubborn woman, as stubborn a woman as ever lived in the moors, she wouldn't simply let him decide alone who was worthy of whom. She raced against time; she raced against her own doubts. She raced against a storm brewing at her back - gray clouds had gathered against her, threatening to stop her forced and hasty march across the roads, the thunder rumbling ominously closer and closer each maddening mile her steed traversed.
"Shadow, here! Hyah!" Nadia's mind worked quickly; she spotted a sideways path that she knew cut across the river bank that separated her estate from the wilds between Berrewithe and Emerys. The long and sloping road saw little traffic from carriages and merchants, on account of its steep and awkward slopes, but atop proud Shadow's back Nadia had no doubt the route would prove faster. Dashing past thorny yellowed bushes and tall, unkempt grasses, Nadia and her proud mount barreled through mud and mush and weeds, the storm growing louder with each passing moment. A crackle of blinding lightning frightened both Nadia and her horse, who whinnied loudly at the blaze of white light, but continued on heedlessly. As trees blurred past, she saw him everywhere - in everything. Her father had been right about her - stubborn. Stubborn enough to put herself at great risk... riding alone, a woman along the moors, as a thunderstorm rumbled forward... and worse, taking a rarely-used path carved along a marshy, rock-riddled highway.
Only then, as the blinding blast of white subsided, did Nadia notice the peculiar horseman at the side of the rarely-traveled path, leading his white-skinned horse to drink at the side of the road. Nadia felt it odd... practically none dared travel this roughly-hewn path. Nadia tried not to worry about the sight, though her heart began to thump in her chest when she saw another horseman clad in black, a scarf drawn across his features, further along the path. Lightning flashed blinding again and Shadow stepped through a morass of muddy puddles, her pace slowing briefly before taking to the bridge up ahead - a rickety bridge of crumbling stones drawn across the river bank, the rushing sounds of a shrunken stream gushing along her ears. The bridge rose tall above the stream, and she dashed across it quickly... but a wary glance back took notice of a gaggle of horses gathered at the shadowy arches beneath the bridge, and a gathered group of men in patchwork clothing, their faces masked, swords and flintlocks slung at their waists, scrambling as they saw her pass.
Her heart stopped and terror froze the blood in her veins as a realization struck her hard as a musket-blast to the back. Bandits, she realized too late. So few took this roadway... particularly in the interest of avoiding entanglements with the sorts of bandits who infested the distant paths. At night, the bandits scattered across every roadway, but now Nadia had crossed daringly into their own domain, and they gave chase. Nadia tightened her profile against the horse, urging Shadow on with loud walloping calls, spurring the creature into a fevered run as she heard horse hooves clopping behind her.
The storm... the bandits, and the threat of losing a man's love. They all loomed over her shoulders, chasing her desperately - threatening to claim her love, her comfort, her future, and now - her life.
"Shadow! Hya!" She glanced over her shoulder as she called to her steed, and the bandits dragged slowly behind her; she took a detour from the rough roadway, her horse deftly leaping across a small stream and hopping up a series of stony cliff-faces. Grinning, she looked back and found several of the foul horsemen confounded by the path, their steeds unwilling to brave those same dangers... but a few were gaining on her, and her heart pounded against her ribs. She felt Shadow's pace slowing; Nadia had pushed the poor horse hard, and now her stamina had begun to wane. Her hands shaking, Nadia gripped the reins tight, leading her tired mount back to the roadway. Shadow gave her all, galloping along; even the horse, it seemed, knew the stakes, feeling sympathetic to her loving master's pained plight. A loud crack rang out, but it wasn't thunder; terror in wide eyes Nadia looked back to see the bandits gaining ground, hooping and shouting, firing their pistols in her direction. She swooped to one side, then the other, leading Shadow skillfully along a lower path down a mountain as her pursuers kept close. Another volley of crackles erupted, loud and high-pitched; her breathing met a wild, fevered pitch, adrenaline pumping fear and flight into her every being. She had made a grave mistake, and as the thunderstorm drowned out the sound of the shouting, screaming bandits chasing after her, trying to intimidate her, she closed her eyes.
She saw him; her love, the only one who could still her heart. She wondered in that moment if she would ever see him again.
Shadow whinnied and Nadia's eyes flashed open as a bullet whizzed past, only a mere inch from striking the steed in the flank. She realized that the bandits had no interest in harming her - they instead wished simply to isolate her, kidnap her, so that they might ransom her, or use her for... rather more nefarious purposes. She swallowed hard, gripping with all the strength her body could to Shadow's reins, but she felt Shadow pacing slower, and slower; the bandits laughed as they began to keep pace, surrounding Nadia on each side.
"Shadow! Here, hya!" she directed her horse along a side path, through some trees; the bandits closed rank behind her, but two clumsy riders moved slowly and found themselves acquainted rather harshly with the ground when their steeds stopped suddenly in the thicket of trees, launching their riders careening into the dirt. Still, six men on horses galloped along behind her ailing mount, and when the trees cleared they rode side-by-side now with Nadia, two of them pulling to each side of her.
"Help! Help me! Please, stop," Nadia exclaimed, tears forming at her cheeks. Laughing the laugh only a creature of seething, slimy scum could laugh, one of the bandits pawed at Nadia's breast, trying to tear her from her mount in the lewdest manner he could. She pulled away, kicking at the man and his horse; Shadow whinnied and rammed sideways into the man, though another bandit rode up behind and took his place. They'd surrounded her now, and her chest hurt; her throat grew hoarse as she screamed for anyone to help.
"Oy! Look 'head!" one of the bandits warned his comrades as the others grasped at Nadia, who tried to pull ahead. She couldn't open her eyes; she couldn't dare look at the fate that had befallen her.
"S'time ta have some fun with you, girly!" one of the filthy bandits crooned, moving in close with a sinister laugh on his tongue. Her heart pounding, she gripped Shadow close, listening to the horse's pained cries over the round of horseshoe gallops and sleazy chuckles.
CRACK!
An explosive sound poured across the fields; at first, she took it to be thunder, but she heard a loud crash and looked to her side. The awful bandit who had been keeping pace at her flank shouted in pain as the force of something threw him from his horse; the other bandits fanned out, exclaiming in fright. Another crack rang out - and she recognized it as a musket shot, the bullet striking another bandit and knocking him clean off his horse.
Hope suddenly gleaming in her heart, she looked ahead and saw a carriage pulled off to the side of the desolate roadway. She led Shadow close to the carriage, but the bandits drew closer; she saw no one at the vehicle, but when the mass of horses and bandits passed close enough a man like a wild, confused blur of color appeared suddenly from behind the vehicle, a using the lengthy butt of his musket to ambush one of the bandits, knocking him off his horse with a powerful swing that cracked against the malicious rider's jaw. Her breaths ragged, her chest sore and her eyes reddened and muddled with tears, she swung around in a wide circle, traipsing back in a wide, arcing circle, back to the carriage. The bandits chased her, and as she drew close to the vehicle she leapt from Shadow's back, rolling along the rode with a pained grunt, taking cover beneath the carriage. She closed her eyes, covered her head, hoping that whoever this phantom savior had been, that he hadn't yet vanished before finishing the job. She heard the bandits do the same; their horses whinnying, hooves pattering, she soon heard their feet and their greedy, grubby and wanting exclamations fill the air. The sound of steel drawn against scabbards startled her as the boot falls and growling voices drew closer. Nadia shook, her eyes clasped shut tight, when she heard the voice grow loud.
"Oy, 'ere she is! Get 'er, and whoever helped—" the grungy voice was suddenly and quite violently silenced by a resounding, skull-cracking THUMP. Nadia winced as she heard the noise ring over the rumble of thunder; then, another, and another, as the scuffle grew wilder and faster. She heard a bandit cry out in pain and finally dared to open her eyes, just to catch a glimpse. She saw a single pair of tidied boots amid a dozen scrounging, dirtied feet, squaring off with skillful, quick movements. Another loud CRACK filled the air, sounding so particularly disgusting in what it meant for the recipient of the attack that Lady Havenshire recoiled beneath the carriage in vicarious pain. She saw a bandit drop, his sword clattering to the cobblestones of the road; horses whinnied as they came around for another pass, and she noticed two other groaning bandits, already taken down, crawling helplessly along the roadway, wracked with pain from their encounter with this mysterious savior.
Nadia covered her head as another series of loud thwacks, jerks and spins followed; her eyes closed, she just begged silently for all of it to be done; she wanted just to see Lord Beckham again. A brush with death had perhaps made her realize more than anything that she just wanted to be near him - even if she didn't prove stubborn enough to convince him of her feelings of how they ought to be together, she would give anything to simply see him again before she died; to see the man she had fallen in love with.
Finally, the sound of the violent scuffle subsided, the crack and smack of blunt rifle-butt against bone and flesh replaced by the long, pained groans of battered, beaten outlaws. Horses kicked up dust and dirt, galloping along without their masters upon their backs. When all the chaos seemed to die, Nadia opened her eyes, her breaths quivering, to see if anyone remained standing after the great battle.
She saw only the decimated remains of the melee - men in patchwork armor and weather-beaten cloaks, scarves covering their faces, bruises and welts freshly beaten into each of them as the struggled for consciousness. She didn't see the fresh pair of boots, and feared the worst. Closing her eyes again, she felt tears along her cheeks, murmuring quietly to herself.
"Please. Please. I just want to see him again. Please. Please. I love him. I'll do anything, please, just let me see him again. You can take me, you can kill me, you can do whatever you will, be I just want to see him again, please," she begged, prayed to some silent power, for anything - just a moment of reprieve, just to see him again.
"See who?" she heard boots clasp as the carriage creaked, and her strange savior appeared. She recognized the voice; it filled her heart, brimming with joy.
"You—wh—" Nadia, startled and confused, saw his face come into view as he knelt down to help her out from beneath the carriage.
"It's not safe for women to travel these paths, you know," Lord Beckham chided her playfully, taking her hand.
"How..." Nadia asked, utterly dumbfounded. He smirked.
"I may not have spent my time learning to ride, m'lady," he quipped, "but I must've spent that time learning to do something worthwhile... right?" he gripped his musket in his free hand, tugging her out from beneath the carriage with the other.