DESPERATION’S EDGE
Alina screamed again. Lord Camry laughed.
“You thought you could escape?” he asked. “Well, my. Am I so dreadful a prospect, so repulsive?”
His face had darkened, his hand clamped on her wrist. Alina looked around, terrified. At any moment he would call the guards and she would be incarcerated somewhere else, this time with no chance of escape.
She took a deep breath. Sent up a private prayer. Then, twisting her wrist so that the thin side faced his thumb, she pulled. His grip broke. She whirled away.
“Guards!” he cried. Alina ran. She ran back the way she had come, heading for the stairs, for the great hall. The only chance was the courtyard. If she could somehow avoid the guards and reach the water gate, she could perhaps break through and into the woodlands beyond. So slim, but she had to take it. She ran.
“Guards!” Lord Camry shouted. He had clearly just taken a repast and he was slow, head fuzzy with wine. Alina, always fast on her feet, ran to the stairs. She saw guards running, bemused, straight towards her.
She screamed, and then whirled round. Ran down the stairs. She saw a guard run towards her, and swerved around him. She just evaded his outstretched hand. The flight of stairs to the courtyard was short, and she ran down and through the great arched doors that led to it.
Outside, the day was changing fast, the dusk already fallen. Still, the men were practicing hard and they were making too much din to hear the shouts and commands inside. She ran past the men, dress streaming out behind her. If one or two men noticed, they turned and looked, whistling in appreciation.
Shutting her ears to the noise, she raced on.
“Stop her!”
The shout rang out across the yard as she sped past the great hall, heading for the gate. The men had clearly been shouted into silence, for the clangs and applause had stopped. The courtyard was silent but for Camry, shouting his command.
Alina felt her heart beat fit to bursting. She was tired. So tired and completely terrified!
She looked quickly about. She was thirty paces from the gate. Already, behind her, she could hear the heavy sound of booted feet on stone, moving fast. The courtyard was not large and she had, she guessed, perhaps less than half a minute before the first men appeared behind her and explained their mission to the guards on the gate.
She ran up to them, shouting out, distressed. “Oh, please! Open the gate! Please!” She looked wildly round behind her, not having to act the hysteria, the tears that ran in fast rivers down her cheeks. She was exhausted, terrified. At her wits' end.
“Sorry, lass?” the gate guard, a kindly man with a helmet and some old metal mail on. “Are you supposed to be in the hall?”
“No!” Alina cried. “Please! Help me! I'm under attack!”
“What, lassie?” the second guard asked, looking concerned. “Speak up. You said...”
“Arrest her!”
Alina screamed. The two guards looked up in absolute confusion as a pack of men-at-arms appeared at the end of the path, twenty paces away. They were about to do what they were instructed, when a horn sounded outside the gate, momentarily pausing everyone there.
A moment later, the gate burst open and the men rode in.
The hunt!
There were men in green cloaks on horseback, armed with bows and spears and some with swords. A pack of dogs ran at their heels, their heads low, shoulders heaving as they quested from left to right, baying, then, as they flooded through the gates to home. Alina flattened herself against the gate, letting the hunt stream past, and then slow as they met with the wall of armed men. As the last man rode up from the back, Alina edged herself along the five feet of gate and slipped behind the last horse.
At the back, standing unawares, was a pack horse. A small, solid pony, wearing a wide saddle. A dead creature draped across it. A youth held the reins, staring wide-eyed and slack-jawed at the pile up ahead.
Seizing his moment of distraction, Alina ran at him.
She screamed as she did so, a great screech that made the youth jump and turn round, dropping the rein in his sudden terror. Alina launched herself into the saddle, letting the carcass slide and drop off the saddle as she set her knees to the side of the small horse and rode.
“Good horse. Good!” Alina whispered in his ear as he reared and plunged. Angry and burning to throw her off, he reared again and came down, all four feet on the ground. “Good,” Alina whispered, gritting her teeth as every bone jarred in her and the boy, inches behind, came round. The pony seemed to come to a decision, then, and shot off, heading towards the entry to the woods.
Leaving the castle, where twenty men railed and sought to get past twenty horsemen, hounds, huntsmen, and verderers who insisted it was their right to block the gate.
Crying with relief and fear, hair streaming back in the wind of their passing, heart thudding with relief and belated terror and elation, all mixed in a heady, fizzling mix within her blood, Alina rode to freedom.
And into a forest at night.