Reuben's sword froze in mid-air, an inch from an enemy's face. The soldier who had been about to have his head cut in two paled like a corpse and staggered back. The few of his companions who remained alive and standing followed suit. They all crowded together around the beefy man, who now faced Reuben with a superior smirk on his face.
Reuben's eyes narrowed. Never had anyone dared to smirk at him in that manner and lived to see another day. Yet he had to admit, with a shudder, that the man had good reason to feel superior.
His hand held a knife.
And the knife lay at Ayla's throat.
Ayla's sapphire eyes were wide and round as coins and stared at Reuben with an unfathomable expression. Sadness? Courage? Fear? It might have been all of those, or none. Whatever she was feeling, it did not really matter. Reuben forced himself to take his gaze off her eyes and to direct it where it belonged: to the hairy hand which held the knife.
“Well, well,” the man sneered. “Not so quick with your sword now, are you?”
Reuben didn't answer. Having assured himself that Ayla's neck was completely unharmed at the moment, his eyes moved from the man's hand to his eyes. The hand would deliver the blow, but in the man's eyes Reuben would see the action before it began. They were dilated with fear. For all his bravado, this was a man in fear for his life.
As well he should be.
Right at this moment, it would only serve to make him more dangerous, though. More unpredictable.
“Let go of your sword,” the thick-set mercenary snarled.
“No, Reuben, don't!” Ayla's voice was breathless and hardly audible. “Don't! Go! Just go and…”
“Keep your mouth shut, you fly-bitten harlot!” the mercenary growled and tugged on her hair so hard she let out a little whimper. Reuben had to call on all of his powers of self-restraint to remain immobile. In his head, he distracted himself with a list of things he planned to do with the beefy man once he got him away from Ayla. It was not a pretty list, but a rather long one.
“Drop your sword!” the man repeated. “Or do I have to cut her?”
Reuben's fingers loosened. There was a moment of indecision—then his sword fell to the floor with a loud clatter.
“The dagger, too!”
Reuben hadn't even noticed that, during the fight, he had drawn his dagger as well. The blade was bloody, so it must have been of some use. It, too, dropped to the ground. It was of no matter. The man could make him drop his sword and dagger—but he could not make him drop his fists. More than that Reuben would not need once he got within range.
“Let her go, and I promise you safe conduct out of the castle,” he lied, his voice as cold and hard as flint.
“Ha, yes! Safe conduct out of the castle so that Sir Luca can chop our heads off when we get back, hm?” The beefy man spat on the floor. “No dice!”
“What then?”
“I'll tell you what then! We're going to take your precious lass here out of the castle and straight to our master.”
“No!” The word that came out of Ayla's throat was a half-growl, half-whimper.
“Didn't I tell you to shut your mouth?”
Again, the thick-set man tugged on Ayla's hair. She didn't let that deter her, though.
“Reuben, please,” she whispered. “I'd rather die! Please! I'd rather die than fall into the hands of these…” She couldn't finish the sentence but, rather, ended in a strangled moan.
Her captor laughed harshly. “Ha, what do you think we'll do, harlot? Torture you? Burn you at the stake? No, we're bringing you to your rightful husband, the Margrave von Falkenstein! Once he's given you a good pounding and plowing, you'll soon change your mind. You'll be thanking us on bended knee, wench! Just you wait.”
Reuben made a few additions to his list. What very interesting additions they were…
“Please, Reuben,” Ayla implored him again. “I'd rather die.”
Her words were weighted with significance that, for the first time, seemed to penetrate the thick skull of the man who was holding her. He tensed, looked sharply from her to Reuben, then relaxed again as the latter didn't move. He smirked.
“Counting on your friend here to attack and make me cut your throat, are you?” he laughed. “Well, harlot, you might be ready to die, but from the looks of him, pretty boy here doesn't want that.” He smirked again, directing his insolent gaze at Reuben. “Am I right?”
“Yes,” Reuben said darkly. “You are.”
“Well, then,” the beefy man growled, “we'll just leave now.”
“Leave the castle?” Reuben asked. “How do you intend to get through the gates?”
“Oh, I think the guards will be nice enough to open up when they see the important parcel I'm carrying.”
Reuben heard the loud sound of boots on stone behind him and turned his head for a moment to see five guards, one of them with a nosebleed, running down the corridor. They stopped dead when they saw their mistress in the clutches of the mercenary. Their eyes slid from Reuben, to the mercenary, and back to Reuben. Slowly, it sank in that he was not the danger here.
Since they were no threat to him, Reuben cut them out of his awareness and concentrated fully on the man holding Ayla.
“Make no mistake,” the Red Robber Knight said in a growl as deep and deadly as a lion's, giving his enemy a death stare. “If you take her with you, or if you harm even one hair on her head, I will find you and kill you in a manner more painful than anything you can imagine.”
The mercenary laughed. “I can imagine quite a bit.”
Reuben's gaze didn't waver. “Not that much, I promise you.”
“Bah!” The man spat on the floor again. “You, kill me, pretty boy? You're going to do nothing of the sort. Want to know why? Because you're going to stay right here while I deliver this little lass,” he tugged on Ayla's hair again, “to her rightful master. Ludwig!”
One of the other mercenaries snapped to attention. “Yes?”
“Get his blades!”
The mercenary hesitated, throwing an anxious glance at Reuben, who wasn't standing too far away from his sword and dagger on the floor.
“No, he won't move, will he?” laughed the beefy man. “Not while I've got her. Now get to it!”
“Yes, Sir!”
Ludwig hurried forward, snatched up both weapons, and brought them back to his captain, who grunted in approval.
“Now,” he snarled, “we are going to leave. And you are going to stay right here. My men will be on the lookout for anybody following us, and if they even see so much as your little finger, she'll lose hers!” He nodded suggestively at Ayla. “Do we understand each other?”
“Yes,” Reuben said. “Don't worry. None of us will follow you through the corridor.”
“Good.” The man laughed a dirty laugh, and his companions seemed to be gathering confidence, too, now that their escape seemed more and more certain. “I knew you were nothing but a wimp, pretty boy! Come on, wench!” With another tug on Ayla's hair, he pulled her down the corridor. “It's time for you to meet your new master.”
Reuben's wrath burned as hot as the fires of hell. He had to use every last ounce of self-control he possessed to keep himself rooted on the spot. Slowly, his enemies retreated with their prize, farther and farther away from him. The last thing he saw before they turned the corner was the desperation glittering in Ayla's sapphire eyes—glittering among her tears.
By all the devils in the pit, no…
The footsteps of the mercenaries receded down the corridor. Then a door closed. For a few terrible seconds, there was no sound but the heavy breathing of Reuben and the castle guards.
“What fould we do, Fir?” one of the guards asked. From the way he spoke, Reuben assumed without looking that it was the one with the nosebleed. A small part of his mind found it amusing that the man would defer to him, considering he had just bashed his face in. Yet most of his mind was too busy adding various vile things to his mental list to have time for any other thoughts.
“You?” he said. “Nothing.”
“But Lady Ayla…”
“I didn't say that nothing should be done,” Reuben cut him off. “I only said that you should do nothing.” And with that, he started running down the corridor, gathering speed as he went. Shortly before he had reached the corner, he bent his legs—and jumped.
*~*~**~*~*
He sailed through the air for a few long seconds, and then his fingers caught onto one of the roof beams, and the weight of his own body and the twenty pounds of his chain mail slammed down on him. Had he been a normal man, this might have felt as if somebody was trying to rip his arms off.
But Reuben was not a normal man, and he had already lived through somebody trying to rip his arms off more than once. He felt nothing. The momentum of his flight carried him up, up, high up into the rafters, where he grasped another beam and pulled himself onto it as though he were wearing merely a linen tunic and not heavy armor.
He looked up, ignoring the cries of surprise from the soldiers underneath him, and grinned malevolently. He had found what he had been looking for. Directly in front of him were the tiles of the roof of Luntberg Castle.
He pulled back his arm, clenched his fist—and then loosed it in a shattering blow! With a deafening crunch the roof tiles exploded outward into the night. Testing, Reuben moved his fingers. They all seemed still to be working correctly, so his armored glove had protected his hand, and the crunch had probably not originated from his own bones. He didn't waste any more time, but loosed a few more blows to widen the hole in the roof, and then pulled himself through.
A shower of cold wetness greeted him. It had begun to rain, and the roof was slippery and shiny blue in the moonlight.
Even through the patter of the rain, his finely tuned hearing could make out the voices of the mercenaries somewhere up ahead.
“What was that?”
“What?”
“That noise? Sounded like bones being broken.”
“Do you want me to break your nose so you know what that really sounds like? Come on, and stop wasting our time! We have to get out of here!”
A raptor's smile appeared on Reuben's face.
Too late for that, my friend. The hunt is up.
With the stealth of a stalking wolf, Reuben ran over the roof, downwards towards the edge. Peering over to the next level of roof below, he could see that it was far enough to break his neck, so he decided—after a few moments of consideration—not to jump. Instead, he swung himself over the edge and, while holding onto the roof with one hand, grabbed a rough, protruding stone in the wall with the other. He moved his feet until he found a foothold—then let go.
As quickly as he could, he scaled the wall of Luntberg castle. Normally, it would have been easy, the rough stone providing many foot and handholds. But with the rain making even rough stone as slippery as an eel's privates, and the movements of his hands inhibited by thick, armored gloves, he had to be careful not to make a mistake and fall. And he couldn't fall. He couldn't die yet. Not while Ayla was in the captivity of these monsters. And certainly not while he hadn't yet beaten that beefy bastard into a bloody pulp!
Inch for inch, he proceeded down the wall. It was tiring work. Although he could feel no ache in his muscles, naturally, he could feel a dull tiredness creeping into them, slowing his movements and making his fingers stiff. Satan's hairy ass, this was no work for a knight! He should be cutting people to ribbons, not climbing some infernal wall! Yet he had to get down. He had to!
He climbed and climbed, and all the while, he could hear the voices of the mercenaries beneath him, approaching, arguing. They were still inside the castle. He had to get down before they got out, otherwise…
And then it happened.
A piece of old stone broke away under the weight of his descending boot, and his hands grasped at the air in a vain attempt to grab again the hold he had just let go of. A strange feeling of mixed freedom and dread engulfed him as he fell, and his limbs flailed uselessly through the air.
And in the brief seconds before he hit the roof, only one thought pervaded his mind: He wasn't far enough down yet. Not far enough to not break every bone in his body when he smashed onto the roof!
Air rushed past him at deadly speed.
Oh, Ayla, he thought, and closed his eyes. I'm sorry. I couldn't even get to the first item on the list.