The Baron
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And waited, and waited, until I heard a panting voice shout, "Good boy!"
The dog should have killed me by now. I was literally in its jaws. Why was I still alive?
Footsteps approached, those of the four men and the remaining dogs. They'd only let one off of the leash, then. And it had gotten me. I never stood a chance.
"Give me the rope, Albert."
Rope? I dared not to move with those teeth pressed into me, but I spoke, half-muffled by the grass. "What...what are you doing?"
Big hands shoved my ankles together tight, then wrapped them up, tying them together securely. A moment later, my hands were shoved up my back and tied together the same way.
"Off, Brute. Good dog."
I sucked in a breath. The beast lumbered off of me and I felt cool air on my neck as the jaws disappeared. Then I was rolled over so that I stared up at the starry sky and the men who had caught me. My eyes flared with recognition.
"You," I said.
"And you," the man said to me.
His name was Lundgren, keeper of Baron Eaves' estate, and de facto head of security. He was tall and thick, not more than a silhouette in the darkness, but I remembered him from the last time I had come here. The man who had stopped me before. Not catching me, not then, but getting damned close. And now he had me in ropes at his feet.
Humiliating.
Lundgren knelt down, looking closely at me. I saw the heavy lines in his face and the cold eyes set into them. "Baron Eaves was very angry at me when you got away, you know. Furious. You didn't manage to steal anything, but you violated his sanctity, and that's unforgivable." He stood up again. "You're probably wondering why you're not in Brute's belly right now."
I said nothing.
Lundgren chuckled. "Trust me, I would have fed you to him in a heartbeat if it was my choice. But the Baron wants you alive, miss thief. It's very important to him for some reason." He shrugged, then waved his hand at his men. "Get her up. Let's go."
One of his men picked me up, holding my restrained form in his arms like a cord of wood. "Spit on me and I'll carry you upside-down all the way back to the castle," he muttered.
He didn't need to worry about that. I still needed to talk to Lundgren. "You're taking me to the Baron?" I turned my head to get a look at him.
"Where else?" Lundgren responded, sounding a little bored. He must have really wanted to kill me. How sad for him.
"Why?" We were moving now, marching back to the castle, men and dogs all in tow.
"Orders," Lundgren said. "That's all you need to know. Maybe," he continued, sounding a little brighter, "the Baron will have me torture you to find out where the rest of your little band of thugs is hiding out. That would make this night a whole lot better, eh, boys?"
They made sounds of approval, and I gritted my teeth. Every now and then, one of the dogs would growl at me, and one of them kept turning his head to look at me. I bet that one was Brute.
"You know why I was able to get you this time?" Lundgren called back to me.
"Please enlighten me," I muttered.
Whether he heard me or not, he said, "Because you're a fool. The last time you came here, you left your scent all over this castle. I know this place inside and out, and no one has ever broken in before. I knew that if it was going to happen again, it would be you. So I got Brute, here." He waved his hand at the biggest hound, the one who kept eyeing me. "Best bloodhound in the territory. He had your scent right away, and as soon as you made the mistake of coming back, you were as good as caught."
I didn't say anything while Lundgren's laugh boomed through the air. Of course I made a mistake. I acted too fast to think it through, but I was too proud to do anything but act. Now I was hog-tied and heading to heaven-knew-what fate.
"You didn't catch me," I said, making sure Lundgren heard this time. "Your brainless mutt did a better job at pinning me down than you ever could."
Lundgren didn't have anything to say to that, but I still took little solace in the fact that I had managed to miff him. It didn't make me any less captured. Any less doomed.
I must have run farther than I thought, because it was a few more minutes before we entered the great stone gate into the estate. The shadow of the archway passed over me, blocking out the moon for a moment, and my sense of resignation grew. There was no way out of this one. I was at the mercy of these men and their baron. They were talking to each other now, no doubt hooting and hollering about what a good job they had done capturing me, but their words were like wind whistling in my ears. Ignorable.
One of the men left us to take the dogs to the kennel, and the other opened the door to the castle, allowing Lundgren and the one carrying me to pass through and into the walls of Baron Eaves.
"Are any more of your friends coming to pay a visit here tonight?" Lundgren asked, his loud voice echoing in the enclosed space.
"There are people trying to sleep, you know," I said. "They must hate it when you're on night duty."
"Maybe so," Lundgren said, "but I'm sure they don't hate it as much as you do. Now answer me—are there more of you?"
"Come on, Lundgren," I teased. "You know a thief works best alone. I'm surprised you need to ask."
He grunted. "The next one that shows up will be fed to the dogs."
We walked for a little while longer in muted and flickering torchlight, Lundgren glancing back every so often, probably to make sure I wasn't trying to escape. I was amused that he gave me that much credit. I was tied up with rope, on top of being held by the two very muscular pythons that his lackey had for arms. I wasn't going anywhere.
"In here," Lundgren finally said, stopping in front of the tall, arching entryway of a room on the left side of the castle. He stepped inside and we followed him in. Not that I had much choice.
The room was big, long, and lit by moonlight. Set into the wall were many immense windows, each one ten feet tall. The row of windows stretched down the length of the room, almost a hundred feet. I could see a fireplace on the far wall to the right. The ceiling was high above our heads, probably twenty feet up, though it was hard to be sure when I was hanging in someone's arms like this. The floor was covered in a deep red carpet with ornate gold-and-black designs set into its edges and center.
It was all very lovely, and I would have appreciated it a lot more if I wasn't sure that I was going to die here.
"Put her down," Lundgren instructed, walking up to a bright part of the carpet where moonlight from a window spilled in. I was walked up to where he pointed and dropped, not gently, onto the carpet. I managed to keep my breath in me, but the back of my head smarted where it had struck the ground.
"Go and tell the Baron we've made our capture," Lundgren told his subordinate after he had dumped me onto the ground. "I'll keep watch over her."
The reticent guard nodded and left the room, closing the door behind him.
"The Baron's not far," Lundgren said to me once we were alone. "And he's awake. He's been waiting for you. He seemed to know that you would come back."
"I doubt the Baron knows anything about me," I said, looking straight up at the ceiling and shifting so that my own restrained hands didn't dig too harshly into my back.
"The Baron knows many things you wouldn't expect. Even I didn't think you would be foolish enough to come back here, but I suppose I gave you too much credit. I just hope I get to see what exactly it is that he wants with you.
"And that I can have you when he's done."
I didn't need to look up to know that he had a grin on his face that glowed in the moonlight. Disgusting.
"He's coming," Lundgren said, a few moments later.
"You just heard that now?" I said. "I heard those footsteps approaching a full minute ago."
"I hope you're this curt with the Baron," Lundgren sneered. "He's not going to hesitate with putting you in your place."
I smiled. "Better than being a lap dog who's afraid to disobey his master."
Whatever ill-thought retort Lundgren was about to let loose was cut off by the entrance of Baron Eaves.
The people who believed in such things would have said the man was vampiric in his appearance. It was subtle; he had no red-collared cape, but his skin was pale, his hair was dark, and he was very soft-spoken, dressed in a dark suit. He had an air of danger about him, like he was a thundercloud filled up and ready to split open and unleash a storm. He was tall, taller even than Lundgren, but much narrower. His eyes were black and impossible to read. They looked over me with what might have been mild interest, absolute disgust, or complete ambivalence.
That was what scared me the most, those eyes. Not knowing what a man was thinking made him very dangerous. Put that man in a position like this, make him wealthy, and be tied up at his feet...my heart was trying to race harder than it had been even when I was fleeing from his men in the field.
"Leave me with the thief." The Baron spoke without looking at his man, instead looking out the window, towards the moon.
Lundgren, to his credit, didn't open his normally-flapping jaw and left the room in silence. When the door closed, it was just me and Baron Eaves.
I looked up at this man and wondered what he could possibly want to do with me.