Stand and Be Eaten

Chapter 2

When she had been gifted with the precious favour of perspective which the passage of time allows, Lady Annabelle would reflect that the moment the carriage door was wrenched open, and when she took her first trembling, hesitating steps outside was a sort of reincarnation. She left behind the hushed, furtive, limited world she had known for the entirety of her life.

In the moment, however, she was at first afflicted with a serious attack of irritation that the brute that had so roughly opened the door had the absolute gall to look amused. Annabelle checked herself as one might a headstrong horse, and instead lifted her chin as high as one might while sprawled on the floor of said carriage; she mightily ignored the fact that Harriet was still somewhat entangled with her own person, to say nothing of the fact that her panniers had been knocked askew and were conspiring to shield her from view.

The highwayman, for there was little doubt that was what the interloper was, hesitated for only a moment, and offered a hand to Lady Annabelle, who sniffed and tossed her head proudly. "Thank you no, sir," she said with as much disdain as she could muster. Hidden from sight, she could feel Harriet grasp her wrist, no doubt in an effort to communicate that it really was very unwise for Annabelle to antagonise their captors.

Despite the sunny spring day, the highwayman wore a rather large dark grey buckskin coat, complete with shoulder capelet, which rose and fell as he sighed. "It's all sixes and sevens out here miss," he said in a surprisingly light tenor. "The carriage is all a-tilt, and it's a bit of a drop to the ground."

Annabelle considered for a moment, her eyes sweeping over the highwayman again. She nodded once, which sent her hat sliding directly into her eyes, having slipped loose of the hat pins, which the highwayman gallantly ignored but for another amused crinkling of those green-gold eyes. Delicately, Annabelle placed her hand on the back of his, noting the supple leather of his gloves. With a sort of scooting motion, and with the help of a rather indelicately placed hand from Harriet, she was able to hoist herself out of the carriage with some shred of dignity still intact.

The moment her feet touched the packed dirt of the road, her ears were immediately flooded with a cacophony that she could not order. The sun blinded her, and she had to blink mightily a few times until her eyes adjusted. When they did, she wished very much that they had not, and longed for the muffled and dark interior of her carriage.

The first thing she was aware of was that two men had seized one of the proud grey horses by the bridle, while a third worked to loosen straps and buckles to loose it from the traces. This was a precarious endeavour, for the horse was in a full-on panic, and was attempting to rear as much as it possibly could at irregular intervals. It took Annabelle several moments to understand that there was, indeed, only one horse; she scanned the road and the edges of the small patch of forest they had been passing through for the other.

She was momentarily distracted by a squeak from Harriet, who was being bodily lifted down from the carriage that was tilted crazily. That was when her gaze fell on the prone form of the other horse, the poor dumb creature being partially under the carriage and quite dead–a neat hole in its head accounted for one of the gunshots she had heard earlier. The unnatural stillness of a creature built to be in perpetual motion was unnerving and mildly disorienting to Annabelle.

This was only the most mild of the horrors that awaited her on the road, for there was still a low, pitiful sort of groaning that pervaded the whole scene. Dimly, she was aware that the highwayman that had helped her down had taken her more firmly by the hand and was attempting to draw her away, but Annabelle resisted, stubborn in the face of her incomprehension.

"Come away miss, there's nothing pleasant about it," he said again in that light voice.

"I shall not be ordered about by–" she began hotly, but bit her words off sharply when she finally located the source of the groaning.