The Nightingale

Chapter Two

Natasha took a step towards the man, favoring her injured ankle, looking up at him as the fire behind his back cast ragged shadows across his face, making it harder to search for answers. His expression was emotionless as he looked down at her, and she couldn't tell if he could be convinced to help her.

She didn't have to chance to try to make her case, though. The Guards had caught up to them, only a few yards away, and as they approached they began to spread out along the beach from surf to brush, beginning to encircle them. Natasha looked back at them as one man stepped forward from the rest, and she knew without seeing his face or hearing her voice who it was that stepped away from the rest.

"The girl belongs to us." She had anticipated hearing it again this time, but voice still sent chills up her spine. "Give her to us, and we will leave you be." Natasha tore her eyes away from her father's and looked around at the men and women following him, wondering what faces lay behind the masks of friends and family that she had once known, as all of their hands began to reach underneath their cloaks for what Natasha could only assume were weapons.

"He's going to kill me," Natasha said quietly, and then turned to look up at the man who had come to stand just behind her shoulder. "He's my father, that man, and if you let him take me back to my village, he's going to kill me. Please, you have to help me." Around her, Natasha heard a rise of murmurs from the men around her, a mix of men grumbling about giving her away and not bothering with a fight while some men began pulling their swords from their sides. Some of them seemed ready to fight, but Natasha could also see in their hesitation to move that they wouldn't act without being given the order.

"Quiet!" The man by her shoulder hushed his men with one word, and for a moment, all Natasha heard was the sound of the waves washing up onto the shore. When she looked from the captain back to her father and his crowd, she noticed that they had all drawn long swords from underneath their clock. Around her, she heard the sound of metal unsheathing as the men standing around her withdrew their own swords in defense.

When Natasha felt a hand on her arm, she jumped. The captain had taken a hold of her arm, and Natasha limped after him in surprise as he pulled her backwards, away from the Guards. He motioned to another man in the crowd, older with long, midnight-black hair. Without a word the second man neared them.

"Take her on board, Castille." Natasha looked between the captain and the older man, Castille, as his thin fingers now wrapped around her other arm.

"Wait, what", The captain released her as Castille began to pull her further away from both groups of men and women, towards the water's edge. She barely had time to react before he pushed her unceremoniously, into a rowboat, half pulled into the sand, before he shoved the boat into the water, knocking Natasha off balance, and hopped in after her. Speechless, Natasha stared at Castille for a moment until she heard the sound of metal clashing behind her, and she turned around in her seat to watch the two masses collide as some of the Guards advanced towards the water after her and the others fought off the group of strange men.

She watched as the men and women in Guards masks fell rapidly. Although they seemed to be fairly skilled with their swords, the captain and his men seemed better. They moved easier in the sand, working their way through the mass of black cloaks, felling bodies one by one. Natasha had never seen such carnage, and the violence made her stomach churn and yet she couldn't look away. She thought of everybody from her village who had disappeared over the last twenty-two years, the men and women who disappeared into the dark and never returned home, and knew that those friends and families were behind the masks, dying. Her father was behind a mask, and she had lost track of him in the chaos. Everybody looked the same.