It took Blasius a full half hour to work the gag out of his mouth. When the wet cloth finally landed on the floor, Gregor gave a philosophical sigh.
Oh, well, he thought, the world can't stay perfect forever.
"How dare she! I am a knight of the Empire! How dare that little strumpet gag me like some common criminal?"
"Appalling, isn't it?" Gregor raised an eyebrow. "Considering you were so polite to her."
"Exactly! I don't know what the aristocracy is coming to these days." Shuffling to the side, Blasius tried to reach the metal ring in the wall to which his chains were still attached. But the ring was set too high. The knight uttered a curse.
"Forget it," Gregor advised him. "I watched this Sir Reuben when he re-fastened our chains. He knows how to bind you securely, believe me. We won't get out of here as simply as that."
"Blood and Pestilence, you're probably right! Oh, how I wish I could get my hands on that fiend! I would teach him a lesson he would never forget."
"I'm sure you would," Gregor said, diplomatically.
"So we're stuck here for now, are we?"
"That is how it appears."
"Blood and bloody, stinking pestilence! I cannot wait until I get a sword in my hands again. Well, until then, at least we have one consolation, Gregor."
"Oh yes?" Interested, Gregor turned to Blasius. "And what is that?"
"Didn't you notice how antagonistic those two were?" Blasius said with savage delight, nodding towards the closed dungeon door through which Lady Ayla and her knight had disappeared. "You might not have noticed, but they practically bit each other's heads off in front of us! To a dedicated student of the human mind, such as myself, it is obvious that for some reason, they hate each other even more than they hate us."
"Um... do you really think so?"
"Of course! Trust, me, Gregor, soon enough, one of them will crack and attack the other."
*~*~**~*~*
The dungeon door had hardly shut behind them, when Reuben grabbed Ayla's arms, lifted her up and shoved her back into a niche in the gloomy stone corridor. A torch burned inside the niche, just above Ayla's head. She could feel its heat from behind—but not nearly as much as she could feel Reuben's heat from the front.
"You!" he growled, sliding his hands up her body, over her neck and onto her face, gripping her tightly. "Do you have any idea what kind of strategic advantage you ruined by coming in there? Do you have any idea what you might have had to see if I had already started? You fool! Don't ever do that again!"
Ayla narrowed her eyes. "Funny. I was just about to say the same to you. Don't try to torture people under my protection, Reuben! Villagers, priests, prisoners—I don't care! Just don't!"
"You're maddening!"
She smiled. She couldn't help it. "Yes, I love you too. But sometimes I could murder you."
"No you couldn't! Not without extensive training in sword fighting, anyway."
"I could poison you," she suggested with a spark in her eye.
"I survived your fennel soup. What poison could be worse than that?"
"That was a medicine!"
"Exactly."
"Reuben, please! Be serious for a minute!"
"Do I have to?"
"Please!" She looked up at him pleadingly, putting all the force of her love into her gaze. He resisted her gaze for a moment—then his grip relaxed and his hand travelled gently down her cheek.
"What is it? What's bothering you, Milady?"
"Well... first and foremost there's your desire to torture everyone you can lay your hands on."
His hand traveled further down, until it rested suggestively on her collarbone. "Is that such a bad thing?" he asked, his voice dark and dangerous. Ayla felt a shiver run down her spine.
"P-please, Reuben." Bending forward, she leaned her head against his armored chest, ignoring the cold of the metal, seeking the warmth she knew lay beyond. "Please, be serious. Why do you want to torture everyone?"
Slowly, the desire drained out of his eyes, to be replaced with something different, more ardent, and altogether more difficult to handle: he looked at her with love. Implacable, unshakable, violent love.
"I don't plan to torture everyone," he said, simply. "Just your enemies."
"Could you try to not do it? For me, please?" She looked up at him again, begging him with her eyes. Why was he so adamant about this? Sometimes, she felt there was something dark and alien in his soul, and she wanted to shrink back from him—but then he looked at her with so much love, and she knew she never could, never would.
He took a deep breath.
"Ayla," he said, slowly, as if putting weight on each word, "you can exchange polite conversation with those men in there all you want, you can treat them well, give them, food, clothes, act the civilized host and good Christian—but at the end of the day, if they get a chance, they will kill you. That is what being enemies comes down to in the end. You kill each other, whenever and wherever you can." His eyes turned hard. "I won't ever allow you to be harmed. Whomsoever declares himself your enemy I will hunt them down, capture, torture and kill them, and nothing you or anybody else has to say on the subject will change my mind."
Ayla didn't know what to say. Reuben held her gaze for a few seconds to let the cold, hard truth of his words sink in—then he plunged forward, pushing her lips apart with his and starting to rob her mouth of everything it had to give.
"I-I'm not going to let you!" she managed to gasp around his lips. "I'll stop you, somehow!"
"At the moment," he growled, detaching their lips for just a second to show her the diabolical smile she loved so much, "I don't give a devil's ass about whether they live or die. I just want to get you into a room with a bolt on the door, so we can be alone for a few hours. Or days."
"R-Reuben... stop...!"
"Why? I'm not even talking about killing people."
"This is even worse." Oh, the delicious force of his mouth on hers... How could she resist? But she had to. She had to!
"This is worse than killing people?" His lips grew more insistent, silencing her protest. "Really?"
Oh yes, it was worse. Far worse. His suggestions of murder and torture she could easily withstand—but the touch of his lips was seducing her, tempting her to give in and surrender to sweet sin.
"Just a few hours, Ayla, no more. I want you. Not just this," he growled, pressing kisses on her cheeks, her throat, her collarbone, "but all of you."
It wasn't the first time he had told her this—nor the second, nor the third. Ever since that day he had first kissed her in the orchard, he had again and again suggested things to her that made shiver with the promise of delicious sin. But still, it hit Ayla every time like a battering ram. The hellish depth of what he was suggesting was simply...
She didn't even know a word so dark and devilish! Being intimate with a man? Before marriage? It was simply unthinkable! And the worst thing was: Every time his lips touched her, she came a little step closer to saying yes.
What are you doing? she demanded of herself, desperately. You were raised to be a virtuous maiden, not a...a... well, whatever it is you become when you're no longer a maiden.
Never in her life before she met Reuben had she even considered the possibility of giving up her virginity—let alone doing it before marriage. It was against all the laws of the Church and Christianity. It was totally impossible.
And as for Marriage... Reuben had never once suggested he wanted to ask for her hand. He was very interested in the rest of her body, but her hand? No, thanks. And while a part of Ayla yearned to give in, to experience him, explore him, a persistent little voice in the back of her mind kept asking: Why hasn't he asked you? If he loves you, why hasn't he asked you to be his forever? Could he be that he just wants your body, and not your heart?
She fought that thought whenever it came to her. Yet it always came back, and whenever it did, it made a chill rise inside her.
As it did at that very moment.
"Reuben... stop, please!"
"Hmm... are you sure?"
Another kiss, and another. Oh, just one more... why not give in?
"Yes! Reuben, let go!"
He must have heard the changed tone in her voice, because he really let go this time and stepped back, looking down at her in concern. "Is something wrong?"
Ayla stared up at his ruggedly handsome face, at those burning grey eyes and the scimitar scar she knew so well.
Is he really that clueless, she thought, or is he just a great actor?
"I... I'm just not in the mood," she muttered. "That's all."
Reuben looked puzzled, as if he couldn't fathom how anyone couldn't be in the mood for what he had in mind right now, but then he shrugged and stepped back, flashing her another devilish grin.
"Well, we still have a few days—and nights—before there will be another battle. Plenty of time to touch sun and moon together."
Ayla had no idea what "to touch sun and moon together" meant—but it just needed one look at that sinful smile of his to make the meaning absolutely clear. She shivered.
"And now," Reuben said, business-like, straightening and stepping farther back so she could get past him out of the alcove, "We should be getting on with things. I'm sure you have a lot of things to keep you busy, Milady, and so have I. A castle doesn't defend itself."
He waited for her to step past. She didn't move a muscle.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked.
She looked at him, suspiciously. "No. The question is, Reuben, what are you waiting for?"
"Well.... I might have one or two things still to do down here."
Ayla's suspicion immediately turned into certainty.
"You mean you want to go back in there," she said, pointing a trembling finger at the dungeon door, "to continue to torture those poor knights?"
"I haven't even laid a finger on them," Reuben protested, an injured expression on his face. Then he seemed to think of something, and added: "Not yet, anyway."
"So you're still planning to? After all I said to you?"
"I told you." His voice was hard. "I have no mercy for your enemies."
"How can you? You're as cruel as the devil himself!"
Reuben's lips twitched. "Thank you for the compliment."
Deep inside, Ayla wondered whether there was anything you could insult Reuben with. Maybe if you told him he was as sweet as an angel? He really had his world-view upside down.
"You can't," she reapeated, trying to make her voice as soft and compelling as she possibly could. "You can't torture those knights. I admit, one of them was a bit unpleasant—"
"You mean he was a completely stinking codpiece."
"Well, I wouldn't put it in terms as strong as that, but yes. Still, the other one was really nice and friendly, wasn't he?"
"Was he, now?" Reuben demanded, a dangerous glint entering his fiery gray eyes. "Maybe I should cut that one into pieces first. If he's so nice and friendly, he deserves special treatment."
"No! You won't go in there again! I won't allow it!"
"Oh, I will," he growled. "But one thing is for certain: you won't! I won't let you near this dungeon ever again, not as long as that fellow is in there!"
"W-what?" Ayla gasped. "What fellow?"
"Do you think I didn't notice how you fawned over that Sir Gregor in there?" Reuben's eyes were burning with gray fire now. "You examined him pretty closely just to see if his ribs were cracked, and you practically didn't say a word in there, except to him!"
Ayla's mouth dropped open. Could it be that Reuben was jealous?
But no! He couldn't be. Not Reuben!
The flames burning in his eyes said otherwhise.
"I didn't talk to him because I feel something for him! I talked to him because he was the only man in there with whom one could have a civilized conversation."
"I was there."
"I know. That's my point."
Before Ayla could slip away, Reuben had swooped down on her again and was kissing her with so much force her knees started to buckle. When he came up for air, she was near to passing out.
"You had better be careful, Milady." His face was just a few inches from hers, his eyes burning like smoke from the very bottom of Pandemonium. "What I take for my own I don't give away again."
"Y-you're jealous of Sir Gregor?" she demanded between kisses, hardly able to believe her own words.
"No," he told her, his voice smooth and deadly. "You can only be jealous of someone who has what you don't have. And it is not Sir Gregor who has you, Milady, it is me. You are mine. And I warn you, Milady: I am a robber knight. Whoever threatens what is mine I shall kill without compunction. Do we understand each other?"
For once she could find no words to launch at him in retaliation. The force of his gaze bored itself into her very soul, silencing her. She just nodded.
"Good." His next kiss was gentle, sweet, and oh so seductive. "Don't you worry, Milady. I will take care of everything. Soon, all your enemies will be dead in a ditch, your lands will be free, and as for you... Well, you won't ever be free again."
And then he pushed her back against the wall and bound her with chains—but she did not mind, for they were the chains of his arms and his heart, in which she would willingly stay bound forever.
*~*~**~*~*
It took Ayla some time to return from her trip to the dungeon. When she and Reuben finally emerged, it was side by side: the only way they had been able to agree on in order to ensure that neither of them snuck back in secret.
The first thing Ayla did after they separated in the castle courtyard was to march to the nearest soldier and send him down to guard the entrance to the dungeons—just in case Reuben would get bored and be in the mood for some torturing and killing of helpless prisoners. She wasn't sure, though, how much good it would do to have one, or even a dozen guards down there: all of her soldiers were more terrified of Reuben than of all the four riders of the apocalypse combined.
Sending up a fervent prayer to God that her prisoners would still be in one piece when she returned, she made her way around the keep, to the inner castle courtyard—and stopped in her tracks. The courtyard was packed with people, some in every day clothes, but most still in blood-stained armor, their weapons in hand. The minute they caught sight of her, they broke out in a storm of cheers, throwing their hats into the air and stomping their feet on the ground.
"Lady Ayla! Long live Lady Ayla!"
"Three cheers for the Lady of Luntberg!"
As if I had anything to do with today's victory, she thought, sadly. But then again, the one who had been responsible was a six foot seven inches monstrosity of muscle of steel, with a glower that could send you running all the way to Venice—not really a sight that encouraged cheering. And her people should have somebody to cheer, if only to lift their spirits.
The crowd rushed forward to meet her, and she extended her hands, exchanging a warm pressure of the hand here, hugging a child there, telling them how brave they were and how proud she was of them. It was true, and they deserved to hear it. Those whose relatives were still wounded she gave what hope she could, and those who had lost a loved one she promised to light a candle in the chapel.
"Thank you! Thank you, Lady Ayla!"
"God bless you, Milady."
The tears of gratitude in their eyes made Ayla blush. Did they think her prayers had any special influence in heaven? To judge from the way one old woman kissed her hand, yes, they probably did.
The play of emotions unfolding among the crowd was multi-faceted and heartrending to witness. Some people laughed with relief at the victory, others cried, others again just smiled quietly, or were too sobered by loss to show any emotion. But one thing came again and again: people never ceased to ask: "What now, Lady Ayla?"
And she gave the only answer she could: "Everything will be all right. I will look after you."
Amazingly, they seemed to believe her.
--------------------------------------------------------------
Greetings, Milords and Ladies!
The editing of book 2 of this series is progressing! With the help of my fantastic volunteer editors, I might soon be able to present you with a published version! :)
Looking forward to it?
Farewell for now,
Sir Rob