Alkyone -- 2d
Piss was running down his leg and into his shoe. He could barely breathe, and he struggled against his bonds, desperate to be free. They can’t do this to me! “Orderly!” he called out, his voice cracking, “Get these bastards off of me!”
“Lie still, ya silly bugger, or yer gonna fall on yer head.” The voice was female, and there was a trace of laughter in the words.
“Can’t … breathe…” he huffed out.
He was hanging over something; it moved underneath him, a play of muscle under skin. It smelled … he was bound … something like a burlap bag over his head …
“Aww … ‘Nando, he pissed himself!” She tched in annoyance. “I’m not cleanin’ that up!”
“We’ll be at the ford soon. You can dunk him then.”
“Hmph.”
Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.
He could feel cloth against his backside that draped his lower body, but nothing encasing his legs. Some kind of robe? He slid his wrists back and forth against the rope that was binding them. “I’m on a horse.”
“Somewhat.”
“Who are you?” Who am I? How did I get here?
“Ya don’t recognize m’ voice? It’s Akilina.”
“Ah,” the horse jostled and his abdomen slapped down on its broad rump. His breath wheezed out in a painful rasp. “Get me off of this!” he gasped out. “I can’t breathe!”
“If ya couldn’t breathe, ya wouldn’t be shoutin’, hey?”
Recognize her voice? So, he knew her. And she knew him. He chewed his lip. “Please.”
“Hmph. Tha’s the first civil word you’ve said.” The horse plodded along. “I jus’ might consider.”
His position spoke of betrayal. But who had betrayed whom? “Thank you,” he said absently. She snorted, so he added. “This is quite the switch.”
“Not so high and mighty, now, are ya?”
So, he was high and mighty? That’d be a nice change of pace. Except that his circumstances seemed greatly reduced. Turned on its head, as it were. His mind played upon the memory of long, white halls, felt slippers and confining straps. Did they send him here? Were they the betrayers? Who …The image of a man in a short beard peered at him, who had the keys? He was mesmerized by the half remembered face. Was it his face? He laughed out loud, not caring what his captors thought, because he didn’t know. He didn’t remember what he looked like.
The horse began to trot. He grunted and tried to protect himself from the pounding by drawing himself on his elbows and knees. Akilina grabbed the back of his robe and, at the sound of hooves splashing, pushed him off.
He landed on his back and sank like a stone. The hood and water together were terrifying. He screamed and tore at it with his bound hands, inhaling a mouthful of water. The robe tripped him up; he kicked at it, floundering, reached up and pulled off the hood. Sunlight blinded him. He blinked, took a step forward and fell to his knees. Water lapped at his chin.
“Well, at least yer clean.”
***
He sat perched on the pack horse, hands bound, the reins looped over Akilina’s saddle horn. The wind shifted and he shivered in his wet robe. He lowered his head and looked out of the corner of his eyes, surreptitiously studying his captors.
There were four of them. Akilina was the only woman, but she looked to be the most dangerous. Her fair hair was braided close to her head and then swung down in a thick rope to the middle of her back. She wore a patch over one eye. Scar tissue swirled at her temple there, and the top of her ear was missing. She moved with a dancer’s grace and he knew that she could kill him in a number of ways quite effortlessly.
Hernando led the way, broad and thick muscled, with copper skin and hair so thick that it stuck up in short glossy spikes all over, blue-black in the sun. He had an easy laugh and wore his weapons with a casual ease that spoke of comfortable familiarity. But he was a bear to Akilina’s striking raptor. Still, perhaps even more deadly when provoked.
The other two were at his back, and both were not more than boys, all lanky legs and elbows. They had laughed when he’d splashed into the river, good-naturedly served him up bread with cheese when he struggled out, and manhandled him up onto his horse when Hernando had signaled that it was time to go.
He realized suddenly that Akilina was studying him in return. Lifting his head, he met her gaze. “I hope that you aren’t expecting to be paid a ransom.” He knew without a doubt that he was completely on his own. How could he expect to find help when he didn't even know what his own face looked like? He pushed the thought aside. Maybe it’d come back to him, who he was and what on God’s Green Earth was going on, but today was not a day for epiphanies. Today was a day for trying to not get killed by these people.
The memory of long white halls played at the corners of his mind and he pushed it away. That today was also a day to be pissing out psychoactive medications into his shoes and being splashed through time and space was acknowledged and set aside.
He was staring, and Akilina flashed a smile that made him shiver. He looked away, swallowed, and turned back, meeting her one fierce blue eye. “We didn’t go to all that trouble to get ya,” she grinned, “jus’ to hand ya back.”