Chapter 7
Caught in the Net
Near Greland-Ilyria Border
When the three of them went asking around about the nearest garrison town, they were presented with two choices: Caraway to the north and Burlington to the south. While heading south would take them closer to their final destination, it was six days by carriage to Burlington compared to just four days to get to Caraway. Dru's logic was that the sooner they got a military escort, the better. Besides the protection and expedited travel, there was also the matter of their lodgings and provisions en route, which would be paid for by the state once they were under escort. Given their limited funds, the choice was clear. Better to let the taxpayer foot the bill.
They were joined in the carriage by a merchant and a Grelish gentleman and his wife returning to their estate in Bunbury after a vacation in Elba's lake country. The gentleman initially refused to share the carriage with mere 'peasant children' as he called Toma and the others, but the wagonmaster was quite insistent that all paying customers were as good as kings in his eyes. Because the gentleman's wife didn't want to spend the night in Connington, he was left with little choice but to accept his new travel companions. If only he knew who he was dismissing as peasant children...
The gentleman decided to sulk the whole way, but his wife took a liking to Dru and chatted with her almost nonstop. Actually it was rather annoying, but the fact that it seemed to particularly annoy the gentleman made it more bearable.
"Oh, I simply cannot get over how young you two are, Madame Joli," the gentleman's wife said of Dru and Goldie. "And to be going so far from home for an apprenticeship. It really is something. Don't you think so, dear?"
Her husband ignored her, but she didn't let it slow her down.
"He can be so bashful at times," she told Dru. "I see your little gentlemen are the same way. Ah, men. Whatever are we to do with them? Without us, I don't think more than three words would be spoken in the whole of human history."
That wasn't sounding like much of a bad thing at this point.
"Oh, do let's talk more about the begonias in Marechal," the gentleman's wife said. "I couldn't believe that the Princess Blues are all gone."
"There was a blight fifteen years ago," Dru said. "Six different varieties were affected and nearly wiped out entirely. I hear some botanists were able to preserve the Princess Blues in Provence and should be reintroducing them to the area next year."
"Oh, that would be marvelous. Dear, we must go back when they've gotten a chance to take root."
Her husband continued to ignore her. Dru's cover story was that Goldie was a cobbler in training coming to Greland to study under the well-regarded Delanceys of Wexham. Dru herself was supposed to be an amateur florist, hence the subject frequently returning to flowers, which happened to be a passion of the gentleman's wife. Normally, when you make up a lie like this, you run the very high risk of being found out by someone who knows better, but Dru managed to keep up with a self-proclaimed flower enthusiast all this time without stumbling once.
"How do you know all this stuff?" Toma whispered to Dru.
"Girls like flowers," Dru replied, "and shoes."
Toma didn't know if his mother cared much about shoes, but she did like flowers. The only problem was that she had something of a black thumb and could never keep any flowers alive for long. He had been thinking about getting her a couple azalea bushes for her birthday, but that wasn't going to be happening now.
He felt Dru's hand on his arm.
"Toma..."
It was only then that he realized that he was tearing up thinking about his mother. Muttering a curse under his breath, he wiped his eyes without making it too obvious. That was the intention, but it didn't escape the notice of the gentleman's wife.
"Oh my," she said with an exaggerated air of sympathy. "Homesick, dear? It's your first time being so far away, isn't it?"
"No, I just got something in my eye," Toma said.
"Got to be the brave boy, don't you? I think it's very attractive for a man to show a sensitive side. My precious Robin, he's such a gentle soul. I am sure he'll grow up to be a poet or a musician. A personality like that is made for the arts."
"Yeah, well, I'm gonna be a carpenter, so I don't need a sensitive side for that."
Toma cursed himself some more for letting himself get drawn into a conversation with this woman, but now the he had stepped into the pit, he wasn't likely to get out.
"Oh, for the delicate work you do," the gentleman's wife countered, "the really fine craftsmanship that will get you noticed by high society."
"I don't really care about high society," Toma said, wondering why he was still talking to her.
"Oh, you mustn't think like that," she said. "However will you improve your lot without the right patronage? Even as a commoner, you can live rather well. Consider your brother-in-law. Surely he will one day be crafting footwear for all the best families. Their future could be bright indeed.
"You can see a sort of grace to them. Such a charming young couple. I daresay that if I would have them dressed up, they could conduct themselves impeccably among good company. I would not be ashamed to have them at my next garden party. Oh, I really should invite you, Madame Joli."
"It would be an honor, madame," Dru replied, "but surely you wouldn't want a couple of mere peasant children such as ourselves among your guests."
The gentleman didn't notice, but Dru gave him a look while saying the 'mere peasant children' bit. His wife didn't seem to draw the connection to what had been said the day before, nor would she have had any clue about the reason Dru was sporting with them. Toma thought she was treading on thin ice, but thankfully these rich twits' skulls were thick enough to compensate.
The gentleman's wife held up her hand as she gave a shrill sort of laugh.
"Oh, now. I say, we should pass you off as fellow bluebloods. I'm quite sure you could manage the pretense. What a lark that would be!"
She laughed again. It was like she was drilling at Toma's eardrums. It almost made him want to scream.
Before the gentleman's wife could torment Toma any further with her nonsense, there was a loud crack in the near distance. It was the sound of a rifle shot.
The carriage came to a stop. Amid the sound of boots tromping toward them, the gentleman's wife looked to her husband and asked, "What was that noise? Why are we stopping?"
Her husband said nothing but looked visibly ill at ease. Whatever it was, it wasn't good. There was some shouting outside the carriage. It didn't sound like Grelish.
Just as Toma was going to peer out the window, he was met by the barrel of a rifle being wielded by a soldier in a red jacket and cap.
"Out of the car!" the soldier shouted.
Toma's hand started to go for his bayonet, but Dru stopped him.
"Toma, no," she said in a low voice. "You can't win. Just do what they say for now."
"I said out of the car!" the soldier shouted again. "Hands up!"
Toma didn't know exactly who these people were, but by their accents, they obviously weren't Grelish. They were probably Ilyrians, but what were they doing on this side of the border?
The six passengers and the driver were rounded up, surrounded by eight soldiers with their rifles fixed on them. There definitely wasn't any chance of fighting their way out of this now.
"What is the meaning of this?" the gentleman huffed. "You lot are interloping on the sovereign territory of the Kingdom of Greland. Do you know what this means?"
The soldier nearest to the gentleman gave him the thoroughly reasoned and elaborate response of a buttstroke to the gut.
"Dear!" his wife exclaimed, instinctively going to his side before the soldiers and their rifles said otherwise.
"Up! Up!" the soldier who hit the gentleman barked. "On your feet!"
The gentleman wheezed and moaned, but because he didn't get up like he was told, the soldier gave him a swift kick.
"I said up!"
Of course, that didn't make it any easier for him to comply and no one could move to help him up, so he got another kick. His wife cried out again. If this was all they could expect, Toma would rather try his chances fighting back, but before he could make a move, a mounted soldier rode up. He had a simple epaulette of braided silver cord on his right shoulder and some silver cording ringing the crown of his cap. An officer but not a particularly high-ranking one.
He said something to his men in Ilyrian. Ilyrian was close enough to Elban that Toma could generally follow it, but the officer was speaking rather fast, which made it difficult to keep up. Something about the eight of them and seven unarmed civilians.
The officer then looked to the captives and said in accented Grelish, "Who are you and what is your business here?"
The gentleman, who had managed to get up onto his hands and knees, was trying to hold back a nosebleed after being kicked in the face. He was the first one to speak up.
"I am Albert Whatley of the Bunbury Whatleys. I was returning home when your men waylaid my carriage. I demand to know what you mean by violating our borders like this."
"What do you think it means when a foreign army enters a country?" the officer replied. "It is an invasion."
The gentleman was stunned for a moment, then said, "Do you think this country will take such an outrage lying down? And even if we cannot stop you, the Aureans—"
"The Aureans can do nothing against Zadok," the officer said. "Your king chose the wrong protector."
"Greland has no king," the gentleman replied. "He was deposed during the war. You invade a country and you cannot be bothered to learn even the most basic facts about it?"
"No wonder you Grelesi are such degenerates," the officer sneered, "raising your hand against your God-given ruler. Consider this judgment then, for defying the natural order."
Rather than let this political-philosophical debate unfold, Dru inserted herself into the conversation. She addressed the officer in Ilyrian.
"Pardon me, sir," she said. "We don't want any trouble. We will do as you say. Please just tell us what it is that you want."
The officer wasn't expecting this, being spoken to in his own mother tongue.
"You're Ilyrian?" he asked.
"No, sir. Elban. My grandmother was Ilyrian, though."
"And what are you doing here?"
Dru nodded to Goldie and said, "My husband has come for an apprenticeship in Wexham. We were on our way there when the carriage was stopped."
Eyeing Toma, the officer asked, "Who's this?"
"My brother, sir," Dru replied. "Our parents were worried about sending a pair of newlyweds abroad on our own."
"You don't look related."
"Well, he's my half-brother, sir. Him by the first wife and me by the second. You know how it is."
"No, I don't," the officer replied. He frowned, looking like he didn't buy Dru's story but without any real way to confirm his suspicions. Still keeping an eye on Dru, he told his men, "Search the baggage. See what you can find."
Two of the soldiers kept their rifles on the passengers while the other six shouldered their weapons and clambered up onto the carriage. They cut loose the luggage and started tossing the cases out onto the ground.
"Oh!" the gentleman's wife wailed. "What are you doing!?"
"Don't move!" one the soldiers aiming at them shouted.
She started crying again. Honestly, it seemed like she was more broken up about them ransacking her luggage than when they were beating on her husband.
While one soldier was busy breaking the locks with the butt of his rifle, another held up Goldie's sword, which had been stowed with the luggage while they were on the road.
"Tenente, look!"
The soldier hopped down and presented the sword to the officer. He held it for a moment before saying, "An Aurean sword..."
He drew the pistol at his hip and pointed it at the gentleman.
"Mr. Albert Wheatley of the Barbary Wheatleys, was it? You are an Aurean spy!"
"What!? No! I—"
Dru hastily interrupted, saying, "It's ours!"
The officer gave her a confused look, but did not point his pistol away from the gentleman.
"It was a wedding present," Dru explained. "My grandfather was an Aurean officer. That sword is a memento of his. It was given to my husband. We brought it with us for protection on the road."
"An Ilyrian grandmother and an Aurean grandfather?" the officer said incredulously. "Next you are going to tell me you're the Queen of Ostivar."
"It's true, sir!" Dru insisted. "Grandmother on my mother's side, grandfather on my father's side. No Ostivari that I know of, though."
"Tenente, look at that," one of the soldiers holding them up said, pointing his rifle over at Toma, or more specifically to the bayonet hanging off his belt.
"Let me see it," the officer said.
"Claudio, take that blade off the boy here," the soldier said to one of his companions digging through a pile of the gentleman's wife's clothes.
Claudio got up and went over to Toma. He took the bayonet out of its sheath and delivered it to the officer.
"Also Aurean," the officer noted. "Another memento of Grandfather's?"
"It belonged to my great-uncle, his brother," Dru said.
"Tenente, sir," another soldier with stripes on his sleeve that marked him as a corporal or something similar said, "remember what we were told by that Dragon woman. Two boys and girl, late tweens, on the run from Elba."
"Here in Grelanda?"
"She said they might try coming east."
The officer shrugged.
"Well, we take them to Campo di Malo. If they're the ones, Zadok gives us a big reward. If not, they can go to Trant. Better safe than sorry, am I right?"
"Quite so, Tenente, sir. And the others?"
"The fewer to look after, the better," the officer said. "We don't need the driver."
Without hesitation, one of the soldiers shot the driver. The gentleman cursed loudly and his wife screamed. Dru didn't scream, but she couldn't help covering her mouth in shock.
"Up, up!" one of the soldiers aiming at them shouted. "Hands up!"
The gentleman's wife had broken down into a red-faced sobbing mess, but she did at least have the presence of mind to put her hands up like she was told.
The officer pointed his pistol at the merchant and asked him, "Who are you?"
"Alois Brimley, sir," the merchant replied, "of the Inglesborg Concern."
Toma recalled him introducing himself as an independent trader before, but maybe he thought that dropping the name of a big international merchant guild like Inglesborg would give him some protection. He was wrong. The officer made a throat-cutting gesture with his pistol and a soldier shot him in the back. The nearest soldier guarding the passengers was quick to take offense. He shouted very angrily and quickly, something to the effect of "I'm standing right here, you son of a whore!"
The soldier who shot the merchant snapped back something like, "It's your own damn fault for being in the way, you mongrel bastard!"
The two could have easily come to blows if it weren't for the corporal or whatever he was stepping in to intervene. He shouted at them to break it up, something about their pride as Ilyrian soldiers, insults about their mother, and a few other things. Meanwhile, the officer turned his attention and his pistol to the gentleman.
"Will the Waverleys of Barbrady pay to get you back?" he asked.
"The Whatleys of Bunbury," the gentleman corrected him, "and they won't pay a cent to you villains."
His wife, who had mostly settled into muted sniffling, was suddenly gripped with panic by her husband's words.
"Dear, what are you saying!?"
Looking to the officer, she hastily pleaded with him, saying, "Please, ah, signore, don't listen to him! They'll pay! They'll pay whatever you ask! Just don't hurt us!"
"They'll pay for one of you," the officer said, and pulled the trigger.
The gentleman's wife wailed piteously as her husband toppled over into the dirt. She threw herself onto his body, crying and screaming and generally making herself an annoyance to their captors.
Showing all the sympathy you would expect from these people, the nearest soldier was shouting at her, "Up, up!"
Only this time the gentleman's wife wasn't so quick to obey. She probably couldn't even hear him. The rest of the world didn't exist for her. Toma knew the feeling.
"Up, up!" the soldier repeated.
He kicked her to get her to move, but she barely even reacted, so he decided to stick her with his bayonet.
"No!"
The officer wasn't fast enough to stop him. Funnily enough, given how noisy she was, the gentleman's wife was strangely quiet after being stabbed, just making a low moaning sound that seemed to be more of an extension of her wailing from before.
Thoroughly incensed, the officer sprang from his horse and backhanded the soldier, then smashed his face with the butt of his pistol, all the while streaming rapid-fire curses that Toma couldn't hope to follow. The main gist of it was the officer complaining about the ransom plan being spoiled.
"Take his rifle away from him!" the officer demanded and the offending soldier was promptly relieved of his weapon. "I'll see you run the gauntlet for this, you imbecile! Damn, damn, damn, damn, DAMN!"
Given how wound up the officer was, it seemed prudent not to draw his ire, but Dru didn't let that deter her.
"Please, sir," she said, "let me help her."
"No need," the officer replied, having almost instantaneously calmed himself back down while reloading his pistol.
Once the pistol was reloaded, he then shot the gentleman's wife in the back of the head.
"You couldn't have helped her," the officer told Dru. "A stomach wound like that is very painful and it takes a long time to die. Better for her that I put her out of her misery."
And more convenient for you, Toma thought. He didn't really like the gentleman or his wife, but that didn't mean they deserved to die. Neither did the driver or the merchant for that matter. Were Ilyrians always like this or did being under Zadok's heel make them more like their masters?
Toma looked to his companions. Goldie was white as a sheet and Dru just looked sort of hollowed out. If it weren't for the fact that Zadok was hunting the three of them and that the one corporal figured out who they were, they would probably be dead along with the others.
The officer mounted his horse and told Dru, "Tell your 'husband' and 'brother' to come along quietly and do as they're told. Do this and no harm will come to you."
"Oh, come on, Tenente, sir," one of the soldiers complained. "Let us have a go with the girl. Hell, even Blondie there will do."
"Keep it in your trousers or I'll have it nailed to your forehead," the officer growled. "The dragon woman wants them alive and unspoiled. Unless you want to be dragon chow, you'll do as you're told. And that goes for the rest of you too!"
The other soldiers gave muttered replies to the effect of "Yes, sir." Almost all of them seemed rather disappointed that neither Dru nor Goldie were available as the afternoon's entertainment. Poor bastards.
"Get together everything that's worth anything and put it back on the carriage, then load up. Palladino, you can drive a carriage, right? Bartome, Giuletti, take the prisoners in the carriage and watch them. The rest of you, hurry it up and hop on. Not you, D'Agoni! You can walk."
The soldier who stabbed the gentleman's wife gave the officer a sullen look but had the good sense not to say anything.
The other soldier guarding them motioned with his rifle, saying, "Go. In the carriage."
There was nothing to do but obey. As they got back in the carriage, Toma asked Dru in a low voice, "You still think I shouldn't have fought back when I had the chance?"
"You couldn't have beaten eight trained soldiers," Dru replied, "and there are surely more of them closeby. It would have changed nothing. Only you would be dead."
"I might wish I was if they hand us over to Zadok."
"There may yet be hope, Toma," Dru said. "Just don't do anything rash in the meantime."
The soldier stamped on the floorboard and said, "No talking!"
Toma and Dru stopped talking. Goldie was too shaken up to do much of anything. Maybe they should've gone south to Burlington after all.