If this was how she died, she swore, she hoped her bloody spirit crawled back from the fade to find the Lord Pratap and play wicked tricks upon his house for this. For all of this. Until he never could know rest again.
Which wasn't much of a comforting thought, as her eyes cracked open to look at the distant light up above of where she had landed. But it was the one she had. Her back heavy, not least of all because of the armor that no doubt saved her on the fall. But she couldn't mistake it - she was bleeding, something had caught her jagged on the way down, that ran from her knee to her ankle. A long cut that soaked blood through her hose and boots. Should have taken her father's advice. She have bought the greaves that were reinforced with plate. But here she was, a the bottom of a pit, bleeding, not sure she could stand up, with -
Her hunter.
Was it too much to hope he was dead? Apparently so. His voice called to her, asking after her as she gingerly moved herself. Pressing up against the wall. Where was her sword - a dagger - for pity's sake -
Lakshmi, Lady, wife and dragon slayer swallowed. Perhaps this would be it. Perhaps there was no comfort. She would end regardless of all else she had achieved, here and now. She took a deeper breath against the pain. Felt the dirt under fingerless gloves that caught under her nails. Cool. Different against the sting of sweat on her brow. She could barely make him out in the dark, but nor did she want too. Instead she took calm in the quiet, readying herself.
"If it is time for my death, I wish first to say my prayers." The assumption simple, she didn't think he would be too affronted by it.
Well she certainly appears alive enough to drag herself a few feet. That's a better sign than he has any right to expect. The rest though--
Marcoulf stares at her, his pale complexion whitened further in the half light here at the bottom of the pit. Then he wheezes, breath sawing. After a moment it becomes clear he's laughing, chuckling in fits and starts as his hand goes to his scabbard and finds it empty.
"Nothing like that," he pants, twisting to survey where they've fallen. "No one's paying for your body at the bottom of a hole. Rather not have to drag a corpse with me." Where--?
There's a sound from the passage above them. A moment later, the sword falls after them and impales the sand near his thigh.
Of all the blessed - Maker, you missed but thank you for shutting him up. Mortified in the shadows that he had the gall to laugh at her, she scowled at him in the darkness she was half in and out of.
"That serves you right."
She stared at the sword where it landed. No point trying to make a grab for it, it was right in front of her hunter. She didn't have a chance of reaching it in time. Still, it would be better to have something on hand.
Looks like she would be settling for the nearest rock. "But... I regret to inform you that is all I may be to you."
Her leg. She wasn't standing on it that immediately.
He makes a dismissive sound, lifting his face to squint at the uneven circle of daylight above them. The distance is hard to guess from this vantage, but given the loose dirt and small stones he can't imagine they'll be making their way back in that direction. Not with the ache slowly blooming in his side. Which leaves... The pit they've fallen into isn't simply a hole. Rather they've tumbled down into a small sloping crevice, the south end of which affords a narrow little passage leading Maker only knows where. Into a dead (hn) end, maybe, he thinks as he carefully gets a knee under himself.
"Then you'll stay here." He reaches for the sword and something pops unpleasantly in his side. Marcoulf claps his hand to his ribs, reevaluates, and instead clambers to his feet. It's only once he's upright that he wrenches the blade free.
It takes some moments to get his hands to stop shaking long enough to sheath it properly.
He wasn't doing any better than she was, at this point. Injured, and her head tilted to observe.
"You're as wounded as I am." Her eyes sharp in the dark, watching from where she couldn't move. Nor did it seem he was, the way he was favouring his side, and how long it took his hands to steady. No better than she could do, right at this moment, if she put weight on her hands. "Neither of us are getting out of here like this."
Comes to much the same assessment he had: there wasn't a way back. Only forward, only deeper into a cave, at least if they didn't want to lay here exposed for the night that was quickly coming. The smell of fresh blood would attract company soon enough.
Nonsense. One of them is upright of their own volition with weight on both feet. He might not move quickly, but he could certainly make his way out without her help. But if she cares to come along? He isn't going to argue. Just like he isn't going to acknowledge the potential long term repercussions of the hurt in his side - not for the moment anyway. Better to make their way out together and not have to double back overland to fetch her from out of the pit and hope she was still alive at the bottom.
He regards her with a blank look. Blinks slowly. "Suppose we work our way out together then." There's the slightest, gentlest quirk to the sound of it. Maybe if she squints, she'll see the wry edge of humor there.
Clear enough: she doesn't like it. Why would she? Working together with the man that means to drag her back to Pratap, so he could humiliate her, no doubt. He could not take her down in war, so he sort to destroy and debase her in other ways.
"I will need your help, if we are to do that." That was a bitter pill to swallow.
For a split second, he says nothing. Does nothing. Just looks at her in the mostly dark, head cocked crookedly and the line of his mouth obscured by whiskers. Then Marcoulf crosses to her. He's steady on his feet, though he braces his ribs with one hand.
She watches it like a cornered animal watches its predator, ready to do her best to bolt in a moment just in case death did turn out to be easier than her offer.
But when his hand emerges from the depths, she let's our a minute fraction of tension and unlocks herself against the pain enough to pull up. Yanking hand at his hand to use as leverage, a fulcrum to pull herself up by.
A mistake only when she lent her weight on her wounded leg and - the sound of pain is quick. Ugly. Sears up her with a sharp cry out that she bites as she lands into him heavily. Breathing hard and quick for it. Swallowing to push past it.
The wrench of her weight on his arm pierces into his side. It strangles the air out of him with such abruptness that he thinks nothing about clutching her elbow and steadying her with a blunt, balancing hand. Without the pain, he might have been tempted to abandon her more quickly to her own devices. As it is, Marcoulf is as momentarily reliant on clinging to her as she is to being supported by him.
And then it passes. He swallows down some air and loosens his grip slightly, backing up a pace when he's certain she won't fall back to the ground for having only his arm and hand to rely on rather the the whole of him.
She leans into it as she gets herself steady again. The pinched line in her brow, the strung heavy feeling of pain that lances up her limbs. But steady - steady - steady. Her fingers uncurl, her hands loosen up and she untangles herself from him. Nodding. "Slowly. But I can." It'd be hobbled as best, but it would be walking.
"I will... strap it. When we're not so exposed." For now, it would do.
And for now: they had other concerns. Like the dark cave that they had fallen into the mouth of. Stretching out before them, deep and dank. Cautiously, she looked towards it instead of at him for a moment. Easier to focus on that. "Do you something we can light?"
Slowly, she says. Good enough. He takes a last moment to steady her from the elbow, then releases her entirely when he's certain she can stay upright without him. That's one problem resolved for the time being. The dark though--
That one may take some doing. His kit and the wrapped torch with it is far above them, packed neatly behind the saddle of a roan mare picked to a tree in the woods hardly eighty meters from the place they'd fallen through the ground. It's no good at all to them down here. Luckily, they've plenty of shredded cloth between them. His own sleeve is in ribbons around his elbow. It's quick work for the dagger in his belt and forms a lopsided bundle when tied around the point of the fine silver sword.
It's as he's tying it in knots that he asks her, "Do you carry a flint?"
That - if there was anything to being on the run for so long: it had taught her about essentials. About what she could need, and what she could drop at a moment's notice. Some of them were obvious, others more of a sentimental purpose. Others just out and out paranoia. Food that would keep for weeks at a time. What clothes it was easiest to keep, armour that she could sleep in. Maker, it must reek, these days, after the hard run she'd gone on to escape her present company. The leather that bit in under her arms and at her neck from the stress she put it under. But never mind that -
Flint, as it turned out, was universally useful.
So she nods, hoping that little on her leg away from him to test her balance as she fished into the straps and pockets she carried. Yanking a few items out. No, that was a knife, no, that was another knife. Folding them into her loose hand as she grunted a little for the effort of bending. Ah - there it was. She fished it out of her pocket, unwrapping it from the oiled cloth she kept it in. The metal striking tool that was tied to the edge of it so she could keep them together ( another thing, worked out as she had run. Keeping things together when she was constantly moving. )
"Here." It's passed over for him to use, as she went back to reassembling her entourage of tools, weapons and other assorted items.
The shirt sleeve's just cloth and dirty at that. It takes some trying to get an edge of it smoking, much less to coax it into burning but by the time she has her belongings cataloged and sorted, Marcoulf has brought some life into the makeshift torch. It's not promising, but it's better than the pitch darkness. If he has to sacrifice another sleeve to it in the future, so be it. Making his way to the narrow passage leading deeper into the earth, he holds the flame there. The smoke curls straight up, still as death down here at the bottom of the pit without even a breath of air from the hole above or the cave before them. Just looking at is has some tang of morbidity to it.
--Which doesn't bear dwelling on overmuch. If all else fails, he can simply leave her behind and make his own way. It'll be a loss of money and effort, but he'll be able to move faster. There are options on the table, he thinks, and that's as reassuring as anything.
After a beat, Marcoulf hefts the sword and tips his head to her. "Ready?"
She nods, as ready as she'll ever be. Though how she ended up here was a matter unto itself, to what it even me man's to go into the dark of tunnels, with the person who had just been trying to drag her back to death or something near enough to it.
"Lead on."
Her step behind him is uneven, where she needs to limp in her steps. She'll pay for this, eventually, if she doesn't get it seen too sooner rather than later. The wound would heal poorly if they didn't find something to help it.
Him too, for that matter. His was favouring his side, as she had seen. Later, later, after they had made some headway further into the dark and then maybe, she could ask him to -
"Your name... You never told me your name, my would he captor."
Ah. Fair enough. He knows hers. Or part of it anyway - enough to do the work he'd been hired to do in any case, and beyond that he doesn't much care what other names she might go by. Not that fairness has anything to do with it. Down here in the dark especially, her knowing his name can bring no trouble.
"Ricart. Marcoulf, if you prefer it." It's a strange, lopsided name which huffs out from behind the teeth in his heavily accented trade tongue. Hangs heavy in the mouth and not at all in the darkness closing in around them as he leads the way gingerly down into the narrow cavern with the torch held high enough to light her way as well as his.
"What else would you like to know?" Best to deal with whatever questions she has (and she must have some) now while he still has the patience for it.
"Why did you accept this bounty? Whatever they're paying you, it will not be enough."
Firm, perhaps more firm than a woman limping behind him right deserves to be but - regardlessly true to her mind. Though she doesn't keep a keen eye on his response. Making sure to navigate the ground below her in limping steps to ensure she didn't fall. It was only getting darker as they went. That encompassing feeling of the daylight disappearing behind them like a closing door.
"Did you even know who I was before you took it?" Barked, cruel perhaps. Like this really was the time and place.
He hums, a mild sound only slightly strained by the effort of holding the torch and picking his way along the stony natural path leading them down, down, down into the darkness. It's hardly moments before the wan light of the shaft they'd fallen in falls away entirely and their place in the world narrows completely to the flame.
"As to the first," he says, voice low. "It's plenty. For the second," --a shrug-- "I barely know who you are now." She is a name and a description, a few details like the color and size of her horse and in which direction she might be travelling. She is important to the person who wants her brought back (alive, preferably) and he gathers she may be important elsewhere to other people as well, but how or for why had hardly factored into the business of finding and following her.
"Does it matter?"
They're still here at the bottom of a hole, making their way steadily downward.
"Because if you understood, you would have asked for more coin than what they wanted to pay, if you took it at all."
She snorts her laughter - typical of Lord Hastings. Cheap and greedy, to say the least. But as they press on, he does have a point. What did it matter, who they were above ground? There was just them and the dark now, and whatever else found them here.
That warrants an unmistakable knowing sound exaggerated to some ridiculous end. It sounds like, 'Is that so? Please, regale me with every detail,' as he leads the way down, down, down into the deeper, truer dark.
"Then I'll be sure to ask even fewer questions when I return you than ordinary." Thanks for the warning, lady.
"Pity then, that you will have to tell him that you were caught with me for days. Or I will. That you learned who I was. What I mean. What I mean to who. Then you can't be trusted, can you? You know then. And you will be useless to him." It's vicious, and this is underhanded. This is a game that he can't win at, not really. He's a pawn between herself and Hastings like a hundred more before him and after him. But when she has only a few days to convince him between here and there, about what was at stake. About why he couldn't do this.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
How dare tbqh
Which wasn't much of a comforting thought, as her eyes cracked open to look at the distant light up above of where she had landed. But it was the one she had. Her back heavy, not least of all because of the armor that no doubt saved her on the fall. But she couldn't mistake it - she was bleeding, something had caught her jagged on the way down, that ran from her knee to her ankle. A long cut that soaked blood through her hose and boots. Should have taken her father's advice. She have bought the greaves that were reinforced with plate. But here she was, a the bottom of a pit, bleeding, not sure she could stand up, with -
Her hunter.
Was it too much to hope he was dead? Apparently so. His voice called to her, asking after her as she gingerly moved herself. Pressing up against the wall. Where was her sword - a dagger - for pity's sake -
Lakshmi, Lady, wife and dragon slayer swallowed. Perhaps this would be it. Perhaps there was no comfort. She would end regardless of all else she had achieved, here and now. She took a deeper breath against the pain. Felt the dirt under fingerless gloves that caught under her nails. Cool. Different against the sting of sweat on her brow. She could barely make him out in the dark, but nor did she want too. Instead she took calm in the quiet, readying herself.
"If it is time for my death, I wish first to say my prayers." The assumption simple, she didn't think he would be too affronted by it.
no subject
Marcoulf stares at her, his pale complexion whitened further in the half light here at the bottom of the pit. Then he wheezes, breath sawing. After a moment it becomes clear he's laughing, chuckling in fits and starts as his hand goes to his scabbard and finds it empty.
"Nothing like that," he pants, twisting to survey where they've fallen. "No one's paying for your body at the bottom of a hole. Rather not have to drag a corpse with me." Where--?
There's a sound from the passage above them. A moment later, the sword falls after them and impales the sand near his thigh.
Ah.
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"That serves you right."
She stared at the sword where it landed. No point trying to make a grab for it, it was right in front of her hunter. She didn't have a chance of reaching it in time. Still, it would be better to have something on hand.
Looks like she would be settling for the nearest rock. "But... I regret to inform you that is all I may be to you."
Her leg. She wasn't standing on it that immediately.
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"Then you'll stay here." He reaches for the sword and something pops unpleasantly in his side. Marcoulf claps his hand to his ribs, reevaluates, and instead clambers to his feet. It's only once he's upright that he wrenches the blade free.
It takes some moments to get his hands to stop shaking long enough to sheath it properly.
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"You're as wounded as I am." Her eyes sharp in the dark, watching from where she couldn't move. Nor did it seem he was, the way he was favouring his side, and how long it took his hands to steady. No better than she could do, right at this moment, if she put weight on her hands. "Neither of us are getting out of here like this."
Comes to much the same assessment he had: there wasn't a way back. Only forward, only deeper into a cave, at least if they didn't want to lay here exposed for the night that was quickly coming. The smell of fresh blood would attract company soon enough.
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He regards her with a blank look. Blinks slowly. "Suppose we work our way out together then." There's the slightest, gentlest quirk to the sound of it. Maybe if she squints, she'll see the wry edge of humor there.
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Clear enough: she doesn't like it. Why would she? Working together with the man that means to drag her back to Pratap, so he could humiliate her, no doubt. He could not take her down in war, so he sort to destroy and debase her in other ways.
"I will need your help, if we are to do that." That was a bitter pill to swallow.
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He offers her the other. Easy enough.
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But when his hand emerges from the depths, she let's our a minute fraction of tension and unlocks herself against the pain enough to pull up. Yanking hand at his hand to use as leverage, a fulcrum to pull herself up by.
A mistake only when she lent her weight on her wounded leg and - the sound of pain is quick. Ugly. Sears up her with a sharp cry out that she bites as she lands into him heavily. Breathing hard and quick for it. Swallowing to push past it.
"I'll be fine."
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And then it passes. He swallows down some air and loosens his grip slightly, backing up a pace when he's certain she won't fall back to the ground for having only his arm and hand to rely on rather the the whole of him.
"Are you able to walk?"
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"I will... strap it. When we're not so exposed." For now, it would do.
And for now: they had other concerns. Like the dark cave that they had fallen into the mouth of. Stretching out before them, deep and dank. Cautiously, she looked towards it instead of at him for a moment. Easier to focus on that. "Do you something we can light?"
no subject
That one may take some doing. His kit and the wrapped torch with it is far above them, packed neatly behind the saddle of a roan mare picked to a tree in the woods hardly eighty meters from the place they'd fallen through the ground. It's no good at all to them down here. Luckily, they've plenty of shredded cloth between them. His own sleeve is in ribbons around his elbow. It's quick work for the dagger in his belt and forms a lopsided bundle when tied around the point of the fine silver sword.
It's as he's tying it in knots that he asks her, "Do you carry a flint?"
no subject
Flint, as it turned out, was universally useful.
So she nods, hoping that little on her leg away from him to test her balance as she fished into the straps and pockets she carried. Yanking a few items out. No, that was a knife, no, that was another knife. Folding them into her loose hand as she grunted a little for the effort of bending. Ah - there it was. She fished it out of her pocket, unwrapping it from the oiled cloth she kept it in. The metal striking tool that was tied to the edge of it so she could keep them together ( another thing, worked out as she had run. Keeping things together when she was constantly moving. )
"Here." It's passed over for him to use, as she went back to reassembling her entourage of tools, weapons and other assorted items.
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--Which doesn't bear dwelling on overmuch. If all else fails, he can simply leave her behind and make his own way. It'll be a loss of money and effort, but he'll be able to move faster. There are options on the table, he thinks, and that's as reassuring as anything.
After a beat, Marcoulf hefts the sword and tips his head to her. "Ready?"
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"Lead on."
Her step behind him is uneven, where she needs to limp in her steps. She'll pay for this, eventually, if she doesn't get it seen too sooner rather than later. The wound would heal poorly if they didn't find something to help it.
Him too, for that matter. His was favouring his side, as she had seen. Later, later, after they had made some headway further into the dark and then maybe, she could ask him to -
"Your name... You never told me your name, my would he captor."
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"Ricart. Marcoulf, if you prefer it." It's a strange, lopsided name which huffs out from behind the teeth in his heavily accented trade tongue. Hangs heavy in the mouth and not at all in the darkness closing in around them as he leads the way gingerly down into the narrow cavern with the torch held high enough to light her way as well as his.
"What else would you like to know?" Best to deal with whatever questions she has (and she must have some) now while he still has the patience for it.
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Firm, perhaps more firm than a woman limping behind him right deserves to be but - regardlessly true to her mind. Though she doesn't keep a keen eye on his response. Making sure to navigate the ground below her in limping steps to ensure she didn't fall. It was only getting darker as they went. That encompassing feeling of the daylight disappearing behind them like a closing door.
"Did you even know who I was before you took it?" Barked, cruel perhaps. Like this really was the time and place.
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"As to the first," he says, voice low. "It's plenty. For the second," --a shrug-- "I barely know who you are now." She is a name and a description, a few details like the color and size of her horse and in which direction she might be travelling. She is important to the person who wants her brought back (alive, preferably) and he gathers she may be important elsewhere to other people as well, but how or for why had hardly factored into the business of finding and following her.
"Does it matter?"
They're still here at the bottom of a hole, making their way steadily downward.
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She snorts her laughter - typical of Lord Hastings. Cheap and greedy, to say the least. But as they press on, he does have a point. What did it matter, who they were above ground? There was just them and the dark now, and whatever else found them here.
"He's dragged you into politics."
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"Then I'll be sure to ask even fewer questions when I return you than ordinary." Thanks for the warning, lady.
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"That you caught Lakshmi the Dragon Slayer."