Abduction in Edoras RPG

[Celuien]

The man's face was not unknown to Garstan. Osfrid. Is that your true name, or is it Bertwald? Or have you other names to share with us? It had been hard not to throw that lie back to him. And now to hear him speaking to Eodwine as though his deception had never taken place was an insult.

Garstan knew well that he should not speak his anger. No good would come of it. If Linduial was truly here, they would need to treat with her captors for her safety, as hard as that might be. Garstan turned his thoughts away from Osfrid, trying instead to pay mind to the land, thinking of how the party should move on next.

A sound like a footstep from behind the wall at Eodwine's shoulder drew Garstan's attention. Garstan cast a quick glance at Eodwine and saw a man appear over the wall. A fell look was in the man's face, and steel flashed in his hand as it dropped toward Eodwine's chest.

In the same instant as the dagger dropped, Garstan went to the right to seize the dagger. Not quickly enough, for the blade met his shoulder, cleaving flesh until Garstan felt it strike bone. The man let out a sharp sound of air against teeth and darted into the trees behind the wall while Garstan lost his footing and landed hard on the ground.

Confusion claimed the next moments. The Eorlingas galloped to meet Eodwine and Garstan, who was struggling to rise. Thornden stood by Eodwine and Deren knelt by Garstan's wounded shoulder.

All of Garstan's thought was on the man, already disappearing into the trees, who had attacked Eodwine. It could have been no other than Sorn; Garstan could think of no other who would bear such ill will toward them. He cried out, "Sorn flees. We must be after him!" He twisted toward the wall but was held back.

"Lie back, be still, man!" Deren said. He called for bandages to stop the blood, and one of the riders dismounted to bring a strip of cloth.

"Now hold still." Deren pulled the dagger free and pressed the cloth against the wound. Garstan winced and reached with his other hand to hold pressure over the bandage while Eodwine and Deren tied his arm in a sling.

"My lords," said Garstan. "We cannot linger here."

[JennyHallu]

Linduial nodded at Scyld's words. She had of course seen her things in his arms with his other necessities, but she refused to let hope deceive her. It made sense for him to take the dagger, if he had access to it. It was fine work, richly crafted. It was probably worth a great deal of money. The doll made less sense, so she pushed it from her mind.

"It is the only thing you can do," she stated flatly. He was looking at her expectantly, but she was closed off, quiet. Too much was happening too quickly, and she didn't know how to react. "Where will you go?"

He didn't answer, which she had suspected. She showed no surprise, but her fear began to eat at her a little. "If you open this door," she asked desperately, "could I make it to those who came for me? I can't ask you to--" she felt the onset of panic, felt it bubbling up inside her, threatening to overtake her in a torrent of meaningless words, and pushed it back, only her eyes betraying anything of her emotion.

[Firefoot]

Scyld had expected anger, but Linduial was showing fear and desperation. Well, perhaps that made sense; he would be condemning her to death; he had just grown more accustomed to her spirit in the past couple days. He did not yet know whether this would make his plan easier or harder. “I can’t do that,” he said bluntly. “For one thing, I think Sorn is still lurking around outside and may even be speaking with the rescue party as we speak. I don’t know. And whether you made it to them or he caught up with you first, Sorn would hunt me down and kill me. He’s mad, but he’s not stupid; he won’t wait around here once you’re dead.” Of course, Sorn would probably hunt him down anyway, but maybe, if he was lucky, by the time Sorn realized Scyld and Linduial were gone, the rescuers would have gotten organized and figured a better way to keep watch over the hall; they might even kill Sorn for him. Scyld felt a stab of disappointment at that thought; he had always entertained fantasies of killing Sorn himself, but dead was dead and it might even be better that way, from a legal standpoint. As if Scyld wasn’t already in enough potential trouble with the law.

At Scyld’s unfeeling words, Linduial’s composure seemed to be crumbling fast. “But – but you have to do something –”

Scyld held up a hand to silence her. “Oh, yes, I do,” answered Scyld mockingly. It was a tone he adopted almost unconsciously, even though he really meant it. “I could not leave you here alone to be killed, of course.” Swiftly, his tone changed; he was deadly serious. “You’re coming with me.”

Confusion reigned in Linduial’s features. Clearly she had not expected this and did not now know how to respond, so Scyld continued. “Perhaps you can see my predicament? I cannot leave you here – apparently not even I am so morally corrupt as that – and I cannot let you go.” Scyld wondered if she picked up on his unspoken reasoning: he did not trust her. He wanted to; for the first time since he had come here as a boy, effectively having been sold into slavery, he wanted to trust someone, but he could not. “You have two choices: to come willingly or by force.”

[JennyHallu]

Something coalesced in the girl's eyes, some flash of hope that had temporarily deserted her. "Willingly, Scyld," she said softly, than again with more firmness. She stood and waited impatiently by the door to her cage. Even if I die, it will not be in here, she thought, with no small satisfaction. "But one thing. Will you hand me my knife? It may yet be that I will need it, before we are safe."

She thought, suddenly, of the man whom she had stabbed, of the startled shock of pain that had come upon his face when her knife had caught his rib. Sorn had of course told her that she hadn't killed him, but she'd thought that she had, or might have, and the thought had not haunted her over much. I did not know this about myself, that I could kill a man. But I could, if I had to. I could do whatever I had to, and still go on, and not think overmuch about it. Not right away anyway.

[littlemanpoet]

"My lords," said Garstan. "We cannot linger here."

"Well spoken!" Eodwine cried. "Thornden, Deren, take these men with you and hunt down Sorn and this Osfrid! I will stay with Garstan."

"But lord-" Thornden started.

Eodwine rose. "You are an Eorlinga! Do the deed! Deren, you lead!"

"Aye, lord!" cried Deren. "Come, men!" He directed Thornden and three men to follow Sorn while he led three others into the House after Osfrid.

Eodwine turned and motioned to the two men who had stayed back with Garstan's and his mounts. They came forward and helped Eodwine get Garstan on his horse. Then Eodwine directed the two men, Eofryth and Grimbold, to circle the perimeter of Sorn's land, starting toward the west, while Eodwine and Garstan and Eodwine circled starting east.

Once they were started at a measured canter over the rolling pasture, Eodwine turned to Garstan. He looked pale but grim and determined.

"Garstan, you trickster, I was supposed to save your life, not the other way about." Garstan tried to grin but managed only a grimace.

"How do you fare? Tell me if you need to stop. We can find a hidden place of safety hereabouts."

[Anguirel]

The ringing out of the horn, the horn Gurth had ridden for and striven for, actually threw him, for some moments, into a paralysis equal to that of his winded and luckless animal.

When his eyes finally broke out of their fixed passage, activity came at the price of purpose. It was perhaps the effect of seeing Sorn's farmstead, where he had been treated so kindly, and so...vilely, where he had existed as an admired idiot and dwelt in comfort, that destroyed Gurth's faculty for decision. He began to walk, and to look about him, almost at random, threading an unsteady, lone way behind the ramshackle building.

And then he saw a man ahead.

Kill it. It is a man. It threatens the girl. It threatens the master.

It is the master. Gurth saw neither a stranger of the wild, intentions mysterious but to be thwarted, nor any of the lackeys who had mocked him. No Osfrid, no Scyld.

Something higher and lower. The tall - but to Gurth, to Helm, so small, so thin, so vulnerable! - figure of one who had been, in his way, a great man despite the pettiness of his wealth. One whose mind had dreamed grandly, whose hand had acted squalidly.

But one who carried a spark inside him that called out to Gurth, that viscerally implored him to throw himself down and acknowledge mastery.

"Sorn," Gurth said quietly.

The Lord of the Manor looked dreadful. He had been drinking, Gurth could see, of late; he could perceive wounds left by mead that had formerly stricken him low. He had not drunk in all his time among the outlaws, had distanced himself, and now regarded victims of intemperance with a surprisingly lofty pity.

Sorn's profile was sharper and thinner, more lined. His eyes were large and seemed verging on raw red, the red of a chicken that has been cooked, but only a very little. The red of Grendel's lolling, spasm-ridden, dying tongue.

"Sorn," Gurth repeated. "My name is Helm, now."

His former master seemed not yet to have taken in his presence. He was in a semi-trance, like that which had fallen upon Gurth moments before; but the giant could not speculate whether such a vacant stare was brought on by stagnant memory, by the indifference of despair, or by helplessness. Brightness absent everywhere else shone in the man's long hands, and Gurth perceived that he was armed, gripping two knives like the arms of comforters, of parents.

But Sorn was on his own land. He had been Master, and there was something in him that yet mastered.

Gurth scarcely knew what he did as he lurched down and knelt before Sorn, his axe rolling from his hands and sliding away.

Somewhere not so far away, Grendel died.

[Firefoot]

A simple agreement: could it really be so easy as that? Was there some catch? Would she try to bolt as soon as he did not have her under direct control? She wanted her knife; did she want to kill him, then make a run for it?

Her answer had come too quickly and easily for that. Linduial was not accustomed to lying, or so it seemed to Scyld. She had not hesitated; she seemed glad to go with him. Why, though? Rescue was at her very fingertips, and she would let him take her away! Why?

Surely she would be no match for him in knives anyway. He would simply keep his own loose in their sheaths and his eye on her at all times. So after those moments of indecision, he decided to trust her just this far. “Here,” he said and passed the knife to her through the bars.

She smiled slightly. “Thank you.” Scyld nodded curtly as he then unlocked the cage and let her out. For the first time, she stood free before him. Well, free from Sorn and her cage.

Not a minute too soon, but perhaps a few too late. Upstairs, he heard someone enter the house: Sorn or Osfrid, likely. Scyld could not risk anyone coming downstairs now, nor could he take Linduial upstairs. So she at least would have to leave through the back cellar door, yet that would be dangerous. If they left that way, it would be heading out blindly as they had no way of knowing who was on the other side of the door. It could be no one or rescuers or Sorn. The best way would be for Scyld to go around and let her out, but he would have to trust her in the cellar. Well, that should not be a problem; she could open the door and walk straight into Sorn. Fear would keep her inside until Scyld let her out; he was sure of it.

He explained the plan to her: “I’ll go upstairs and out through the main house. Lock the cellar door behind me so that Osfrid at least can’t get down here. I’ll let you out through that cellar door over there.” He pointed to it. “I’ll knock once, then twice more, when it’s clear." Scyld hesitated a moment. Could he trust her with the pack? It would be entirely suspicious if Sorn or anyone else saw him with it and he would have difficulty explaining it. "I'm leaving the pack here with you, too, and I'll get that when I let you out. After that…” He shrugged. “It’s all touch and go.”