Being stretched flat on a perpendicular wall for hours without being able to move at first did not seem like too harsh a punishment but after an hour in the same spot, my muscles ached from the strain. The human body moves constantly adjusting weight, shifting positions and just moving. I could not move anything and my muscles began cramping after two hours. At three, pressure points flared and burned proving just how devious a torture it was. Plus, my ribcage was extended, making each inhalation tougher. By morning, I was numb and to make matters worse, I had to use the restroom.
It wasn’t until late mid-morning that I was let free. I simply dropped off the Wall to land in a heap on the floor where I remained until the numbness wore off and the real agony of returning circulation began.
It started as pins and needles, became an intense itching and then a burning pain that made me bite my lips to stifle my groans. I rocked, that helped to take my mind off the pain yet when that was gone, the aching cramps started. The worst ones were those that gripped my rib muscles and doubled me over. If I had seen the guard, I would have begged him to kill me so the pain would end.
Thankfully, after an hour’s worth of agony, I was able to move and I tottered over to the chamber pot to relieve myself. For the first time in days, I went and it was thick, sludgy like dried, old blood. My stomach was quiet and thirst did not bother me. I set the mug of tea still standing on the stool seat aside and sat, facing the door with my forearms resting on my knees. I waited.
It was mid-afternoon before I heard them returning. A contingent of guards, the wizard and the Governor were stamping down the hallway towards me. Once in the room, the Governor looked me over and nodded.
“He looks like his father, D’Arcy Spencer. Your father was a good officer, boy. He fought valiantly against the vile Borderlanders.”
“You mean the people ours murdered at Cape Fear?” I retorted. “Peaceful citizens who shared the town with those from over the Wall?”
He gaped at me. “How do you know? There were no survivors!”
“There was one,” I returned grimly. “My mother.”
“Your mother–? She was from Aberden, a fairly well-off crofter’s daughter. Where are your parents now? We sent a detachment to the farm in Cayden’s Valley and found only Davlos Sentinos living there.”
I smiled, happy that one of our former hired hands had moved in and was caring for the place. He’d worked for my dad for five years, finally earning enough to buy his freedom from the Town Council. Last we had heard, he’d bought a small farm some ten leagues from the Valley which would make him a close neighbor. He was raising hay and fruit trees, meat bulls for the southern army’s Quartermaster Staff. They were like cattle but twice as large, ate half as much and matured in less than half the time. His herd was small, just one bull and ten cows but each cow produced up to three calves at time. My dad had helped him with the seed money for the cows.
“My parents were murdered, his horses stolen and sold, some driven as far away as Cape Fear,” I explained. “My father wasn’t dead yet when I found them. He lived long enough to tell me who had attacked them. He made me promise to get the horses back.”
“Who is the man responsible for murdering your parents?” the Governor asked and I looked him straight in the eyes.
“The Lemieux brothers pulled the trigger,” I said flatly. “But it was my grandfather that set this whole thing in motion.”
“Why? Why would the Earl do that?”
“Because he wants to restart the war and tear down the Wall,” I said. He looked at me, his aide, the doctor and Blackfin. He made no comment, only told me that I was to get ready to travel, he was sending me to Port Jervais to catch a warship headed back home to Ehrenberg for repairs and change of Command.
I would be going under guard and confined to a cabin with him.
“No!” I protested and he stroked my face with one manicured and painted nail. It left a burning trace down my face.
“Do not make me prove my promises, dear Toby,” he drawled and I shuddered. He turned to the General. “Change his clothing so that he looks a proper gentleman and does not disgrace his grandfather’s name.”
“Will he be chained and manacled?” the doctor questioned. “Have you found something he can eat and drink?”
Blackfin smiled and they shivered. “Oh, yes,” he grinned. “He has found what he needs to feed on. We’ve solved his food problem.” I leaned away, unable to explain my new dietary requirements.
They left me to make arrangements for my trip. I sat and stared at my feet while I waited. They returned with a bundle of clothes and ordered me to change. I held up my hands and shrugged. Blackfin pointed and the chains came off in his hands. He watched me strip with hot, greedy eyes and I turned my back on him as I pulled on the fancy nankeen breeches, high boots, ruffled shirt and tailored vest in canary yellow. Over that, a valet helped me pull on the tight-fitting green jacket and tied my neck cloth. I kept on my underwear from Arian’s. With a deep pang, I wondered where she was and prayed she was safe.
“You have a fine, body, Tobias. I could teach you many ways how to pleasure it.”
“No thanks,” I grimaced in disgust and backed into the corner as far away from him as I could go.
“Hold out your wrists.”
I wanted to kick him and bolt for the door but even as I entertained the thought, the guard stepped forward and barred the way. So, meekly, I held out my hands and he clasped the cuffs on me, kept his eyes locked on mine as his hands dipped lower and stroked my cock. I stiffened in outraged disbelief.
“Would you let me fuck you if I brought you young, fresh blood, Tobias?” he whispered in my ear. I would have run backwards if I could have gone through the wall to escape him but all I could do was twist my hips away, knocking his clawing hand away.
“Please,” I said brokenly. “Please, leave me alone.”
He pulled me forward and pushed me out the door into the hallway where I was surrounded by armed soldiers. In a curious cavalcade, we marched through the carpeted hall, past closed doors until we came to a staircase wide enough to go down four abreast with me in the middle. Into a Great Hall where another contingent of soldiers waited at attention.
Two trunks sat there and Blackfin ordered the pair closest to the door to see that they were carried to the coach, loaded and placed onboard the ship.
I saw the sun for the first time in days when I was ushered through the back door of the Governor’s palace. It made my eyes smart from the brilliance.
On a graveled drive that circled the back of the mansion and contained the barracks of the Hussars, waited a heavy coach drawn by a four-in-hand of stout shire horses. The driver sat atop the box, clad in the uniform of a sergeant in the Hussars. Saddled horses stood behind, held by hostlers.
The guards mounted first and from inside the coach, the door swung open. Blackfin told me to get in and awkwardly, I climbed in to sit between two men. One of them placed ankle restraints on me while the wizard entered and sat delicately opposite me. I couldn’t stop shivering. I didn’t know what was in store for me, how I was going to escape or what had happened to Arianell and my horses. I prayed under my breath. “God save me from the evils of the night,” I whispered.
Blackfin heard me and grinned that evil smile that made my blood run cold. “You are the evil of the night,” he returned and I turned my head away. Enduring the lurching start in silence, praying that my motion sickness would not inflict itself on me.
The horses put their shoulders into the harness and the coach lurched off straight into a trot. It was dark inside, they had closed the curtains on the windows and it grew uncomfortably warm with the seats full. It stank too, of sweat and horses, heavy male musk that contrasted sharply with Blackfin’s perfume.
I could smell their blood, could almost sense the even rhythm of their beating hearts. It both sickened and enthralled me. The soldiers’ hearts beat the little bit faster, I could sense that they were afraid of him but not so much, me.
No one spoke, we were all lost in our own little worlds until the coach stopped some two hours later and I heard the driver call out that we had to cross the ford to catch the ferry or risk losing two days travel time because of flooding on the Pike.
I knew it was at least three days to reach the nearest seaport city; that the coach would stop every six hours to change the horses and once to allow the men to eat. Usually, they would put in at a stagecoach stop to rest for the night but we were not paying customers and I knew the warship would want to sail on the tide, it would not delay their departure for one man.
As if he had read my mind, Blackfin said, “Don’t worry, Toby. The War Lion will not leave until you are on board.”
“Why do you have me chained? Do you think I can throw myself out of the coach and run away? I have no horse, no food and no weapons. No monies and no friends or allies here. Where would I go? How would I survive? I still cannot breathe properly,” I pointed out my dilemma.
“You do yourself a disservice if you think I will not credit you with courage, ingenuity and intelligence, Lord Spencer,” he returned smoothly. “You did not track down your horses, retrieve them and survive without these qualities and more. I have the utmost respect for your abilities so you will remain manacled until t you are confined in your cabin.”
I wanted to explode and attack him yet I suspicioned that he had other arcane methods to subdue me. Besides, I was in chains and surrounded by armed men and at his mercy.
“Your eyes are so expressive,” he mused. “I’ve never seen eyes that color before–a blue so dark that they look violet.” His eyes widened and a small, secret smile played on his face. “What was your mother’s name again?”
“Maleen Davenport.”
“And you said she was from Cape Fear?”
“She wasn’t from there, she was visiting her folk, and she was from Aberden.” My answers were reluctantly dragged out of me.
“What did she look like? Do you look like her?”
“She was beautiful,” I remembered. “My father said men came from all over just to see her. She had violet eyes and dark reddish hair, not the orange red like the northern Erhesh but almost oxblood colored. Long, with curls on the ends that bobbed when she walked. And the sunlight loved her. Wherever she sat, it glowed upon her.
“She loved horses and all the wildlife loved her. She could sit in the woods and birds would land on her. Deer would eat out of her hand. Butterflies would crown her with their wings.
“Plants would thrive for her where no one else could get fruit trees and gardens to grow. She was my mother and I loved her.”
The red-haired wizard leaned close and I could see the unnaturally smooth skin of his cheek. Not a hair or a blemish marred his countenance. I marveled anew that this person was so feminine that I had never thought he was male. He did not have an Adam’s apple, I wondered if he had the male equipment or he had removed it. I had heard tales of lords in the East who had done that to the men that guarded their seraglios.
Once again, he seemed to read my mind as he picked up my cuffed hands and ran them down his chest to his crotch. I felt real breasts, his penis and sac before I snatched my hand away but his grip was too powerful. He forced me to fondle him until he was heavy eyed with pleasure, I was crying in distress and the guards sat stoically ignoring all that was happening.
When he let go, I dry-heaved until I could not breathe and sat stiff and terrified as the coach horses trotted on uncaringly.