Fate - First Reply Serendipitous Liberation

[Praetor Ruslan Gildal]

BRUTTAEUM, CAMPANIA
NORTHEAST OF GILD​

With fury and speed did the Gildans descend in ambush upon the convoy. They emerged from their places of hiding among the forested hills, common in the land of Bruttaeum, and Ruslan Gildal, the leader of the Gildan ambush, gave the war cry of "REGELISHAH!" as he and his fellow Gildans ran down the hill. Shock overwhelmed the Bruttites on the path, armed soldiers serving their Tyrant King Brutus, and they scrambled to mount a hasty defense. But daring won the day, as crossbow bolts from shadows unseen assailed the Bruttites before even Ruslan and his men could clash into the melee. The Bruttites, fearing attack from all sides, were thrown into disarray, and the Gildan soldiers cut them down to the last man.

Overcast skies overhead blocked the light of the sun in a thick gray blanket, and, to Ruslan's reckoning, such a thing was apropos for the land of Bruttaeum. Bruttaeum was nothing if not a land of slavery, the wretched practice flaunted and indulged by the Tyrant King. Brutus himself was a formidable sorcerer, and had through his secret arts lived for many centuries. As such, he exclusively preferred his slaves to be of elven heritage, and he engaged in covert trade with slavers from across the world to import fresh "chattel" from afar. Men from Cerak At'Thul, the Empire of Amol-Kalit, and even some Orcs from the Blightlands, all he enticed with profit and power to serve him in his Tyranny, and these men now dead upon the path were of that number.

Ruslan had taken a small number of brave Gildans with him for this mission: only thirty, so as best to keep a low profile, while still having the manpower to overwhelm the Bruttites. His aim was to rescue a captured Gildan elf, who had been kidnapped from the Jemaat, and was believed to be held in this very convoy.

Ruslan cleaned the blood from his axe, and then holstered it on his belt. "Fine work," he said to his soldiers. "Regel watches over us this day." And to this came a round of agreement, Gildans each in their turn replying with "Evet," many with enthusiasm and vigor, some with solemnity (one day, perhaps, all Bruttaeum would be liberated).

The convoy was a small one. Two wagons, the front wagon carrying supplies for the Bruttites, and the second, Ruslan presumed, carrying the prisoner. The Bruttites, scarcely able to be called men for the barbarity they regularly displayed, had been transporting their prisoner in a wooden box, vaguely coffin-shaped, with but a hole here and a hole there such that the prisoner could breathe.

One of the Gildan crossbowmen secured the key from the fallen Bruttite Slavemaster. He tossed it to Ruslan, and Ruslan caught it. He jumped then onto the second wagon. With the key in the lock he gave it a twist and the latch clicked. And then Ruslan threw open the lid.

But who lay inside...was not the Gildan elf Ruslan and his men were looking for.

"Who...are you?"

 

[Alleria]

Light fell on her olive features, and she blinked against the sudden flood of in the place of darkness. The young woman did not immediately move as her saviors stared at what they had rescued. Not what they wanted to find, clearly. She stared in silence at them, unmoving and unsure as to the nature of this particular trick.

There was always a trick, another game.

---

Her heart thundered in its cage of bone. It might burst free and save her yet.

After a fashion. She would rather die than go back to Summer. Anything was better than being merely a plaything to callous immortals that were just as likely to break their toy as to let her live. Broken flesh was hardly as painful as a broken mind.

She wasn't sure that she hadn't been shattered and was too far gone to know it.

The mountain air was dry and cold, the scent of pine and the bitter bite of old snow thick. Its bite at her throat as she puffed and panted, kicking up scree and branches as she pounded down the alpine path. Somewhere behind her were a posse of men on horseback. Many had dismounted and all of them stalked her in the silence of professionals. No ordinary cutthroats, these.

The only reason she had eluded them thus far was simply because the various paths through the forested mountains were not friendly to riders. She was fairly nimble anyway and had slipped their grasp. She was as silent as a rabbit, too, zig-zagging along twisting paths that wove through the slender boles of towering firs and over stony shoulders of ridges. Only the snap of her cloak in the wind of her passage marked her passage; the occasional clatter of chipped stone when she scrambled up steep slopes.

I won't go back. I won't. Her features were grim, dark eyes wild with fear. She could feel the comforting weight of the knifes at her waist and the lute on her back. One of those things would do nothing to help her. Neither would, actually; there were a dozen of them and one of her. She was confident in herself but there were limits to human capability.

There was no way she could face off a dozen.

She slipped round a pile of fallen trees from some long-ago landslide and gasped as rough hands gripped her arm and pulled her round.

"Ho there, girl!" The man pulled her up onto her tippy toes, features hard. No gloating, no leering - just business. She went to drive a knee into his groin and he adroitly turned aside, twisting her arm. "Now, now, there'll be none of that."

He spun her round such that the instrument fell from her back as the strap that held it snapped. In a quick and efficient motion drove a gloved fist into her sternum. Her breath left her in a single whoosh and the world spun.

"Can't damage the goods. They were very adamant about..."

The world faded to grey, then black.

---

Dark eyes regarded the armed Gildans. She had sat up, but she had not moved from where she had been held captive. Alleria tentatively felt in front her as if expecting to find wood against her fingers. When nothing brushed their tips, she pinched herself hard.

"What are you?" she asked quietly after staring at the man who spoke for an uncomfortably long time. She did not offer him her name.

Names were dangerous things in the wrong hands.

 

[Praetor Ruslan Gildal]

Ruslan glanced back at one of the men with him, Kaan (a dependable and veteran Career Soldier, who volunteered for every levy in his lifetime, and who needed no convincing to join with him). Kaan, judging by the bemused expression, heard the same question Ruslan himself had heard: what are you? A strange thing to ask, even in a place as bespeckled with a multitude of races like Alliria, for many were already known.

"We are Gildan," Ruslan said, taking her question to be more one of nationality than anything else. "This surprise fortune is still yours, but...we were expecting these men to be transporting an elf."

"Ruslan-gazi," called a man from the front wagon. "This cart won't fare through the trackless paths."

"Move it from the road, and hide it as best you can in that gully yonder. Toss the bodies into the gully as well. But take the supplies and the horses."

And then he turned his attention to the woman once more.

"How did you come into the Bruttites' custody?"

Alleria

 

[Alleria]

"Gildan..," she said in her low voice. Perhaps she had heard of such a thing before. A place? It was difficult to recall what was real and what was not after so long spent among creatures that played with her mind as she played with a lute or a violin.

She sat a little straighter, looking round. Where was her instrument? Her lips drew into a thin line as they danced across the wagon bed, then at the men gathered round. A trace of unease etched itself across her smooth features. "I am not an elf," she said in the same tone as someone saying that the sky was blue. She ran a hand through the tangled mess of her hair and looked down at herself. She was in a slave's shift, coarse woven wool that hung off her like a sack.

A look of panic crossed her face as Ruslan spoke, and she made to get up. She had been cramped in that box for a long while, though, and sat down quite heavily from the sudden swimming in her head. "Wait," she mumbled. "They might have put my things on that wagon."

She had no idea what a Bruttite was. She had no idea where she was and still had no idea what these Gildans were. They might have been what they appeared to be - men and women. They did not have the look of fae about them, nor the stink of glamour either. But then...that was just it, wasn't it?

Tricks and more tricks.

"What elf is worth killing all of these men to rescue?" She didn't want to admit that carelessness had brought her to her current circumstance. She also didn't trust these soldiers, either. The poison of mistrust was a hard one to shake.

She moved to stand again and wavered on the brink of falling again.