AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The men nodded their thanks and headed for the door to the servants' stairs. When they had vanished, Rachel started out once more, quickly making the door out of the castle. She took to the pathway that the servants used when going to town to get things they needed for the running of the castle. There were big soldiers, fearsome-looking men, who were patrolling everywhere, but they didn't seem to be bothering the servants, so Rachel fell in with some carpenters and walked along beside the tall wheel of their handcart. She hid her face behind the load of boards.
The soldiers paid only casual interest to the servants going about their work, mostly watching the prettier women. Rachel kept her head down and kept walking. With her hair all chopped off she looked like a nobody, and none of the soldiers stopped her.
Once beyond the big stone wall, she kept walking along with the servants until they went through a patch of woods that was right up close to the path. She glanced back over her shoulder and didn't see any soldiers looking her way.
Quick as a cat, Rachel slipped into the trees. As soon as she was in among the thick balsams and pines, she started running. She took deer paths through the bramble, following any she could find that went west or north. Once she was running, panic came out of nowhere and took control of her legs. All she could think about was getting away. This was her chance. She had to run.
If the Imperial Order soldiers caught her out here, she knew that she would be in trouble. She wasn't sure what they would do to her, but she had a pretty good general idea. Chase had given her those lessons one dark night by the campfire. He told her something of what men like that would do to her.
He told her not to let herself get caught by men like that. He told her that if she was facing such men, and capture, she had to fight them with everything she had. Chase said that he hadn't meant to scare her, but hoped to keep her safe. Still, it made her cry and she only felt better when he sheltered her under his big arm.
She realized that she had nothing with which to fight. Her knives had all been taken away. She wished she had been smarter and before she left the castle had taken a quick look in Violet's room to see if she could find any of her knives. She was so eager to get away that she never thought of it. She should have at least gone through the kitchens when she'd been down in the service areas and gotten a knife. She was so busy congratulating herself over a piece of string, and that she had gotten away, that she had never thought about getting a weapon. Chase was probably angry enough to come back to life and scold her for being so thoughtless. Her face burned with shame.
She stopped when she saw a stout branch lying on the ground. She picked it up and tested its strength. It seemed sound. She whacked it against a fir tree and it made a solid sound. It was a little heavier than she would have wanted to carry, but at least she had something.
She slowed to a trot and kept moving, trying to put as much distance between her and the castle as she could. She didn't know when they would discover her missing, and she didn't know if Six could track as well as she could do everything else. Rachel wondered if Six might be able to gaze into a bowl of water and see where Rachel was. That made her run faster again.
By early afternoon she came across a trail. It looked like it headed roughly north. She knew that Aydindril was somewhere to the north. She didn't know if she could find something that far away, but she couldn't think of anywhere else to go. If she could get back to the Keep, back to Zedd, he would help her.
She was so deep in thought that she didn't even see the man until she almost ran into him. She looked up and realized that it was an Imperial Order soldier.
"Well, well, what have we here?"
As he started to reach down for her, Rachel swung the club with all her strength, whacking him across the knee. The man cried out and fell to the ground, clutching his knee, shouting curses at her.
Rachel tore off running. She took to the deer paths again because she was smaller and it was easier for her to negotiate them than it would be for big men. It sounded like there were suddenly a dozen men after her, crashing through the brush. She could hear the man she had clubbed far back, still cursing up a storm, yelling at his fellows to get her.
As she burst into a clearing, winded and nearly out of strength, she saw that there were men blocking the path ahead. They all started for her.
Rachel ducked to the side and ran. It seemed like there were soldiers all around. She was in a panic, not knowing how to get away from them.
She heard one man fall. She didn't look back, but kept running. She heard another fall, crying out briefly, then going silent. She wondered if, when running at breakneck speed, they were catching their feet in holes, or twisting ankles on low vines.
Another man let out a grunt. This time Rachel stopped and turned just long enough for a quick look. It had not been a fall, or a twisted ankle. It had been a sound released in death. Rachel's eyes were wide as she stared. Another man shrieked like he was being skinned alive.
Rachel wondered what kind of woods she was in, and what monsters were loose in them.
She turned and ran. She had no chance if the men got her. She didn't know what else was about, but she first had to keep from getting caught or they were liable to slit her throat for giving them a difficult time.
Suddenly, three men charged out of the brush, roaring in rage. A little cry squeaked out as Rachel ran with all her strength and fear. The men, though, had longer legs and were catching her.
One of them stopped suddenly. Rachel glanced back over a shoulder and saw the man arching his back, as if in pain. She saw, then, a foot of steel jutting from his chest. The other two turned to the unexpected attack from behind.
As the man who had been run through with a sword started to fall, Rachel's jaw fell open at what she saw behind him.
It was Chase, big as life.
She couldn't make sense of it.
The two men charged him. Chase fought them with swift, powerful strikes, taking them both down as if doing no more than brushing aside pests, but at the same time more men poured out of the woods around them. She saw at least a half dozen of the big Imperial Order soldiers to one side alone charging the even bigger boundary warden.
Rachel ran back as Chase fought all the men at once. When he killed a man to his side, a man to the other side used the opening to go for him. Rachel whacked the backs of his knees. His legs folded under him. Chase swung around and ran the man though, then met the fierce charge of yet more men, all of them grunting with the effort of trying to take down this one big man. They gritted their teeth as they growled and tried to grapple Chase's arms so other men could stab him. Rachel waled away at them with all her strength, but to no avail.
When one of the men fell dead, Rachel snatched the knife in a sheath at his belt and immediately stabbed the legs of a man going for Chase's back. He cried out and turned. Chase took him in an instant.
All of a sudden it was quiet, except for Rachel and Chase's labored breathing. All the men lay dead.
Rachel stood staring up at Chase. She couldn't believe what she was seeing, couldn't believe her eyes. She feared that he might vanish, like a phantom.
He looked down at her, and that wonderful grin of his came over his face.
"Chase, what are you doing here?"
"I came to see if you were all right."
"All right? I was held captive in the castle. I thought you were dead. I had to rescue myself. What took you so long?"
He shrugged. "I wouldn't have wanted to spoil your accomplishment. Isn't it better that you did it on your own?"
"Well," she said, a bit perplexed, "I could have used some help."
"Is that so?" He appeared unmoved by her complaint. "You look to have managed."
"But you don't know. It was terrible. They locked me up in the box again, and they locked my tongue so that I couldn't talk."
Chase eyed her askance. "I don't suppose you brought that tongue lock with you, did you? It sounds like a useful device."
Rachel grinned and hugged him around his waist. When she had first met him she had to hug his leg because that was all she could reach. She basked in the comfort of his big hand on her back. It felt like everything in the world was right again.
"I thought you were dead," she said as she started to cry.
He ruffled her chopped-off hair. "I wouldn't do that to you, little one. I promised to take care of you, and I meant it."
"I guess that I'm stuck with being your daughter."
"Guess so. Your hair is ugly, though. You'll have to grow it back if you want to stay with me. You can't keep chopping it off like that if you want to be my daughter. I told you that before."
Rachel grinned through her tears.
Chase was alive.
* * *
CHAPTER 52
With Cara right on her heels, Nicci strode through the immense brass-clad doors covered in elaborate, engraved symbols. A flickering flash of lightning came in through the dozen round-topped windows between the towering mahogany columns to illuminate row upon row of shelves all around the cavernous room. They had managed to patch only the worst of the damage to the two-story-tall windows—enough, they hoped, that the room could be used for its intended purpose as a containment field. Some of the heavy dark green velvet draperies with gold fringe were getting wet as rain blew in the remaining holes on some of the stronger gusts.
Seeing what was in the center of the room, floating above the large table Nicci had once floated above herself, she hoped that a bit of errant rain would be all that came in through those missing parts of the windows.
Rushing to meet her, Zedd gripped her shoulders. Desperation was clearly evident in his eyes.
"Did you find him? He's alive, isn't he? Is he all right?"
Nicci took a breath. "Zedd, he survived the events in the sliph—I at least found out that much."
