Escape

Lara awoke in a large room. There were two girls chattering in a corner and, although they were quiet, the noise was still unbearable to Lara. The constant headache had been worsened by the impact of the gun. She groaned quietly, then shut her eyes and tried to blank her mind.

It didn’t work. The two girls’ annoying voices were nagging in the back of her head.

“What did she say? And to the landowner’s sun, no less! Disgraceful,” one said, disgust and shock plain in her voice.

“If the landowner’s son touched me I wouldn’t been upset,” the other said, and they both tittered.

The sound of a door opening hushed the two girls. "Has she woken up yet, Mikita?” the new person asked. By the sounds of it, she was an older woman.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” ‘Mikita’ said, her voice more serious but no less annoying. “She’s remained stable.”

“Mikita, you should be careful about using language like that around men. No one likes a smart girl.”

Lara managed to supress her sound of derision at the notion that ‘Mikita’ could be considered smart by anyone.

“I don’t know why he wants to keep her,” the older woman said. “A foul beast like that should stay out in the wilderness. She shouldn’t be allowed near respectable people.” She paused, and then sighed. “I guess the master has his fancies, eh?”

“I wonder when he’ll wake up. It’s been four hours already, and he said he was only going to take a quick nap,” Mikita said.

“That’s right. Maybe you should go and wake him Mikita. Hurry though- try not to stare too long!” The older woman said. All three women laughed, and the door was opened and slammed shut once again.

After that, the room was thankfully much quieter.

The two remaining woman spent what seemed like an eternity doing pointless activities before finally leaving.

Lara sighed. She thought of Adrianne, and what she was doing at that point. Whether she was OK. Then she forced herself to ask herself the same question of Ava and Maria. From what the women said, it had been at least four hours since she’d been captured. She wouldn’t make it to the others before sundown.

Oh well. She’d been there long enough. Now it was time to escape.

She sat up and rubbed her eyes.

“So you’re finally awake now?” She started and turned. It was the landowner’s son, standing in the doorway. She turned away again, cursing silently, wondering why she had not heard him come in.

“Are you sure you want to turn away princess? With your back to me, you won’t know what I’m doing, and you’re useless without your knuckledusters, aren’t you? How did a girl like you come across something like that anyway? I was quite surprised- they’re a fine piece of work, and they must have been expensive. Real metal is so hard to come by these days. I hope you don’t mind my relieving you of them?”

Lara’s head began to pound harder; her knuckledusters were one of her most precious items. The only thing that could lessen the thumping was checking her left hip for that reassuring weight. It was still there.

“You know, if you’d smile you’d be even more beautiful.” The landowner’s son said, but the comment produced no reaction from Lara. She had no desire to be beautiful.

Suddenly, she felt him touch her, his arms holding her own firmly to her sides, making it impossible for her to fight him off.

“I warned you,” he chuckled lowly. “I told you that you wouldn’t know what I was doing with you back turned, and I meant it. You’re so proud, too proud for a woman. But I can cure you of that. When I’m finished with you, you’ll have no pride left at all.” His lips touched her neck, and his hands moved up to slip the sleeves of her robe down, giving Lara a little freedom to move her arms. She slipped her right hand under the robe, across her torso to the weighted left hand side of her body, where she grabbed something cool and hard. The landowner’s son continued to kiss her shoulders, her chest and her arms. Lara was frozen. The pumping of her head became too much for her to handle.

“Real metal knuckledusters, real cotton robe, real leather tunic… I wonder what you lingerie is made from. You are a rich girl aren’t you? You’d be a great asset, if I were to marry you,” he trailed off and kissed her again, her breast. “And rich girls taste so good.”

Lara made a retching sound, followed by another and another and another. Then she was sick, all over the bed.

The landowner’s son swore. “Damn, you’re just going to be difficult, aren’t you? Luckily there are other beds.” He scooped Lara up, fully freeing her right arm. Being sick had cleared her brain; she could think and function properly now. Her free arm moved and hit the landowner’s son’s left arm at an alarming speed.

The arm went limp, and Lara’s legs dropped to the floor. She stood up straight, resisting the urge to collapse.

“That’s… quite a punch.” He said weakly, holding his left arm with his right. Lara kicked the back of his knee, flooring him.

“What punch?” she scoffed. “What you felt-” she slid an arm around him, and he something cool and sharp at his throat- “was a knife.”

~

Lara was, once again free.  Her knuckledusters were restored to their place in her pocket, and she’d even managed, after a little creative use of her knife, to get some money. Adrianne would be relieved. She spent the majority of her time worrying about food, water and money and their lack thereof, and it was proving detrimental to her health. Lara, for all her harshness, cared a lot about Adrianne, more then she cared for herself or anyone else, and she was constantly thinking of what would be best for her.

The thoughts of Adrianne made Lara worry about her safety, and she quickened her footsteps.

~

It was pitch black, and the moon’s light shone gently through the hazy sky. It was worse in the cities, Lara had heard. The pollution left from decades of war had added on to the pollution of too many people living too closely together and the pollution of rich people, which Lara considered to be the worst type of pollution. Rich people owned armies, and therefore deserved to die.

Adrianne and the girls had probably only travelled as far as they could before the sun had set. Without Lara, who insisted on travelling till they dropped, and who made them keep a steady and above all quick pace, the girls covered less ground but took twice as long. That meant Lara could travel at leisure, and the girls would meet her at the spring. She had made sure to get her bearings before she left and knew which way she should walk. And she enjoyed travelling alone, free of Ava’s constant chatter.

Lara couldn’t stand her younger sister. Just looking at her made her headache worsen.

She walked another mile and a half before deciding that she should settle down. She wondered again how Adrianne was doing, and sighed. Adrianne wasn’t built to travel. Ava and Maria had been travelling their whole lives, and Lara could walk for three days without food and still fight thanks to the Spartan training she had put herself through, but Adrianne found it hard to manage two days of walking, and recently they had been walking almost non-stop. The region they were travelling through had been affected more severely by the war then they had expected, and it was telling on Adrianne’s already-poor health. She had refused to admit this, just as she had refused Lara every time she had tried to offer Adrianne her own share of the rations. Lara shook her head as if to dismiss the thoughts of something she could not help, and rolled over for a few hours sleep before sunrise.

~

Adrianne, Ava and Maria were still walking. Adrianne was anxious to reach the spring where she was positive Lara would be waiting. Ava was carrying Maria, although the child was almost as big as she.

“Adrianne, can we stop now? I’m tired,” She complained, hefting Maria higher up on to her back for what had to be the hundredth time.

“Ava, let me carry her now. You’ve been holding her for about an hour.” Adrianne said, but Ava shook her head stubbornly, and picked up her pace to show that she was really ok. Adrianne sighed. She was too tired to fight.

“We’ll stop soon, ok?” She twisted her hair into a knot. “When it drops, ok? Then we’ll stop, and rest” Ava nodded, and hefted Maria up again.

Twenty minutes later, the knot had come loose, and Adrianne’s hair hung loose down her back once again.

Adrianne stopped, secretly relieved, and took a sip out of her canteen. She was running low on water. Then she and Ava set out the sleeping bags, piling them close together, and throwing Lara’s over them. Maria was in the middle, and Ava and Adrianne flanked her protectively.

They lay in silence for almost ten minutes before Ava spoke.

“Do you think Lara’s ok?” she asked, her shaking voice indicating that she was crying again.

“I think she’s fine,” Adrianne said, making her voice as reassuring as she could. “And I think that even if she wasn’t fine she wouldn’t want you to cry over her.” Adrianne cursed herself as soon as the words left her lips; it had been the wrong thing to say. “Look, Ava, you know she can protect herself. She probably just got caught up in the town doing something. She will definitely be there to meet us once we reach the spring.”

“But she hasn’t even got a sleeping bag,” Ava wailed, sobbing fully now.

Adrianne bit her lip, and didn’t try to comfort the little girl. She couldn’t, she was too worried herself.

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