Project Empress 025

[Chapter 6 continued] 

“First things first”, Elisa said, “we have to make sure that when the time comes you can liberate yourself.” As she said that she lay her weapon collection down on the floor, it consisted of a long sword, a one handed sword, a long messer, as well as a school of knifes in many different shapes and forms. She took a modern survival knife from the latter group and turned back to Cara. 

“Lift you arms”, Elisa said. 

Cara did as she was told. Elisa started to cut into the rope holding her lower arms together. It took longer than Cara had expected. At first she didn’t want to push her would-be rescuer, but as time went on she had more and more difficulty to remain still. She tried to move her head around to see what Elisa was doing. 

“Stop moving, will you?”, Elisa said. 

“What’s taking you so long? Is this some kind of special rope?”, Cara asked.

“Nope it’s as common a rope as they come. But for my plan to work, this has to be done right.”

“And what is your plan?”, Cara asked, thinking that if she was to be a central part of it she should know what was supposed to be happening.

“When the pirate comes with your food, you will wait for him to give it to you. Then as he turns around to walk away, you liberate yourself from the rope and grab his feet and maybe give them a nice little pull so that he falls flat on his face. Which will be my signal to attack, neutralise and get the key from him. You will then be free and we both can be on our merry way towards freedom.”

“Sounds good. But why does this make your cutting so slow? Is your knife dull?”, Cara asked.

Elisa stopped with what she was doing, her burning eyes slowly rising over the horizon of Cara’s bound hands. 

“Young damsel”, Elisa said, her words flowing from her like slow lava out for revenge, “I am a Solingen ranger and a forge walker. My blades are my life and their edge my honour. The are never dull.”

“I’m sorry… I… er… I was just wondering…”, Cara said, wanting to but physically unable to retreat from Elisa’s wrath.

“Yes you are…”, Elisa said, her eyes still trying trying to turn Cara into a fine super heated mist. She breathed in, her eyes flaring up, but as she slowly breathed out the fire left her eyes. “First time’s for free, no one is born all-knowing…”, Elisa relaxed again, resuming her work. “What I am doing here”, she said, her face vanishing behind Cara’s hands again, “is cutting up the entire rope so far that, when it’s time, you can rip it completely apart. This way, when the guard comes, he will see you still bound, everything will be fine, but the moment he turns around… riiiip… and you are free.”

“Oh”, Cara said. After a brief pause; “I am also bound to the bars of the cage behind me. You better give me that knife first so I can cut the rope behind me before you finish your work on my arms. We don’t want to rip the rope around my arms before the guard comes.”

The eyes dawned over Cara’s hands again. Brows crinkled in though. A short nod. Elisa carefully placed her knife in Cara hands. 

Cara, for her part, cautiously moved the knife past her head, waving it around behind her neck until she found the rope. She had to turn the knife in her hands so that the blade made contact with the rope. A short slicing motion bit deep into the rope. Two moves later, the rope was cut and Cara could finally move her head again without being strangled. 

“That is a very sharp knife”, Cara said to Elisa, handing the knife back to her. Elisa just nodded, taking her knife back, without a word continuing her work. 

A few minutes later Elisa reappeared, now looking rather satisfied. 

“This should do it”, Elisa said. She then put the knife she was using away, went through her collection again, pulling out a long slender knife, a good ten inches long. It was mostly blade, only at the very end it curved up to a serious looking point. 

“Here, take this one. Hide it under your legs. If need be that one should help you the most inside your cage.”

Cara would have loved to get a feel for the knife but that would have broken her bonds, so for know she carefully pushed it under her legs, taking great care of not accidentally cutting herself with it.

“Now, we wait”, Elisa said, collecting her blade herd and vanishing above Cara again. There was a bit of noise, followed by deep silence. Cara even held her own breath, concentrating on her surroundings, to see if maybe she could detect Elisa’s breathing. But there was nothing. What she did notice then was, that the ground was moving very gently, which meant that she was probably on a ship. That was exiting. But also good news, if she was still on a ship she hadn’t been unconscious for too long. Which meant that she was probably still relatively close to Datlem. The situation was less horrible than she had expected. 

Cara was still imagining her triumphant return to civilisation and how she would non-nonchalantly tell Natalie about her audacious escape, when she heard the metal door open again. There were the heavy steps again. The heavy boots, with the work pants. Followed by the man hiding behind the enormous beard. 

“Are you hungry now?”, the man asked.

“Oh yes, very!”, Cara said grinning broadly. She was a terrible liar, but in some instances she could hide the truth behind a convenient illusion. She told her truth, the other side saw their truth, everybody was happy. “I am really looking forward to it.”

The beard-man shook his head laughing. “You are a weird one.” The man took Cara’s now empty water bowl and pulled it towards the bars of the cage. He took out two glasses with some kind of stew inside them. He opened the first glass, filling the room with the smell of pumpkin, handing himself the glass through the bars emptying the container in Cara’s bowl. He then repeated the same process with the other glass.

“I’ll come back in twenty minutes or so”, the beard-man said, pulling a wooden spoon out of a pocket inside his coat. As he did so, Cara could see the grip of his cutlass and knife on his belt. He put the spoon next to the bowl. “And I will need the spoon back. Not that you try to use that as a weapon.” 

The man laughed. Cara laughed. 

“I’d rather use a knife for that”, Cara said still smiling. 

“Good choice”, the beard-man said- He got up, turned around, moving back to the door somewhere to the right.

This was Cara’s chance. She ripped the rope holding her arms together in a move that made her feel like Hercules, shifted her weight forward, jumping...

Her scream alarmed the beard-man who turned around to see a now very much unbound Cara twisting on the floor of her cell, trying very much not to scream in agony as all her joints and muscles screamed at her for her glorious idea of going from forced immobility to full Olympic athlete in under a second. 

“Wha…”, the beard-man started to say.

“Oh for fucks sake”, Elisa interrupted him as she crashed into him from above. The beard-man fell over helped by Elisa’s hand pushing his face down as she fell. The back of the  man’s head cracked against the metal floor. His cry of pain was stopped midway, by Elisa’s rondel dagger piercing his heart and part of his lung. Elisa shifted her weight around, placing one of her knees on beard-mans throat. Placing a hand and a foot on his torso she pulled out her dagger. Air and blood spluttered out of the wound which she instantly pushed with her free hand again. She remained in that position for a while. She then slowly removed her hand from the wound out of which blood began to seep out. She shifted her weight away from the now dead pirate and began to search him.

“You killed him…”, Cara said, her eyes wide, her aching body forgotten for the moment.

“Very well observed”, Elisa said, still searching. “There we go”, she added, as she produced a key ring with various keys. “Let’s get you out of that cage then.”

“Why?”, Cara asked.

“Because you want to be free…?”, Elisa said, slowing down only slightly as she eyed the lock of the the cage and the the keys in her hand to find the most likely candidate.

“Yes. But why did you kill him?”

“Because”, Elisa said, moving back to the cage trying the first promising looking key, “that man was a pirate.”

“But that isn’t a reason”, Cara said as Elisa opened the door to her cage. As Elisa leaned in to lend Cara a hand, Cara shied back. 

“Really?”, Elisa said. She sighed. “Look damsel. That…”, she pointed at the dead pirate with her dagger. “Is a very bad man. I had to kill him to get you out of here.”

“You could have knocked him out.”

“Oh my god… you little piggy iron ingot…”, Elisa said. “Knocking someone out is very hit or miss. If Mr. Pirate over there had started to scream all his friend would have come to join him and then I would be there in that cell right next to you, if I was lucky.”

“But he wasn’t a killer…”, Cara said, still staring at the dead man. 

“Says who?”

“I’m still alive and he gave me food”, Cara said, pointing at the bowl. 

“Yes, little ingot, because he and his friends want to sell you. This is a slaver. Slavers are bad. Do you understand that?”

Cara just nodded. 

“Are you still going to eat that?”, Elisa said pointing at the bowl of stew. Cara just shook her head. “Nice”, Elisa said, grabbing the bowl and spoon. “First you get some feeling back into that body of yours. You need to be able to move if we are to get out of here alive. You have two minutes. Thee minutes tops. His friends,” Elisa pointed at the dead man with the spoon, “are going to start wondering where he is soon. By then we need to be armed and moving.” She took a spoon full of stew and ate it. “Oh man, this is really good. Their cook is an artist”, Elisa said, her eyes closed, savouring the stew. 

“No thanks…”, Cara said, still staring at the pirate and the puddle of blood growing quickly from under him. 

“Your loss”, Elisa said. “Now hurry up we need to move out of here.” Elisa moved aside, starting to shovel the stew into her mouth. 

It took Cara several attempts to get her body to cooperate. Various parts of her had been asleep and were now starting to wake up to a show of pins and needles, while her joints were loudly protesting the very idea of doing their jobs. Whimpering, she loosened one limb after the other. Crawling out of her cage she took care not to come into contact with the pool of blood that was slowly moving towards her. 

“Where is Jeanne D’Arc?”, Cara said trying to ignore the dead body in front of her.

Elisa, still stuffing her face with the stew, looked around. “There is another prisoner?”

“No”, Cara said. “Jeanne D’Arc is my sword.”

Elisa put the spoon into her bowl, swallowed the focused on Cara. “Is it a sharp?”

“No.”

“Is it a rare or somehow expensive sword?”

“No…”, Cara said her gaze lowering, when she remembered what was waiting further down for her, she instead decided to focus on the bowl in Elisa’s hand. “It is just a cheap, black sword. But it’s mine…”, she couldn’t bring herself to finish her sentence. Getting out of here alive was more important than getting her crappy old black sword back.

“Well at least there you are lucky”, Elisa said. “If it was a valuable blade they wouldn’t have put it in this crappy store room.” 

“They put me here…”, Cara said looking a bit further up the arm that held the bowl, her indignation giving her courage a small boost.

“Yes, bound in a cage and it’s not like they can just walk through here and nick you all subtle like”, Elisa said. “Which is why we should hurry up, get your Jeanne and get out of here.” She resumed to wolf down what was left of the stew. “Damn, that was really good. We should steal their cook too…”

Cara pushed her gaze a bit further, looking Elisa in her face again. Elisa had finished eating. She set down the bowl, placing the spoon back inside.

“So you are going to help me find my sword?”, Cara asked.

Elisa climbed up the cage back to where ever the entrance to her crate was. “Of course”, she said, vanishing out of sight for a moment, returning with a backpack and a large canvas bag. “Your sword is part of you.” She jumped down, put on her backpack securing it and slung the softly rattling bag over one of her shoulder. “You don’t leave something like that behind.” She looked at Cara, smiling a warm smile for the first time since Cara had seen her. “Don’t worry piggy iron, we’ll get your sword. I think I know where it is.”

“My name is Cara”, Cara said.

“Good to know piggy iron”, Elisa said, moving past Cara towards where the metal door had to be. 

“Why do you keep calling me that?”, Cara said as she tried to follow Elisa. This was made rather hard by the dead man and the pool of blood that had by now reached her feet. The metallic smell of blood and something else far more unpleasant was filling the air by now. If she wanted to get out she would have to walk through the blood and over the dead. 

“Because”, Elisa said, “you are not steel yet. You certainly went through the smelter and the forge, but you’re not there yet. Let’s hope you harden.”

“I don’t want to harden,” Cara said, carefully moving through the blood which was somehow both very sticky and slippery at the same time. Cara had to concentrate not to retch.

“If you don’t harden, you’ll break”, Elisa said, while checking the contents of a couple of cloth covered barrels to one side.

“I don’t want that either…”, Cara said, her voice now sounding strange, as she was now consciously breathing through her mouth alone, to not have to smell her surroundings. That did not help against the weird sensation of walking through the pool of blood. Each step made her shudder.

“And that’s why you are still piggy iron, damsel piggy iron”, Elisa said. looking back at Cara with a sad smile on her face. “You’ll find your way”, she added, moving ahead again. “I have the feeling that you’ll make good steel one day.”

“What makes you say that?”, Cara asked, thankful for the conversation as it gave her something to focus on. ‘Conversation…’, she thought.

“Should we be talking this loudly?”, Cara whispered. 

“Yes”, Elisa didn’t whisper back. “There is a double door leading to this storage room. The doors make quite the spectacle when you open and close them but when closed they keep the sound out pretty well.”

“How do you know that?”, Cara said, wondering about the apparent omniscience of the forge-walker. 

“Because unlike you little piggy iron, I’m not a prisoner.”

“That makes sense…”, Cara said.

“Ah… here you go”, Elisa said, looking under another cover. She pulled a black sword from out of a rack. “This your sword?”

“Yes!”, Cara almost yelled. For a moment all blood and dead beardy men were forgotten. She rushed forward to get her sword back. 

“Do you mind if I get to know Jeanne a bit?”, Elisa asked.

“Er… no go ahead.”, Cara said.

Elisa changed into a stance that Cara didn’t recognise. It looked like a more centred version of one of her lower guards. Elisa moved the sword in a few quick strikes ending it a stab. She played around a bit with it trying to get a feel for the overall balance for the sword. 

“Decent”, Elisa said. “Manoeuvrable, but with a slight tendency to bite. I like that. Where did you get it?”

“A flea market…”, Cara said. 

Elisa looked at her dumbfounded. The laughed. “Well you do have luck on your side at the very least. For a flea-market sword its spectacular.” Elisa walked back to Cara, handing over her sword grip first. 

“OK piggy iron, you have your sword back. Keep good care of her. For the rest of our little adventure I would recommend you use the knife I gave you. At least until we are out in the open and you have space to swing Jeanne. Stay close to me. Do as I say. How good a fighter are you?”

“With my sword? Not very good”, Cara said. “But it was enough to beat two of the pirates who attacked our ship.”

“That’s an interesting definition of ‘not very good’”, Elisa said. 

“The pirates didn’t know the basics principles of the martial arts. They don’t count”, said Cara.

Elisa snorted, shaking her head. “Right… Well you follow me. Keep quiet and keep our backs covered. OK?”

Cara nodded, holding her sword close to her. Feeling her sword´s weight in her hands started to relax her. She inhaled, instantly regretting having relaxed as suddenly her nose was flooded with the smell of blood again. 

“Around that corner”, Elisa pointed forward, “is the inner door. We are going to try to open that all quiet like. But we can’t know if someone is close enough to hear the door so the moment we open the door we have to assume that we are going to get attacked or ambushed, understood?”

Cara nodded again.

“Piggy iron?”, Elisa said.

“?”, Cara expressed.

“Knife?”

“Oh…”, said Cara. She moved her sword into her off-hand. Pulled out the knife Elisa had given her. “Ready.”

“Let’s see if we don’t make steel out of you yet”, Elisa said and moved towards the metal door.