The Hostages
Here’s another Alphabet Soup cycle that I wrote for Femslash100. (One of the pieces, “Bargaining”, I wrote for their ‘Surrender’ challenge, but the rest are Alphabet Soup -T, I, Y, & M, specifically).
Word Count: 862 (all together, not counting the individual titles).
Timeline: Immediately after "Because of Her".
Lost
Cold sweat trickles down my back. There’s blood seeping through my trousers from the gash in my leg. Two fingers broken for sure, and a bad bruise over my left eye. It hurts to breath. Broken ribs? Probably.
At least they let me keep the uniform. It’s marginally harder to rape someone in trousers and I guess I’m not worth the effort. Yet. Then again, maybe they’re leaving me alone because of the white hair. Maybe they think I’m too old to suit their tastes.
I think of Wazzer, with her iron-hard faith, even when she was in the Grey House. I’ve never had faith like that. Least of all now.
I think of Mal.
I shouldn’t be thinking of Mal. I’ll start crying if I do that for too long.
I would give almost anything to see her again. Just once.
Of all the ways I thought I’d die, I never thought it would be like this, locked in a Moldovan cell and shivering with cold.
Rates of Exchange
“Corporal?” the young man jumped at the sound of General Clogston’s voice. “Go fetch Major von Borogvia, will you? Tell him I’ve got a mission for him.”
The corporal saluted and hurried from the tent, as Clogston carefully sanded the contract.
She knew the vampire was the right man for the job. If only because the Moldovans could afford better cross-bows than the Borogravians could, and thus they weren’t making do with wooden bolts. No-one was going to shoot a vampire - not twice, anyway.
But… Chris Clogston was nothing if not honest with herself - even though she lived a lie in front of everyone else - she knew there was another reason she wanted Maladict to handle the hostage exchange. She just hoped the Colonel was still alive when they got her back. She admitted to herself, as she folded the contract, sealing it with a blob of red wax, that she wasn’t entirely sure what the Major would do if things were otherwise.
Professional
Mal had led a squadron of soldiers - mostly people from the medical tents, because she knew how these things went - to the middle of the battle field. Limping behind them were the forty or so Moldovan prisoners who were being traded back to their own people in exchange for Borogravian captives.
Under different circumstances, Mal might have spared them the thought of ‘poor sods’ because being used as a bargaining chip is not a pleasant experience for anybody.
As it was, all her thoughts were focussed on the door of the Moldovan keep.
She scanned the line of prisoners, as they filed out, searching for a shock of white hair among the men.
There!
The sight of her - limping painfully on a badly swollen leg - jerked Mal forward a step before she could stop herself. She held herself still after that, waiting with the detached aloofness that supposedly comes naturally to vampires and officers both.
The men filed past, and those who couldn’t walk unassisted were bundled onto stretchers or else leaned against their more able-bodied comrades.
“Colonel,” Mal said, her heart leaping against her ribs. She could smell the sickness in Polly’s blood.
“Major,” Polly replied, squaring her shoulders.
“It’s good to have you back with us.”
She nodded, looking bleak for a split second.
“It’s good to be back,” she replied.
More heartfelt greetings would have to wait until later.
Bargaining
Once upon a time, I thought there was freedom in surrender.
I still do, at times. Yielding to her mouth, or her touch, I can let myself go, at least a little.
But… there are other types of surrender: The fluttering of a white rag on the wind.
We had to bargain, to get our wounded back.
She was among them, this time, the soldiers herded into enemy cells. We traded three men to get her back.
We got a bargain.
She’d needed a surgeon when she got back. Most of them did.
I sit by her bedside, absently stroking her sweat-dampened hair. They gave her something to make her sleep, but it should have worn off by now.
“Don’t give up,” I murmur. “Don’t give up.”
Songbirds and Salvation
The swelling on her leg had gone down a great deal since she’d limped into the surgeon’s tent, waiting her turn for their ministrations. She knew she was lucky to have gotten an Igor, even if Borogravia’s army surgeons were getting used to the idea that ‘tar’ was not synonymous with ‘stitches’, many of them would still have been more than happy to hack off her infected leg, pronouncing it ‘not worth saving’ - To the Igors, everything was worth saving. She could breath again, too, without the stabbing pain she’d almost started to get used to.
She lay in her own tent - ‘recovering’ on the General’s orders - and Mal would stick her head in occasionally to see how she was doing.
Mal.
She’d been so sure that she’d die in that cell, that the infection would take her, or some fragment of her broken ribs would pierce her lung and do it faster.
She hadn’t had faith - of any sort - since before her mother died.
But she was starting to believe in miracles.
*****
So… Comments? Questions?
Word Count: 862 (all together, not counting the individual titles).
Timeline: Immediately after "Because of Her".
Lost
Cold sweat trickles down my back. There’s blood seeping through my trousers from the gash in my leg. Two fingers broken for sure, and a bad bruise over my left eye. It hurts to breath. Broken ribs? Probably.
At least they let me keep the uniform. It’s marginally harder to rape someone in trousers and I guess I’m not worth the effort. Yet. Then again, maybe they’re leaving me alone because of the white hair. Maybe they think I’m too old to suit their tastes.
I think of Wazzer, with her iron-hard faith, even when she was in the Grey House. I’ve never had faith like that. Least of all now.
I think of Mal.
I shouldn’t be thinking of Mal. I’ll start crying if I do that for too long.
I would give almost anything to see her again. Just once.
Of all the ways I thought I’d die, I never thought it would be like this, locked in a Moldovan cell and shivering with cold.
Rates of Exchange
“Corporal?” the young man jumped at the sound of General Clogston’s voice. “Go fetch Major von Borogvia, will you? Tell him I’ve got a mission for him.”
The corporal saluted and hurried from the tent, as Clogston carefully sanded the contract.
She knew the vampire was the right man for the job. If only because the Moldovans could afford better cross-bows than the Borogravians could, and thus they weren’t making do with wooden bolts. No-one was going to shoot a vampire - not twice, anyway.
But… Chris Clogston was nothing if not honest with herself - even though she lived a lie in front of everyone else - she knew there was another reason she wanted Maladict to handle the hostage exchange. She just hoped the Colonel was still alive when they got her back. She admitted to herself, as she folded the contract, sealing it with a blob of red wax, that she wasn’t entirely sure what the Major would do if things were otherwise.
Professional
Mal had led a squadron of soldiers - mostly people from the medical tents, because she knew how these things went - to the middle of the battle field. Limping behind them were the forty or so Moldovan prisoners who were being traded back to their own people in exchange for Borogravian captives.
Under different circumstances, Mal might have spared them the thought of ‘poor sods’ because being used as a bargaining chip is not a pleasant experience for anybody.
As it was, all her thoughts were focussed on the door of the Moldovan keep.
She scanned the line of prisoners, as they filed out, searching for a shock of white hair among the men.
There!
The sight of her - limping painfully on a badly swollen leg - jerked Mal forward a step before she could stop herself. She held herself still after that, waiting with the detached aloofness that supposedly comes naturally to vampires and officers both.
The men filed past, and those who couldn’t walk unassisted were bundled onto stretchers or else leaned against their more able-bodied comrades.
“Colonel,” Mal said, her heart leaping against her ribs. She could smell the sickness in Polly’s blood.
“Major,” Polly replied, squaring her shoulders.
“It’s good to have you back with us.”
She nodded, looking bleak for a split second.
“It’s good to be back,” she replied.
More heartfelt greetings would have to wait until later.
Bargaining
Once upon a time, I thought there was freedom in surrender.
I still do, at times. Yielding to her mouth, or her touch, I can let myself go, at least a little.
But… there are other types of surrender: The fluttering of a white rag on the wind.
We had to bargain, to get our wounded back.
She was among them, this time, the soldiers herded into enemy cells. We traded three men to get her back.
We got a bargain.
She’d needed a surgeon when she got back. Most of them did.
I sit by her bedside, absently stroking her sweat-dampened hair. They gave her something to make her sleep, but it should have worn off by now.
“Don’t give up,” I murmur. “Don’t give up.”
Songbirds and Salvation
The swelling on her leg had gone down a great deal since she’d limped into the surgeon’s tent, waiting her turn for their ministrations. She knew she was lucky to have gotten an Igor, even if Borogravia’s army surgeons were getting used to the idea that ‘tar’ was not synonymous with ‘stitches’, many of them would still have been more than happy to hack off her infected leg, pronouncing it ‘not worth saving’ - To the Igors, everything was worth saving. She could breath again, too, without the stabbing pain she’d almost started to get used to.
She lay in her own tent - ‘recovering’ on the General’s orders - and Mal would stick her head in occasionally to see how she was doing.
Mal.
She’d been so sure that she’d die in that cell, that the infection would take her, or some fragment of her broken ribs would pierce her lung and do it faster.
She hadn’t had faith - of any sort - since before her mother died.
But she was starting to believe in miracles.
*****
So… Comments? Questions?