Chapter 166

Soreness wasn't an uncommon feeling for someone living in the wilds, cozy beds, perfect temperatures, warm blankets, those were a running joke among the tiny handful of those who survived wilderness duty. It was a common mockery that at least when they died out there, they wouldn't wake up sore.

But that soreness was usually in her back, or in the crick of her neck, or all over during cold winters. But the only time Neia ever remembered waking up with sore arms was in training with her bow. It was such an unusual state to wake up in that she briefly wondered what was wrong, tried to move, and found she couldn't.

Her eyes flew open as the most dreadful fear came over her, 'Have I been captured by demihumans?!' The thought shot her to total wakefulness, and with that wakefulness and the flying open of her eyes, came memory.

'No, I've been captured by my idol… damn. That was the worst day of my life… so far.' She sighed and forced herself to relax. She heard the rumble and bumps below and felt the steady forward motion with it, and one look at the covering overhead, and she knew she was in a wagon. The cheap tan covering was the sort commonly used by the Paladin order to hide the contents from outsiders or hide outsiders from the contents. 'So I'm a prisoner… and unless I've been out for more than a week, they brought this with them as far as they could, then carried me back to it. I was assumed guilty from the start…' It was a bitter realization that spoke volumes of her standing with the Paladin Order.

"I could write to my parents… they would understand, wouldn't they?" Neia was talking to herself in a tiny whisper and staring up at the fabric while she worked her wrists against the ropes. Her hands were bound at the wrists and her biceps and triceps bound against one another, contorted into the shape of chicken wings, lying like that for hours left her with a constant ache. 'I could probably snap the ropes, but they're expecting that.' She listened outside and tried to move her feet, those were secured with heavy chains, making snapping the ropes useless.

She tilted her head back just to look at… nothing. 'It would just tell Remedios that I'm awake and resisting.' The pain in Neia's jaw was starting to return, 'I think it's cracked.' She realized, and when she tilted her head to the side to look at… again nothing, just the blank wall of the covered cart, she felt the bruise on her face and sucked her teeth in with a wince.

Even to her own mind it was curious to Neia Baraja that she felt no real fear, if her own order were against her, what chance did she have at a trial? Even if her parents used their influence, what good would that do? 'Would they even try?'

The question fed into the one thing she did feel.

Regret. 'I'll never be able to make them proud of me after all… how… unfortunate.' The cart rolled and bumped around under her, jostling her against a few sacks of useless supplies. 'Idiots, carting all that around, how mobile do you think you can be?' Contempt and frustration with her Order raged like fire in her blood.

'Didn't I work hard enough?! I kept people safe! I did my job! I-' She aborted her raging that was taking shape in her head, 'By their reckoning, I didn't. Nits make lice, I let children and pregnant women go, I didn't execute everyone, and I should have killed the dragon. By their thinking… the failure to murder is treason, and treating Olasird'arc is the same as aiding the enemies of humanity.'

Children, the pregnant, the wounded pleading for their lives, every Paladin that was not a monster knew that moment of empathizing pity seeing children wailing for their parents, a little one rocking the body of someone who died with her arrow in their heart. Most would have felt something for the small ones.

'But they put them down anyway.' Neia understood why they did it, and that alone. 'I might have gotten off light, a slap on the wrist, or at most discharged.' But Olasird'arc was as good as a death sentence.

'So this is how it ends for me. Serve and protect my nation, make mother proud, make father acknowledge me… to death by hanging if I'm lucky, or death by the sword if I'm… less lucky.' That was enough to shudder.

Neia saw someone die that way once. A soldier who sold patrol route information to demihumans, bound upright to a stake, and then pinned to it by having a rusty sword shoved through his belly and into the wood. A strong swordsman would be used so that it would come out the other side, and then the end would be heated and bent so that it couldn't be removed from the stake. It was said that anyone who could walk off the handle side and survive for a day would be pardoned. 'Nobody ever does though, if the blood loss doesn't kill you, the infection will, and that is if you don't just stay pinned upright to the stake to expire in the elements.'

Neia closed her eyes, she couldn't feel remorse for what she'd done. Not for any of it.

'But mom, dad… will you even be able to look at me?' That question made her swallow hard, depending on where she was being taken, she might find out the answer to that very question. 'Probably not to Hoburns, could it be to the fortress itself? To the wall?'

She looked up at the thick canvas and tried to guess her direction based on the direction of the scraps of light that made it within.

Neia didn't sit up, she didn't want to give away that she was in fact awake. Going to the wall was the worst possible situation. It had the only city in the area, all the villagers, all the little towns, they were only there to support the fortress city which was only there to support the wall. Nearly everybody was a veteran of the wars against the Demihumans or descended from somebody who was.

Though Neia hadn't been there personally, she struggled to imagine any kind of a fair trial among them.

'But do my arms really have to be sore the whole damn time?' She asked while working and twisting the ropes, whoever tied them had used a lot, but hadn't been especially good at it. 'The weakness of not taking many prisoners, you don't know how to handle them.' Neia snorted at the half joke, the ropes burned against her wrists from their tightness, but the one to bind her clearly mistook 'tight' for 'secure'.

Her constant work continued to loosen the amateurish knot until she had her hand loose, and then used her free hand to undo the remainder, the slack rope let her unfold her arms and droop them underneath. 'At least now I'll ride in comfort.' Neia thought and then reached for a sack, pressing her hands, she felt the hardness of a large quantity of dried beans. She tugged it over, sat up just a bit, and put it under her back. She then folded her hands behind her head and stretched out.

Reaching the fortress would take a few days, her 'escape' from her bonds would be discovered eventually. But then again, Neia felt no fear, only bemusement. 'The look on the Commander's face when she sees me just relaxing against these beans with a smile on my face and giving her a little wave, it'll be worth the slaps I'll take for it.' She rubbed her shoulders deeper into the sack of beans, 'This really is comfortable… somebody should make a chair or something out of this stuff.' She thought, and yawned as quietly as she could to wait for the inevitable.