He's a Very Desperate Prince // (for wouldberapunzel)
It was long past midnight, far into the cold dark reaches of the night, when the Prince finally saw his hope for salvation in the distance. Lightning cracked overhead, and in its flickering illumination he saw the outlines of a large manor house sitting on the crest of a small hill two, perhaps three miles further on in the distance. With a quiet prayer of thanks in a voice gone harsh and raw he angled toward them, begging the gods that looked over princes to just let him reach the house before the last of his strength ran out.
He didn’t run, he was too tired for running, and the slash along his ribs – shallow though it might be – made each quick, stumbling step more painful than he would have wished it. He was exhausted, weary from two days without food (even if he’d known the wilderness lore to tell friendly plant from poisonous it would have done him little good; the moors in this corner of the Realms were mud-bogged and cruel this time of year, the earth unsteady and treacherous – he was days North of his intended route, and spring broke harder and later here than it did in the Hollyhills to the South. He’d pulled himself out of a sinkhole once already, losing his doublet in the process and barely making it out alive, and considered himself lucky for it. He’d kept to higher ground as best he could since then, wishing with all his heart and soul for a stand of trees to give him at least a bit of cover from the rain – and from any of the bandits that might still be pursuing him.
He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t help it – and he bit back a moan as the memories cam unbidden into his mind yet again. Three more weeks on the road, traveling quickly but comfortable, and they would have been in the Crystal Court snug in their beds, safe on the other side of their journey on a Royal Visit to the Kingdom of the Sundancers, to see if amongst the Sunking’s seven daughters could be found a match in temperament for Prince Henri (and, even more importantly for the advisers and Royal Matchmaker who had been part of his ill-fated trip, if a match in military and economic suitability be found between their two kingdoms). By ship across the Songsea the journey would have been no more than eight days on the sea, twelve if the winds were entirely against them, and no more than a fortnight overland on both shores from one Capital to the next; but the pirate clans, usually quiet in the cold winter months, had been unusually active, and the Code – which protected the lives of the nobility provided they could offer proper ransom – broken, as one lord after the next lost his life to the god of the waves or the top of a pirate cheiftan’s sword.
In light of such things, a bit of a roadtrip seemed the more prudent of matters, and the merging of the two kingdoms on opposing shores of the Songsea even more advantageous. So instead of a journey straight from one land to the next over the sea, an amusing adventure of perhaps no more than three weeks with a stay of several months basking in the attentions of the Sunking’s reputedly beautiful bevy of daughters, Prince Henri and his entourage had undertaken what was expected to be a journey of closer to six, perhaps seven weeks if the weather failed to hold. Still, a longer journey – with a chance to perhaps assess the situation overland for the expansion through the Western Territories of the newfangled railcarriages – was deemed the far wiser choice.
But a trip over land held its own dangers, which were never more evident than this – the Crown Prince of the Kingdom of Stars racing as fast as his weary, exhausted legs could take him across the moors toward whatever fate lay ahead in the unknown manor house of what Henri would only presume to be a Wildlord of some kind. It had to be, he thought as he slowly gained ground on the impressive chateau on the hill, the size of it slowly coming into view as he neared it, bit by bit; it had to be a Wildlord’s manor, because he knew of no other man or house or clan who could boast such an impressive dwelling. Not that this was particularly comforting, as there was much about the lands that lay between his Kingdom and the Sunking’s that he knew little or nothing about -- that no one truly did.
These were strange lands, the Western Territories that lay on the edge of the Songsea; strange lands, wild and unbowed to the yoke of any one central King. They had passed out of the Starking’s lands and into the Storywood, dark and deep and filled with a strange sense of menace and movement even in the middle of the night. Small villages huddled in clearings on the Road, who were more than happy to trade for the coin of the Royal Party but who ushered them along as quickly as possible, as though they trailed back luck in their wake. Which, in retrospect, was not as mad as it seemed at the time.
Six days and nights in the Storywood, and Henri was never more glad than when the dark recesses of those sinister woods were behind him, and the Hollyhills ahead, the Road stretching out before him like a smooth, inviting ribbon over their early spring grasses. Six days and nights in the Storywood, and a fortnight through the Hollyhills, all without incident, and the men were beginning to let down their guard. Instead of pirates they’d faced a serious of slightly unnerving trees, and now this – spring in the low country, with flowers coming up to bloom the further southwest the went, and three days past they had spent the spring equinox at the first proper village along the Road. Beer and wine and a feast that was gods-sent as far as the men were concerned, and wide-eyed, eager young lasses who got no small thrill out of the chance to flirt (and often more than simply flirt) with a Royal Procession. It had been a good two days they’d stayed in the village, resupplying and enjoying the hospitality, but a foolish two days none the less, for it had afforded a band of highwaymen who must have been alerted by a scout from the village the opportunity to set their trap just right.
Their trap – Henri let out a small moan, stumbling and dropping to his knees in the cold, muddy ground as he closed his eyes, pushing the memory away hard, harder – but still it came at him. Screams, of men and horses, the clash of metal on metal and the thick meaty thud of metal on flesh. The guard to his right going down as Henri had pulled his own sword, cursing himself for his inherent distaste for the bloodshed of it all, remembering as best he could the forms he’d been taught – but a Prince who’s never seen true combat is no match for a highwayman who makes his living off it, and he’d been disarmed quickly, taking a wound along his ribs that hurt more than anything he’d felt in his life up to that point but that he knew, even through the pain, could have been far worse if the brigand hadn’t tripped over Henri’s own fallen sword. His bodyman, loyal to the end, had ended that man; but at great cost, and while he fought to his last breath Henri’s loyal bodyguard had screamed at him to flee. And flee he did – hating himself for it while knowing it was the right thing to do, all at once; fled and took the shame of it with a sick gratitude as his side grew wet and slick with blood and he stumbled on through the thin cover, running north and west as a storm broke over the Hollyhills, the storm that was still with him two nights later. Ran until his body gave out and he slept fitfully, curled up in a ditch, half-hidden from the rain by a small bit of shrubbery he’d spent long hours of the night contemplating whether or not to eat. And from that morning until when he’d collapsed again in the rain that night he’d been on the run, fearing fever, hungry – but not thirsty, oh no, not with the constant storms hammering down on him from the heavens, thankfully obscuring his trail but leaving him miserable and cold – and convinced that at any moment he would hear the brigands behind him, signaling his death.
Closer – it must be closer – and with a soft cry of fear and pain and weary, weary rage Henri caught up hard against a low stone fence, the top of it bruising his thighs even as he went spilling over it. He lay on the ground a moment, cursing softly in his rough, cracked voice as a bolt of lighting flashed through the sky a moment too late to help him. Carefully, wincing at the slash along his ribs whined its displeasure and the new bruises along his legs made themselves known with a high cry of introduction, he turned toward the house, limping wearily toward it, unaware that the water washing off is face was now mixed with blood from a cut he’d fetched himself below his temple. It hurt, but so did the rest of him; he’d not thought that he would ever in his life hurt like this – he wasn’t supposed to, he was, by god, the Starprince, and this wasn’t for the likes of him – and had he been told a month ago that he could sustain a blow to the face such as this and not even notice it he would have never believed it. Nor, might it be added, imagined a world in which such a thing were possible.
Finally, finally, he reached the walls of the manor, thick solid stone of a kind with which he was entirely unfamiliar. But no matter that, this strange and intriguing material, no matter anything but the immediate: he needed warmth, and he needed food, and he needed a healer’s care -- midwife, physicker, chirurgeon, sorcerer’s bloody apprentice, he was in no position to be picky at that point. He needed in, and that was all the mattered.
After what seemed another lifetime inching along a seemingly unbroken wall longer than anything he’d thought possible he finally found a door. Almost weeping with relief he tried the handle, and for one horrible moment he was convinced that it was locked, and that he would need to keep working his way about the huge manor house – practically a palace, really, if the small bit he’d seen of it was any indication – inch by inch in the dark until he found another one. “Please,” he whispered, reaching up to run his hands over his face, unaware that when they came away there was blood on his fingers. “Help me.”
He tried the door again, and like a miracle it opened. He laughed, a quiet and almost mad sound as he stepped through the door, closing it carefully behind him and sagging back against it, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light of what was, to his great pleasure, a kitchen, with the remains of what looked like a small late-night meal on the large butcher-block table in its middle. Henri, with a lack of grace and style that would have horrified the Starprince who’d left his court, leapt at the table like a wild jackal and began tearing bits of a bread and pieces of meat from the half-eaten plates, shoving pieces of cheese into his mouth with a glee so wild it was nearly savage; never the once wondering whose meal he’d interrupted, nor if perhaps they’d be less than perfectly glad for a visitor in the middle of the night bleeding all over their kitchen and wolfing down their leftovers like a starving bear.
