Page 7 of Beloved Enemy
It hadn’t been five minutes since she’d lost sight of that woman before she realized she was not climbing up this path but descending.
“Well, what the hell?” She grumbled, recognizing the same view—only closer—of the River Nevis.
Confusion had settled quickly. She’d felt as if she been ascending, even as she continued on, but she wasn’t. Though she was somehow no longer on a clearly marked path, she’d obviously been going downhill, had soon reached the base of the mountain.
And that’s when she’d first seen them.
What had seemed a dream, a convoluted, inexplicable dream.
Nightmare, as it turned out.
Many hours later, everything was still hazy, or more precisely, inconceivable.
Charlotte remembered that the pendant, worn inside her sweatshirt and T-shirt and against her skin, had become warm. Like, really warm, burning her skin. At the bottom of the trail—a different trail, she’d presumed since it wasn’t familiar at all and bore no signage or markers—she’d yanked the chain out from the neck of her hoodie and had held the pendant and stone in her hand, having to immediately drop it as it was too hot to hold. She would have ripped the stupid thing from her neck but that she was interrupted, her attention drawn to a thunderous noise and what had looked like a cloud of dust drifting across the landscape toward her.
Though there was no sun to speak of, Charlotte squinted, trying to make sense of the dust cloud rapidly approaching her. As it drew closer, she realized it was not a natural phenomenon but a horde of mounted men. Her heart began to race as she made out the details—figures on horseback, moving swiftly and purposefully toward her.
The riders wore strange clothing, baggy pants tucked into tall boots and rough-hewn shirts, and some were decked out in what looked like medieval chainmail. Many wore helmets, some with bedraggled plumes and others with visors that obscured their faces. The horses, large and powerful, were bigger than any Charlotte had ever seen.
Fear and confusion knotted insider as the distance between her and the riders closed. And once more her mouth dropped open when she saw that they carried weapons—swords, axes, and spears—held firmly in their hands or strapped to their sides.The sound of hooves pounding the earth grew louder, echoing like a drumbeat in her ears.
Panic set in. She felt a cold sweat trickle down her back, her mind racing with possibilities. Were these men part of a reenactment gone wrong? Was she about to be trampled? She looked around frantically for a place to hide, but the open landscape offered no shelter. Unless she meant to climb the mountain again, she was rather trapped.
Fear gripped her, a primal terror that made her legs feel like lead. Her breathing became shallow and rapid, her pulse pounding in her ears. Charlotte stumbled backward, her mind screaming for her to run, while her body was frozen in place.
The riders slowed as they neared her, and the few gazes she met narrowed with suspicion. They spoke in a language she didn’t understand, their voices harsh and commanding. One of them pointed at her sweatshirt and Charlotte briefly entertained a ridiculous fear that he was a possum lover and offended by the graphic and statement on her hoodie.
Others pointed as well, and Charlotte slapped her hand over her chest to cover the image. Her fingers touched on the pendant, and it dawned on her it was the necklace over which they raised such a fuss. The reaction to her touching the pendant was immediate and dramatic—they recoiled, muttering among themselves and glancing nervously at the amulet. Charlotte had no idea why, but it seemed the pendant had struck fear into them.
One man, tall in the saddle and with a black gaze, barked orders, and the men began to surround her, their movements cautious and deliberate as they positioned their horses in a circle around her. They kept their distance, as if afraid to get too close to her. The black-eyed man urged his horse forward, brandishing a length of rope. Charlotte shrank and backed away, causing those behind her to back up as well.
“I’m not sure what you’re doing...but I’m not about to let you tie me up.” Her voice was not her own, belonged to someone with a high-pitched and frightened squeak. She glanced around, scanning the landscape beyond these twenty men, wondering where that woman had gone, or why she’d not encountered or didn’t see now that large tour group.
The tall guy dismounted, gesturing for her to hold out her hands, and when she shook her head, he repeated the gesture more forcefully.
Her pulse pounding, her confusion overwhelmed by sheer terror, Charlotte backed up again, only to startle and whirl around when she felt a sharp prick on her shoulder. Spun round, she stared down the pointy end of a spear, the handle of which was long enough that the guy wielding it maintained a distance he considered safe. A whimper escaped when other metal-tipped spears joined the first.
“What the—?”
The man behind her hollered something guttural and awful, causing her to pivot again to face him.
His face was grotesque, marked by welts and scars, and surrounded by long, dank hair; his nose was bulbous and seriously in need of a few blackhead remover strips; and half of his lip, the top right side, was simply missing. Two of his incisors and one canine, none of them brushed recently by Charlotte’s estimation, were clearly visible, his deformity meaning that his expression was arrested in a perpetual snarl.
Oh, God. Is this my end? At the hands of this man? This angry mob?
Again, he motioned stiffly with his hands, showing that he wanted her to put hers together.
The tip of a spear pressed into her back at the same time, forcing her forward.
Too stunned, too frightened to resist, Charlotte held out her hands.
The man with black eyes and only half an upper lip quickly bound her wrists though his eyes never left the pendant.
When her hands were tied, he inclined his head to someone behind her and she was prodded forward with jabs from a spear. She was directed to one of the horses where several men exchanged anxious glances, clearly reluctant to touch her, but Lip barked more orders, and she was hoisted onto the horse’s back behind a mountain of a man who glared daggers at her. She didn’t understand why they were treating her with a mix of fear and fury, as if they believed she possessed some dangerous power.
But hell, she hadn’t understood anything at that moment.
Or since.
