Accidental Time Traveler-InutaishoxOC

4. Inutaisho The Gallant

Layla groaned, stirring. Her eyes cracked open slowly, her surroundings wavering in and out of focus. She was in a small dark place that smelled of unwashed humans and urine.

It felt like a hammer beat a staccato rhythm against the back of her head and the rest of her didn't feel much better. She reached behind to touch the sore spot, her fingers coming away sticky with blood.

Carefully, Layla pushed herself into a sitting position and immediately regretted it when the world started to spin. Doubling over she vomited on the floor, her stomach heaving until she finished.

Layla tried to break through the fog wrapping around her mind. She must have a concussion. Where the hell was she? What happened?

Layla remembered the bandits attacking and then fleeing to the forest to escape them. Then one of the bandits caught up with her and....She clutched her head. The rest was fuzzy.

Someone whimpered, a soft despondent sound.

Layla wasn't alone.

Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand, she looked around. A group of women huddled in the corner. Layla recognized them from the village. The bandits must have captured them along with her. Shit. What was she going to do?

Sucking in a deep lungful of air, Layla studied her surroundings more closely. She and the other women appeared to be in a shed of some sort with barely enough room for them all to sit.

A small candle flickered weakly in the corner beside what smelled like a piss bucket. Without any kind of windows, she had no way to determine whether it was day or night, let alone how long she might have been here.

Avoiding looking at the pool of vomit, Layla rubbed dirt off her fingers and stood. Her vision swam again from the sudden movement and her legs wavered. She dug in her heels until everything steadied, then carefully worked her way around the shed in search of the entrance.

"What are you doing?" One of the women sniffled while she searched for a handle.

"Looking for a way out of here." Layla told her.

Tears trickled down the woman's face. "There's no point. The entrance is barred from the outside. We're trapped."

"So, you're just going to give up?" She asked.

The woman burst into tears, setting off the others.

Layla pinched the bridge of her nose. Oh, boy. Crying always made things better. Not.

She tried reasoning with her fellow captives again, keeping her tone soft. "What about the walls? One of the boards might be old or rotten. We can break it lose and escape."

The woman wiped at her cheeks. "Everything's solid."

Layla looked at the ground. "What if we dig a hole by one of the walls?"

"We don't have any tools!"

"If we each take turns, we can use our hands. It should go more quickly that way."

The group of women stilled, exchanged glances with one another deciding whether to accept advice from a strange foreigner.

"That...might work...." The first woman admitted, regaining her composure.

Layla crawled to the back of the shed and started clawing through the soil. Another pair of hands joined hers. Hopefully, they'd finish before the bandits returned.

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Inutaisho tracked the bandits to the burned out remains of a fort where a line of carts driven by armed men slowly trickled in. Manacles dangled over the side of one of the carts, clinking ominously again each other.