Nada's Escape: Fighters' lies

31.1 Treason

A blur of green tells me we're in the gardens, beyond the reach of any street lamp now. Beyond the reach of anyone.

"Look at her, she doesn't get it." The one on my left shakes my shoulder. My head lolls, birthing a new horde of red pain feyflies.

"Yeah that's cos of all the carry in her drinks." Says the one on my right. He hoists me higher on his shoulder and maintains a punishing pace through the hedges.

"This is not some kind of hazing ritual." The one on my left sneers, feeling the need to shake me again. I moan, finding the extra leeway to eject the gag from between my teeth.

They throw me to the grass and my head is spinning too much to open my mouth again.

"No. We're really going to kill you." The one on the left stage whispers. I squint up at him, a smudge of white against the sky. I swallow back bile, fighting the feyflies for control of my throat.

"Why?" I croak, retching a new ball of hurt up into my mouth.

"We're-"

"Oi," cuts in the other one, "We're not actually killing her."

The one on the left laughs darkly and shoves me back against the hedge. He lifts me upright then and I get a view of a long stretch of dew-dropped grass over his shoulder. We're in the meadow. They dragged me all the way out here just to kill me?

He grabs my chin, trying to turn my head to meet his gaze. I resist, head thumping with every heartbeat.

"Stop. My head hurts."

"Your head hurts?" The mean one sneers in my ear, "What about Toby, huh? His brain is slowly bleeding out though his ears and there's nothing anyone can do about it. Not the apothecary, nor a hundred doctors."

He slashes my arm, a blossom of bright red pain appearing there. I catch my breath, frozen at the mention of that monster. So that's what this about. Vengeance for that Huntsmen slug.

I hurl spit at the Huntsmen before me. I hope it reeks of vomit. He backs up, revealing the knife I hadn't seen him draw. His teeth show up white in the night.

"And we don't even have to do the dirty work. Fitting isn't it?" He dashes forward and slashes at my face. Before I can flinch a cut sears its way down my cheek.

I push off the hedge, rage rising with the cocktail of red in my bloodstream but- but- But I can't launch off the hedge. I don't move anywhere in fact. Is the drug paralysing me now?

I thrash, finding my uncut arm moves just fine. The mean one laughs; the greedy laugh of a child tormenting a spider. My free hand finds the vines at my throat, my side, my other arm. The hedge is fighting back...

The mean one darts forward again, cackling now. Carving up the hedge, I realise. Slicing up my skin is merely incidental. Cruel. His blade sings along my other arm and I'm thoroughly trapped, the folds of my skirts compressing in around my legs. It feels like the night itself is pressing in on me.

"This is your plan?" I mutter around the chorus of pain feyflies, "Tie me to a hedge? Bit high school isn't it?"

The mean one almost rushes at me, at the carnivorous hedge, but his partner stops him. The other one, his skin blending into the night, shoves the gag back in my mouth. It tastes of grass and sour dirt.

"Come on, we've got to be back before..." The second one's voice is a husky monotone. The mean one shoves the other's shoulder in the direction of Norgara. They set off running back along the meadow and I open my lungs around the gag.