Terrible things happen in wartime. When a princess is captured by marauders, her guard captain must come to the rescue.
guest story by zyzzyva
tags: historical Fiction, nsfw
THE MESSENGER arrived at the schloss in the middle of the afternoon. He was one of the Horse Guards, uninjured but clearly in a terrible state, on a lathered horse, and when Captain Mansfeld saw him she knew it was trouble.
“Swedes,” said Heinrich, panting. “On the Richterswil road. Killed Josef and the others. I don’t know about Princess Elaine.”
Mansfeld swore vehemently. She hadn’t known the Swedish army was this close to the principality yet, but she’d warned the princess anyways about riding out so cavalierly. The princess had just laughed that airy laugh of hers and said it would be fine, and Mansfeld, grinding her teeth, had had to let her go.
Now God knows what had happened to her. Taken hostage for ransom was, probably, the best case possibility. The worst had quite a lot of options. Mansfeld didn’t want to imagine what could happen if you trapped the princess with a roving troop of soldiers. She was already grabbing a brace of pistols and a horse. Every moment counted now.
There were four guards at the schloss ready enough to go with the captain immediately. Mansfeld considered, for a moment, whether she should strip the place so bare, but only for a moment. The schloss was an old medieval affair. Either the Swedes were raiders, or a lost detachment gone feral, and they’d pass the schloss for easier pickings without trying it; or they were with Gustav’s army, had even a single piece of horse-artillery, and no meaningful defence of the place would matter. It stung anyways, but she had to get to the princess as quickly as possible. Getting her away from the Swedes and back to the safety of the schloss was her first priority.
“How many,” she asked Heinrich as she mounted her bay.
“Eight maybe? Ten?” said the man, still panting.
Good. Raiders or just marauders. Her and four of her soldiers might be able to do this after all. “You good to lead us there?” she asked.
“Yes, sir,” agreed the guardsman. Good man. They were going to need that spirit.
The Richterswil road was several hours from the schloss. Heinrich had made it in one, but had needed a new mount even to head out again; they’d have to pace themselves. It was agonizing, but the only option. As they went, Mansfeld queried him about what exactly had happened.
It had gone more or less as the captain had feared, and imagined. Princess Elaine and her guards had been riding towards Richterswil, on the second day of her leisurely recreational tour of the tiny principality. The Swedes—a party in ragged uniforms, so probably with Gustav rather than deserters, whose clothes would have been in a far worse state—had been coming the other way, on route to Königsberg-im-Tanaus, maybe, or perhaps simply foraging. Lieutenant Čeček had suggested the princess run, and maybe she might have even taken his advice, but the Swedes had rushed them too fast and she was knocked from her saddle in the first moments and then the Horse Guards had had to try to defend her on the dust of the road. Čeček was shot, the others killed or incapacitated, and according to Heinrich, the lieutenant with his dying breath had ordered him to warn the garrison at the schloss.
Mansfeld was perhaps a little skeptical of that last, but kept it to herself: running had been the right choice, either way. It was the only chance they might have had to get the princess away from the Swedes.
They rode on, the captain trying to work through the coming fight before they got there. There were dozens of places to ambush the raiders along the road, and she knew them beyond a doubt better than they could; but she didn’t know how fast they were moving or even which direction, beyond broadly southwest, and if they missed them the opportunity would be gone. All they could do, really, was get on the road and try to catch up. It wasn’t much of a plan, but they’d lost the initiative. Mansfeld ground her teeth again. The Swedes were on foot, at least, according to Heinrich. That gave them a bit of time.
It was still coming on dark, with no sign of the Swedes, when they reached the inn. Mansfeld cursed, at herself, for not seeing it. Of course they would have set up for the night here. It was an old Imperial inn, fortified across the road, now collecting such tolls as the principality could scrape out of the paltry wartime trade. The innkeeper and whoever was on watch there at the moment—Corporal Hötze, right?—couldn’t think to keep them out alone, certainly not with the princess in their hands, and the Swedes could use it as a defensible site to spend the night. No foragers alive would pass up the place.
As soon as the inn came in sight, the captain ordered her troops into the scrub on either side. It should have been cleared back but, like the road itself, the wild was quickly advancing on it through wartime disuse. It was helpful now, at any rate. She left Maria with the horses – Heinrich was probably in worse shape than she was, but wanted to prove himself much worse – and the remaining five of them began moving towards the inn.
The Swedes were either not alert or husbanding their powder, because no one fired at them from the upper floor while they made their way to the outer wall. There was a postern on the southeast side that should have been locked but wasn’t—Mansfeld would have to decide whether to praise or bastinado Hötze for the oversight—and they went in. The inn kitchen was empty, so the captain silently ordered them to fan out throughout the first floor.
Mansfeld, her brace of pistols out, went with Karl and Julia into the taproom and found most of the population of the inn there. The innkeeper, her daughter, Corporal Hötze, and—thankfully—an injured but clearly alive Friedrich from the Horse Guard, were penned in behind the bar, with six tipsy and unalert Swedes eating, drinking, and passing around a pipe in front.
“Yield,” hissed Mansfeld in a hoarse stagewhisper, and the startled Swedes hesitated. Her two pistols were nothing like enough to cover all six, and the Swedes were clearly starting to realize that too. Karla and Julia had muskets but even at this close range it would be a rough shot, with hostages behind.
One of the Swedes started, slowly, to rise. Mansfeld pointed her right-hand pistol straight at his head. This broadly uncovered the other Swedes, who also started moving a little, and then musketfire came from some other room in the inn, the direction the other half of her troop had gone.
“Heinrich! Jean!” shouted Mansfeld, now that any hope of recapturing the inn by surprise was gone. Either they were in control where they were, and could rush to her aid, or they weren’t and Mansfeld was dead anyways. And the princess was lost, although she couldn’t allow herself to worry to much about that now.
One of the Swedes suddenly jumped at her. She shot the first one to move—headshot or not, he went down—but her other shot missed entirely and Julia apparently couldn’t nerve herself to make the shot with her friends in the line of fire. Karl fired anyways, though, and possibly hit someone else, Mansfeld couldn’t tell in the flurry of motion. The nearest Swede to her just had a knife but it took her a second to drop her guns and draw and he managed a slash that forced the captain to stumble backwards. Julia was clubbing a Swede with her musket and Karl hadn’t even tried to draw, he was grappling one of them. Hötze and, bless her idiot heart, the innkeeper’s daughter leapt the bar and tried to do as best as they could unarmed.
“Yield!” shouted Heinrich behind them. The Swede fighting Julia did; the one fighting Mansfeld didn’t. She had her sword out now, though, and her opponent had clearly never been trained in fencing. A moment later the other was on the ground, bleeding bad, and the rest of his comrades had dropped their weapons too.
Heinrich came forward to Mansfeld. He was splattered in blood something awful, but seemed hale, so it probably wasn’t his. “I think this is all of them, except the leader, sir,” he said. “No sign of Princess Elaine down here.”
Of course the leader would have the princess. Mansfeld nodded at him and turned towards the stairs to the upstairs rooms. “Keep them down,” she told him. “I’ll—I’ll find the princess.”
She went upstairs. The Swedish leader must have heard the firing; if they’d somehow had enough self-possession to keep ahold of the princess as a hostage, Mansfeld couldn’t protect her now. She took the stairs slowly and carefully.
There were three tiny rooms upstairs; two were empty, with open doors. The last was shut. Mansfeld took a deep breath and pushed it open.
It was exactly as she’d expected, and feared.
Princess Elaine was on the floor, in a rough heap. Her riding clothes had been badly torn, probably in the first fight, and she had been bound exceptionally tightly; Mansfeld could see the rope cutting painfully into her legs and arms and belly and breasts.
The Swede was seated at the edge of the bed, above her, gazing down at her prisoner. Mansfeld ignored her completely.
“There you are,” said Elaine, with an amused smile.
“Are you all right?” asked the captain, her voice weakening beneath Elaine’s gaze.
“I’m fine. Freja and I were having a most productive conversation.” At the sound of her name, the Swede shuddered and moaned a little. Mansfeld did her best to ignore it.
“I’ll get the ropes off,” Mansfeld fumbled.
Elaine smiled wider. “Oh no, Freja put so much effort into them.” The Swede shuddered again. Mansfeld couldn’t stop herself from glancing at the Swede’s slack face, the glassy gaze of someone experiencing Elaine’s presence for the first time.
“Of course,” mumbled Mansfeld.
“And all that shooting—you didn’t kill any of Freja’s lovely followers, did you?”
“One or two,” admitted Mansfeld. Then, with an effort: “You’re not going to make me find uniforms for the survivors, are you?”
Elaine laughed, musically, and the captain and the Swede both trembled. “Oh, no, Katerin.” Mansfeld had been in Elaine’s service ten years now, but she still couldn’t quite hold in her gasp at the sound of her name passing those lips. “But if Freja—” (moan) “—wants to bring me some tokens of her esteem after she goes back on campaign, I would never refuse such a gift.”
“Yes, mistress,” whimpered Freja, in Swedish, too overcome even to carry the conversation on in the same tongue.
“Now, Katerin, bring me downstairs. I’m sure your soldiers and Freja’s—” (moan) “—will be overjoyed to see I’m alright.”
“Carry you,” asked Mansfeld, knowing the answer. It would be a humiliation, and yet her arms already tingled to touch Elaine’s flesh, and the thought of being ordered to do it buzzed in her mind and body.
“Yes,” purred Elaine. “Carry me, Katarin.”
It was all alright, though, the captain consoled herself, as she knelt. The Swedes would leave and, who knew? Maybe even eventually forget what had happened, or at least get killed by the Imperial army. Elaine would remain here, ruling only the subjects of the principality and the garrison of the schloss. Mansfeld would be safely between her and the rest of the world again.
Even after all this time, she still wasn’t sure if she did it out of self-sacrifice or jealousy.
Author’s Note: Another one that kinda changed as I wrote it. Originally it had much more explicit sex (ain’t that always the way?) and the Swedes were orcs. As it is, though, it fits kinda nicely into the Paladin-verse, assuming I ever make that a thing. Anybody got a good shared universe name?
Note from Devi: The artwork is part of an engraving series by the Baroque printmaker Jacques Callot, entitled “Les misères et les malheurs de la guerre.” Also, today I learned what ‘bastinado’ is.
