Chapter 15: Back Again?

It was time to return Maggie and her spouses to the farm and the Hero and his contingent to Crossroads. As already decided, Autumn and her new husband were traveling with them. Ayesha and Asma elected to stay with their mother. Conflicted, AlvaBeth elected to join with Charles. Barring bad weather or new phalanxes of thieves, they estimated the journey back would take three or maybe more weeks.

On the first day, when they stopped for their midday meal, Monty suddenly exclaimed, “We need to go back. Something is amiss! Something doesn’t feel right.”

Finding a secure place, well off the road, they stripped down to essentials and left Bron and Autumn to guard their makeshift camp. Though difficult, they persuaded Trudi to remain with them, but AlvaBeth held up her crossbow and insisted on assuring that her relatives were okay.

Without packhorses or the weight of supplies, they alternated horses to return in much less time than the outbound trip required. Dismounting at the stable, they found no sign of the stable boy. In addition to horses belonging to Ayesha and Asma there were three strangers – two that they recognized as belonging to the former suitors. “Not a good sign at all,” Monty and Pēteris agreed.

Once again, Monty was the team captain. He sent Maggie and Sarah to the front door with instructions to wait to enter. He, Charles, and AlvaBeth would enter the rear, with Robyn and Miriam backing them and Pēteris backing the teens.

Looking through an open window, AlvaBeth saw an amazing sight. Three women stood, naked from the waist up. The stable boy lay naked at Asma’s feet with a dagger protruding from his chest and feet drumming on the floor. The two teens faced three dandies whose pants were tangled around their feet. Each teen held a sword, and the three dandies were menacing them with two daggers and a sword. The teen’s unencumbered feet gave them a decided advantage over the men.

Medina was trying to fend off the two gravediggers with a large frying pan. These two still wore their pants. Both were armed with a dagger, and one also held a poker with a glowing red tip.

AlvaBeth’s bolt and scream of fury arrived at the same instant, felling the digger with the poker. Medina’s sideways swing of her pan caught the second digger in the head, felling him with a crushed nose. Startled, the would-be suitors were distracted enough for the pair of teens to thrust through two defenses. Their one remaining adversary managed to stagger one step before Charles’s throwing knife took him between the shoulder blades.

Monty entered and watched as Asma kneeled beside the still kicking stable boy. Asma looked him in the eye and said, “Die you traitorous bastard!” She twisted the knife several times until he coughed up a gout of blood, kicked again, and was still. While Asma was busy with the boy, Ayesha made rounds with her newly acquired sword and concluded the business of finishing off the invaders of her home.

Standing, she faced the new arrivals and said, “You know, Mother is pretty good with her pan, but Monica’s training really made the difference for us. Thank you.” She walked to Monica, and hugged her friend, almost in desperation.

“Monica?” Medina asked, “I thought his name was Monty.

“Later,” Ayesha told her.

Monty forestalled more along those lines when he asked, “Did we get them all? Any others?” Learning that there were no more intruders, Monty directed them all into the parlor where Robyn began checking the women for cuts or other injuries.

“So how did all this come about?” he inquired when they were all settled.

“Our Barley betrayed us,” Ayesha began, “when he was sure you were gone, he found those five and let them in through the kitchen door. It happened so fast, I’m sure that I don’t remember it all or maybe exactly everything in the right order.”

“First, they didn’t believe there was no money in the house, so they smacked us around some, hoping to frighten us. When that didn’t get them anything, they decided that torture would make us give up the location of this supposed hoard. That poker you saw was to burn our titties.”

“We were forced into the kitchen and had to watch them put the poker in the fire,” Ayesha continued.

“That’s when they began to get stupid,” Asma took up the tale. “They’d started into the wine, you see, and I think they wanted us to put on a tittie show. One of them untied our hands and told us to take off our blouses, so we did.”

“Two took Mother over to the fireplace and showed her the heating poker, and the other three decided a little rape might be a good idea before our titties and faces got all burned and ugly. They put their swords down and were taking their pants off.”

“Charles, Maggie,” Ayesha continued, “remember how you always coached us to bide our time in a fight? That if we couldn’t get in the first blow, to wait for the killing opportunity? Well Asma knew that without your tutoring. The little traitor, Barley, was a rabbit getting naked and came over to maul her breast and dip his wick. She stabbed him with her hideout knife.”

“The three jerks still behaved like we were harmless and weren’t watching their swords. We both managed to get the swords, and their pants tangled around their feet helped us - gave us some advantage over two daggers and a sword,” Asma said, “but it was, at best a standoff. I’m not anywhere near skilled with a sword, so it was Ayesha who was doing most of the work to protect us. I could thrust and parry to hold off a dagger, but not two daggers or a sword.”

“The two with Mother decided to threaten her with the poker to get us to drop our swords. Really, really, stupid,” Ayesha declared. “Dropping our weapons wouldn’t do anything for us. They might finally get those swords, but they were going to have to take them from our dead hands.”

“We were watching, always watching, and when AlvaBeth’s scream distracted them, we thrust. Good thing the kitchen has a slate floor, or that hot poker would have burned the house down,” she digressed.

“That’s pretty much it,” Ayesha told them. “I don’t know if Barley and the other two were in on it from the start. I don’t think so. Now we’ll never know.”

“I think he was,” Monty injected. “He was one reason I decided to come back. All your other servants ran away when they had the chance, but not him.” She turned to Pēteris and told him, “Plus, all the Hero shows on Cassandra stress not leaving a living enemy behind you. Those dandies gave up waaay too easy during the first rescue, but I didn’t spot it. Our friends almost paid the price.”

Ayesha turned to her mother and said, “I think we should all go with Charles and his wives.”

Asma, clinging to her big sister, gave no question about her intentions, “You’re my guardian. Wherever you go, I will!”

Pēteris looked at his Companions and back to Monty. “In the morning, Robyn and Miriam and I will ride back to the others,” he told him. “Take two days to help them straighten out their affairs, then ride out to meet us. We’ll wait an extra two days, then you’ll have to ride hard and catch up.”

Monty nodded his head in agreement. “If there are enough beds, we’ll stay here tonight but eat at Jesse’s. Pēteris, if you and your Companions will ride over to see if he can send us someone to care for the horses and a couple more to dispose of the bodies, we’ll get busy stripping this carrion.”

Reunited, but with three additional women and several baggage laden mules, the combined parties set out again. Both Maggie and Sarah were glowing with happiness that they each were pregnant with Pēteris’s baby. Pensive, Monica had resumed her female personality and rode silently, often alone and clearly thinking.

Two days into the return, she maneuvered herself to ride alongside of Maggie. “If I decided not to return home, would you welcome me into your family?” she asked quietly – not at all her normal, confident self. “I thought that I had an exciting life on Cassandra, but now I know it was really dull and shallow. You and Charles and Sarah have crept into my heart, and I find it difficult to think of never seeing you again. I won’t call it love. Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t – but friends – this is more than I ever had before.”

When Maggie started to respond, Monica raised her hand to indicate there was more. “I started out thinking that getting a baby out of this deal would be enough, but it isn’t. I’ve also come to admire Pēteris and Robyn and Miriam, and one long fuck-fest until I get pregnant just isn’t enough. I want Pēteris’s baby – maybe babies - and I want to stay.”

Maggie reached across and took Monica’s hand, “For my part, you are more than welcome to stay, sister. You should speak with Charles and Sarah, but I’m certain they would answer the same. Pēteris might be a different matter. He feels for you; of that I’m also certain, but what you ask might cause enough trouble that he could never return to us.”

“Consider the portal itself and the design of the Hero and Damsel system. A burning appendage is bad. What if the portal decides that Pēteris was tom-catting with me and Sarah? Would making you pregnant tip the scales so that the portal considers him un-heroic and refuses to pass him and the rest back to Crossroads? That would fit the pattern, would it not?”

“Robyn and Miriam already call you ‘sister,’ and they will always have him – here or there or in between. Pēteris must decide the risks, and you must submerge your desires and counsel him of Cassandra’s politics to help him make a wise decision,” Maggie told her. “You’ve said that you’ve always gotten what you wanted – by hook, crook, or fucking – but you must realize that this time might be an exception.” Echoing one of her earliest statements to her friend, Maggie directed, “Deal with it!”