> [RP] Mortimer Castle

Ignatius did as he was told. He shuffled backwards away from the door, letting his hands rest at his sides. He looked at her face, so full of strength and determination. He wondered when it was that he had forgotten such human emotion and had allowed his anger to consume him. To make him into


such a monster.


He remembered the day his father had likely been killed. He would never know, of course. Though he had been only a little boy, he had been a coward. His father had bellowed out for him to run, and he'd never stopped. Surely he had meant for him to run home, but he had his instead. In the woods, he'd laid on his stomach, afraid of every snapping branch and waving tree. The thought of going home caused bile to raise in his throat, as he was sure he'd return to find his siblings laid out in their own blood, his mothers soft as corn silk hair marred in dirt where he body fell...

He would never know. If the men left them all to live, then he had missed that life as well as the life he would have known with his wife and three sons. He'd left them too. Maybe that was when he lost himself.

He'd kissed their foreheads and traveled to Cornwall to meet friends who had collected rations for his men and his family. It was to feed them for another three days, but he'd come back to only ashes. Geoffry Viceroy Mortimer's men, The Arms of Ion..puppeteers for the King. In doing his majesty's bidding, they had murdered everything he'd ever loved.

They had created what he had now become and in their self righteousness, they claim he has become the criminal. Even expect him to go quietly, now.

It was no surprise to him how men of class and breed deemed their actions to be of grace and valor, but when poor men strike the same chord, they are vagrant butchers. He'd fought such ignorance ever since he'd stepped off the boat and married his beautiful wife. She had believed in him. Told him he was the chosen one, Jah's disciple of justice.

So when he let his hands fall to his sides, upon his face there was nothing more than a blank expression. The disciple would go where ever it was they meant to take him, whatever happened next, was in Jah's hands now.
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His face had gone blank, but he had complied with her order. Maybe he was going to be cooperative after all. However, she still wasn't going to trust him with anything. If he had anything to do with the mess outside than he didn't deserve her trust. And there was always the possibility that he had some kind of trick up his sleeve.

But, standing here staring at the door wasn't going to get them anywhere, so Chandrea closed the distance to the door and turned the key in the lock. As she swung the cell door open, she glanced at her fellow guards, hoping that they were ready for whatever might happen. Then she looked back at their prisoner, "If you will step forward, Sir, we'll be leaving."

Her plan - what little there was of one - was to simply head to the stables in hopes of borrowing a cart of some sort to get him to the court. There was no way Chandrea was going to trust him loose on a horse - even considering that the Mortimers would be willing to let him ride one of theirs. She was hoping that her companions had a horse that would pull the cart though, Staf would definitely object. And, even though they were now working together as partners, she was still scared of her tall gelding.

I instinctively stiffened when the door swung open and my hand tightened on the hilt of my sword, but he made no sudden movements and ever so slightly I relaxed. I looked over at Yven finding that he disappeared, turning quickly I searched the darkness only to find that he reappeared holding a pair of shackles.

"Found these on a table." He commented, swinging them around and smiling, "Won't have to worry about him lopin' free." He opened them up and stepped foward to slip them on the prisoner. I considered wrestling them from my friend's grasp and strangling the guy, but decided that wouldn't exactly go over well with our employers, or my co-worker so I stilled myself, content to grip my sword tighter.
"Careful, Yven..." I muttered quietly, slipping my sword a couple of inches out of its sheath, if this man found a way to dispatch all three of us and go free there was no one around near enough to stop him and by the time they found out he'd be long gone and on another rampage. My eyes narrowed as Yven got closer, ready to put them on...

He watched the three of them look at him as if he would strike them with some unseen weapon or put a curse on them with just a spoken word. If things kept on like this, he'd be here another night waiting to be taken. It was obvious that these "guards" were just babes in their profession, not seasoned escorts skilled with a blade. He'd have to offer himself over more than likely before all three of them passed out, allowing him to step over their bodies on the floor and walk out of here a free man. He sighed deeply, amused to an extent by their comical reaction.

"Shall I sing and dance before we go? Entertain you...maybe quote the poetry of scholars, or shall we be on our way? You see, I don't mind either affliction, so long as we aren't to stand here for another hour waiting to see if I slit your throats and escape. I can do that too, but I prefer my victims to be less expecting, more surprised, and guilty of something more than fear. None of you meet that qualification, as of now.." he searched their faces to see if his words had meant anything to them.
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"Wouldn't mind a little singin' to lighten up the mood..." I muttered as I darted foward to take the manacles from Yven's hands and then clipping them around Casimir's wrists.

Placing my hand at the small of Ignatius's back I pushed him lightly toward the hallway, whistling a tuneless song as if trying to find a rythm. Pushing again I turned away, scrunching up my face in thought as I tried to find the right notes to the tune I was whistling. Stopping and smiling suddenly I gave a triumphant, "Ha!" and began humming, then belted out:

""Off with his head, ole Casimir's dead and his feet will surely be fryin, what goes bump in the night, tis a sad sorry sight, when a bad man be on trial and cryin'!"

I fell to whistling again, content with the tune I had created, "Just a little something I picked up in the city." I explained to Yven when he stared at me quizzically.

Chandrea ground her teeth as the man mocked them again. She was getting very tired of listening to him insult them at every turn. She could have simply cut him down with her sword and saved them all the time and mess of a trial, but she had always made a point of not attacking unarmed people. And, she had the sneaking suspicion that with a weapon in his hands, this man would be rather forceful.

Shamgar shackled the prisoner, and Chandrea turned to lead the way to the stables. If all he was going to do was laugh at them, then this would be a relatively easy assignment. An accidental bump or two usually helped to quiet those who thought she would be weak just because she was female. Just the thought of "bumping" into this man a few times made her spirits a bit lighter.

And then, from behind her, she heard the most...unusual sound. She turned around. Was Shamgar singing? Odd...But then she hadn't been around many black guards. Maybe they all sang as they worked. Well, as long as he didn't expect her to join in...

She continued on towards the outside door.

Michael was waiting outside the door with a cart ready to get the prisoner there to court.

Viceroy watched hidden in a tree ready to watch the exchange and follow them covertly. He was ready for this chapter to end.

♪♪If you leave me now, you'll take away the biggest part of meee!♪♪

Yven smiled and sang: ♪♪Whoohooohooooooooooooooohoo don't baby, please don't go!♪♪

The duet continued as we loaded the prisoner onto the cart, preparing him for the trip to the court. Mid-load I nudged Chandrea in between verses and smiled, "Gonna join in?"
Indeed for if you start singing it's not as fun when you sing alone. Two's good, but if you can get the third one in, it'd be even better.

Heck, we might even get our charge in on it, bet he had a good bass voice, and it wouldn't do well at all to carry on the trip in absolute silence in which we stared at each other menacingly. Hey! If we got to the court in one piece we could get everyone there to start singing! It'd make this whole situation much, much better, that was for sure.

He was indeed surrounded by fools. Singing fools nonetheless. If any man who ever worked under him behaved in such a way he would have slit his throat. Whoever had sent these...guards must have been from an acting troop and not a military faction, that much was obvious. Performers and not protectors. Of course this could be a situation that would evolve in his favor. He allowed himself to be shackled and escorted.. looking to the girl to see if she too would be persuaded to make a scene like the other cads.
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The young woman grimiced slightly before regaining her composure. What the two men were doing was not what she would have called singing. Caterwaulling maybe...No, not even cats would sound like that. It wasn't even that she could sing that well, but she did know good singing when she heard it...and to her ears, this wasn't it.

Shaking her head, she muttered under her breath, "And I have to put up with these jesters until the job is done? How do I get into these things?" Well, at least they had secured the prisoner. That was a good thing. Maybe these two, for all their singing, would be decent guards after all.

She looked at Shamgar in disbelief when he invited her to join in. "The two of you are making more than enough noise for one group." Had she thought it thru before she spoke, she might have modified her words to keep the peace, but the holds on her tongue had fled screaming in the face of the singing coming from her two companions.

Staf was waiting for them outside the door as well. Seeing his favorite target, he moved behind her slightly before giving her a hard nudge in the middle of the back. Banging into the cart hard, the young woman turned to glare back at her horse. He snorted and shook his head, seeming to laughing at her. Gritting her teeth, Chandrea looked to Michael, "I will drive the cart I think. I'll tie my horse to the back. He will be a decent guard all on his own."

"We shall leave post haste once your horse is tied... I just didn't realize we'd get a song or two," Michael said shaking his head.

They were loading him in the cart, his feet shuffling, restrained at his wrists, he took a seat against the wooden bars and planks. He still wasn't sure where he was going, no one had bothered to inform him. More than likely he'd be imprisoned in a dungeon, rats feeding off his ankles and the smell of rotting in his nostrils for the years to come. He'd likely die of disease or malnutrition, if the Mortimers had their way..

A slow death, with daily torture. Something much more crude than the singing, if that were possible. That's what he had to look forward to. He'd expected them to put up a fight, maybe he'd die, but did that even matter?

None of these people would ever understand why he'd done what he'd done. Geoffry Viceroy Mortimer was a coward and all that mattered now was to bury the truth so he could go back to his own life.

Pritchard had cried, sobbed like a child when he'd told Ignatius what had happened that night. He'd been drinking, took off and broke rank... Geoffry had followed him. He'd thought he was chasing Casimir, he'd said. It turned out that he had been chasing a map maker. All the while, the other officers had set fire to the camp. The building where his wife had been resting, she had just given birth to their son, was one of the first to burn. His other children, just seven and nine years old, were laying next to their mother and the baby when the flames started to lick up the walls. Succumbing to the flames while deep in their sleep, they never stood a chance. He'd asked Pritchard why, made the man get down on his knees...

"Tell me, tell me HOW.. WHY...!" he'd screamed. he was losing his mind, hearing this man tell the story in tears. He'd no right to cry now, it wasn't as if this murder were any different than the rest.

"Orders! We had orders and I swear to you, we only followed the orders handed down by the high council, given to us by our captain. We didn't know.. we never would have followed through with it if we knew she was" Ignatius took the back of his blade and hit Pritchard as hard as he could across his cheek. The blood splatter from his mouth sprayed the side of the wall where he was kneeling, dripping with a steady flow now.

Pritchard cried out and sobbed harder. His throat gurgled with spit and he spewed out his words, slobbering and trying to speak again.

"Please, saints of heavens, pleasse.." he gasped, spitting the copper taste out from his mouth ".. please.. " he was sober now, and begging for his life.

Ignatius would have felt sorry for him, in fact it was near pity he felt for what he had to do now. It was almost too easy, and had any of them the sense to know what was coming, he'd doubt they would have committed their sins. But it was too late for them now.

He'd been searching for them every night since they had committed their crimes. Lurking in the darkness, eyes wide unable to rest. He'd paid every dime he had to men and women six counties in either direction if even they could say they had seen a group or soul who might have done this. As luck fancied his plight, one woman had brought him to a tavern in Birmingham. She said her husband had a mistress there that he visited, she was angry that his coin seemed to run scarce after their affairs.. so she wanted him punished. She told about his profession, that he'd lost his employment for being to close a kin with the bottle and that maybe he'd know something more about the incident since he worked for the Kingsmen. She told him "Arms of Ion", said she'd heard Pritchard (her husband) blabbing about it when he'd come home drunk many nights.

He'd no sooner took his seat when he heard a loud mouth causing a stir. the barman called his name, which was how fate found her crown. From there it had been an easy conquest, winning the drunkards favor by buying him a drink. Coaxing him outside proved to be a smooth act, one of camaraderie and back patting. So long as Pritchard could keep his drink in his hand, you could almost get him to do anything.

That was when he'd gotten every name of every man who'd played a hand in it. He knew where they lived, their wives names, where they went to the market.. it was glorious.

He'd let him beg just to fuel the devil growing inside himself and then with a swift but silent thrust, he'd slit Pritchard's throat and left him to die in the filth of the back alley storage room and made for his next victim that very same night.

A month later, on a busy street, he'd found the man who had been second in command to Geo Mortimer. Out of everyone he'd hunt, out of all the men involved, he would never forget the look in his eyes.. or the words he'd said.

"You can kill us all, you might finish this, but you're no different... we are good men, even you.. we just did what we had to do"

He'd changed then. There was something that made him curious in the words he'd said. So he stopped going after Geo's men and hired mercenaries to that for him instead. He began to focus on one man, one man he never seemed to be able to find, until now.

No matter how he tried, he couldn't help but hear it, those words again and again. We just did what we had to do... we just did what we had to do... we just did what we had to do...

He closed his eyes and turned off the sounds around him, fading into the past while the guards prepared for the trip.


OOC: We can move to the arrival in the other thread whenever you all are ready.


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"Yes, well, I wasn't aware that we had signed up to be entertainers as well." She glanced back at the pair, and rolled her eyes. Hopefully it was a large area, where they were going. Otherwise, they would likely be scheduling another murder trial...with her as the prisoner.

Staf snorted at her again, and tried to dance away from her, but Chandrea was more than ready to leave this place with all the dead bodies and destruction everywhere. Grasping his reins firmly, she lead him around to the back of the cart and tied him securely. It might be an interesting ride for her fellow guards if they stayed in the back of the wagon...Staf was in the mood for mischief.

Returning to the front of the cart, she climbed into the driver's seat and only waited for her companions to get settled before starting off towards the court house cell.

AFTER DAY ONE OF THE TRIAL


When dusk had swept the skies with purple and gold, Kenna found herself nearly at the door of the castle before she came back from where her mind had taken her. She was deeply lost in the justifications of submitting the poison to do it's task. She could have something delivered, food or drink with the pesky contents sprinkled in it. The only foul side of it was that maybe they would test it.. someone else could succumb to it and then she would be responsible for murder herself. She arched her eyebrow at that thought, not pleased.

That just wouldn't work. She sat down just outside the castle door and tucked her knees up to her chest. She needed a sign, something to tell her this was her only option. Maybe then she could see this for what it should be. An opportunity to rid the world of an evil that poisoned everyone it touched. It seemed rather ironic, if you think about it.

The others would be returning soon. She thought about going on up to her room to sleep, but something just wouldn't let her rest, so she stayed right where she was, for now.
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