Totentanz

Book 1 Chapter XV: Der Plan

Warning: contains references to murder, misogyny and rape.

DER PLAN
German, "the plan"

It was foolish indeed -- thus to run farther and farther from all who could help her, as if she had been seeking a fit spot for the goblin creature to eat her in at his leisure; but that is the way fear serves us: it always sides with the thing we are afraid of. -- George MacDonald, The Princess and the Goblin

Pushing though the twigs and leaves of the bushes left both of Diarnlan's hands stinging and cut. The gash from the window was still bleeding sluggishly. Her trousers and shoes had become so dirty that they provided some measure of camouflage. Her hair was full of enough leaves to cover a small bush. Worst of all, her ankle throbbed dully when she wasn't putting weight on that foot, then became sheer agony as soon as she did put weight on it.

She collapsed on the grass as soon as she was on the far side on the hedges. For a minute she stared up at the sky, in too much pain to even consider moving. Then she remembered the figure watching her. She thought of the lunatic who'd kidnapped her. The gods alone knew what he was planning. His deranged ramblings had shown he believed he'd already killed her, so it was easy to deduce he intended to kill her yet again.

An image intruded in her mind; an image of herself stabbing a boy in the back and shoving him underwater. It was so vivid that Diarnlan had to rub her eyes just to make sure she wasn't actually seeing it right now.

This is ridiculous, she thought. His insanity is beginning to rub off on me.

She sat up and looked around. Nothing but fields and hedges and trees as far as the eye could see. No sign of any houses, herds, or people. She couldn't even spot any roads.

This doesn't look like eastern or central Avallot. And it certainly isn't the northern counties. 

Unfortunately those were the only parts of her homeland she had been to. The logical conclusion was that she was in either western or southern Avallot, but she didn't know enough about either to make an educated guess. The lack of farms or livestock suggested the southern counties. The only problem was the southern counties were full of mines. Diarnlan hadn't given much thought to what they looked like, but she certainly didn't expect them to have so many fields and no mines in sight.

Amidst a group of trees she spotted a flicker of grey. She looked again sharply. No, her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. That really was smoke. And smoke meant a fire, which meant people and probably a house. She scrambled to her feet, ignoring the stabs of pain that shot through her ankle, and ran towards those trees.

Ahead of her a path came into view. Diarnlan sped up. By the time she reached it her ankle had become so sore that she couldn't run any more. Instead she hobbled along the path. On either side of it grew trees of some sort she hadn't seen before. She stopped to catch her breath leaning against one. Her ankle now ached even when she wasn't standing on it. If she had the time to wait she would have cast a healing spell. She wasn't good at them, but at least she could stop the pain until she got to a doctor.

Even with the shelter provided by the trees she was still too conspicuous. Anyone who approached from behind would see her at once. Diarnlan limped on until the path rounded a corner. The trees were replaced with large bushes that someone had sculpted into shapes. Humanoid shapes, in fact. And some artistically-talented gardener had clipped the foliage at the top into something that looked like a face.

Diarnlan stared up at them with an odd feeling of foreboding. She'd never heard of anyone doing that to bushes in Avallot. The art of tree-sculpting had been invented by the empire of Drekakuria. They'd introduced it to other places, but it had never caught on in Avallot. No one wanted to practice a style of gardening associated with their enemies and would-be conquerors.