Original Stories Fan Fiction ❯ Patricia ❯ Captain Emir ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter Two

Captain Emir

 

Patricia watched as Kyra walked calmly back to the building across from hers. It had taken her most of an hour to convince her sister that all was not lost if she stopped fighting those that came to her during the night, but that she would find something during the day that would make her nightly pain seem worth it.

 

As Kyra opened the door to her room, she turned back and waved to her older sister and then stepped inside and closed the door. Patricia was almost positive that Kyra was taking it as well as she was, was because she had told her that she was welcome to come to her with anything, whether it be talking or getting healed.

 

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a mob of soldiers approaching. They were drunk and reeked of blood: They had killed someone recently, and they were headed towards her sister's room.

 

Quickly she walked out in front of them, and took a quick turn away from the buildings. She heard their footsteps come to an abrupt halt. Looking back she saw that they had seen her and were momentarily talking among themselves to see who they would go after, the spirited new girl or the skilled older one.

 

To help them decide, she grinned at them and tossed her hair over her shoulder. Then she started walking away from them. That made up their drunken minds; they followed after her, stumbling over one another.

 

Patricia led them into the more private portion of the forest surrounding the army encampment. She could hardly contain her laughter as they tripped over tree roots, rocks, and even stepped in animal burrows; more often than not it was a rattlesnake burrow. Grinning, she realized that she would have her hands full of treating rattlesnake poisoning in the morning.

 

Turning around a tree, she happened upon a young man in a clearing. He had hair blacker than hers and dark eyes that spoke of intelligence and kindness. He looked up as a twig snapped somewhere in the forest beyond his private sanctuary.

 

Patricia quickly hid behind one of the nearby trees and prayed that he wouldn't see her. She watched, transfixed as the man slowly got to his feet, his sword lightly tapping his thigh in the process, and made his way towards the source of the disturbance and found one of the drunken soldiers passed out on the forest floor.

 

“You really shouldn't drink so much and then try and find your way through the forest,” he said, his voice rich and full of amusement. His tan skin was revealed as a gentle breeze drifted through and blew a few tree branches out of the way of the bright moonlight.

 

The soldier must have said something, because he frowned and looked around. She stifled a gasp as he looked directly at the tree that was hiding her from view. He slowly made his way over to her tree, a frown etched over his handsome features.

 

He had high cheekbones, a prominent nose, full lips, and almond shaped eyes. He wore a plain shirt tucked into breeches, though, with the help of the moonlight, she saw slight muscles that rippled beneath his shirt as he walked.

 

“Whoever you are, come out,” he said. He moved around the tree blocking his view of the person, but was slightly annoyed when they moved away from him. “I'm not here to hurt you, I just want to find out what it was the soldiers were chasing out here.” He stepped around the tree again, only to find more empty space.

 

“Are you a wood nymph, siren, or demon?” he asked carefully, naming the creatures that lurked in the shadows of the trees, luring men out into the deeper parts of the forest. Wood nymphs lured men to see how far they would follow, while sirens and demons lured them to feast on their flesh or life energy.

 

Patricia continued to move away from him as he attempted to corner her. Several times, he changed direction in an attempt to catch her, but every time, she changed with him. She stuck as close to the tree bark as possible without sinking into the tree itself and kept as far away from the young man as possible.

 

“Alright, you're obviously not a siren or a demon, since you haven't tried to lure me out into the night or eat me. I guess that makes you a wood nymph, one of the shy tree spirits that lures men for the fun of it, not the kill,” he reasoned. “Will you come out?”

 

“No,” Patricia said, her voice cracking with fright.

 

“Why?” he asked, encouraged now that he had received a response. He had heard of the forest nymphs speaking to mortals, but had never actually spoken to one before.

 

Patricia had a sudden idea. “I have to go home, they call to me,” she said. A sudden gentle breeze blew through the trees, filled with a hint of ringing chimes. She heard the man heave a sigh of disappointment as he murmured, “Pity she couldn't stay longer. It would have been nice to tell father a little about encounters with them.”

 

She almost gave a whoop of joy when she heard his booted footsteps turn away and begin to walk back towards the encampment, but barely managed to contain herself. She had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing as he found the men she had led into the forest. He laughed at them enough for the both of them. His laughter was as rich as his voice, it was something that she could have listened t for the rest of her natural life and even well into her death.

 

Turning slightly, she caught a glimpse of a woman with green tinged skin sitting in the branches of an old oak tree. “Thanks,” she whispered. Even though she couldn't see the real nymph anymore, she had the feeling that the petite female was still watching her from her tree.

 

“Fun. Come again,” a voice chimed. There was a hint of musical chimes in the voice, the same hint that the wind had carried. She must have been laughing when the wind blew, Patricia decided as she made her way back to her room.

 

Waiting for her outside her door was one of her usuals. She heaved a tired sigh as she murmured, “Time to get to my usual night work.”

 

Morning…

 

Patricia pulled her white cotton dress over her head and tossed it into the corner of her closet where the rest of her dirty clothes sat waiting for her to clean them on her day off. She pulled a powdery blue shirt and tan breeches out and dressed. Quickly divesting herself of her ruined makeup, she stepped outside and nearly ran into a male teen that looked to be about her age.

 

“William?” she gasped as she stepped back to get a better look at him. He had the same eyes and hair as her, though his skin was a bit tanner from three years of working with their father in the field in her absence.

 

“You actually remember me?” he asked, his black eyes sizing her up. “Even though you never even wrote me once the entire time you were away. Why'd you run in the first place?” No matter how long they were apart, he would always be able to recognize her, his twin.

 

Patricia placed her hands on her hips and glared at her twin as she snapped, “I can't believe you actually bought the bullshit story that our parents fed you. I thought you would have known me well enough to know that if I had wanted to run away, I would have gone to you with my plan, and that I would have suggested we run away together.”

 

Her black eyes blazed with an equal amount of coldness and fury as they glared at each other. She had thought that her twin would have had enough faith in her that he would have thought things through, instead of blindly buying whatever lie their parents tried to feed him about her.

 

She side stepped him and stalked over to the dining hall. On the way, several of the other harem women she was friendly with joined her and looked back at the teen that followed them a short ways away.

 

“So, who's the hunk?” a brunette asked

 

“We saw the two of you exchange some pretty heated words. Is he an ex-lover of yours?” a blonde haired one teased her.

 

“Sure, if I were into incest,” Patricia snapped. “He's my twin, or at least I thought he was.”

 

“Ouch. I've never seen you this worked up,” the blonde said.

 

“Does this mean he's free?” the brunette asked hopefully.

 

“Have him. I don't care. He actually thought I ran away without him,” Patricia said, outraged. “He actually believed the story our parents told him when they sold me to this place. They said I ran away, of all the things they might've said, they chose to say that I ran away. I mean, I thought he was better than that; that he would know that I wouldn't have willingly left without him, that I would have asked him to go with me, if I was even running away.”

 

“Sounds like the two of you were rather close before you were split up,” the blonde said gently.

 

“Yeah, we were,” Patricia said, glancing back to find that the brunette had fallen back and was hanging on his arm. She smiled some as she remarked, “Helen is sure getting over her last heartbreak real quick, isn't she Trice?”

 

She and the blonde had such similar names that many of the soldiers and other women had taken to calling the blonde Trice instead of by her real name, Patrice. Patricia watched as her brother looked at her for a brief moment before he plunged into conversation with the beautiful brunette.

 

“Looks like your brother is encouraging her plenty,” Trice said, looking back too. “I think he's doing it to get back at you, in a way.”

 

“He's not like that,” Patricia said without thinking about her words. She instinctively defended the brother she had always stood up for when others in their home village had accused him of stealing from them, which as it turned out later the headman's boy had stolen their missing goods because he said he was hungry.

 

“A lot of time has passed since you last saw him. He could have very well've changed in your absence,” Trice said patiently. “See ya later, Patricia,” she added as they reached the dining hall and went their separate ways.

 

Patricia joined the line as they waited their turns to get their breakfast. Scanning the faces of those around her briefly, she realized that neither of her sister's were anywhere to be found.

 

She stood on tiptoe to see over everyone's heads and was immensely relieved to see that there was indeed a strawberry-blonde girl serving breakfast. She was quicker than the rest of the cooks combined and had managed to take over an entire section of the morning food, literally shoving the other servers out of her way so that she could work with her own section of the food.

 

Kira was the more out spoken of the two younger girls. She had always been the one to persuade Kyra into doing something mischievous and had always taken the blame for it, no matter how bad the punishment might have been.

 

When it came time for her to serve Patricia, she took one glance up and dropped the plate of food she had been dishing up with a gasp. “Patricia?” she asked incredulously. Kira also had the better memory of the younger twins, she remembered Patricia as though she had seen her every day of the past five years.

 

“Hey, Kira. When you're through here, find Kyra and she'll tell you everything,” Patricia said with a soft smile. She had sorely missed her little sisters and was glad that she could speak with them again, but she wasn't so happy that they were part of the harem like her.

 

Kira handed her a plate of the gooey oatmeal, toast, and fruit that was served at every breakfast. The younger girl still stared at her sister as she moved away, then got right back to work as soon as Patricia had been swallowed up by the crowd.

 

Patricia tried not to look back at Kira as she made her way to the table reserved especially for harem women and sat down next to Helen, her brother sat at a table not too far away. Seeing that he watched her, she looked pointedly away.

 

“So what's with the little serving girl? You two seemed to know each other too,” Helen said casually, though she was dying to know what was going on.

 

It wasn't everyday that one of the new harem girls knew an older one that had been there for a number of years. It was even rarer that they were related.

 

“Two new harem girls were acquired by Second Captain Yuntuan some time ago. I just found out that they were here last night,” Patricia said patiently. She knew that everyone within hearing distance was now attentively listening to her, something that didn't happen very often either. Even though she was one of the more sought after harem women, that didn't mean she received any special privileges, and that included being listened to.

 

“I used to know them. They lived in the same village as my twin and I,” she said. It wasn't a lie, exactly, she just didn't add that they were sisters. If there was one thing she knew, it was that when a sought after woman's sisters came in, they too became sought after on the assumption that they were just as good as the one that had been there longer, and that was the last thing she wanted to happen to her sisters.

 

“Alright then,” Helen said sullenly. She wasn't used to people keeping secrets from her, she was the one that everyone told everything to and she knew when something was being withheld from her.

 

“Attention,” someone shouted and there came a scraping of chairs as everyone scrambled to rise. The young man from the previous night and Captain Emir, limping unlike usual, came into the dining hall surrounded by an entourage of six guards, four more than the captain's usual amount.

 

Emir looked around the hall briefly before saying, “As you were,” and taking a seat at the officers table, the young man sitting beside him and Yuntuan on his other side. After conversing with a few of his commanders for a moment, he stood and called, “Patricia Ward, report to me immediately.” Then he sat down and continued talking as though he had said nothing.

 

Patricia couldn't stop the fear that clenched at her gut. The last time she had reported to him immediately, she had wound up in a dark, dank cell for a week for refusing a direct command from Yuntuan. Yuntuan had ordered her to refuse to treat an entire list of soldiers he knew didn't like him, which of course she had refused. He had gotten even by taking it to Emir.

 

She carefully rose to her feet and made her way, zigzag around the tables in her way, to the officers table and Captain Emir. He might have been good looking if not for the scar across his left temple, the one he said he had gotten from doing battle with a demon, but it had actually come from his own sword when he had been cleaning it a year or so ago. (She had been the one to treat his shallow scratch.)

 

Stopping so that the table and three of his generals were between them, she waited for him to notice her. The younger man was the first to take notice of her. He looked her from head to toe with scrutinizing eyes, he flashed her a brief smile before allowing one of Yuntuans to draw him into a conversation on Rules of Conduct for an everyday swordfight. Yuntuan was the second, he brought her to Emir's attention.

 

“You will report to the medical hall at once. I have been informed that several of the soldiers followed a nymph into the forest last night and that they received serious rattlesnake bites,” Emir said coolly, not noticing that Yuntuan's green eyes glittered like ice. She knew he thought she was the nymph that had led the soldiers into the forest, but had nothing to prove it.

 

She turned to go as he added, “I'll be by after breakfast to check their conditions.” Patricia literally bolted out of the dining hall to get away from Emir. He always managed to unnerve her in some way or another.

 

Patricia slowed only when she was sure that she was far enough away from the dining tent to feel safe. As soon as she approached the medical hall, another healer ran out to her, panting as she said, “Ten…in critical…condition…. Need…anti-venom…now.” The white haired healer grabbed Patricia's arm and dragged her inside to where their patients lay waiting to receive the antidote.

 

With a staff of three healers, it was impressive that they had managed to give the rattler anti-venom to twenty of their thirty patients at all. Patricia was shocked to see that two of the healers were checking over those that had already been administered the antidote and making sure that they were alright. They still had another ten people to administer the antidote to and they were still worrying over those that had already received the cure.

 

“What do you think you're doing? Those people are already cured. Put aside what you're doing, grab a bottle of antidote and a fresh needle and inject those still poisoned with venom,” Patricia scolded them, rolling up her own sleeves and forgetting that they had chased her into the forest the previous night.

 

When a patient came to her, it didn't matter what they had done to her or anyone else, they were her patients and they were her responsibility. If she had a bone to pick with them, she would do it when they were healthy, not go about it the sneaky way like others sometimes did and get them while they were injured.

 

Patricia strode over to the shelves where the medicines were kept and plucked a freshly cleaned needle from a basket and picked up a bottle of anti-venom. She emptied the bottle of its contents into the needle and made sure there were no air bubbles in it. Then she calmly walked over to a soldier that was covered in sweat and looked to be running a high temperature and stuck the needle into his arm without swabbing the area.

 

She didn't pause to see if his condition improved, instead she and the other three healers continued repeated the process seven more times between them. Patricia and another healer reached for the same bottle of anti-venom, their hands colliding.

 

“We have two more patients and one bottle. What do we do?” the second healer asked.

 

Patricia looked at both soldiers and asked, “Do we decide who lives and who dies? Can a healer even begin to contemplate a decision like that without the fear of her decision weighing on her for the rest of her life?”

 

“Yes, we can. We choose who to treat and who to turn away,” a white haired healer supplied as she finished injecting her patient with the antidote. “You choose, Patricia. Who will it be of these two? I most certainly don't care which lives or dies.”

 

“I won't choose,” Patricia said softly. She didn't like being entrusted with life or death decisions, someone would always end up hurt or dead. “No, I can't. They will each get half a dose of the antidote and then one of us will go out and retrieve a rattlesnake and create another batch of anti-venom so that this kind of thing never happens again.”

 

She picked up the bottle and emptied it of half its contents into the needle. The healer nearest her took the bottle and disposed of the rest. Once the soldiers were injected with half the antidote, Patricia said, “I'll go get the rattler.”

 

“No, I'll do it,” another healer said, her eyes lingering on the doorway. Patricia looked where she looked and saw Emir standing there, his normal two guards behind him as usual. “Go, and don't rush it. Those snakes are temperamental,” she warned the healer as she strode out the back way.

 

Again, she noted that the captain walked with a slight limp as he came towards her and the soldiers that were still passed out from the venom. “It'll be another few days before they even come to,” Patricia informed him, moving away from him in favor of checking one of their fevers.

 

“How long were they out there before they were found?” he asked coolly. He sat down on the edge of an empty medical cot and leaned over to remove his leather boot.

 

“Kelly, how long was it before they were brought in here?” Patricia asked, addressing an extremely tired and nervous brown haired healer.

 

“Three hours, maybe. We were able to get the antidote to twenty of them in an hour and a half before Patricia joined us,” Kelly supplied nervously. “Then it took us another ten minutes to administer the anti-venom to the last ten patients, with the only drawback being that we ran out of supplies before we finished.” The younger healer's nerves were shot through after running around for almost two hours straight, worrying if one of her patients was going to die on her or not, she couldn't handle talking to the fierce captain of the army on top of everything else.

 

“What did you do?” Emir asked as he dropped his boot on the cold tiles and rolled his breeches up to his knee.

 

“We gave half a bottle to the last two until more could be made. The two that received half the treatment will hold out for awhile, until an alternative cure is found or the venom is extracted from the rattlesnakes and processed into anti-venom,” Patricia said when Kelly looked like she might break down from nerves.

 

“Ward, come here and take a look at this old wound. It's acting up again,” he said, calling Patricia by her last name, a painful reminder of where she had come from and where she had ended up at.

 

Patricia grabbed up a sewing needle and sanitized it. She knew exactly what was wrong with his calf wound, he hadn't let it properly heal three months ago and had wound up tearing the muscle again, requiring more stitches. He had probably ripped it open again doing an extremely difficult sword routine to impress some foreign ambassador or low ranking nobleman.

 

She stifled a groan when she saw that it was ripped and infected. “What did you do to it this time? It's infected on the left side,” she informed him, treating him as she treated any of her other patients. “Kelly, get me the disinfectant and bandages.” Patricia didn't look up as the younger healer handed her the supplies she had requested, she was used to Kelly's silence whenever she worked on the captain.

 

Emir yelled with pain as she splashed the disinfectant onto the infected part. “Well it wouldn't hurt so much if you would let it heal properly for once,” she snapped. “Kelly, disinfect a knife and hand it to me when you're done.”

 

She clamped the needle between her teeth as she used some of the bandages to dry the slightly foaming area off. The handle of a knife came into her peripheral vision, she dropped the bandages and grabbed the knife.

 

“Hold still so I don't cut you,” she said when he tried to move away at the sight of the knife. She carefully skinned the infected areas and handed the knife back to Kelly before she disinfected the needle again so that it wouldn't cause further infection.

 

As soon as she was through stitching the open wound up again she wrapped it in clean bandages and stood, hands on hips. “Next time you come in here with the wound open, again, I'll let Kelly treat it,” she threatened. “You need to remain off that leg for at least three weeks to let it heal properly. No excuses this time, we aren't due for any battles for the next year.”

 

Emir eyed the feisty healer. Trust this particular woman to have their battle schedules memorized just to make sure he healed properly. “Fine, fine,” he muttered under his breath as he got gingerly to his feet. “Tell me something: Did you have a twin before you came here?”

 

Patricia was surprised by his sudden question as she answered, “Yes, a twin brother.”

 

“William, right?”

 

“Yes, why?” she asked cautiously. Never before had the captain ever before taken an interest in her personal life before the time she had come to the army harem. It was slightly unnerving to have the army captain asking her about her old life.

 

“He was asking about you the night Yuntuan brought him and the younger twins to the encampment,” Emir said carefully. “Saying that you had run away from home.”

 

Patricia turned a bright red, the only warning that they had when she was about to snap. “If I had run away, this is the last place I would have run to,” she snapped.

 

Kelly gasped at her words and dropped the knife that she had been cleaning. Patricia turned away from Emir and walked over to the younger healer and picked up the knife for her. “If that's all, Captain Emir, then I will ask that you leave and allow us to get back to treating your injured soldiers.”

 

Emir hesitated, then said, “Actually, I should warn you, we're hosting the royal prince. He'll be here for a few months, testing the strength of my men, and he'll be sending a few dozen to you a day. Be sure that you have enough supplies to treat them all.”

 

“Right,” Patricia said, having regained her cool. “Anything else?”

 

“No,” Emir said as he pulled his boot on and rolled his breeches down. He walked on his injured foot a bit and was satisfied that she had done a good job.

 

As he walked out the door, she called, “Stay off that foot or I won't treat it anymore.” He grunted in response and continued walking, his guards flanking him on either side.

 

Kelly gave a sigh of relief and went back to cleaning the blood off of the knife that Patricia had picked up for her. “How can you stand to deal with the captain like that?” she asked. “If he even gets within twenty feet of me I start panicking and usually mess something up.”

 

“He makes me nervous outside the Healer's tent, but inside he's just another patient. That's how I look at it,” Patricia shrugged. She bent over one of the soldiers and took his wrist in her hand and took his pulse. She checked his heartbeat, breathing, and other vitals and repeated the process with the rest of the thirty other soldiers as the other healer took care of the various cuts and scrapes that floated in and out during the morning.