Unmaking Percy

Part IV - I, continued (The Parted Glade)

He held his hands up as soon as he was within sight of the yellow cloaks.

"It's me" he said simply as he approached. It was a bare-bones announcement, and he feared he was neither tall not resonant enough for it to really carry through.

He heard a startled grunt and a choked gurgle behind him. He spun at once on his heels, and saw that three other men had sneaked up on Valeria and Myrtle. They must have been hiding somewhere up in the trees; Percy could think of no other way for them to have materialized there so swiftly and silently.

It took two of them to subdue Valeria, and all the while, they looked as though they sorely wished they were three. Her flailing punches and kicks raged wild upon them, smashing and bruising as though they were nothing more than ripened fruit. When they managed to pin her down on her knees, their yellow cloaks were speckled with a pretty red that dribbled from their faces. The third man held back Myrtle, though he clearly put little effort into the task: one look at her and at the shawm she carried on her back had no doubt convinced him she was but a minstrel travelling with the group.

"Wait, stop! It's me" Percy repeated frantically, his hands raised even higher.

He did not know what else to do. He watched on helplessly, frozen in panic, as each moment rushed him by: Myrtle struggling against her captor and earning herself a tighter grip, Valeria's hands getting tied behind her back with a bit of twine, Evans attempting to rise on one leg and getting shoved back down by cowardly hands.

The captain of the group stepped forward. His expression had an unyielding sternness; but, to Percy's relief, he bowed.

"My lord, you need not have come here" he said with a deep, smooth, lead voice. "We did not wish to get in your way. We came and went, fast as we could."

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but you have to release them. At once" Percy frowned.

The leader was entirely, thoroughly golden: his blond hair shone in the sunlight, his eyes gleamed with purpose, and his voice sounded hollow as a gold locket.

"My lord, we have been following you for a while" he said. "When we saw you were riding with this imposter, we imagined you had your reasons. That you were perhaps waiting for the right moment to unmask him. We were patient. But when we saw you last night gathering firewood like a servant boy, we knew they had you captive – perhaps under some spell, even – and that we had to step in. We have of course no wish to meddle in your quest, and we kept our interference to a minimum; we knew that when we took him away, you would have the upper-hand once more. We rode off as soon as we had him. We did not mean to insult you by implying you needed help. We merely played our part as humble servants to your destiny."

The look the man gave Percy was a riddle, something both honest and dissimulated, a heaviness he breathed, a stiffness in his wide gestures. But Percy had a fine-tuned awareness of what others thought of him, and he quickly understood what lay behind that look. The man could not have been more honest: he truly wished Percy had not come. There was no disrespect in his eyes, but something else: something Percy had already seen in impatient riders who found their path blocked by a statue or a monument, and who took the long way around it in grudging but deferential silence.

"You need not concern yourself with this matter any longer, my lord. Nothing will please us more than to see you free to continue your quest now, while we take this imposter to the nearest town to make a public example of him" the man went on.

A festering dread oozed into Percy, slowing his movements, blurring his vision. With extreme reluctance and a disgust he could not understand, he drew one step closer to the shining, golden man. He placed a hand on the man's forearm, with a gesture he had once practiced for the many dignitaries and lords who would, in his now shattered future, come to take counsel with him: a firm grip to show he was trusting and trustworthy, a grip just a squeeze away from being threatening.