V3Ch81-Breaking a Paladin Part 1

Weeks passed. The air grew hot and arid quickly as Samara and the Army marched away from the capital.

They were entering the desert now. Soon they would be within range of the enemy she had come to fight. It seemed she had gotten away with her crime, at least for now.

She still felt nervous, but other feelings had managed to take the fore.

Guilt and remorse over what she’d been complicit in. Her sister had just been under house arrest, for stupid political reasons, and to free her, Samara had been involved in murder.

And she kept on making it worse.

“No, I don’t want to talk about it,” she practically hissed at Mischa when the swamp mage asked her if she wanted to commiserate about what was bothering her.

Samara immediately apologized, of course. But she kept acting that way around both Mischa and Hailgrim, despite her intentions. She had never been a criminal before, had never had to lie to everyone around her, until the dream lover slipped into her mind. Now she was going beyond lying, committing crimes for her sister. She couldn’t even blame that on anyone else. That had been entirely the paladin’s choice.

The guilt and paranoia was too much for her to handle. Every innocuous question felt like an accusation or, at best, a high wire she had to walk across.

She set into a pattern of behavior that felt unstoppable to her at the time, even as she saw the slow disaster of it unfolding. She would push Hailgrim and Mischa away and then slowly try to pull them back, then push them away again just as harshly.

The cycle repeated over and over throughout the course of the march until she thought it might be too late to salvage the situation.

Finally, she gave up.

At times, she thought she was doing them a favor, trying semi-consciously to distance them from her inevitable dishonor. The less they knew, the better for both them and her.

Gradually, as the prospect of her being arrested seemed to grow more unlikely, she recognized she might have just been protecting herself from a difficult conversation. But it was too late. After a dozen or more little wounds to the relationship they had with Samara, the two were doing their best to befriend others in the Royal Army rather than trying to pull her back into their orbit.

There was also the other distraction that kept her from thinking clearly. There was always a low-simmering lust, just below Samara’s belly.

It was a feeling that sat uneasily with the fear, anxiety, and intense unworthiness, but she felt an unwanted undercurrent of lust almost all the time now. Her inner fire had built up over the course of those dreams with the mystery man, “Tybalt.” She had no way to put it out now that the Goddess was apparently no longer suppressing her desires. She didn’t even have a way to manage it. There wasn’t enough privacy in an Army camp for her to touch herself, and the idea felt ridiculous every time she considered it.

Those feelings she couldn’t address made everything else that would be merely annoying almost unendurable.

The desert heat. The social isolation. The anticipation of her own death, either in battle or in a gallows the Kingdom erected for her after they arrested her.

Samara felt like she might snap.

Those were the circumstances when a handful of riders caught up to General Caracalla’s Army detachment.

“We need to speak with the General!” declared the lead figure as they rode up.

Someone called a halt, and then General Caracalla himself approached, wearing a slightly impatient expression.

Samara rode over, too, if only to affirm that these people weren’t here for her. She kept off to the side, barely in view.

“What brings you into the midst of my military operation?” the General demanded with the sort of calm severity that Samara had only ever seen from powerful men.

“We come with an arrest warrant for the paladin Samara of the Great Temple of Astara.”

No. No! Shit… Please, Goddess, let this be some mistake…

Samara didn’t allow herself to react visibly. She could see others at the edges of her peripheral vision who were reacting - looking at her, looking at each other, instantly distrusting the woman who’d been riding in their midst all this time.

“For what?” This time it was the Major who spoke. He rode forward and snatched a scroll that the lead rider had been holding. The man scowled, but the Major - probably used to deference from other men, as the General’s son - ignored it and simply read through the scroll.

“What does it say?” asked Lady Miranda from his side. She had been spending a lot of time with the Major, the paladin had noticed. The nature mage sounded merely curious, but the look she directed Samara’s way was one of undisguised amusement. The two women had never taken to each other.

“Apparently there was an attempt to break the High Priestess out of her, um, voluntary seclusion,” the Major said. He looked Samara’s way. “Two men died. Lady Samara is implicated.”

“Exactly,” said the rider impatiently. “We have orders to return her to face the King’s justice.”

“Should political matters be interfering with a military operation?” That was Dominic Sevenhills, the son of another general who was accompanying their march at his father’s request.

Ignoring the boy’s question, the rider nudged his horse, and the beast took a step forward, toward Samara. She sat in her own saddle, paralyzed, unsure of what to do. She had resolved not to run before - at least not until she could get aboard a ship - but now that she was faced with the prospect of the King’s justice, she questioned that decision. Maybe if she turned around right now and kicked her horse into a gallop, she could outride them. They were only a week’s ride from the desert port of Whadesgart, she’d heard someone say.

“What sort of bullshit is this?” General Caracalla asked bluntly.

Everyone around him stilled, including that lead rider.

The man turned around to face the General.

“We have orders,” he began repeating.

“I heard you the first time,” Caracalla said, eyes hardening. “But I also don’t care. The boy is correct.” He gestured to Dominic. “You are here on a political errand. Politics is important, yes. But I have my own orders. I have carefully chosen those who are to accompany me to face a catastrophic threat to the Kingdom. I have a small, elite military force. I have members of the Divine Trust. I have a nature mage. I have my son here. I have General Sevenhills’s son. I have three members of the Party of Heroes… and one of those is the paladin Samara, endowed by the Goddess Astara with power. None of these pieces is redundant. None can be easily removed without harm to my war effort. Whose bright idea was it to send riders out to address this matter when we’re in the middle of approaching a battle?”

Samara couldn’t see the rider’s face, but the back of his neck reddened. She could guess the same was happening to his cheeks.

“We are on assignment directly from the Grand Duke,” he said. “The relationship between Kingdom and faith is on a precipice right now. It’s a delicate moment, and this is critical too. Even if it may not seem as such to one who is so steeped in military affairs, it is important to His Serene Highness that we ride back with the Lady immediately.”

“That’s out of the question,” the General said instantly. “I’ll have a word with the Grand Duke when I return. I may have need of her in the next few days. In any case, if she dies, she’s no longer a problem for you, right? We’re not far from Fort Hadrian.  The battle is just ahead of us. Timing is critical in these matters. And you brought insufficient numbers to escort a paladin prisoner anyway. She likely has the strength of ten men. Before you ask, I won’t part with a single troop to help you make that journey. You may, if you wish, keep an eye on her for the rest of the trip. But if you stay, I may choose to make use of you in the fighting to come.”

That’s encouraging, Samara thought. She hadn’t taken General Caracalla for an ally of hers. Of course he isn’t. He just thinks he needs every holy person he can get for this fight, and he’s right.

“You are defying the Grand Duke’s order, then, sir?” asked the rider. “Keeping this paladin traitor free? Giving her the chance to escape?”

Caracalla shook his head. “You are too eager to get into a pissing match with someone whose authority outstrips yours, boy. I will allow you to bind her if that makes you more secure. But her presence is nonnegotiable.” He turned to face Samara and called to her. “My lady, please comply peacefully with these men. In time, you will face some reckoning for any past actions. You have my word that I will ensure that the merits of your contributions over the next few days are taken into account in passing final judgment.”

It was cold comfort as the rider and his entourage approached her. One of them drew a set of shackles from his horse’s saddlebag, and Samara felt her stomach jump at the sight. She bit her lip.

Please let me wake up from this. Let this be a dream, please, Lady Astara…

She had never in her life been bound or shackled outside of a dream. And there was nothing erotic about this situation. She felt the humiliation setting in even before the iron touched her skin.

As the soldiers drew closer, she could smell them. The stenches of unwashed sweat mingled with fear and anger. Their facial expressions reflected those same emotions, lips curled back in expressions of anger and disguised fear. Normal men always feared what they didn’t understand, and that had often included paladins in Samara’s experience.

She couldn’t account for why these specific men seemed so angry at her in particular, though. She didn’t recognize any of them from that night. If this was merely a law enforcement action, why was there such hate in their eyes?

“Dismount from your horse,” the lead rider ordered.

The tone in his voice made her hesitate, contemplating resistance.

In the moment she sat there, undecided, he reached up and struck her across the face. She was taken so by surprise that she failed to stop him, even though he was slower than her. A thin trickle of blood rolled down her chin from where her teeth had accidentally bitten into her lower lip.

“Stupid bitch,” the rider said. “You continue your defiance even now.”

Samara blinked. She was more affected emotionally than physically. No one had struck her outside of actual combat since she was a child. She had to process it.

I’m the one at fault, she thought meekly. Otherwise… despite everything, my friends would defend me.

She could see them among the crowd of soldiers watching, Hailgrim and Mischa. Their expressions looked troubled, but they weren’t making their way over to her. She didn’t resent it. It was smart. They should keep their distance from her shame.

She dismounted. The lead rider reached down, grasped her holy symbol, and ripped it from her neck. She felt a stinging sensation as the thin silver chain broke around her skin.

No, I need that… But all her senses and instincts seemed duller than usual. She had accepted that she was a criminal and deserved to be punished.

“You don’t deserve to wear our Goddess’s symbol, cunt,” one of them said.

There was a small, wet sound, and then Samara felt the sensation of moisture on her cheek. She reached up to touch it. The fact set in for her just as her fingers made contact. One of the men had deliberately spit on her.

“Filthy fucking criminal,” one of their voices growled.

“Stupid bitch,” the leader repeated.

She looked around helplessly and saw the way the other soldiers, the ones she’d been traveling with, were staring. Their eyes had gone so cold and hard. She could no longer see her friends’ faces. They must have turned away, or perhaps their feelings were so like those of the crowd around them that their expressions were no longer easily distinguishable from the mass of disapproval.

All her life, she’d been good, she’d been obedient. She had served her Goddess faithfully and followed her sister’s lead. Now this.

She felt her stomach tangle in knots. Her eyes filled with moisture.

Her career was over. In all likelihood, her life would be over soon.

Something quietly broke inside Samara. She wished for nothingness, for oblivion. The intense shame - the hate directed at her, the way everyone was watching - was all too much, too painful for her to endure.

It was all she could do to hold herself back from crying.

I’m sorry, she thought over and over. I’m so sorry.

As the men shackled her feet together, she was just a body. She didn’t resist in the slightest. Still, no one else intervened. Not her friends, nor the Divine Trust, who must have been thinking about the implications of her and the High Priestess’s actions for their own standing in relation to the Kingdom.

She had known that no one would do anything, of course. Why would they bother?

It’s over, Samara thought as she began to walk. I’m alone, I’m nothing now, and it’s all over.