Mordred has no fondness for the bright warmth of sunlight, but his familiar did. Angmar lay stretched out on the lawn absorbing the heat from the sun’s rays, his eyes shut tight against the glare. His faerie sheltered his pale skin in the shade that the shadow of the castle cast across the grass at the base of the outer wall. He held open a book, which was small enough to have fit comfortably in the palm of his hand, with the first finger and thumb of his right hand. His blue eyes scanned hungrily across the pages, drinking in the words like thirsty man presented with water, ignoring the sounds of joyful bird song which rang all about him. The young baron turned the page with his thumb, his gaze flicking away from the page momentarily in order to regard his familiar. It was then that he noticed the man slipping stealthily through one of the finely pruned hedges at the far end of the garden. Mordred arched one dark eyebrow, his book forgotten, and watched the stranger as he moved towards the building.
The intruder moved with a grace which indicated that he was well used to passing unnoticed and suggested that, in normal circumstances, he would have succeeded in his mission to enter the castle undetected. It was unfortunate for him that Mordred was more than unusually observant. The baron closed his book and placed it down on the grass beside him, before rising to his feet with a grace of his own, dusting himself down with his long-boned hands. Employing his own particular branch of stealth Mordred followed after the intruder, leaving his dragon behind him without a word. He seized his moment beneath the watch tower, stepping out of the shadows with surprising speed in order to slam the outlaw into the stone wall with considerable force. The baron was the taller of the two by a good few inches and he smiled down at the bandit as he drew the dagger from the sheath at his hip. He pressed the point against the other man’s Adam’s apple, pressing just hard enough to draw a little trickle of blood.
“You’re going to tell me why you’re here,” Mordred purred, applying a little more pressure with the arm which held the man to the wall, “and you’re going to do it quickly.”
---
Mordred tugged on the length of rope in his hands, the opposing end of which was knotted around the bandit’s wrists. The baron had successfully persuaded Spider to lead him to where his friends had taken Gaiane. He had not brought Angmar with him, knowing that the dragon destroyed any element of surprise. The two men moved silently along the path, with the bound Spider leading the way, a fly wrapped in the web of a larger arachnid.
“You remembered what I said?” Mordred asked his companion, catching up with him in a few long strides to press the knife blade against Spider’s spine, “about what I would do if you proved uncooperative? The bandit nodded. The baron untied the knots in the rope, setting his prisoner free; the other man promptly set about massaging his wrists.
“Slowly,” Mordred cautioned as he traded his knife for a ball of fire which crackled away between his finger tips, “I’ll be watching, understood?”
Scowling, Spider nodded, climbing up back onto his horse as the baron kept a grip on the creature’s reins,“understood,” he muttered mutinously.
The baron smiled, darting forwards he brought the fire very close to the fleshy part of Spider’s thigh, “understood, what?” he hissed.
“Understood, my Lord.”
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