Little Red, Riding Wood Ch. 04

Gautier reached into his satchel to pull forth a book, Celia's journal, which he flung, fluttering like a wounded bird, through the air to land on the floor between them.

"Whore! Dirty, fucking, tart. Who in the village haven't you spread your cock-hungry legs for? Who hasn't filled that vile, disgusting hole of yours?"

Sinclaire felt Celia tense even further, if such a thing were possible. Her fingers dug into the muscles of his arm and shoulder as she clung more tightly to him. She moved to stand on the floor herself, shielding her naked form behind him for both modesty and protection.

"I haven't. Father, I haven't. I never have, or would."

"Liar! It's all here. Every sordid encounter."

"They're just stories, Gautier," Sinclaire told him, keeping his voice as calm and authoritative as he could. "Just private, made up tales, I'm sure."

"Oh? Oh? Even the ones involving you?"

Sinclaire's eyes went wide. He half glanced back to see Celia's reaction, but kept his main focus on the danger before him. Stories about him, he thought. Sinful stories.

"Tell me they aren't true! You stand here before me, both of you naked and reeking of sex. As I peered through the door you lay in each others arms, kissing, and not at all in the polite, familiar way of a respectful father and his obedient daughter."

Sinclair moved with slow care, guiding Celia with him. She shuffled along behind him as he moved, continuing to hide her form and use him as a shield. He slipped slowly to the side, to position the two chairs in the midst of the room, the ones covering the loose floorboards, between them and Gautier.

"Whore! I will tell you now how your life will be. You will marry me, and never again lay with another, ever. That will be the price for my silence about your crimes. I told you that you would be my wife, and now you will. My wife, the whore! Your father will give his permission, and even support my efforts to hire my own team."

He gave them an evil smile. Celia tried briefly to dart out for the book, but one quick heft of the ax frightened her back into place behind her father. Sinclaire then eased towards the book himself.

"No!" Gautier bellowed, taking a threatening, stomping step towards him.

Sinclaire backed away again, trying to think. The book was the key, if it contained what Gautier claimed. Without it, the woodsman was just a madman making up stories about his neighbors.

Sinclaire considered his options. With two firm hands, he half turned to hold Celia as he gently pushed back towards the bed, while he stepped the other way in a blatant effort to circle the room towards the door. If he could split Gautier's attention, perhaps Celia could grab the book, while he and the woodsman wrestled.

"Father!"

"Cover up, dear."

Gautier seemed to sense his dilemma immediately. He'd been a fool to toss it so theatrically. But now, with his initial rage subsiding, he was thinking more clearly. Sinclaire couldn't afford that.

"You're just hurt, Gautier, because she's more woman than you can handle, and she'd even prefer sharing a bed with her own father to sharing one with you."

It had the desired effect. Sinclaire could see the animal fury instantly return to his eyes.

"Papa!"

Celia had reached the bed, pulling the sheet up as soon as she could to serve as a modest cover.

"Look at her, Gautier. Look how beautiful my daughter is. I just finished making love to her, Gautier. She took her father's log inside of her, clung to me like a little girl and screamed her love for me out to the forest. She's not your whore, Guatier, she's mine. She's Papa's little whore."

Gautier's face grew redder and redder. It even seemed to expand as it reddened, almost turning purple, like a swelling cock. Sinclaire teased him further with an evil smile.

"She knows how flaccid you would be, Gautier. Only her own father could ever please a woman as sensual and erotic as she."

From there, everything happened almost more quickly than Sinclaire could think.

Gautier charged him.

Celia screamed.

Sinclaire, on instinct alone and probably doing the most foolish thing he could, charged as well. As Gautier raised the ax, it struck a low beam in the ceiling, pushing him off balance. That was just the opening Sinclaire needed to dodge to the side, towards the door, hoping to draw Gautier out after him, away from Celia.

Sinclaire had moved too soon, and too eagerly. Gautier moved too quickly to intervene. But with him between Sinclaire and the door, Celia could now reach the book. She dove for it, almost tangling her legs in the sheets she used for modesty.

Gautier lunged next at her, this time pulling the ax back crosswise, to swing it horizontally, like a scythe. It sped through the air before Celia, driving her back away from the book.

Now it was Sinclaire's turn to feel fury. He bellowed his own animal cry as he lunged at Gautier's back. Gautier continued to spin his own body in the direction of his ax swing, then pulled the ax around with him, completing a full circle while barely missing Sinclaire's chest with the blade. He had pulled himself up short just in time.

"You know what, Sinclaire? You're far to clever, and too much trouble to leave be. I have all the proof I need, in the book. I'm going to kill you, and marry and fuck your daughter whenever I please, until I grow bored of her and one of the younger, prettier girls comes of age. I'm going to have it all, and you're going to die knowing it."

Sinclaire looked yet again around the room, searching for anything he could use as a weapon. There was nothing here. Gautier moved carefully towards him, again controlling his own anger while backing him away from the door, while casting quick glances Celia's way, to be sure she stayed away from the book.

Sinclaire moved to put the chairs and the loose floor boards again between him and Gautier.

""She'll lie in your arms, Gautier, and imagine that she is with me. Even with me dead, you'll never have her. You're not nearly man enough for her."

Gautier growled again in bestial anger while swinging his ax back again for a hefty swipe. He brutally and forcefully kicked aside the chairs between he and Sinclaire, only to plant one heavy foot on a loose board. He crashed through the floor, gashing his leg and catching it there.

In that moment, one of the chairs clattered forward at Sinclaire's feet. Without thinking he grasped it, raised it over his head like an ax, lunged forward and swung downward as hard as he could. Gautier looked up with eyes wide in shock but still laced with rage as the edge of the arm of the chair, with its carved wolf head, crashed into the top of his skull.

There was a sickening crack. Sinclaire had not meant to hit him so hard, but really had swung the heavy chair with all of his might in fear and with an instinctive need to protect his daughter. Gautier collapsed backwards in a heap, sprawled awkwardly with that one bleeding leg still pinned within the floor almost to the knee.

In the next moment, Celia was again in Sinclaires arms, crying and hugging him, while looking at first at Gautier's still form, and then looking away by burying her face in Sinclaire's chest. Sinclaire held her close and tight for a long while, until eventually he felt compelled to move. He pushed her gently away as he stepped towards Guatier's still form.

For her part, Celia moved quickly to her book, to grasp it and hold it to her breast with both hands, almost as if she were a sorceress, and her soul had been imprisoned there within its pages, and she needed to protect it to secure her own life.

The gash on Gautier's head was deep. His skull was cracked clean through. Sinclaire knelt behind him to confirm his worst fears. There was no breath coming from his lips. Gautier was dead.

He tried to feel some remorse. As despised as Gautier was in his eyes, he was just a man. He'd thought him to be arrogant, selfish and self absorbed, but not evil, at least not until today. Thinking things through he couldn't exactly say he had regrets, but killing a man, even an evil man intent on harming Celia and himself, made him feel like retching.

He fought the bile out of his throat and back into his stomach, for Celia's sake. Now was not the time for remorse. His first thought was to get the cursed body out of his home, their new home. It took some struggling, as Celia watched from the corner of the room on the verge of tears herself, clearly overcome with all that had transpired.

Once he'd freed the body's leg from the floor, he grabbed Gautier under the shoulders and hauled him backwards, out of the house, down the steps, out onto the leaves and moss before the house, intending to drag him some distance from the house to bury him.

* * *

Royden watched in shock as Sinclaire appeared, dragging Gautier behind him. How had the old coot possibly overpowered Gautier? He must have caught him unawares, Royden decided, just as he had with he and his brother. The tricky old bastard didn't fight fair. He won only through guile and deceit, and sheer luck.

Ruffe and Royden exchanged a smug, knowing, smiling glance, as Royden pulled an arrow from his quiver, then notched it and took aim. If Sinclaire wouldn't fight fair, then neither would he and Ruffe. And with Gautier unconscious at best, he now couldn't keep Royden and his brother from their preferred prize. In a few short minutes, Sinclaire would be dead, and his lovely, red haired daughter would learn how thick and hard Royden could be for a woman.

* * *

Celia watched her father drag the body away. The horror she felt had faded, although her heart would not stop racing. For a moment she had felt guilt, as if this all had been her fault. She'd written the entries in the journal. She'd tempted her father. She'd spurned every man's advances. She'd failed to prevent Gautier from following her here.

She'd seduced her own father.

If Gautier was dead, she'd thought instinctively, his blood was as much on her hands as anyone else's.

But no, she thought. He was a grown man. He was responsible for his actions. She had no idea how he'd gotten her book, but it was hers. It was his moral duty to return it. If he was foolish enough to read it, and then to even more foolishly believe every word he found there, then that was his stupidity at work. If his anger led him out here, to righteously but unjustly punish her kindly father and herself, and at the same time to profit from the situation and use it to sate his own base desires, then how did that make him in any way a victim?

No, Celia thought, as she quickly arrived in a place where his deeds were his, and he owned his own demise. Father had had no choice. It was self defense, and even then they had only survived by the greatest of luck.

It was as if fate had declared that the two lovers must be together, she decided.

She watched as her father, struggling and panting, hauled Gautier's huge form away. She watched, when the woods burst into a cacophony of snarls and growls. An arrow flew through the air from that spot, straight at Papa.

Celia's heart felt like it froze as the arrow flew for what seemed like an eternity, straight at her father's back. Her mouth opened wide to let out a scream that could never form in time, let alone reach him in time for him to act.

The arrow flew nearly true, reached Sinclaire, and nicked his side as it just missed and instead buried itself in Gautiers limp body. Her father quickly yelped in pain, crouched and turned in one motion, looking for the source of the arrow and belatedly responding himself to the sudden noises coming from the same direction.

Celia saw them now, as she was stricken with a new wave of panic. The entire pack of wolves, lead by the black wolf itself, wrestled and tore at something just beyond the nearest thicket of brush. Celia ran, oddly aware in a detached thought that she was still naked, to stand beside her father, who crouched frozen in shock, gripping his side. A small pool of blood formed on his shirt there.

There were screams from the shrubs. Ruffe burst from behind a boulder, his eyes wide in panic and blood covering his torn leather breeches, as two wolves bounded after him and pounced. He fell to the ground, eyes looking straight at Celia and her father, with a horrible look of panicked plea for aid on his face.

The two wolves fell on him with maws gaping wide, full of teeth, as more appeared looking just as fierce and charging into the fray. Ruffe's bloody body was mostly hidden under a seething mass of fur and teeth. Celia hid her face in her father's chest, never seeing the remainder of what transpired, but hearing every snarl and scream.

She felt herself being lifted to her feet by her father. She kept her eyes shut and head buried in his chest, shielded by one arm, as he guided her away from the noise and back toward the cabin.

After they'd gone a distance, she felt her father stop, and she herself dared to look. The wolves were not pursing them. One group ripped at what was left of Ruffe, while another did the same to someone or something hidden in a thicket. Celia had no doubt that was Ruffe's brother Royden. The two were never apart, and that was exactly where the arrow had come from.

The black wolf separated himself from the pack. He looked their way, straight into Celia's eyes, she felt, before loping easily but menacingly towards them.

Once again her father pushed her behind him. She clung to his bulk as she peered around him at the approaching black terror. Sinclaire inched backwards, pushing her with him, as the wolf approached.

The wolf loped easily and calmly towards them, but when the black wolf stood beside Guatier, it halted to rest one paw on the body's unmoving chest. The wolf tipped its head back to let out a mix of a howl with a series of yelps. As if on cue, following his orders, a number of the gray wolves from the nearest pack broke free, leaving their meal, to come to join their leader.

She and Sinclaire continued to slowly and warily retreat to the cottage, but the wolves advanced no further than Gautier's body. The gray wolves grasped the limp form in their maws, dragging it away in fits and starts, as the black wolf stood, blue eyes locked on Celia's.

He watched them withdraw, displaying no interest at all in following. When they were almost to their porch and Gautier's body had by then disappeared behind the thicket from whence the arrow had sped, the wolf bowed its head once, still never taking its piercing blue eyes from Celia's, then turned and sauntered, exuding its power all the way. It loped into the thicket and was gone.

You are in my wood, woman child, the wolf had said to her, once.

She wondered if they would now be allowed to remain.

You may, if that is my wish, he had said then.

* * *

No one ever came into the Wolf Wood to look for Gautier, and no one looked at all for Royden and Ruffe. Their ax and bows and such were buried by Sinclaire even deeper into the wood. The arm of the chair and the floor of the cottage were repaired and cleaned.

Sinclaire and Celia took some weeks to recover from the trauma. They did not sleep well for some time, but they had each other, and a love that was too great to be dislodged by evil men and sorrowful events. With time and patience and the comfort of each other's love they came to terms with what had transpired and moved beyond it.

Monsieur Couerduloup and his daughter soon sold their home in the village to move permanently together into the woods. The suitors never completely gave up with their pursuits, but they were always politely if firmly refused.

To quicken their journeys to and from the school where Sinclaire and Celia taught together, they used the same path day after day, making it more and more clear and easy to traverse. They did so without fear of discovery or invasion. The woods itself and the wolves within it were protection enough. Monsieur and Mademoiselle Couerduloup lived there by the pardon of the black wolf itself.

Sinclaire took Celia with him, from time to time, through the Riding Wood and down the river for brief periods to explore the world. When Celia discovered that she was with child they virtually had to go. They lived for a short time in the big city where Celia studied at the university and Sinclaire worked again as a book smith. While there she sold a book she had written to the master book smith. It became rather popular within the city, being a heroic and adventurous tale about a wise and sinister yet strangely kind black wolf that lived far to the south in a deep, forbidding wood, and the way he met and saved a young girl who was lost.

After their son was born they returned to their cottage, telling the villagers that she had been wed, but that her husband had died in the city of the plague. They all chittered and commiserated, and said that that sort of misery was what city life always brought.

It would be fun to say that Sinclaire and Celia lived happily ever after, but no one lives ever after, happily or otherwise. It is enough to say that they lived and loved happily for very many years, always finding ways to hide their forbidden affection for each other from the world but to share it with each other, and to sleep in peace in each other's arms knowing that, for them, they had made all of the right choices. They could, and some might say that they shouldn't, but they would and they did.

So all that remains for the reader to do, at this point, is to ask themselves:

"Could you? Should you? Would you?"

And what would the black wolf have to say about you and your answers?