My 8 E-books written over the years by Alina Udrea - HTML preview

She had about two more hours before the orphanage doors

would be closed for the night and before Miss Eveline would check that all the children were in their beds. So there was enough time to get to the cabin. She went down the same path as always but there was something in the air, it was as if the forest was more alive than usual. Then she remembered: the hunting season was open. Which meant something else, too: the hunting cabin might not be abandoned anymore, the king's hunting party might be using it during the hunting season. So she would have to be careful as she didn’t want to give up on going there.

Angela had a small but sharp knife tied to her belt which she

always carried for protection. She was seventeen years old and she was a beautiful girl and she had had to use that in various occasions. Most of the times it had been enough to show that she could use it and that she was ready to use it in case she had to, without having to actually use it. But there had been a few times when she really had to use the knife to protect herself like the time she had met a gang of drunkards who intended to mess with her. And she wasn't to be messed with. Angela was a skilled lock picker and she was skilled with her knife. She could also use a bow, although she was not very good at it. In her trips to the hunting cabin, she had found the knife and a bow and arrows which she trained in while roaming the forest.

The orphanage provided the children a scrappy breakfast, a

poor lunch and an even worse meal for dinner. So after breakfast, all the kids in the orphanage who were older than 12 were free to go to town and work for people for a meal if they

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wanted more than what the orphanage provided. But not all kids preferred to work, some started to pickpocket people in busy and crowded areas of the town or steal cheap stuff which they later sold for a few dimes.

Angela too had to resort to stealing to survive and to try to

improve her life. It wasn't something she was proud of but whenever she had tried to get a job, the men would only see her as a helpless wench from the orphanage whom they could have their way with so she eventually gave up on trying to get a job and started stealing. Never much though, just enough to keep her going.

On the way to the cabin Angela wished she had her bow with

her, too. She was afraid that if the king's hunting party had gone to the cabin they could have taken her bow. It was old, but it was working. Then again, maybe they didn’t need that old piece of wood. As she approached the cabin, she could hear the hunters blowing in the horns for their dogs to get the prey. They were hunting deer and boars and blowing their horns and making quite a racket. At least the dogs were quiet, no dog was barking, they had been well trained.

She could see the cabin in the distance and she decided to

advance carefully and check if there was anyone inside. She advanced slowly through the tall grass, making as little noise as possible. When she was only a few steps away from the cabin, she stepped right into a boar trap which caught her right foot. It was so unexpected that she let a loud cry of pain escape her throat. This only made her panic even more. As she was trying to escape the iron contraption, a large golden retriever started barking next to her as it had surely been drawn by her earlier

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yell of pain.

“Shhh, go away! Go back to your owner! “ but the dog wouldn’t go away, to her utmost distress. The last thing she wanted was for the king's men to find her there. She would have to explain what she was doing there and why she wasn't at the orphanage where she belonged.

But it was too late. Three hunters accompanied by more dogs came to see why the first dog was barking in a frenzy. Her foot was bleeding but she was still trying to escape the mechanism when she finally realized there was no way to get loose, so she waited for the hunters to approach her, while she was already making up excuses in her head for her reason of being there.

The tallest and most handsome of the three approached her

while the other two were standing and watching him, dumbfounded with the whole situation. He seemed to be in charge, as far as Angela could tell.

“Princess, leave the girl alone!”, he addressed the golden retriever whose name was obviously Princess. The dog immediately obeyed him and stood by his side, still curious about the girl caught in the trap.

“Don't move”, he then addressed Angela. “You will only worsen things if you keep wiggling, stand still and I will try to release you!”. He was speaking calmly but as someone who knew what he was talking about and had everything under control. For a moment, Angela forgot about the pain.

The hunter jerked the iron boar trap a few times until he

could feel it give in.

“Need any help, your…?” one of the other two hunters spoke

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when the one helping Angela hushed him to be quiet. “There!” he said smiling victorious as he released Angela's foot from the trap. Then he ripped his sleeve and used it to bandage her foot with it, leaving the other two hunters agape. Angela too wasn't used to kindness so she didn’t know how to react either. She was just as speechless as the two hunters standing behind the one who had helped her.

“Can you walk? And who are you, miss? And what are you doing here all alone in the woods? Don't you know it is dangerous?”

“Whoa” Angela said, “so many questions…”, while she was stalling to find a good enough answer to get her out of trouble. “Ok, let's start with the beginning. Who are you?”

“Angela.” She said simply. “Thank you for your help but now I’ll be on my way”, and Angela started limping back the way she came when she felt a hand on her arm grasping her gently. “Wait!” the man who seemed in charge said. “Where were you going? Where you going to this cabin? Because I don't see anywhere else you could have been going”. “As I said, thank you for your help, but that’s none of your business, is it? I will be going back now, thank you very much and good bye!”

“Not so fast!”, he said and grabbed her arm again. Now this really got her mad and she was afraid that maybe the three hunters wanted to have their way with her as there was nobody else there to save her. So she took out her knife with a swift move and in the next second she was holding it against his throat, to the other two hunters' sheer fright. Sweat was running down their necks as they witnessed what happened,

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they were obviously concerned for the first hunter's well-being. “Don't try anything funny, or his life will be on your hands!” Angela said just as scared as they were. The dogs stated barking and snarling at her as they realized their master was in danger. Princess was running around her and sniffing, trying to guess her intentions and see if her master was really in danger or the girl was just bluffing.

“Call your dogs” Angela ordered the two hunters. “ Let him go” one of the two hunters started to babble out the words, “or you are in big trouble”, he went on, sweat trickling down his spine.

“Yeah”, the other suddenly got a bit of courage and managed to utter a few words, too. “ He is the…”, but he couldn’t finish his sentence as Angela's prisoner gave him a deadly look meaning that he should keep quiet. Next thing she knew, he twisted her arm and unarmed her, grabbed her rusty knife and put it against her throat, switching roles completely, to the other two hunters' relief.

“As I was saying” he said mocking her, “what were you doing here?”

“Nothing, I was just going to spend an hour or so in the cabin away from the rustle of town. It is too noisy during this period as the spring festival is approaching”, she quickly answered. “Were you going to hunt the king's deer? You know the penalty for that!”, he said checking her out.

“No, no, I swear!” she said and it technically wasn't a lie as she wasn't going to hunt that day. She didn’t say about the deer she hunted last week, though.

“You are brave and as far as I can see, you can take care of

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yourself”, he said and he set her free. “We are not going to harm you, we are the king's men, we don't harm helpless girls!”

“First of all”, she said with fire in her eyes because she had just been unarmed by him and this hadn't happened before, “I am not a girl, I am almost 18, so I am a woman, and second, if my foot wasn't bleeding and the sunlight hadn't gotten in my eyes, you could have never taken the knife from me!” and she made a funny pout at him which only managed to make him laugh, infuriating her even more.

“Ok, enough hunting for today, gather the things and let's get back to the castle!” he ordered the other two. Then he addressed Angela: “Need a ride downtown? You won't be able to walk or if you will, it will take you forever.”

“I don't need your help, thank you very much!” she replied proudly.

“Ok, I see you are as stubborn as a mule, suit yourself!”, the handsome one said and then he addressed the other two: “Let’s go!” but he winked at them as he was sure she would change her mind as soon as she realized he was right. When Angela saw that they were really going to leave her there, she jumped up to her feet and pleaded annoyed that she was defeated: “Wait, ok, you are right, could you take me to town?”

The tall man stopped his horse and waved for the other two

to also stop. Then he looked at her, she was standing proud but there was something in her large beautiful eyes and he guessed she was afraid although he was sure she would never admit it. “Didn’t you forget something, Angela?” he asked. “What?” and she looked around to see if she had dropped

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something or lost something in the grass. “George, Adrian, let's go if this ungrateful wench can't realize what she forgot!”. The two hunters, George and Adrian, were looking at him confused but started to gallop at his words. No sooner had they done that when they heard her scream behind them.

“Wait, please!”

“See? Was it that hard?” the tall handsome guy said, stopping his horse in his tracks and waiting for her to limp to him. “Won’t you help me get to your horse? Please?” she added this time and as he was looking at her it was as if the words literally hurt her more than the wound to her foot. “Nah, you don't need our help. When I tried to help you, you put your knife to my throat”. His words made George and

Adrian shiver at the thought. They would have paid with their

lives if anything happened to him.

Angela managed to get to his horse and he eventually

helped her up. She wrapped her arms around his waist and the four of them started galloping back to town. “What’s your name?” she asked after a few miles during which they rode in complete silence.

“Daniel”, he answered simply without adding anything more. “Ok, thank you Daniel for your help. But I can manage from here.”

“What are you talking about? You can't walk, you need medical attention, I'll take you to the hospital.”

“No, you don't understand, I have to get back…”

“Where do you live? I'll let your parents know…”

“I have no parents”, Angela couldn’t hide it anymore. “I live at

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the orphanage. But I have a roommate and she is probably worried already. And the principal of the orphanage, Miss Eveline, she can't know of my little adventure or she'll throw me out in the streets… Which she will anyway next year, when I turn eighteen…”, she said, sadness in her voice and in her eyes. She saw that there was some sort of struggle in him concerning her but he eventually agreed to take her to the orphanage after making sure that her foot wasn't hurt that bad. He reckoned that with proper hygiene and some medication, she should be all right.

So Daniel left her at the orphanage gates and then he left towards the castle accompanied by his squires George and Adrian and Princess, his golden retriever.