Chapter Text
Florian is not suited to running, either by constitution or by character.
Once, he might have been. Back when he first joined His Highness' household – just recently come of age and even more recently titled, whip-smart and hungry – he hadn't been any more inclined towards exerting himself, but he would have found the drive from somewhere. Would have dug deep, gritted his teeth, and endured.
But all the intervening years of fine foods and comfortable living have taken their toll. He is – he can finally admit to himself now, in extremis – overweight, out of shape, and decidedly overdressed.
Lord Hughes had counselled him to armour himself before the battle or, at the very least, avail himself of a sturdy pair of boots, but Florian had scoffed at this well-meaning and foresighted advice. He had, in his naiveté, imagined himself in the place of the Battle Mages of old, as they had been depicted in the woodcuts and paintings he had spent so many hours admiring as a child: their robes billowing dramatically about them as they stood tall atop a distant mountain, raining fire and lightning down on their massed enemies below, far away from the clamour, stink, and danger of the real fighting.
But those paintings had all been lies and the Florian of two days ago was an idiot. The Florian of today despises him.
The soles of his fine brocade slippers – which were the talk and the envy of His Highness' court not even a week ago – are worn through in spots, and near every step he takes provides him with yet another painful reminder of his own hubris as some jagged rock, broken stick, or prickly plant becomes intimately acquainted with the soft underside of his foot. The midnight blue silk robe he'd so admired when he'd taken receipt of it from the royal tailor is also worse than useless now after last night's rain, the sodden weight of it dragging on his shoulders and leeching all the heat from his skin.
He would gladly strip the robe off and cast it aside were he wearing the shirt and trousers the tailor had suggested would be the perfect accompaniment to it. But he is clad only in his vest and drawers beneath, because, well, he is an idiot.
He mutters this admonishment over and again as he scrambles up the steep, scree-littered hillside before him – on his hands and knees, because the beautiful, flamboyant, absolutely fucking ridiculous and impractical long tails of his robe keep tangling around his legs and sending him stumbling.
By the time he reaches the hill's apex, he hasn't the breath left to spare for self-recrimination, and for a long while afterwards, he crouches where he lands, one arm wrapped around his aching chest, the other braced against the ground, as he desperately tries to suck in enough air to keep himself from passing out.
When his vision clears, and he feels cautiously optimistic about his chances of moving without his stomach losing its tenuous hold on the handful of sour berries he'd resentfully breakfasted upon that morning, he straightens up and peers over the other side of the hill.
It's even steeper than the one that he'd just climbed but, mercifully, far shorter, flattening out into a wide plateau only a hundred ells or so distant. At first glance, its no different to the rest of the desolate wilderness surrounding it – who knew that a veritable wasteland lay so close at hand beyond Eboracum's staunch encircling walls? Certainly not Florian, or he would never have been so dismissive about those boots – just a patchy carpet of heather and gorse bushes, amongst which a smattering of scrawny trees have gamely taken root. Between their sparse branches, Florian catches a glimpse of something that makes his sorely abused heart swell with hope; something formed of lines far too regular to be a natural feature of the landscape.
He thinks it could be a hut, of the sort he's read that shepherds and other such hardy denizens of these dales build to shelter from the worst of the often-cruel weather.
Buoyed with fresh optimism and renewed purpose, Florian's first two downward strides are steady, confident, and sure. His damned unsuitable shoes slip on his third stride, he loses his footing entirely on the fourth, and the remainder of his descent is made in an undignified, lurching rush, arms pinwheeling.
His desperate momentum carries him to the base of the hill and beyond, almost to the door of the hut. It's smaller than it looked from above – smaller even than Florian's dressing room in his bedchambers at the palace – built from warped wooden boards, weathered grey by the rain and the years. But its thatched roof is sturdy, and it looks far more homely and inviting than the ditch in which Florian had spent an unsettled few hours trying to sleep last night.
He pushes at the warped door, and it creaks open to reveal a mostly empty room, deeply shadowed despite the bright midday sun outside. The only furnishings are an old packing crate – doing duty as a table and home to a rusty lamp, dry of oil – and a thin straw tick mattress. No blankets are in evidence, and the mattress itself is damp and stinks of something sharp and offensively musky, which Florian can only assume is sheep dung.
He sinks down onto it gratefully, nevertheless. Falls onto it, more like, because his legs give out from beneath him, suddenly and completely, as though his body has become a burden too great for them to bear for even a second longer.
He has not been able to shut his eyes for more than a few minutes together at a time since he fled the battlefield. With the baying of Prince Caerwyn's hounds behind him, the promise of safety so far ahead, and no Second to keep watch over him whilst he slept, he hadn't had the courage to do so.
He had lost sight of his Second, poor Mayhew, when Prince Caerwyn's soldiers swarmed the watchtower and he'd turned to face them, expression set grim and sword raised.
"Run, sir," he'd said. "Put your head down and run, and don't you look back."
And Florian – far wiser then than he had been only scant hours before – had followed his advice to the letter. He'd run until his lungs felt as though they were bleeding, his muscles tore, and his joints all burnt with cold fire, and he'd run for many miles more after that, but he can't go on any further.
Because the deep, gnawing emptiness that fills his chest and his belly has grown so vast now that he can no longer bear it. There is no magic inside him anymore, not a speck; he'd drained it all raining fire and lightning down on his enemies, for all the good it did him in the end.
A few hours of sleep will help recover his power sufficiently that he'll be capable of summoning up a spell or two to defend himself if needs be. A day or two of peace would be enough to replenish himself completely, but he cannot depend on that. He has not heard the hounds for several hours now, nor the tread of Prince's Caerwyn's soldiers, but they are unlikely to have given up their chase and he has been careless, with no energy or thought to spare for covering his trail.
Despite his exhaustion, he expects sleep will be slow to come without loyal Mayhew's steadfast presence at his side, but he drifts off quickly and easily between one blink of his eyes and the next.
He wakes to a rasp of sound and a small swell of heat, licking across his exposed cheek. A sparking match, its tiny flame so bright and unexpected that it dazzles Florian momentarily, and disorients him to such a degree that he doesn't even think about trying to move before a hand clutches his shoulder, holding him down hard against his borrowed mattress, and the possibility of effecting his escape has already passed.
"High Mage," says someone in the cool darkness beyond the light of the match, "you certainly are a slippery bugger. I'll give you that, if nothing else."
The voice is low, gravelly, and horribly, sickeningly familiar.
Jack fucking Rayner. Florian's life, it seems, is still capable of becoming even worse.